Objective two: ruin the bastard’s sister so she would be forced to wed him. In medias res.
Objective three: make the rest of the Spaniard’s life a living hell until he ended it on the field of honor. A promise.
Retribution was the sole thing on his mind when Morgan first saw Lady Leonora Forsythe. She was seated on the periphery of the ballroom, attended by a turban-wearing dowd with a wan complexion. The turban was obviously the lady’s mother.
He’d been told Lady Leonora suffered an unfortunate limp, which precluded her from dancing. However, he had not been told she possessed the breathtaking beauty of an angel. The former did not deter him. He could easily guide her into a darkened alcove or an empty hall. Nor did the latter. Even angels were meant to fall.
Watching her, he sipped from his glass of punch. The stuff was sickening and sweet, and its only saving grace was in the bite of the spirits lacing it. When he imbibed, he preferred unsullied spirits. The sort that made him forget, if only for an evening. Sadly, not even a drop of illicit Scottish whisky was to be had at the Kirkwood ball.
The man owned a gaming hell that served the best liquor in the land. Morgan would have expected better, but he supposed anything less than proper ballroom fare would have been frowned upon by the tittering lords and ladies who had assembled here this evening. Kirkwood’s wife was a duke’s daughter, and it would seem the festivities were his attempt to blur the boundaries between his world and the quality.
Morgan didn’t give a damn for balls. He also didn’t give a damn about the punch he was drinking or the room in which he stood, or the fact he was not imprisoned and being tortured by French soldiers who wanted answers he refused to give. His body, beneath the trappings of his evening finery, was marked with scars and burns, all testaments to his inability to ever give a damn about anything again.
Anything except making the Spaniard suffer, that was.
El Corazón Oscuro, the Dark Heart. Also known as the Earl of Rayne, half-brother to Lady Leonora. It was almost impossible to believe as he flicked his gaze over her, marveling at her white-blonde hair and skin pale enough to rival cream. But it was true. The blackest-hearted devil he had ever known and the lovely woman in the diaphanous silver gown shared blood.
And soon they would share one more connection.
Morgan’s wrath.
But first, he needed an introduction.
Fortunately, he did not have far to look or long to wait, for his trusted friend and old comrade-at-arms Crispin, the Duke of Whitley, joined him by the next thudding beat of his heart. Revenge would soon be his. He could taste it, bitter and dark and delicious, upon his tongue. He could feel it in the surge, the pounding pulse of blood coursing through his veins, much as it had before a battle: fierce, fast, consuming.
It was a rush, and for the first time since his return to England, since he had been freed from captivity, he felt alive. So gloriously, viciously alive.
“Morgan.” Crispin exchanged a stilted greeting with him, his bearing, his tone, and even his expression, stiff with guilt.
Much as it had been ever since their reunion.
Crispin had been with him on the Peninsula that fateful day, when El Corazón Oscuro had taken Morgan captive. The bleak, hideous, hateful day it had all begun…
But he would not think of that day now. Nor would he think of the torture that had ensued. For if he did, then the madness would come. And he could not entertain the madness today. Today, he must remain determined. Today, he must stay the course and keep the madness at bay.
He must begin his retribution. Imprisoned as he had been all those months, he had been given ample time to meticulously plan the foundation of his revenge. In the end, he had become so inured to even the beatings, that he would separate his mind from his body. His mind would wander while his body faced unimaginable cruelties and degradations. And in his mind, it was always London to which he returned, sweet revenge which he earned.
His heart sped up, pounding in his chest and in his ears.
But he could not give in here. He gulped down the rest of his punch to distract himself. “Tell me Kirkwood has something better than this swill hidden somewhere. Some misbegotten Scottish whisky, perhaps.”
“Of course he does,” Crispin returned, studying him with a gaze reminiscent of the manner in which one would survey a wild animal. A snarling fox, perhaps, with its fangs bared, about to decimate creatures smaller than himself. “But one does not partake of whisky at balls, Searle.”
