To date, she’d found every suitor, beau, and gentleman unsuitable.
Her attention veered to the jewelry store, The Dragon’s Hoard. Even now, were her jewels on display there? Her brooch, glittering blue and white beneath a glass countertop?
Or did the Lyon’s Den dispose of contraband in another manner?
Greedy bastards.
She’d asked Mr. Dobkin to visit the jewelry store for that very purpose after she’d provided him with detailed descriptions and even sketches of her missing gems. She very much suspected he had ignored that request, too. Had she taken it upon herself to make inquiries about the jewelry, the proprietor might’ve alerted Owen when next he attempted to sell his stolen bounty.
She couldn’t take the risk of alerting Owen that she was on to his schemes.
He was up to something more than just helping himself to her valuables. She was convinced of it. Without a doubt, his machinations somehow involved her.
Mouth pulled into a grim line, Vanessa scarcely checked the unladylike curse balanced on the tip of her tongue. She felt nothing but contempt for those who frittered away their inheritances or for the people who owned or worked in such despicable establishments as the Lyon’s Den.
They were the dregs of humanity, preying on other’s weaknesses and faults.
And those women who retained The Black Widow of Whitehall to find husbands for them, through fair means or foul?
Weren’t they also worthy of contempt?
Indeed. Why shouldn’t they be?
According to the Lyon’s Den servant girl Gaines had obtained information from, not all of the grooms had been willing partners in the arranged unions.
Blackmail, extortion, and rigging the games had been used to garner their cooperation.
Vanessa shuddered.
Just what was she walking into?
Chapter Two
The Sword and Shield Tavern
At the same time, three streets away
Kingston Barclay glowered darkly at the inch of amber liquid remaining in the crystal tumbler. Firmly encased in his white-knuckled grip—more evidence of the turmoil churning within him—the glass rested upon the battered rectangular table.
His third, or was it his fourth glass?
Since when had he needed whisky to bolster his courage?
Bloody, bloody hell.
Since he’d decided to seek The Black Widow of Whitehall’s assistance in acquiring a bride. He was bloody insane.
No, he was out of options.
Desperate times, and all of that driveling rot.
He quaffed back the last swallow, closing his eyes and relishing the fiery trail of spirits sliding to his belly and creating a warm pool there.
Christ.
Kingston was really going to do it.
Barter his future dukedom and fortune for a wealthy wife now. The now being the most critical and relevant detail.
How else could he restore his familial lands to prosperity? Feed, clothe, and provide a roof over the heads of his three younger sisters and two brothers? Pay for their educations and dowries for the girls, and make provisions for the boys’ futures as they deserved?
They’d already lost their parents and currently eked out a meager existence at Quail Hollow House outside Canterbury. While he’d been gallivanting around the world playing at being a soldier, they’d struggled to survive.
It was his duty and responsibility to provide for them. And Kingston wanted to—nay, needed to—make up for his prior negligence.
But how exactly?
That worry had plagued him the months he recuperated in the hospital and the six months since, as well. Six months of searching for a solution in London. And each and every time he strove for an answer to the deuced conundrum that was his life, he came back to the most logical recourse.
Find a wealthy woman willing to pay handsomely to buy herself the title of future duchess. Hell, mayhap Kingston ought to have taken out adverts in the gossip rags. Promoted a blasted bidding war. He could’ve stood on the auction block and let them inspect him like a prized stallion.
In point of fact, a version of an auction was what he meant to put to The Black Widow of Whitehall. She could handle the bidding and perhaps even encourage wagers on the outcome. He had no plans to bed his duchess, so he needn’t worry the scars covering his shoulders, back, and arms would offend her tender sensibilities.
By Hades, pray God this path he’d chosen would spare his siblings further humiliation and pain. Everything Kingston did now was for them.
He’d been arrogant and selfish, persuading his generous, loving parents to buy him a commission in the army, and cajoling Gabriel Becket to do the same. Father had laughed and said it must be Kingston’s Highland ancestor, Camden Kennedy’s, warrior’s blood that made him eager for the battlefield.
