Tempting the Scoundrel (Private Arrangements Book 2)

by Katrina Kendrick

  He knew a thing or two of fairies—wasn’t an Irish lad raised without the tales—and she looked like some maighdean mhara, a sea maiden tempting sailors to destruction. Now he understood why they took their chances with the sea. He was tempted to swim out there in the middle of the lake and let the fates decide whether he lived or died.

  Alex tilted her head. “You look quite contemplative. What are you thinking?”

  “I’ve a confession.”

  “I love confessions. Is it something terrible?”

  Thorne waded into the pond until the water reached his knees. “Horrifying. It may shock you.”

  At that, Alex swam closer. Then she turned on her back and floated, putting her chest above the water line. Thorne bit back a groan. Christ, but she was going to be the death of him.

  “Shock me? I’m afraid that ship sailed when your jacket hit the grass.”

  “I kept my shirt and trousers,” he pointed out.

  Her smile was lovely. “You’re stalling. Tell me, Nick.”

  “I can’t swim.”

  “Whaaaaat?” She paddled closer. “I’m not shocked, I’m horrified. Everyone ought to be able to swim. Where did you grow up?”

  A part of him wished he could tell her about the rookeries. That the people of Whitechapel were not blessed with a place like this, or even the time, to float and swim without worry. The closest body of water was the Thames, and that foul river might as well have been the City’s lavatory. And water in the East End? Just as bad. The Bethnal Green vestry was filled with corrupt bastards who didn’t live in the district, and didn’t give a shit about sanitation. Diseases spread quickly when your own water made you sick. Worse: the cramped quarters and close tenements housed dozens of people in single rooms. Whole families died together.

  But he could not tell her these things. Nicholas Spencer hadn’t been raised in London; he was a country schoolmaster. So Thorne gave the first place that came to mind—somewhere far away, where a man like Nicholas Spencer might flourish: “Southwold.”

  “Southwold?” Alex raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

  “Of course.” And just what the bloody hell was wrong with Southwold? People lived there, did they not? They presumably had passels of small, Southwoldian children to teach.

  “That’s even worse, you realize.” She sounded amused now. “You lived by the sea and cannot swim.”

  “Teaching the children left little time for swimming.” He hated that lie. The life he had crafted for Nicholas Spencer seemed as ill-fitting as the old clothes he wore as a lad. The ones that were made for different children, ones who had money.

  “Then tell me about your life in Southwold. Do you have a wife?”

  “I don’t,” he said, settling on a rock at the edge of the lake. He soaked his feet in the cool water.

  “No? You must have been a devoted schoolmaster, then. Do you miss it?”

  Something in Thorne rioted at the idea of lying to her. Of wooing her with falsehoods. So rather than answering her question, he hedged with a bit of truth: “I miss my friends most, I think.”

  More than an answer to her, it was a reminder of who he’d fail if he didn’t marry this woman: the rest of Whelan’s lads. O’Sullivan, who hadn’t been the same since escaping the aristocrat Whelan sold him to years ago. Callihan, who Whelan used for the worst of his crimes. All the lads who’d lived and died in that cramped cellar below the streets of the Nichol. And the people who owed Whelan debt for protection, who didn’t have the means to pay every month. They were forced to do Whelan’s dirty work or die.

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said. “For you to go from having friends to a place with none at all.”

  Here he found himself on much easier ground. “Are we not friends?”

  Their eyes met. Then Alex hid her face, but not before he saw her blush. “We are,” she said, turning over to float on her back. “So next time we meet, bring a swimming costume. Friends ought to teach friends how to swim.”

  Chapter 8

  London. Four years later.

  Alexandra’s entire skull was pounding.

  “Ye think she’s dead?”

  “I think she’s pretty.”

  “I think she’s dead.”

  “She’s not dead, ninny. Her eyelashes are fluttering. Are ye dead, miss?”

  Alexandra opened her eyes—and immediately shut them against the scalding light. What in god’s name . . . ? Oh. Right. The bottle of brandy she’d consumed sometime between the hours of one and three. She felt like she’d been run over by a carriage and dragged some great distance.

