In Love With a Wicked Man

In Love With a Wicked Man

Liz Carlyle

Contents

PROLOGUE

Becoming Ned

1829

Cambridgeshire

W
inter had come to Bexham in a swirl of snow that likely wouldn’t stick, and a clatter of skeletal branches whose frozen tips pecked and scraped at the headmaster’s window like the fleshless fingertips of a wraith. From the quadrangle below came the sound of boys bursting from their classes for dinner, a clamor just loud enough to drown out Edward’s growling belly.

Hunching forward on the stool, the boy jerked viciously at his coat, attempting to pull it tight against the chill, but he’d long since outgrown the thing. In truth, he’d outgrown a great many things at Bexham, for when the birch rod cracked down upon the headmaster’s desk an inch from his nose, Edward did not so much as flinch.

“Well, boy,” barked Mr. Pettibone, “your father’s finally come.
Now
what have you to say for yourself?”

Boldly lifting his gaze, Edward had only a shrug.

It brought a small sort of satisfaction, the hard-honed ability to hold one’s fear at bay; to sneer in the face of enmity and to give as good as one got. But then, his was a small sort of life. A life of utter inconsequence—and, for all that it mattered, not remotely like the life he’d been expected to live.

The headmaster had begun to tap the birch impatiently on his desktop. “Well, Mr. Hedge, do you see what Bexham’s been up against?” he complained, staring over Edward’s head. “That cold, calculating look in his eye! That unbridled insolence!”

“Aye, like his bitch of a mother,” muttered Hedge, so low only Edward could hear it. Suddenly, Hedge turned from the bank of windows he’d been pacing, the buttons of his ostentatious frock coat catching the light as he came to loom over Edward.

“So you’ll answer Mr. Pettibone, me boyo,” he went on, seizing his ear in a ruthless twist. “Answer him, or the stropping you took here won’t hold a candle to the one you’ll take at my hand.”

The lad lifted his chin another notch but the twisting did not relent, and this time Edward knew better than to strike back. No, he would not strike back—not until he knew he could strike Hedge
down
.

And that day was surely coming.

So Edward shrugged again, and spoke with the dulcet, upper-class clarity more common to Eton than Bexham. “Yes, I hit him,” he said defiantly. “I hit him because he called me a bastard.”

“Aye, and so you are,” said Hedge on a chuckle.

“And when he called me a bastard, I called him a jumped-up costermonger’s get,” Edward clarified. “And then
he
struck
me
. So I had to strike him back. That’s how it goes with this lot, Hedge. You daren’t back down.”

Hedge gave another grunt—this one a tad dismissive—then released Edward’s ear and turned his attention to Pettibone. “So. Just the usual row, then. Lad’s got a chip on his shoulder. No harm done, eh?”

The headmaster tossed down the birch with an impatient
thwack!
“The boy with the broken arm, Mr. Hedge, is the son of a City alderman,” he said grimly. “I think I need not explain the inconvenience
that
might cause a man in your sort of business.”

“Aye? And just what sort o’ business would that be, Mr. Pettibone?”

The headmaster’s nose lifted an inch, but Bexham was not the sort of academic institution that could afford too many scruples. “I believe you mentioned you were in London
finance
.”

“Just so,” said Hedge, extracting his purse. “Well, what’s the damage?”

“The
damage
?” said the headmaster sharply.

“Aye.” Hedge let a twenty-pound banknote drift onto the burnished desktop. “How much is it to be this time?”

The headmaster pushed the banknote back across the desk. “I don’t think you grasped the purpose of this meeting, Mr. Hedge,” he said. “Edward is no longer welcome here.”

“What, at no price?” Hedge was accustomed to purchasing convenience. “What the devil am
I
to do with a twelve-year-old boy?”

“Take him back to London, I suppose,” said the headmaster. “I fear we can no longer concern ourselves with Edward. The brawling, the broken windows, the sullen anger—yes, all this we’ve tolerated. But a fractured arm? Of a City alderman’s son? No, my dear Mr. Hedge. Not even your ill-got gains can buy your way out of
that
.”

Hedge drew a hand down a face that had once been handsome but had now begun to sag with dissipation. He lifted both eyebrows enquiringly. “A recommendation to another school, then, perhaps?”

“You’re fresh out of schools,” snapped the headmaster. “Bexham was his sixth.”

