Any other man would have crossed to the woman immediately and stooped to gently waken her and wipe away the tears that clung to her cheeks.
Dominic crossed to a mahogany table and poured himself a generous draught of brandy in hopes that the liquor would be able to loosen the knot that tightened in his gut whenever he looked into his mother’s face.
His voice was emotionless as he said, “Madam. It is done.”
Catherine St. Cyr started awake, her blue-green eyes lost in bruised circles of hope and haunted despair.
“Dominic,” she breathed, her simple white gown falling about a body slender to the point of frailty as she struggled to her feet. “Dominic, please tell me that you made Sir Jasper see reason.”
“Actually, what Sir Jasper saw was the point of my sword. And a quantity of his own blood.”
“You… fought?” She gasped, stricken.
“It was carried out with the height of discretion. You’ve no need to fear a scandal.”
“You think I care about that? Just tell me you were not injured!” Lady Catherine rushed over to him, her fingers on his shirtfront as if searching for any sign of a wound.
Dominic disentangled himself from her. “Do not distress yourself, madam. I sustained…” Dominic’s mouth quirked at the corners as he remembered Lucien Dubbonet, a termagant with glorious blue eyes and the most stubborn chin he’d ever seen. “I sustained one minor injury, and not at the hands of d’Autrecourt.”
Lady Catherine stuffed her hands behind her back like a child caught touching some forbidden treasure. “Dominic, when I told you of Aubrey’s predicament, I did not want you to charge out and place yourself in danger in his stead! I only—”
Dominic hated the stirring of pain beneath scars long buried. “What did you expect me to do? Slap Sir Jasper on the hand and lock Aubrey in his room? Or did you think I would just ignore the whole incident and order the young fool a shroud? There was nothing else to be done.”
“No. I suppose I should have known that you would take care of him. The way you care for your estates. The way you care for me.” Why did her voice sound so infernally sad? “You will not have to flee to the continent, will you, Dominic? You did not—not—”
“Kill him? No.”
“I just feared that—”
“That even after all these years, I would be so hungry for d’Autrecourt blood I’d not be overly particular which d’Autrecourt was beneath my sword?” The words were cruel, a weapon to drive Lady Catherine away. But they were his only chance to fend off the throb of pain he felt at the unguarded emotion in her eyes. When she flinched, Dominic felt the pain in his own body.
“You had best go to bed, madam. I believe I hear Aubrey’s carriage, and I can assure you, the boy’s reaction to what I have to tell him will be quite spectacular. You will need your rest to play Lady Comforter to his wounded pride in the morning.”
“Dominic, let me stay, try to explain. Perhaps if we both speak to Aubrey, he will not… not…”
“Goodnight, madam.”
Those eyes that had once been bright with innocence seemed raw and stricken. But Lady Catherine crossed to where Dominic stood, awkwardly brushing back a tendril of midnight hair from his brow. She looked incredibly small and fragile, as if a single harsh word would make her dissolve into nothingness.
Dominic wanted to reach out to her, pat her shoulder, to soothe her. But all he could do was gentle the timbre of his voice. “It will be all right, madam.”
“Will it?” Tears welled against Lady Catherine’s lashes. “I wonder, Dominique.”
It was the pet name she had given him when he was small. A tender endearment that had once made him drag his gruff boyish dignity about him, though secretly he’d been pleased whenever she used it. Now Lady Valcour stared into his face, wanting something he knew he could not give her. A man’s forgiveness for what a boy could never understand.
He saw the familiar disappointment shadow her gentle mouth. Then she slipped from the room.
Dominic downed the rest of his brandy. He crossed to the table and poured another, aware of the muffled commotion of Aubrey’s arrival in the entry hall.
The boy was laughing with one of the under footmen, telling some preposterously bawdy story as he shed his cloak. Aubrey’s tread was unsteady as he started down the corridor. Dominic went to his desk and sat down, watching through the doorway until he glimpsed a dashing scarlet frock coat and a flash of disheveled gold hair.