  “Ugh,” she groaned. “I’d rather be dead.”

  “She don’ sound like a lady,” a voice whispered. “Was told them swells speak all fancy-like. Like them poems Mrs. Ainsley reads us.”

  Alexandra gingerly eased her eyes open. Two red-headed girls stared at her in fascination, as if she were a strange new species of insect. They couldn’t have been more than seven years of age, with freckles dappled along their round cheeks. Their striking similarity ended at their wardrobe: one green dress, one blue. Alexandra wondered if the difference helped to tell them apart.

  Beyond the duo was an unfamiliar room. Opulent, yes, with draping chandeliers and vivid blue wallpaper pressed with floral patterns. The view from the window revealed the rooftops of buildings placed close together, ones she had never seen before. Why, she even slept in an unknown bed—a massive four poster monstrosity with silk sheets. It could have fit an entire passel of children.

  “Where am I?” she asked, trying to clear the cobwebs from her mind. She would never drink again.

  Never, ever.

  Alexandra didn’t even recall getting out of the bathtub. Had Nick carried her out? Put her to bed? He must have done. Perhaps the headache was a blessing, then. It distracted from the indignity of passing out naked in a bathtub from too much brandy in her estranged husband’s gambling den.

  The girl with the green dress answered first. “Yer in the room connected to Mr. Thorne’s.” She bounced on the bed next to Alexandra. “Are ye really a lady? Heard you was a lady, but ye haven’t looked down yer nose at me yet.”

  These children were only adding to her confusion. Who did they belong to? Why were they here?

  A thought occurred to her. Oh, dear god, had Nick sired children during their separation? She was going to kill him.

  Be sensible, she reminded herself. It wasn’t their fault that their father was an ogre who didn’t give a damn about his marriage vows.

  “Why would I look down my nose at you?” she asked the girl as she tried to find her bearings.

  The hammering in her skull only grew worse as she sat up, but she did her best to ignore it. She needed answers. She had to find Nick. Alexandra lifted the counterpane, relieved to find she was wearing—

  Wait a moment. This wasn’t her nightgown.

  Was she was wearing his mistress’s clothes?

  Yes, she was going to choose her murder weapon very carefully. A pistol, perhaps?

  The little girl in the green dress looked shy now. “The ladies what see me in passing on the streets don’ look at me nice-like. Hurts my f-f—” she frowned, glancing at the other girl with a questioning expression.

  “Feelings,” Brown Dress finished.

  On second inspection, Alexandra decided Brown Dress was older—at least nine years old. She only appeared so young because she was small. Like many of the children in the East End, malnourishment had stolen height and weight from her.

  Nick wasn’t feeding his own children properly?

  Never mind the weapon, Alexandra was going to set Nick on fire, then shoot him.

  The younger girl curled next to Alexandra and propped her chin atop her knees. “Thought ye was dead, but Fiona kept insisting ye wasn’t.”

  Fiona rolled her eyes. “And she’s not, is she?” To Alexandra: “What’s yer name, lady?”

  “Alexandra,” she said, still confused. If not Nick, these children ha
d to belong to someone here. Why else would two little girls be loitering in the private suite of a gaming hell? “And who might you both be?”

  “Two naughty children who picked the locks again and are about to be late for school,” a new voice said.

  Alexandra looked over to see Nick leaning against the doorframe, watching the girls with an amused expression.

  “Is she really a lady, Mr. Thorne?” Fiona asked, giving the bed a jostle. “She’s ever so pretty. She got skin like milk, she does.”

  His black eyes sought hers. “Lady, she is. And, aye, very pretty.”

  She had forgotten the trick of those eyes, how off-kilter he could make her feel. His heated expression promised long days in bed, hours of devotion to her pleasure. Even now, after everything he had done, the stark hunger in his stare sparked some light inside her. Some twin desire that she had tried for years to extinguish.