Young and foolish and full of himself—Christ, he’d been a cocksure assling—Kingston had reveled in the thrill. In the excitement and adventure. Until the brutal, horrendous, gut-wrenching reality of war had stripped him of his brother in spirit, if not brother by blood.
Jesus. He hadn’t even been able to go home when Madeline wrote that their parents had died mere weeks apart. The letter had taken six months to reach him. At just seventeen, she’d been left to care for their four younger siblings.
And God curse Kingston for a selfish, neglectful bastard. He’d let her for almost three more years.
But you couldn’t have known father had made several poor business decisions that rendered the family coffers empty. Nor can you be faulted that Father didn’t tell you, and he left your sisters and brothers destitute.
And there was nothing he could’ve done while convalescing either.
Nevertheless, shame infused Kingston for being a self-centered, dishonorable cad. A better man would’ve promptly resigned his commission and returned home.
He flexed his shoulders, the familiar tautness stretching the flesh across his back, reminding him he’d barely survived. Reminding him what his purpose in life was now. What his obligation this night was.
Around him, the tavern’s din ebbed and flowed, the sounds muted as if his head was beneath several feet of water.
Though not a posh establishment like White’s or Brooks’, The Sword and Shield’s clientele leaned more toward the merchant class. Respectable and well-to-do, but not elite or prestigious. Which, he supposed, was why several of the patrons kept sending curious glances toward his table, where no fewer than three nobles sat with him.
The lords’ very demeanor, let alone their expensive, immaculately tailored clothing, declared them aristocrats. Yet none affected the haughty air or condescending attitude one often associated with nobility.
His thoughts meandered back to his siblings, even now awaiting his return home. What would’ve happened to them if he’d perished in Belgium? Bile burned his throat, and his gut coiled into a knot as appalling, inconceivable images paraded before his mind’s eye.
As their next of kin, Gaylord, Duke of Caerleon, would’ve become their guardian, God save them.
Caerleon—Lion.
Lions were noble, dependable, social creatures.
The Caerleon dukes to date, were nothing of the sort.
“You don’t have to do this, Barclay,” Pierce Chamberlain, Earl of Wainthorpe, murmured, his raven brows pulled together into a single harsh line. His almost black eyes penetrating and intense with emotion, he splayed a palm across his chest, his signet ring glowing in the candlelight. “Myself, Pembroke, Dandridge, Pennington, and half a dozen more of our other friends would gladly loan you the funds until you came into your title.”
As the Duke of Caerleon’s presumptive heir, Kingston would inherit a wealthy dukedom, several estates, and a slew of other entailed and unentailed properties. But his great-uncle despised Kingston as much as Kingston reviled the lecherous old sot.
The only thing Caerleon cared about was his reputation. A reputation that was so tarnished and tainted, a
lifetime of servitude to the Church couldn’t begin to bring a shine to it.
How bloody ironic was that?
Kingston would rather sell his soul to the devil before he asked Caerleon for a shilling. The duke hadn’t a benevolent bone in his decrepit body, or an inkling of kindness in his corrupt soul. He’d have demanded his pound of flesh from Kingston.
No, he’d have exacted his depraved, warped form of payment from Madeline, Rebecca, Dorena, by selling their favors to his equally debauched cronies. Gareth, and Paxton would’ve been Caerleon’s perverse target. Hadn’t the sodding degenerate attempted as much with Kingston when he’d been but a thirteen-year-old lad?
The same age Paxton was now.
And the duke had suffered a knife to his paunchy belly for his deviant inclinations.
Kingston had been going through a stage where he pretended to be a Highland warrior, and blades had fascinated him. He’d forever thank the divine powers that he carried a small dagger in his boot that fateful day. The day he’d nearly rendered Caerleon a eunuch. It would’ve been a service to the world, should Kingston have succeeded.