Morgan felt not so much like a snarling fox as a rampaging lion, hungry for blood. Too large and too angry and too voracious to be stopped.
“Balls would be so much less tedious if one did.” A servant hovering nearby approached with a tray at the ready, whisking away his empty glass.
“I am glad to see you here, Morgan.” Crispin paused. “My duchess has convinced me to play the role of the gentleman and indulge in the social whirl.”
“Glad to see me at all, you mean to say.” He cocked his head, considering his old friend, who had gone pale beneath his scrutiny.
Together, they had witnessed hell on earth. What he had endured on his own was a level beyond that, a tenth circle of hell, as it were. Inexplicable. And he would not lie. He envied Crispin for escaping as he had, with nothing but a sore head and a return voyage to London to take his seat as the heir. All while Morgan had lingered as a captive of first the guerrillas and then the French. All while he had been beaten and interrogated, while he had been humiliated and abused in vile fashion.
None of that had been Crispin’s fault, it was true. Rather, it had been the fault of El Corazón Oscuro. Which was why he was standing here, in this ballroom, dressed as if he cared about waltzing and bowing and commenting upon the size of the gathering and the quality of the lords and ladies strutting about the room.
Peacocks, all of them.
But could he blame them, truly blame them? He had been a peacock once, too, after all. It had been only his time abroad and his years as a soldier that had rendered him any different. Those times had made him who he was today.
“Yes,” Crispin said then. “I am damned glad to be seeing you at all. You have the way of it, precisely. I missed you, old friend. I…when I believed you gone…”
“But here I am,” he interrupted quickly. Coldly, too. For truth be told, he could not bear any reminders. His overtaxed body and mind could not endure returns to what had happened. Even mere thoughts made him shake like a tree at the mercy of a violent wind.
He understood the problem was likely his and not anyone else’s. It had taken him a solid fortnight upon his return to London before he could even leave his townhome. Before he could step a bloody foot out the goddamned front door. It had taken him just as long to understand what had befallen him as a soldier had changed him. It had changed him forever, and there would be no return to the Morgan he had been before.
There was only the hardened shell remaining now.
“Yes,” Crispin echoed solemnly. “Here you are.”
He said it as if the words were somehow untrue. And his friend was not wrong in this, for they were untrue, in part.
His attempt at a smile went flat. “War changes us.”
“That day,” Crispin began. “Your hand…I do not understand.”
“The severed hand did not belong to me. Only the signet ring did,” he bit out, for this was the last thing he wished to discuss ever, let alone at a ball in the midst of polite London society.
He understood Crispin’s confusion. Though much of what had happened on that day in Spain remained mired in a part of his mind he had deliberately closed off, he could not suppress the image of one of El Corazón Oscuro’s minions sliding his signet ring onto the pinky of one of the butchered French soldiers. The Spaniard had raised a deadly looking blade, and chopped the Frenchman’s wrist with one swift blow.
The fallen soldier had not yet been dead, which had made the scene even more gruesome. Sometimes, Morgan still
heard the poor bastard’s scream in his nightmares.
“But the reason for what occurred,” Crispin continued. “I am deuced glad El Corazón Oscuro left you whole, but—”
“I can assure you I am not whole,” Morgan stayed him bitterly. “But I will not discuss this with you further, Cris. Not here. Not now.”
Not ever.
Mere thoughts of what had happened made him lose control of his body. Already, a cold sweat broke out on his skin and his hands tremored.
Crispin’s jaw ticked. “Then when, Morgan? You have been avoiding this dialogue ever since your return. You are my oldest and greatest friend. I thought you dead. I mourned you. Can you not imagine I would wish to revisit that day, to understand what occurred?”
What had occurred was that Morgan and Crispin had been ambushed by El Corazón Oscuro. Crispin had been left behind, and Morgan had been taken. It was as simple and as complicated as that. What came after that day…he could not think it. Could not face it.
He ground his molars with so much force his jaw ached. “Can you not imagine I would not wish to revisit that day, Cris? I have come here tonight in search of a wife, not to dwell upon the hells of war.”
