Any Wicked Thing (28 page)

W
arren practically pounced upon him when he came through the door. Unfortunately, he was not bearing towels or a fresh set of clothing.

“You have a visitor, Your Grace. I took the liberty of putting him in the library, and am readying the ivory chamber for him. I wish you'd mentioned his arrival,” he complained.

Sebastian was getting accustomed to feeling chastened by his butler. His idle fantasies as he walked home concerning Freddie's heavenly arse crashed to earth. “Devil take it! I wasn't expecting anyone, so you can't blame me. Who is it?” Please God, not one of his numerous creditors who'd finally ferreted out his hiding place.

“A Mr. Cameron Ryder, Your Grace. He says he was invited for a fortnight.”

Sebastian felt an odd thud in the vicinity of his heart. “Shit. I wrote him not to come. It must not have reached him. Damn it.”

“I shall set another place for dinner. At nine.” It was obvious the butler still disapproved of the late hour for dining, not to mention his language. Sebastian imagined he was wreaking havoc with the kitchen schedule, but it was at his pleasure to set. Everything at Goddard Castle was at his pleasure. He had suffered enough at the hands of others to ever give up what he wanted now. He was the bloody Duke of Roxbury, for Christ's sweet sake.

Cam could stay one night, and then Sebastian would send him packing. Freddie would have a fit to think he was trying to sell the castle out from under her, and Sebastian needed no friend to distract him from her. Or have his friend distract
her
. Cam could be quite the distraction. Cameron Ryder was tall, darkly blond and very handsome, with eyes as blue as the Aegean Sea. Even if the man had more or less saved his life, he was not at all welcome at Goddard Castle at the moment.

Their friendship had been forged under trying circumstances, made even stranger to discover they shared an odd connection. Cam was the natural son of the late, unlamented Earl of Archibald. Sebastian had once promised to show him Goddard née Archibald Castle if they ever escaped the filthy hovel of their jail cell. When Sebastian discovered he could dispose of the property—
had
to dispose of the property—Cameron was the first person he contacted, even if it meant stirring up the past. Lord Sanderson was merely a backup—the man had more money than he knew what to do with, and collected castles as one might collect snuff boxes. But for Cam, the castle was a key to his birthright, and his enthusiasm for it, sight unseen, had given Sebastian hope for the way out of debt.

And now he was here, uninvited.

Well, not precisely true. But Sebastian had uninvited him, if only Cam had stayed at home to receive the letter.

Sebastian looked down at the state of his attire. But Cam had seen him worse, naked and starved in his Egyptian prison.

Maybe Cam would be interested in purchasing something or other from his father's vast collection of rubbish and the quick visit might be worth the disruption. Sebastian needed money. Cam was a broker of all sorts of antiquities, enabling him to live on the fringes of society quite comfortably. People intuited that he had some connection with the ton. It was true, but not a connection Cam cared to reveal, especially when his father had jumped from the roof of this very castle rather than be hung as a spy. Very few people knew of his Archibald blood. Sebastian had only found out after a drunken night in Cairo when he complained long and loud about his own father's foibles. Cam had been keenly interested in hearing about Goddard Castle, or Archibald Castle, as he preferred to call it.

He found Cam sitting behind Freddie's desk, his hands encased in white cotton gloves, holding a magnifying glass over some decrepit volume. Yes, Warren had put the man in the right spot to wait.

“Sebastian! Did the cat just drag you in?” Cam rose with a grin and extended a gloved hand.

“It's raining cats
and
dogs, in case you haven't noticed.” A crash of thunder emphasized Sebastian's words. He'd expected to be hit with God's lightning bolt the whole way home. “But you were probably too busy snooping around to notice.” He sank down into a bloody uncomfortable chair on the other side of his father's desk. Cam resumed his position and gingerly closed the book he'd been examining.

“You've got an amazing amount of stuff in this library. I trust you want to sell the contents separately at auction. I can help you with that. You'll make more than I can afford to pay you.”

Sebastian grimaced. “Here's the thing, Cam. The sale of Goddard Castle needs to be delayed a little while.”

“What? No, no. You know how I'm fixed. And you know how much I want Archibald Castle. You can't shake more money out of me than I've got by teasing me, Sebastian.” Cam sat down again, looking every inch like most of the grim portraits in the long gallery.

“It's not that. I owe you, Cam, and I'll never forget what you've done for me. But there's a—problem.”

Cam grinned. “What's her name? It's the ward you told me about, isn't it? Doesn't want to leave? Is she pretty? She can stay here with me and warm my bed.”

Sebastian struggled not to jump over the desk and throttle his friend. “She cannot! And she is pretty. Just not in the usual way.”

“Prim and proper, is she?”

Primness and propriety had very little to do with Freddie lately. He thought of her above him, her breasts swaying as she rode him. Sebastian shrugged. “She wants to buy the castle herself. She's something of an heiress. I think we can deal together and come to some sort of agreement.”

“In
your
usual way?” Cam winked.

Sebastian shrugged again. He was acutely uncomfortable talking about Freddie, trying to recall exactly what he'd told Cam about her.

“Good Lord. You're being reticent, almost
too
discreet. Don't tell me you're going to marry the girl! This is the one who tried to trick you into getting leg-shackled years ago, isn't it?”

Blast. Apparently he'd confessed almost everything. He was fairly sure he'd omitted the actual deflowering and the massive quantities of vomit, however.