Hedge grinned. “Aye, well, we’ve both been thrown out of better places than this.”

“The better places won’t have him,” Pettibone retorted. “Eton, Rugby, Harrow—well, once, perhaps, they might have done. But not now. Not when it’s become public knowledge his sire is the owner of a—a . . .”

“A
what
, Mr. Pettibone?” asked Hedge jovially. “Go on. Let it trip right off that learned tongue of yours.”

“—a low gaming hell,” snapped Pettibone.

“A low and extremely
profitable
gaming hell,” Hedge amended. “Ah, well! What’s to be done now, Pettibone? I know nothing of brats.”

Pettibone’s expression suggested that perhaps Hedge oughtn’t have bred any. “Well, if it were me,” he said tartly, “I’d apprentice him to a counting house. And a harsh one, too, for it will take a strong hand to keep that one in line.”

“Don’t I know it!” said Hedge wearily. “But a counting house? Surely that requires a sort of aptitude that is beyond—”

“My God, Mr. Hedge!” interjected Pettibone. “The boy is violent, not stupid! Have you read nothing we’ve sent home to you? Do you know nothing of your own son?”

Unabashed, Hedge shook his head. “Dropped on me, the boy was, like a stray cat.”

“Well, your stray cat is a prodigy,” said Pettibone impatiently, “with near total recall of figures, geometry, algebraic concepts—not to mention his grasp of probabilities.”

At last, Hedge brightened. “No! A sharp one, eh?”

“Indeed.” Pettibone had gone to the door, and flung it wide. “Sharp’s the word.”

“Ah, well, then!” Hedge hauled the boy out of the chair and frog-marched him toward the door. “Per’aps I can think of a use for the lad after all.”

“What happy news,” said Pettibone dryly.

“Aye,” said Hedge, vanishing around the corner, “especially happy for
me
, I begin to think.”

CHAPTER 1

In Which Lady d’Allenay

Plans a House Party

1850

Somerset

F
amily lore had long held that when the ancient Barons d’Allenay were no more, the Kingdom of Great Britain would crumble. For better than five hundred years, an unbroken if often tangled line of these noble gentlemen had held control of the vast Somerset estates collectively known as Bellecombe, which had been the seat of the Barons d’Allenay since the time of Henry V.

But at long last, after the fortunes of the barony had waxed and waned a dozen times, there finally came the day when there was no Lord d’Allenay.

No one was less pleased by this unfortunate turn than Kate, Lady d’Allenay. But the kingdom did not, after all, crumble.

And the fortune? Regrettably,
that
was definitely on the wane—and all of Bellecombe with it. But Lady d’Allenay had never been without pragmatism. Indeed, from the earliest years of her girlhood, her grandfather, the thirteenth Baron d’Allenay, had been wont to pat her on the head and declare her
the sensible one.

Indeed, she could hardly have been
the beautiful one.
That honorific had fallen to her late brother, Stephen. Certainly she was not
the charming one
, for her little sister, Nancy, had half the county’s male population eating from the palm of her hand. So all that was left to Lady d’Allenay, it seemed, was pragmatism. And from the age of eight, when she had realized that her frivolous parents were not to be relied upon, she’d striven to cultivate that dull virtue.

“
—and do it pillowslip by bloody damned pillowslip!
” she added through clenched teeth.

“Beg pardon, m’lady?” enquired a voice behind her.

“Never mind, Peppie,” Lady d’Allenay called back to her housekeeper. Then, with a clever twist, the baroness extracted herself from the depths of a massive linen press and presented Mrs. Peppin with a stack of fresh pillowslips. “New!” she declared triumphantly.

“Why, so they are!” Mrs. Peppin’s eyes widened.

“I had a dozen put back,” Lady d’Allenay confessed, “in anticipation of just such an emergency. The old ones we’ll mend. Remind the maids to set them darning side down when they make up all the guest rooms.”

“You always were such a sensible girl, miss,” said Mrs. Peppin, gazing lovingly upon the crisp fabric.

“And full of pragmatism,” added Lady d’Allenay rather too cheerfully.

But not beauty. Or wit. Or red-gold ringlets. Her housekeeper, however, had not seen new linen in a decade, and was awed into silence by its magnificence.