“Aubrey.” The mere name was a command. The youth blinked, peering into the library with eyes bleary from too much liquor.
“Dom!” the boy exclaimed, shoring himself up by leaning on the doorjamb. “Waiting up for another one of our charming brotherly chats? Too bad. I haven’t time to listen to your lecture right now. You see, I have an appointment at an ungodly early hour this morning.”
“I regret to inform you that there has been a change of plans. Sir Jasper d’Autrecourt met with an accident.”
“What?” The flush of drink drained from Aubrey’s face, the scorn in his eyes shifting to almost wild fury. “It was you, wasn’t it? Blast you, Dominic, if you interfered in this I’ll never forgive you!”
“I shall try not to be heartbroken at the prospect. Feel free to add saving your fool hide from d’Autrecourt’s sword to my numerous other transgressions.”
“Damn you, this was my affair! Mine!” Aubrey staggered toward Valcour. “How the devil did you even find out we were to fight?”
Dominic looked down at a sheaf of papers on his desk and tried to blot out the image of Lady Catherine wringing her hands. Her eyes had been so huge and terrified, he’d wanted to murder Aubrey himself rather than rescue the boy from this latest disaster.
“You won’t tell me who carried the tale to you, will you? Oh, no! You prefer to be the great, omniscient earl of Valcour, all-seeing, all-knowing! Well, damn your black soul to hell, I deserve at least to know exactly how you shamed me.”
“I merely visited some gaming hell and pointed out to the assembled company what everyone already whispers about in private: the fact that Sir Jasper only challenges babes fresh from the cradle. That he hasn’t the courage to fight a grown man.” Aubrey reeled back as if Dominic had slapped him. “D’Autrecourt felt compelled to prove differently.”
“You didn’t. Dom, tell me you didn’t!” The boy looked ashen. Doubtless he would have preferred dying nobly to facing a few moments of disgrace. Dominic remembered a time when he had felt the same. He stood up and paced to the window.
“You’ve made me the laughingstock of the season,” Aubrey flung out. “How dare you! I won’t endure it. Tomorrow I’ll leave for Brighton.”
“A magnificent idea. Order your valet to prepare at once.”
Aubrey gaped, obviously thunderstruck at Dominic’s quick acquiescence. “What did you say?”
“A retreat to Brighton is a brilliant idea. I shall be delighted to be rid of you. Of course, there will be those who say you are proving the gossips right if you go.”
“Proving them right?”
“They will say that you had me interfere in the duel because you are a coward. That you fled London because you were ashamed to show your face. Of course, their opinion is worth no more than this.” Valcour gave a dismissing snap of his long fingers.
“I’ve nothing to be ashamed of! I did nothing wrong!”
“Quite a pretty case of righteous indignation. It is possible that you would be able to play the wounded hero to a more sympathetic audience if you attended some social function and aired your opinion of my interference to the world. There are those who claim that if you show the gossips no fear they’ll forget the scandal soon enough. But if you quake before them…” Valcour met his brother’s eyes. “You will live with the disgrace of it forever.”
“Do you think me a fool?” Aubrey challenged. “You know it will be the topic of conversation for months!”
“I didn’t say this was my opinion, Aubrey. Only
that there are some who believe it so. The one thing I know for certain is that you will not die of the scandal. However, you would have died at the point of d’Autrecourt’s sword.”
“Maybe that would have been better for everyone concerned!”
“Quite dramatic. You might have had a career on the stage, though I must say, actors are rather a more stable lot. You might care to remember that your mother adores you, in spite of all you do to make her feel otherwise. Any harm befalling you would break her heart.”
The mention of Lady Catherine sobered Aubrey as little else could have.
“Of course, when you flee to Brighton, you will be abandoning her to the sharp tongues of the gossips. It is a pity, but she will feel compelled to defend you. Of course, considering what a cold-hearted villain I am, I will not lift a finger to help her.”
Dominic crossed to his desk, where a dozen invitations to various social functions were scattered. He grimaced, knowing it was in Aubrey’s best interests to brazen out this new scandal in the social whirl as soon as possible.