Crispin’s brows shot upward. “You are seeking a wife?”
He well understood his friend’s surprise. He had always sworn off the parson’s mousetrap, having seen the damage such an institution could do to two people. His own sire and mother had been at daggers drawn for the entirety of their union. They had hated each other with a vicious vengeance. His father’s wrath had run so deep he had refused to even share a roof with his mother.
But this was different, and he had a reason for seeking a wife. Not just any wife. One woman only. His eyes traveled once more to Lady Leonora. She possessed an icy, regal elegance. A beauty that took his breath. But she also had something else—a hesitance, perhaps. As if she were embarrassed of something. As if she were unsure of herself.
He could use her weakness to his advantage.
“I am contemplating marriage,” he said, continuing to watch as the turban—still presumably the lady’s mother—glanced in his direction and then began fluffing her skirts as if she were a hen in the house, ruffling her feathers. “Since my return, I have been visited by an affliction of sorts. I now possess a healthy respect for my own mortality, and the need to secure the line has risen within me, stronger than ever before.”
The turban fixed a smile to her lips and appeared to surreptitiously deliver orders to Lady Leonora. Lady Leonora fidgeted her skirts, draping them over the limb he had noted her favoring earlier. Yes, there it was. Her infirmity was the source of the hesitancy he sensed.
Of course it would be. He imagined her sobriquet, Limping Leonora, would also be a great source of pain for her. She looked about the ballroom then, as if in search of someone. He willed her to look in his direction. To see him. But she did not.
“You are interested in Lady Leonora Forsythe?” Crispin asked quietly, dredging him from his inspection of the lady in question.
“Is she a familiar of yours?” he asked, hoping he had just found the solution to his problem, one which would enable him to accomplish objective number two with far greater ease.
Crispin studied him, his gaze intent. Searching. “She is, yes, through my lovely wife.”
Crispin had gotten married whilst Morgan had been trapped on the Continent. Morgan had seen Crispin and his lovely duchess together on several occasions since his return, and the two exuded contentment and nauseating love with such disturbing devotion, he had been forced to excuse himself from their presence.
Mayhap here was something that would render Whitley’s wife useful after all, and mitigate the suffering he had endured in having to witness their lovesick banter and mooning glances.
“Perhaps you can introduce us,” Morgan suggested, a smile pulling at his lips for the first time this evening.
It was not a pleasant smile, and he knew it from the manner in which his friend stiffened and frowned. It was the smile of a predator about to snap his jaws upon his unsuspecting prey. Of the soldier who slammed his bayonet into the gullet of his enemy before the other man could act. It was born of ugliness. Of relief and anticipation, of grim, satisfying victory.
He felt like the very devil about to descend upon the angelic Lady Leonora. But he had no place inside him for compunction any longer. It had been excised from his body by weeks of beatings. He had always taken the beatings, the pain. And he would take Lady Leonora now in the same way: without flinching.
She was to be his prize.
“I am not sure that is wise,” Crispin said, his tone steeped in caution. “Lady Leonora is…delicate.”
He stared right back at his friend, determination coursing through him as surely as blood in his veins. “I require an introduction to the lady.”
“You intend to marry her?” Crispin asked then. “My wife will flay my hide if you dally with Lady Leonora and raise her hopes.”
“Others have flayed my hide, Cris,” he informed his friend bitterly. “Men with far greater determination to inflict pain than your duchess. Will you introduce me to Lady Leonora, or must I seek out another?”
Crispin exhaled on a reluctant sounding sigh, and Morgan knew he had won. “Very well. I shall introduce you. But if you hurt her in any fashion—”
“Lead the way,” he interrupted curtly, returning his gaze once more to Lady Leonora. His future marchioness.
He knew in his heart and in his gut right then and there, he would hurt her. He would break her. He would use her, and he would not feel the slightest hint of guilt, for one day soon, El Corazón Oscuro would face him once more, man to man, and he would have his goddamn revenge.
*
Freddy was married.