“Surely there is another way,” Crispin Rolston, Duke of Bainbridge, insisted, bringing Kingston back to the present.
Kingston shook his head.
He was out of funds. Out of ideas. Without hope or recourse.
Quail Hollow House needed a new roof and chimney before next winter. The larder was nearly empty, the fields unplanted, the floorboards rotted in several damp rooms, and the coffers nearly as empty as a church’s during a famine or plague.
His brothers and sisters had suffered long enough.
Too damned bloody long, in truth.
Eligible young ladies didn’t want to wait years, perhaps decades, to become a duchess or take a chance that the funds they brought to the union would be long gone before they ever acquired the coveted title.
Then there was the matter of an heir.
Kingston didn’t intend to produce one. Gareth would be his.
A match arranged by The Black Widow of Whitehall was the only remedy. A marriage of convenience. A business arrangement with no expectations of a personal or intimate nature.
Unable to bear the sympathy he knew he’d see in his friends’ eyes, Kingston poured another finger’s worth of whisky into his glass, concentrating his entire focus on the mundane task.
Not wise imbibing so much, but he needed numbed faculties for what he was about to do.
A shout of laughter, followed by a throaty feminine giggle, hinted the evening’s entertainment at The Sword and Shield was taking a turn in another, predictable direction.
He spared an acrid glance in the direction of the stairs where a couple, arms wrapped around each other’s waists, ascended the risers. The man bent and placed a kiss on the woman’s exposed shoulder, and she gave another throaty laugh.
At one time, Kingston had been no different than that young, randy buck. A callow, cocksure rogue, seeking his pleasures where he might while his family struggled to put food on the table and keep a fire in the hearth.
You didn’t know that.
Nevertheless, self-loathing eviscerated him.
“Barclay?” Wainthorpe’s query brought Kingston back to himself.
He slowly raised his tired gaze to meet his friend’s concerned eyes.
Yes, Wainthorpe and the others would loan him funds without hesitation and without interest too. Several had offered as much, and Kingston declined each and every one. He would accept no favors ever again, most especially from those he cared about.
The last favor he’d asked had cost his best friend his life and left Kingston maimed.
Scarred. Emotionally crippled.
A hollow, bitter shell of the man he used to be.
Oh, his clothing hid his mutilated flesh, but it was the memories that tormented him. That refused to heal.
Gabriel’s screams of agony…
No, I shan’t think of it.
He couldn’t, or he’d curl into a fetal position and wail like an inconsolable infant.
Future dukes didn’t display such weaknesses. Didn’t reveal how fragile they truly were—barely keeping a firm grip on their sanity. And only doing so because his sisters and brothers needed him.
He was all they had. He must succeed.
So, Kingston lifted his glass in a salute and skewed his mouth into a self-deprecating grin.
“To finding a suitable bride,” he quipped with false jollity.
All he asked is that whoever the woman was, she would have a good heart and treat his sisters and brothers with kindness and affection. Oh, and she must have an obscenely generous dowry, of course.
Which he intended to repay as soon as he inherited his ducal fortune.
He could only pray the old duke would cock up his toes and feed the fires of hell soon. And pray to God, not squander his wealth away in the meanwhile. The fact that Kingston not only had to depend on that depraved sod for his inheritance, but also that he gambled his future on it, made him want to vomit.
Or maybe that was the whisky.
Still, repay his future duchess he would, for Kingston would be no lady’s fancy man. No woman would ever hold any degree of control over him again. Women—as he’d learned in the most brutal betrayal—were never to be trusted. Blinding smiles, full, pouty mouths, sensual sighs, and supple bodies all hid venomous hearts.
Kingston didn’t give ten damns that marriages were arranged for wealth and position every day amongst the haut ton. It was bad enough he was practically prostituting himself to gain an heiress.
Practically?
Bloody hell.
That was exactly what he was doing.
Selling himself, his pride, his dignity, for money.
But not his body.