“I was intending to send my regrets to most of these,” Valcour observed with feigned carelessness. “But now I suppose I will have to discuss them with Lady Catherine. I wonder which she will choose to attend to mount your defense, Aubrey. Addison’s soiree? Newton’s musicale? No. Most likely the ball the new American ambassador is giving a week from tonight. There will be such a large assembly, she can make a single sweep to defend your honor.”
Aubrey was trembling, his cheeks flushed, his eyes filled with loathing. “You think I would leave my mother to suffer for me? I love her! Unlike you! I’ll go to the accursed ball, damn your eyes to hell.”
Dominic raised one brow. “I beg you to reconsider. It would be a hideously humiliating experience. I can even spare my traveling coach for your escape. And a generous amount of money. It goes without saying that you have none of your own. Perhaps you could even sail to the continent. France is lovely this time of year.”
“Keep your coach and your accursed money! I’m attending that ball, and there is nothing you can do to stop me!”
“I see. Perhaps I will attend as well. It should prove quite entertaining to see such a brave young knight take the town dragons by storm.”
The boy’s face flooded with something akin to hurt. So much so that Dominic had to turn away from him.
“Damn you, Dominic, why can’t you leave Mama and me alone? Why must you torment us?”
“It is my duty as head of the family to… torment you, as you so ungraciously put it.”
“What else would you call it when you interfere in an affair of honor? Unman me before all England?” Aubrey challenged.
“I beg to correct you,” Dominic said, smiling a little at the memory of flashing blue eyes and tumbled gold curls. “I saved you at considerable risk to my own… er… manhood.”
“We both know you didn’t charge into the breach because of your great love for me! You barely tolerate me as it is. For once, I thought I was living up to your expectations. D’Autrecourt insulted me, and I met that insult with a gentleman’s challenge. But no. Even that was wrong! I don’t understand, Dom! You’re the one who is always so all-fired determined to defend the St. Cyr honor!”
Dominic wheeled on his brother. “Don’t talk to me of honor, boy! It’s only been three days since I hauled you out of a sponging house for gaming debts. You swore to me…” Dominic’s mouth twisted at the bitter futility.
“I didn’t ask for your help then, either!” Aubrey retorted. “One of your precious friends ran tattling to you that I was in trouble, just like they did tonight. Why didn’t you let me rot there? Because I’m a St. Cyr? Because I was dishonoring your precious name?”
“You’re the legal heir to the earldom.” Dominic struggled to keep his temper leashed. “And you’re my brother. I’m responsible for your actions.”
Aubrey gave a choked laugh. “You mean I’m the millstone slung about your neck, the cross the great martyred earl has to drag through society because he’s too honorable to throw me into the gutter as I deserve? You might as well let me revel in my destruction and be done with the whole affair, Dom. I’m sure I’ll find plenty of our illustrious ancestors wallowing in hell to keep me company. Our father, the fifth earl, to begin with.”
Pain and fury tore jagged edges through Dominic’s chest. His arm flashed up, but he slammed it to a halt just before backhanding his brother across the jaw.
Aubrey leapt back, his eyes wide. Even his drunkenness couldn’t mask his shock.
The sick sensation in the earl’s stomach mingled with despair as he stared into Aubrey’s face. Suddenly Dominic felt unutterably old.
It seemed an eternity before Aubrey spoke, low, fierce. “I can only hope you suffer the same hell you have put me through, Brother.”
Dominic looked away, for once no mocking sneer touching those sensual lips. “Mine is a very different corner of hell. Be grateful you will never feel its fires along with me.”
Chapter Four
It was the perfect night to return to Perdition’s Gate.
Satin shimmered, jewels flashed, the light from three hundred candles fragmenting in crystal prisms rained down on the guests who crammed the Wilkes’s ballroom. The most powerful men in England demanded John Wilkes’s attention, while Claree was lost in a swarm of ladies who buzzed about her as if she were coated with honey and they were starving bees.