  But she was no longer the infatuated girl in Stratfield Saye. Give her a blade, and she’d cut him from her heart for good.

  Brown Dress touched her wrist. “Why she got bruises on her arm?” the girl asked. “Like ‘andprints, them. Looks like me ma’s did after spendin’ a night with a man.”

  Nick clenched his jaw and pushed off the doorframe. “Fi, Lottie, away from the bed now. O’Sullivan’s gonna take you to school and I don’t wanna hear any complaining, either. Lottie—” He let out a breath. “Lottie, sweetheart, where are your boots?”

  Fiona bounced off the bed and ran to Nick, who clasped her hand. “She lost ‘em, Mr. Thorne.”

  “I didn’t lose ‘em,” Lottie said, slowly getting off the bed. “Gave ‘em to a girl what just came into the orphanage. Didn’t have any boots, she did.”

  “And now you don’t have any,” Nick said. He shook his head. “Go find O’Sullivan and have him fetch a pair for you from Mrs. Ainsley’s, then it’s straight to school, all right? Off you go.”

  “Bye, lady!” Both girls disappeared out the door.

  As their patter of footsteps disappeared down the hall, Nick cleared his throat. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Like I’m being stabbed through the skull,” Alexandra said.

  Nick’s smile was small. “I’d expect so. Didn’t think a woman so small could consume that much brandy in a single evening. Want anything for your bad head?”

  “No. I’ll use the pain as a lesson never to drink again.”

  Alexandra fretted with the sheets, her skin so pale against the deep crimson. In the morning light, the bruising along her arm was more visible. It was worse above her elbow, where a clear imprint of five fingers left their marks.

  “Bruises anywhere else?” Nick kept his voice light, but Alexandra was not fooled. Violence flickered across his features.

  “Possibly.” As cold rage continued to play across his face, she felt compelled to add, “They look worse than they feel.”

  Nick came closer. She had forgotten how he commanded a space, how the walls seemed to contract when he entered a room. He stared at her bruises intently, as if counting each one. Memorizing the shape of them. Imagining how her attacker put them there. Yes, this was not Nicholas Spencer, the schoolmaster who had come from Southwold. This was the man who commanded the East End. His reputation for violence was as renowned as a general on the field of battle.

  He turned and picked up some folded clothes from the wingback chair. “Here.” He set the bundle beside her. “Thought you might like something to wear that wasn’t a night rail.”

  The shades were more somber than she usually wore: grey, brown, and black. The corset was the only item that held any color at all, and the pretty rosebuds on the undergarment unsettled her. Had he unlaced the stays while taking it off another woman? Had he admired the shape of her in it?

  “Is it from the same place you found this nightgown?” she asked, touching the silk fabric. It was well made, if a bit frayed from wear. “From a mistress, perhaps.”

  “Mistress?” He lifted his lashes. “Is that where you think it came from?”

  Alexandra had always thought black to be a cold shade, as sharp as obsidian. Though forged in heat, volcanic glass made a perfect weapon; it might have been brittle, but it was hard and amorphous—the edge cut easily through flesh. If he wanted, he could wield those eyes of his like a blade. Perhaps he saved that for enemies, for those who were fool enough to challenge him.

  For her, that gaze was as hot as coal fire, and every bit as dangerous.

  But Alexandra was no coward, to let this man intimidate her. He ought to know her better than that. She lifted a shoulder. “I have no expectations. It’s been four years—”

  Nick reached Alexandra before she could blink. His arms pressed into the bed on either side of her, and he leaned in, close enough to kiss. “Aye, four fucking years.” His voice was almost a purr. Did he see her shiver? “I’ve fair worn out my hand, but I’ve never taken any woman since you to my bed.”

  Was he telling her the truth? Alexandra hated the flush of warmth that went through her. Had he really—

  No. You will not do this again. He was a liar, wasn’t he? A confidence artist with years of practice deceiving people. Why, she probably hadn’t been a challenge at all. All it took to destroy her life was his wicked smile and his pretty face.

  What an easy mark she was.

