The Last Wicked Rogue
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The Last Wicked Rogue
The League of Rogues - Book 9
Lauren Smith
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
An Earl By Any Other Name
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Titles By Lauren Smith
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Smith
The League of Rogues ® is an officially registered federal trademark owned by Lauren Smith.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at lauren@laurensmithbooks.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
This book was previously published in 2016 by Samhain Publishing. This is a republication of the original version.
ISBN: 978-1-947206-50-2 (e-book edition)
ISBN: 978-1-947206-51-9 (print edition)
ISBN: 978-1-947206-52-6 (hardback)
For Cambridge,
the university which inspired the stories of the League of Rogues and changed my life forever.
Prologue
London, December 1821
The deafening crack of ice breaking was like a gunshot. It halted Charles Humphrey, the seventh Earl of Lonsdale, dead in his tracks. He’d been racing across the frozen Thames, twilight bleeding over the wintry landscape ahead of him, creating eerie shadows that led to the figure just beyond his reach.
“Stop!” Charles shouted. Pain and rage filled him to the point that nothing else existed within him. He was a beast driven with one purpose: to kill the man he pursued.
His own brother.
But the sound of breaking ice was all around him now, echoing across the Thames. The man ahead of him stopped, skidding briefly along the ice. Charles did the same, listening for another warning sound, but he could see no obvious cracks in the surface.
“Not another step, brother,” the man warned, his voice firm and cold.
The rage that had momentarily been pushed aside by the threat of breaking ice now came roaring back. His fingers curled into fists.
“Brother? You dare call me that? You took everything from me. She was my world.” The fury inside him fell like a black curtain over his vision. He dared not close his eyes. If he did he would see her, his love, dying in his arms, and it would weaken him. His anger was his only strength now.
“It’s no less than you deserve. You took my world from me,” his brother practically growled. “You and your father destroyed my life.”
“He was your father too,” Charles hissed. “He was trying to save you.”
“He left me to save myself! You are a disgrace.”
Charles’s fury was just barely controlled. “I’ve never had a problem with the man I am, but you? You are a murderer. If we’re listing sins, yours will come first.” Charles took another step toward him.
“Murderer? How dare you—”
Crack! The ice broke, and his brother cried out and plunged into the icy depths below.
“No!” Charles rushed toward the hand sticking up from the break in the ice, and like a damned fool, he shot down into the water as well.
Darkness, ice, and cold enveloped him. He struggled as he saw another figure in the murky water. He reached for him, his fingers brushing the tip of the man’s shoulder, but the current was too strong. They were going to die. Every nightmare he’d ever had since university was coming true. This was going to be the end.
At least then he would be with her, his darling wife.
The man ahead of him choked, his pale face contorting as he drew in a lungful of water.
He should have always known it would end like this. Death in the dark for both of them. Only this time, he’d killed his own brother and his wife, because the past wouldn’t let go of him.
Perhaps he had been the villain of this story all along…
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League Rule Number 1:
A house divided against itself cannot stand. Nor can our friendship. We must stand together, or divided, we fall.
Excerpt from the Quizzing Glass Gazette, December 11, 1821, the Lady Society column:
The Quizzing Glass Gazette regrets to inform readers that there will be no Lady Society column this week. We trust her readers will understand and hope she will return to us in the near future. We know many of you have written to Lady Society regarding the fate of Charles Humphrey, the Earl of Lonsdale. We hope and pray that Lady Society returns with news regarding this particular bachelor.
Dear Lady Society,
It is a national tragedy that your column has been suspended at this particular time as it is with great curiosity and much trepidation that I write to you in horror of what my dear husband witnessed last night while returning home to me from a business meeting near Lewis Street. While strolling along the roadside, my dashing husband happened upon a disheveled lady in a striking red gown who was, according to my stalwart husband, running away from—and this is most unnerving, Lady Society, but she was trying to escape Lord Lonsdale!
It pains me to say this, but I do believe the incident with the swans alluded to in your column is not the only rakish behavior of this rogue! Indeed, my charming husband insisted Lord Lonsdale was most pressed in the middle of the night, looking for this lady who was running about barging into sober men of consequence like my husband!
And indeed, Lady Society, that wasn’t even the most unusual bit of information my husband relayed to me! He did recall seeing, after the lady disappeared and Lord Lonsdale was already on his own way (home, I presume, to make himself suitable for courting), a most dangerous-looking bloke who skulked after Lord Lonsdale rather menacingly. What a horror!