Lucy was certain she could fling a bobcat into the center of the room and no one would observe that it was there. And not even the fiercest old dragon of society would notice if the ambassador’s American guest were missing for a few hours.
Lucy peeked from behind the curtain of the alcove where she’d retreated after the last dance, her gaze traveling to the clock upon the mantle for the tenth time in as many minutes. She wished to blazes she could make the hands move faster by force of will alone.
But in spite of her impatience, she curbed the impulse to go charging off earlier than planned: She had worked too hard and waited too long to risk ruining her chances of escape tonight by growing careless.
She had planned this expedition with the precision of a general throughout the past week, while the rest of the house had been in an uproar preparing for the coming ball. Her bundle of masculine clothes had been tucked behind a pillar in the garden just that morning, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice. And she had spent countless hours charting the movements of the grooms so she would know at what time the stable would be most deserted.
She considered it a heavenly gift that Claree had planned the ball for Thursday night—the appointed time she was to rendezvous with the mysterious stranger in the gaming hell. And although Lucy had failed in her mission last time, she was resolved that tonight she’d not allow even the devil himself to stand in her way.
The devil…
She felt a tingling awareness beneath her skin, something dark and enticing stirring inside her, as her memory filled with the image of eyes black as Satan’s soul, a mouth tempting as sin.
The earl of Valcour’s mesmerizing features danced like some sensual dream inside her mind. His face was cold and arrogant. His eyes were burning, intense. The carnal heat of his mouth seemed so seductive that Lucy had spent the past week wondering what it would be like to taste it.
It was absurd, this curiosity. A result of too many sleepless nights. Yet, even in his absence, the fascinating English lord had tormented her, taunted her, dared her—to what, she did not know.
Lucy drew deeper into the shadow of the curtain, raising trembling fingers to the exquisite likeness of Alexander d’Autrecourt she had pinned in the froth of lace at her breasts when she’d dressed three hours earlier. She had worn the ornament in vague hopes that one of Claree’s guests might recognize her father’s face and comment on it. Of course, it had been ridiculous to hope that the English would stop peering down their noses long enough to remark on something so small and delicate.
&nbs
p; Especially when they had such a deliciously fresh scandal to sharpen their teeth on.
Lucy nibbled at the corner of her lip, scraps of conversation she’d heard earlier that night echoing in her memory. She must have listened to a dozen accounts of what had happened in the now notorious “duel at the gates of hell.” It had taken all Lucy’s willpower to keep her own mouth clamped shut as each story grew more fantastic than the last, the truth lost in embellishments so ridiculous she was certain her baby sisters would not have believed them.
But, truth to tell, she could almost have been grateful for the flurry of gossip, since it provided such a convenient distraction to aid in her escape. She could have been grateful, if it weren’t for the grudging sympathy she was beginning to feel for the earl of Valcour’s brother, who was the butt of the constant jests.
Still, Lucy thought with grim determination, this wasn’t a night to go crusading on behalf of some English boy she’d never even met. She had to keep her mind fixed on her purpose. To find the mysterious man who had disappeared into the twisted alleyways the week before. To discover the secrets that had been hidden in the vague, sorrowful blue eyes she’d glimpsed so briefly before Valcour had ruined everything.
She pressed her hand against the pocket hidden beneath her silver-tissue gown and heard the soft crackling of the parchment she had concealed there. But even this scrap of music he had left behind in the gaming hell saddened her. For when her fingers had tried to coax the melody out of the pianoforte, she discovered that whatever creative fire Alexander d’Autrecourt had once had had vanished. Gone like the serenity that wreathed his face in the painted miniature.
“Pardon, Miss Blackheath.” The sound of a voice at the edge of the curtain made her turn, and she saw a man with a ruddy face and lecherous eye sidling into her haven. “I would delight in claiming you for this dance.”
“Please, go delight someone else,” she said with a beatific smile. Then she hurried from the alcove, leaving the gentleman gaping. She glanced one more time at the clock, relieved to see that it was time to make her escape.
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