He’d taken a vow of celibacy after the buxom beauty Odriana Janssen’s duplicity in Belgium, mere days before the Battle of Waterloo. She’d been a spy, passing tidbits of seemingly inconsequential information along to her superiors. Information she gathered from her numerous lovers, including him.
Kingston would never know how she got word to her contact that night that Gabriel was delivering the missive or how she guessed it was to Colonel Pountney. Kingston hadn’t revealed that particular detail. Only that he was able to meet with her—at her request—for a half-hour dalliance because Gabriel was doing him a favor by delivering a letter.
Except, Kingston supposed, Odriana might easily have sent word with a servant. And perhaps, she’d been told to report anything at all at that critical juncture.
I was a goddamned imbecile.
His cock—no, his lust—had cost him much. Too much. Scrubbing a hand over his forehead, he tried unsuccessfully to erase the tormenting memory.
He had little enough self-respect left as it was.
Except in his beloved siblings’ eyes, he was a hero.
A Goddamned, bloody hero.
The army had also declared him one.
“Unmitigated bravery and selfless sacrifice in the face of imminent death.”
What a colossal load of horse shite.
Kingston was no hero.
Not by any stretch of the imagination or truth.
He should have died, not Gabriel Becket. It didn’t matter that he’d been severely burned trying rescue Gabriel and the other soldiers. Yes, he’d managed to save the lives of four men by repeatedly reentering the burning building after the explosion. But he hadn’t been able to save Gabriel—his dearest friend since childhood. That truth, and his own self-loathing, would torment Kingston every day for the rest of his life.
He didn’t even know how Gabriel’s mother and sister had learned of his death or how they fared afterward. A memory flashed inside his mind, Vanessa’s white-blonde hair billowing about her shoulders and her unusual amber-brown eyes twinkling with pleasure as she ran toward Gabriel, her arms outstretched.
Kingston had played the poltroon and hadn’t called upon Vanessa and Mrs. Elligon on
ce he’d left the hospital. Shame pummeled him equally for his cowardice and guilt.
How could he face them?
Answer their questions?
See the tears in their eyes?
Explain that it should have been him who died that day, but he’d been too eager to bed the lusty Belgian beauty?
His friends, sitting around the slightly wobbly table, exchanged dubious glances at his sardonic toast but remained silent. None lifted their glasses with him, not that Kingston blamed them.
Pain and remorse cleaved his chest, lanced his heart and conscience—a double-edged sword of guilt and self-castigation.
Would they haunt him for the rest of his life?
Why shouldn’t they?
“I must bid you farewell,” he said. “I don’t wish to keep Mrs. Dove-Lyon waiting. In truth, I’m astounded she agreed to my request to meet with her to discuss the possibility of utilizing her matchmaking services.”
With a hefty sigh and another wry grin for the sake of his solemn friends, he pushed away from the table. Straightening his newly acquired royal blue coat—tailored for this very occasion—he hid a grimace. It wouldn’t do to arrive in his out of fashion togs. He must make an excellent impression for his plan to succeed.
After all, at present, he had nothing to offer. Everything hinged on his future inheritance. It was rather like teetering on the edge of a cliff.
“Yes. I’ve heard Mrs. Dove-Lyon generally reserves her services for the most unsuitable of ladies.” Looking contemplative, Stanford Bancroft, Duke of Asherford, bussed a hand over his jaw. “Those who cannot manage a respectable match on their own.”
Another bitter grin tipped up one side of Kingston’s mouth. “I’d say that describes me to perfection. Wouldn’t you?”
Chapter Three
Still outside the Lyon’s Den
Vanessa leaned forward a few inches, honing her focus on another man approaching the Lyon’s Den, his gait slightly uneven.
Pished already?
Well, it had been half-past nine when she’d left home, and surely it must be near half-past ten by now. Owen was generally well into his cups by eight, foxed to his red-rimmed eyes by ten, and often passed out cold by midnight.
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