From her customary position at every social event, the resident wallflower seated on the outskirts of the ballroom, Leonora watched her dearest friend, Lady Frederica Kirkwood, smiling up at her dashing husband, Mr. Duncan Kirkwood. The evening’s ball was a grand event, the societal debut of the married couple. Mr. Kirkwood—a gaming hell owner and illegitimate son of the Duke of Amberly—was determined to be respectable. And Amberly, who was in attendance this evening as well, had lent his aid to that cause.
Leonora was happy for her friend. So happy a sheen of tears blurred her vision as she watched the dark-haired Freddy and her golden-haired husband whirling about the ballroom. They made a striking pair, truly they did.
A spear of some indefinable emotion shot straight through her at the sight. She did not wish to believe it was envy, for she loved her friend, and Freddy deserved every happiness. She deserved a husband who was handsome and who gazed upon her with rapt adoration, quite as if she were the only female in all London, because Freddy was kind and noble and tenderhearted, and there was no finer lady to be found than she.
No, Leonora did not begrudge Freddy all the wondrous change her friend had experienced since marrying the man she loved. But some small and wicked part of Leonora wished that for once in her nine-and-twenty years, she would not be overlooked. That she would not be Limping Leonora, whom no gentleman wished to wed.
That she would have a husband of her own.
He did not even need to be as handsome as Mr. Kirkwood. Leonora did not fool herself about her matrimonial prospects. She was not a catch. Her dowry was paltry, and her half brother was the enigmatic Earl of Rayne, of half Spanish blood and notorious for his reclusive ways. He had not been seen in town for some years. Indeed, Leonora had only heard from her half brother occasionally in recent years, through sporadic letters sent from abroad. She knew nothing of his whereabouts beyond his presence on the Continent. To Leonora, Alessandro had always been a caring, affectionate brother, in spite of his absences. Naturally, however, the whispers about his madness did nothing to aid her cause of husband hunting. And neither did her advanced age or infirmity.
Surely, she could find someone, however. A gentleman of consideration and compassion, one w
ho would not look upon her as a creature to be pitied and scorned but instead as a woman who might be his bride.
“Do sit up straighter, my dear,” said Mama suddenly, breaking her customary silence. “He is looking upon you now.”
“He?” Leonora stiffened and instinctively adjusted the fall of her gown, making certain no hint of her lame leg existed beneath the diaphanous silk crepe. She gave a hasty glance about the ballroom, but as far as she could see, they were surrounded by the standard cadre of glittering, tittering lords and ladies, and not a soul of them were paying any attention at all to Limping Leonora or her invalid mother on the border of the fete.
“Do not cast your eyes wildly about the room,” Mama chastised, her lips scarcely moving as she pinned a smile in place and fanned her face with such slowness it had no effect at all.
She frowned at her mother. “Are you overheated?”
Mama made a sound of long-suffering. “If only I were not so often abed, struck low by my failing health, I could have taught you how to snare a husband. How do you think I wed His Grace? It was not by sitting in a corner.”
Leonora’s cheeks went hot with embarrassment. Though this was an old quarrel between herself and Mama, it was nevertheless a dagger whose blade had not dulled with time. It still had the power to cut deeply into her flesh, and it did each time.
She could have pointed out Mama had not suffered the burden of a lame leg.
Instead, she held her tongue as she always did, for it was easier. “Of course, Mama. I am sorry your health has affected you so, and that I have been a burden to you with my inability to make a match. If any gentleman would have me, I would already be a wife and mother, and you would not have to act the chaperone for me when you are unwell and would be better served to remain at home, resting.”
Mama fanned herself again. “He has looked away now, but I do believe he and the Duke of Whitley are in conversation about you, my dear. Why, I dare not trust my own eyes, for no one has ever…”
Though her mother’s words trailed away, Leonora knew what she had been about to say. No one has ever shown an interest in you. And it was true. Try as she might, none of the eligible gentlemen she met wished to wed her. They did not want a painfully shy, quiet wife who limped and could not join them in a minuet. They wanted diamonds of the first water.
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