Sebastian felt a twinge of guilt, but only a twinge. Cameron would see Freddie for himself, and very likely she'd lapse into her starchy self confronted with a man such as Cameron Ryder. “She's a bit long in the tooth to be called a girl—eight-and-twenty, a dreadful bluestocking. She wears spectacles, and her fingers are black from ink. Not your type at all. And I have absolutely no intention of marrying her. I've known her since she was a little butterball baby.”

Cam raised a golden eyebrow. “Not your type, either, then. Just how much money has she got?”

“Rather a lot, and it's rightfully mine to begin with. I've got to get to York and meet with my father's solicitor there. The one in Dorset is as useless as a boil on my arse, and the business manager even worse. The pater was a totally disorganized bastard.”

“Now, now. You don't want me to take offense. We bastards want to keep our line pure.”

“This is serious, Cam. Things are even worse than I thought when I first wrote to you. I expect my creditors to find me here any day and lay siege. In fact, when my butler told me I had a visitor, I was ready to turn tail and sleep on the moors. I thought you were the bailiff.”

“So sell me Archibald Castle. Marry your heiress. Problem solved.” Cam snapped his gloved fingers, but there was no accompanying sound.

“I don't want to get married. Freddie doesn't want to get married. She wants to write history books.”

“You're joking. By God, you're
not
joking. And all this time I thought you were irresistible.”

Irresistible or not, it would be a disaster to marry Freddie. To marry anyone in his current state of upheaval. But he would not bore Cam with his troubles. Instead, Sebastian pointed to the corner of the desk. “Look at those. I'll bet she wrote most every word in them, even though my father took the credit.”

Cam removed the gloves and took a volume from the knight book-end guards. “
Roxbury's Middle Ages
. These have an excellent reputation in the trade, you know. They're full of scholarship, yet accessible to the reader. Very popular. Schoolboys all over the country have it shoved down their throats and they don't mind swallowing.”

“Perhaps so. Freddie wants to finish the series—here. You know I'm a selfish bastard, no further offense to bastards meant. I may be her so-called guardian, but if she wants to spend the rest of her life watching the walls fall down around her, who am I to stop her? She can pay me from her trust and that's all that counts. Now that you've actually seen the place, would you still really want to throw away good money on it?”

Cam gave his dimpled chin a thoughtful stroke. “I'm not sure. But I am most anxious to meet the rich little bluestocking. I could do with an infusion of cash myself.”

Sebastian felt an unaccustomed wave of proprietary interest. “We may have shared women in the past, Cam, but Freddie is not on offer.”

“Steady, old man. Although it would be fun to see if I could poach a chit from a duke. As I recall, I beat you a time or two when you were only a marquess.”

“She's not my chit to poach. We are just—friends of a sort.” They used to be. What was between them now was impossible to describe.

“Well, then. Open season.”

“You're welcome to try,” Sebastian said, his pride getting the better of him. Surely after what he and Freddie had already shared, she would not be attracted to Cameron Ryder. She had chosen him, Sebastian Goddard, as her first lover, after all.

“Capital! You know how I thrive on competition. That should make my stay in this dreary dump much more amusing.”

“I thought you considered this dreary dump to be your ancestral home.” Sebastian itched for his whiskey now. He also needed to make himself presentable for tea with Freddie. Cam, despite traveling, looked to be a regular Beau Brummell. “And you can't stay. You'll spoil everything.”

Cam turned down his mouth. “Can't stay? You invited me up here for two weeks. I'll have you know I moved heaven and earth to get here. Left a very promising house party in Berkshire with two wellborn widows and a vapid viscountess after me just so I could inspect this place.”

“Not even you could service them all. If you'd stayed in London, you would have gotten my message eventually. I wrote and told you not to come.”

“But I'm here now, and not at all inclined to leave, Sebastian. Surely you don't want to upset my valet and my driver. They're knackered coming all this way. My valet may never forgive me, as a matter of fact. He's not at all impressed with the accommodations.”

“I don't give a damn about your servants. I left my man Drummond at Roxbury Park.” Sebastian ran a hand through his damp hair. Cameron Ryder was an unexpected complication, but Sebastian supposed he owed him some courtesy. Owed him much more, really. “All right, you may stay a day or two, just long enough for your horses to recover and eat their heads off in my stable. But then I want you gone. I have plans for Freddie, and they don't include you.”

“Make it a week.”

“Three days. That should give you enough time to rummage around here and listen for the echoes of your ancestors. But you're not to say one word to Freddie about you buying Goddard Castle. Nor are you to lay a hand on her.”

Cam laughed. “Not one finger. I won't promise away my other appendages, though.”

Sebastian smiled, but his cheeks felt frozen. “You really are a bastard. Don't get in my way, Cam.”

Cameron looked as though he wished to continue their banter but thought the better of it. “Say, what does a man have to do around here to get a drink?”

“Tea is being served in the solar in half an hour. Get old Warren to lead you there. As you can see, I've got to go change.”

“Been rutting in a field, have you? Who's the lucky girl? Some Yorkshire milkmaid?”

Cam had the uncanny knack of always hitting on the truth, no matter how unpleasant it was. Sebastian attempted a leering smile.

“Will the fabulous Freddie be taking tea with us?”

“That's Miss Wells to you. Don't be charming.”

Cam shook his head. “Now you're asking too much of me. Bad enough I'll have to drink tea.”