“Well, that’s sorted.” With a businesslike flip of her chatelaine, Lady d’Allenay checked the time on her watch. “I’m off to the new rectory shortly to inspect the construction.”

But Mrs. Peppin pointed through a nearby window. “There be a gurt black sky out, my lady.”

“Well, drat.” Kate glanced at the gathering storm. “Nancy’s taking tea at the rectory. Which means we can expect Mr. Burnham and his mother for dinner. He’ll doubtless drive Nancy home.”

“Oh, aye,” Mrs. Peppin said dryly. “An act of pure Christian charity, that.”

“Just warn Cook.” Kate turned to lock the press. “I’ll get busy mending for Mother’s visit. Oh, and do remind Fendershot to inventory the cellars. Aurélie’s friends do drink quite a
shocking
amount of wine.”

“A body can scarce count the bottles flying,” muttered the housekeeper.

“I do hope we don’t have to order more champagne,” Kate fretted, setting off down the passageway. “It’s so frightfully expensive—but Aurélie declares she cannot abide Italian vintages.”

“Oh, la, la, her delicate French blood!” Mrs. Peppin was not a devotee of Lady d’Allenay’s mother—or her friends. “Per’aps you ought to tell Mrs. Wentworth we can ill afford to have them?”

“I did do last year, you’ll recall,” said Kate as they started down the sweeping staircase, “but this year . . . well, the thing is, Peppie, she’s found out about the glebe land.”

“My word! How?”

“Nancy probably wrote.” Kate shrugged. “And I’m sure Aurélie has concluded that if we’re building a new rectory and giving the Church acreage, Bellecombe must be a
little
flush.”

“I wish, miss, you didn’t have to call your own mother by her Christian name.”

Kate sighed. “But
Mamma
makes her feel old, Peppie. You know Aurélie requires pampering. It seems a small indulgence.”

Mrs. Peppin sighed. “How many is Mrs. Wentworth bringing for shooting season?”

“Just her usual.” Kate mentally counted. “There will be the Comte de Macey again, I daresay—”

“—if the French pox hasn’t carried him off,” muttered the housekeeper.

“Really, Peppie, you’re uncharitable,” said Kate smoothly. “Besides, the two of them are just old friends now. Aurélie’s current lover is a merchant banker, I believe.”

“And a rich one, too, I don’t doubt.”

Kate paused on the landing. “Yes, but if one must love, is it not better to love someone rich? That’s what I keep telling Nancy.”

“Little good
that’s
done,” said Mrs. Peppin. “Who else, then?”

“Her bosom beau Lady Julia. And—oh, yes!—a young gentleman. Sir Francis something-or-other. I collect she thought he might flirt and sigh over Nancy, and thereby distract her.”

“Your mother’s wicked gentlemen friends generally expect a bit more of a lady than flirting and sighing.”

“Mrs. Peppin, you quite shock my virginal sensibilities.” Kate turned the next landing, and set off in a different direction from the housekeeper. “Well, I’m off to the parlor with this pile of tatty linen.”

“Hmm,” said the housekeeper. “Perhaps
you
ought to be off to tea with a handsome young man like your sister?”

But Kate marched on down the passageway, and pretended she didn’t hear.

N
ED
Q
UARTERMAINE WAS
in a dark and pensive mood. With his coat and cravat long ago cast aside, he sprawled by a dying fire in his finely appointed suite, his knees splayed wide and his shoulders thrown back against the buttery leather of his armchair. Only the faint
chink!
of his brandy glass striking the marble tabletop broke the quiet as Quartermaine stared out into his garden; a garden that would have been awash in moonlight had this not been London, and the night sky not choked with damp and coal smoke.

But Quartermaine was a creature of the darkness—and, truth be told, more comfortable in it. And on this night, he was embracing that darkness with a bottle of eighteen-year-old Armagnac and a strand of small but perfect pearls adorned with one teardrop sapphire.

They lay heavy in the palm of his hand—and heavy in his heart, too. But that organ so rarely troubled him, the ache in it tonight might have been mistaken for dyspepsia. Best to wash it back down again, he’d decided. Still, from time to time, between sips of the burnt, ashy spirit, he gave the pearls a pensive little toss, just to feel them settle back into his hand, clicking against one another before stilling again; cooler, yet ever heavier, it seemed.

Just then, as if to punctuate the regret, the gilt clock on his mantelpiece struck the hour.