Obviously, the only solution is to get Lord Lonsdale wed as soon as possible! If you could work some of your magic, Lady Society, as you have with his friends and others before him, I do think Lord Lonsdale needs your help about now.
Also, if you could point him in the direction of my lovely second daughter. She is quite adept at the piano, and her needlework is impeccable—though do not bring up her French, for it is abysmal.
Yours,
A Desperate Society Mama
Charles leaned forward in his chair, two rows back from the front of the audience, listening to Miss Matilda Brower sing, plotting how he might find a way to have the
pianoforte beside her mysteriously drop out the nearest window onto the street below.
As she warbled the notes to some atrocious melody, Charles could actually feel his mind atrophy from a lack of proper stimulation. There were a dozen other things he could be doing right now, a dozen other women he could be seducing, including that lovely young widow Mrs. Forsythe, who was eyeing him over her fan just one row behind and to the left.
He shot the naughty widow a wink, and her fan fluttered a little faster. But there was no way he could simply stand up and walk out of the room, not while Miss Brower was still performing her impression of someone strangling a cat with a set of bagpipes.
Bloody musicales.
There were easier, more merciful ways to kill a man than forcing him to sit through a performance by a number of young ladies who had not an ounce of talent between them. He clenched his fingers around the evening’s program and stifled a groan. He needed to escape, but that would require a distraction.
One row in front of him, his close friend, Godric St. Laurent, the Duke of Essex, was nodding off. How the man managed to fall asleep during the high-pitched warbling, Charles couldn’t begin to fathom.
Charles carefully picked up the cane propped against the chair beside his. The cane’s owner, Cedric, Viscount Sheridan, was staring off into empty space and didn’t notice its absence. With a gleeful grin, Charles positioned the cane under the seat of Godric’s chair and gave it a hard thwack!
Godric leapt off his chair as though bitten by a viper. “God’s blood!” The dreadful cat-strangling sounds died off abruptly as everyone turned to stare at him.
“Er…I…say…bloody good music.” Godric cleared his throat and sat back down, smoothing his waistcoat, his face now ruddy. Charles snickered to himself, but it was loud enough in the sudden silence that he was heard. The auburn-haired beauty sitting next to Godric turned to glare at him, violet eyes blazing.
“Keep it up, Charles, and I shall make it my priority to get you married. If only to put a leash on your behavior.”
The woman, Godric’s wife, Emily, had never made a threat she did not carry out, which was a great feat for a nineteen-year-old duchess.
“Not likely, my lady,” he snorted. “If I stopped being myself, then you would all be bored to tears in a fortnight.”
Emily arched a brow in challenge, and then the dreadful caterwauling began again.
Well, he’d had quite enough of this. Distractions be damned. Charles ignored the shocked gasps of those around him as he hastily exited with a rakish grin at the startled Miss Brower. Once outside, he leaned back against the wall, his palms pressed against the blue satin wallpaper.
“My lord?” a footman inquired. Charles glanced at him.
“Fetch my hat and coat. Bring a coach around.”
He had to get out of this bloody house, get away from all this nonsense with balls and parties. The social amusements he’d once enjoyed were losing their appeal by the day. His breath shortened as a wave of panic flared to life. This past year he’d watched his friends all marry and start having children. They were moving on, leaving their days of being young and reckless behind.
They’re leaving me behind.
The thought of facing the rest of his life alone had never bothered him before. He’d always had his dear friends, the League of Rogues, at his side. In that bloom of youth, he’d never once considered that he would be the last bachelor standing. Now, with marriages and christenings filling up his days, the pace of his life had been dramatically disrupted. And one thing had become startling clear. He was alone.
A hollow ache of loneliness descended upon his shoulders. There was not much he could do about it of course, except find a young wife and sire heirs. But Charles had seen the outcomes of men choosing their partners poorly and had hoped to avoid that fate.
He’d also never experienced the dreaded sensation of being a fool in love. It had turned his friends from rogues whose behavior was tolerated only because of their wealth or standing into gentlemen almost overnight. That transformation terrified Charles but also intrigued him. He may not want to fall in love, but he damned well wouldn’t marry unless he was. Better to be a besotted fool who loved one’s wife than the alternative.