  The reminder angered her. “You’ve no need to be dishonest with me now,” she said, pushing at his chest. “You already have my money.”

  “Sure, I suppose it’s hard to believe a man like me would remain faithful to his wife. He might wonder if she could say the same.”

  What matter? A thousand lovers couldn’t erase the memory of him: his body pressed to hers, cock inside her. Later, the sight of him kissing down her hips to settle his lips and tongue between her thighs. And what did it matter when four years had done little to ease the ache in her heart at his betrayal?

  Her lips flattened. “That wife might wonder if her husband has the right to demand fidelity when he began the marriage under false pretenses.”

  Nick’s eyes burned into hers. “Have you a lover, Alex?” he asked her, very softly.

  “And if I did?” she asked. She relished in the cruelty of her question. Let him be hurt. Let him wonder. He’d done worse. “Would you maim the hand he touched me with? Kill him for giving me what you couldn’t?” She rested her hand at his nape and whispered in a voice as cold as the winter ocean, “Would you find a way to punish me for welcoming another man between my thighs?”

  Nick jerked away from her. “Learned a thing or two from those heartless nobs, did you?”

  “On the contrary. I learned everything I needed to know from you.”

  He let out a rueful laugh. “Ruthless I am. But my enduring regret is lowering myself so far in your esteem that you think I’d punish you, or anyone else, for my mistake.”

  How could she believe his words? He’d hurt her so deeply that four years had not lessened the ache. He had the face of the man she loved, but he was not Lord Locke. Lord Locke didn’t even exist. “Perhaps there is no man in my life. After all, how could I trust them after you?”

  His expression constricted slightly, as if he held back a flinch at her words. “Then perhaps that ought to be my enduring regret.”

  “Enough.” Alexandra didn’t want to feel sorry for him. He’d betrayed her, after all. She tipped her head to the door and returned to an easier topic: “If those children aren’t yours, then whose are they?”

  If anything, his expression became more guarded. “Fi and Lottie’s ma died in a building collapse in the Nichol eight months ago. Don’t know who their da was.”

  “And they live here? At the Brimstone?”

  Nick hesitated. “The orphanage nearby.”

  Why was he holding himself so strangely? He was shifting on his feet. Nick was not a man who shifted, nor one who appeared uncertain about anything. That made her suspicious. It was yet another reminder that the whole of his life remained unfamiliar to h
er. Composed of secrets she had only pieced together over the years through her work. The picture was incomplete; he was a puzzle with a thousand missing pieces.

  Frustrated, Alexandra asked, “But why do they come here, then?”

  “Reckoned they fancied having a sweet roll from the kitchens,” he said with a shrug. “The orphanage takes care of their needs, but most of them have never had full bellies and regular meals before. They take it where they can. They know I’ll give it to them, since I own the—” he made a noise and looked away.

  One missing piece in the puzzle of his life filled.

  “You own the orphanage?” She couldn’t keep the astonishment out of her voice.

  Nick lifted a shoulder. “Few of them. Makes it easier to hire managers who treat the children well, put meals in their bellies, and don’t sell them off to toffs looking to abuse them.”

  It was easier if she believed the broadsheets, written by those who did not know him. They called him an Irish upstart with suspected Fenian sympathies. One who used violent methods to claw his way from an impoverished nobody to someone who commanded an East End empire.

  That was the man who sold newspapers. That was the man Members of Parliament deemed too dangerous, even as they spent money at his gambling den.

  That was the man who had crushed her heart beneath the heel of his boot.

  When Alexandra’s work took her to the East End, she couldn’t help but ask about her errant husband. From working girls to the miscreants outside the gin palaces, people spoke of his fairness. Of the high wages he paid staff, of the families he took responsibility for. Alexandra would examine these notes at night, in the privacy of her bedchamber, and file them away with an ache in her chest. Each one was a reminder that Nicholas Thorne was capable of caring for so many people. She could not reconcile those stories with the man who had colluded with her father to destroy her. With the man who cared enough about children that he’d purchase several orphanages.