Emily could tease all she liked about getting him married, but it wouldn’t happen, not with any woman he knew in London, and he knew them all.
He closed his eyes a moment, dispelling his anxiety before he headed to the front door and met the footman who’d retrieved his hat and coat.
He left the townhouse and headed for his waiting coach. His valet, Tom Linley, would normally be waiting for him, but he’d given Tom a much-needed evening off. Given Charles’s strained relationship with his own brother, the boy had become something akin to family over the last year. Someone he could trust with anything. With the gap between him and his friends ever widening, Tom was fast becoming the only one he could trust.
He couldn’t help but wonder what the lad did when he wasn’t tasked with following him about. The boy’s shyness precluded any notion that he would be visiting a house of ill-repute or a gambling hell. More likely, Tom had spent the day with little Katherine. With a baby sister to care for, much of his spare time no doubt centered around her.
“Where to, my lord?” the driver inquired.
Charles glanced about the wintry roads. There was only place he could go to clear his head.
“Lewis Street.”
The driver’s brows rose, but he didn’t object. It was a rather dangerous part of London, and most men avoided it. Thieves, murderers, and all manner of evil-minded men dwelt in the tunnels below Lewis Street.
In the past, Charles would have headed to a pleasure haunt, the rest of his friends in tow, and they would have spent the evening drinking and carousing in the company of London’s finest courtesans. But everything had changed. Now they wouldn’t come with him even if they wanted to. The despair of that thought, of being abandoned by them, made his throat tight. A recklessness soon possessed him. He knew he shouldn’t go to Lewis Street alone, but he didn’t care.
He climbed into the coach, and it jerked into motion soon after he took his seat.
It was late, half past eleven when the coach stopped on Lewis Street.
“Shall I wait for you, sir?” the driver asked.
“Not with a den of thieves nearby.” Charles knew that the rookeries near the tunnels were full of men who would slit a man’s throat if they thought they could get a penny for it. He was sure that when he was done, he could walk a few streets away and hire another coach to get home.
“Very good, my lord.” The driver flicked the reins, and the two dappled grays rushed away, leaving him alone.
He straightened his hat, and with a dark grin he ducked into the shadow of the nearest doorway. He rapped his knuckles on the ancient, weathered wood. A panel at eye level slid open, and a burly man with a thick beard and hard, dark eyes scanned him from head to toe. The panel slammed shut and the door opened, the burly man allowed Charles to brush past him. From the street, the building looked like a small warehouse, but it was in fact a portal to a massive underground world of tunnels that led to rooms where men could box and wager without rules or interference. Even the Bow Street Runners feared coming down here, and they only ever did so in force.
Charles had been coming here more and more of late, the wild atmosphere and chaos feeding something dark inside him that he couldn’t explain. Every rage, every fear that built up inside him, he could turn loose here. And then, for a brief few days, he would feel free.
“Ring three is available,” the doorman said as they traveled deeper through the craggy walled tunnels, which were said to date back to the Tudors. The main cavern held three large boxing rings, two currently in use.
In the third, a tall brute with meaty fists roused the crowd as he called for a challenger to face him. He was a thick-necked man with hair cut almost to his scalp, and his thick lips were evidence of a face that had b
een taking hits for years.
Yes, that man would give him a good night’s work.
Charles cupped a hand around his mouth. “Oi!” His shout carried across the crowd. The man in the ring paused, and the crowd quieted as they all faced him.
“Two hits and you’re down,” Charles announced as he removed his hat and coat, giving them to a scrawny lad who stared up at him with wide eyes.
“Tuppence if you hold on to these for me.”
The boy nodded anxiously, and Charles patted his shoulder before he climbed up onto the platform of the ring.
“Two hits?” the man growled. “Bit cocksure, ain’t cha?”
“Absolutely, old boy.” Charles rolled up the clean white sleeves of his shirt, baring his forearms.
The man shrugged. “Yer funeral.”
“And the stakes?” Charles asked as he took his stance. He didn’t need money, but winning off these fools was intensely satisfying. He usually donated the winnings to a worthy cause, or on the rare occasion his doctor, who patched him up after the rougher fights.
The other man laughed harshly. “All right. Whoever wins can take that pretty bit of muslin over there home.”
Charles frowned. “Pardon?”
The man jerked his head to a woman who was suddenly pulled into the open as two men dragged her to the front of the crowd. This was not normal, even down here.