Three chimes. Three o’clock.

An hour at which there was good money to be made from the vanity and desperation of others. Above Quartermaine’s head, the night’s work continued on as little more than a soothing rumble of voices; one that was occasionally broken by the faint scrape of a chair leg across his marble floors.

He gave the brandy another sip.

The pearls another toss.

His heart another hard wrench. As if he might, just this once, manage to wring from it the will to do the right thing. But before he could steel himself to the duty, there came a faint knock at the door.

Peters. No one else had permission to disturb Quartermaine once he had stepped from his office into his private domain.

“Come!” he ordered.

His club manager entered with a perfunctory bow. “You might wish to come upstairs, sir.”

Quartermaine tipped the Armagnac bottle over his glass. “Why?”

“It’s Lord Reginald Hoke,” said Peters. “I turned him off as you’d ordered but it didn’t sit well. Apparently the damned fool feels lucky tonight.”

After refilling his glass, Quartermaine lifted his lazy gaze back to Peters’s, his eyebrows rising faintly. “Lucky enough to settle his accounts?” he murmured. “For if he does not, Lord Reggie shan’t put so much as one manicured toe across the threshold of this establishment, lest I chop the thing off and use it for a bloody paperweight.”

“A paperweight, sir?”

“To hold down that stack of worthless notes he’s given us,” said Quartermaine without humor.

Suddenly, from behind Quartermaine, the sound of hinges creaking intruded, followed by the rustle of fabric. He twisted in his chair.

“Ned—?” Her voice edged with irritation and her wild curls tumbling down, Maggie Sloan stood bracketed against the lamplight of his bedroom, Quartermaine’s silk robe gathered around her in voluminous folds.

“I’ve business to attend,” he said coolly. “Go back to bed, Maggie.”

He sensed rather than saw the disdain flick over her face. “No, I think I’m off.” Lip sneering, she slammed the door.

Emotionlessly, he turned back to Peters. “Where’s Hoke now?”

“Pinkie stopped him in the entrance hall, sir.”

“Alas, poor Reggie,” said Quartermaine, setting his bottle down. “Shall I set loose the hounds, old chap? Or is there a bit of blood yet to be wrung from the Hoke turnip?”

Peters laughed. “Oh, there’s blood,” he said. “That’s why you should come upstairs.”

That elevated Quartermaine’s brows another notch. “Indeed?” he said. “You shock me, Peters. I thought old Reggie entirely done in.”

“He implies he’s to meet some of his cronies here in half an hour for something deep,” Peters suggested. “But he needs cash to stake at the card table, and he’s in a mood to bargain.”

Quartermaine sipped musingly at his brandy. “Well, I’ve never been known to sneer at a bargain,” he said, rising. “But bring him down here. I’d rather not put my coat back on.”

Peters bowed. “Certainly, sir.”

Quartermaine followed Peters back through the suite and into the adjacent study where the heart of the club was centered. No bacchanalia or whoring went on within these walls; the Quartermaine Club was simply a circumspect, high-stakes gaming salon where many a noble scion had sent ten generations of wealth shooting down a rat hole beneath Ned Quartermaine’s watchful eye.

But it was wealth, not blood, that determined whether a man—or a woman—could gain entrée to Quartermaine’s world. Blue blood alone was next to worthless in his estimation—and he had enough of it in him to know.

Suddenly Quartermaine realized he still held the pearls in his hand. On a pinprick of irritation, he jerked open the drawer of his desk and let them slither into it, a cascade of creamy perfection. Then he took a cigar and went to the French windows that opened onto his garden.

The ash soon glowed orange in the dark. He could hear the rattle of a carriage coming up fast from the direction of St. James’s Palace. The cry of a newspaper hawker in the street. And then the silence fell again. What the devil was keeping Lord Reginald?

Perhaps the craven bastard had turned tail and run back up St. James’s Place to cower in one of his posh clubs. It little concerned him. Quartermaine always got his money—one way or another. He puffed again at the cigar and pondered at his leisure how best that might be done, for patience, he’d learnt, was truly a virtue.

Suddenly his front office door burst open in a great clamor, with his doorman Pinkie Ringgold shouting down a red-faced Lord Reggie as he shoved him into the room.

Reggie spat back, insulting Pinkie’s parentage. Pinkie reciprocated by twisting Reggie’s arm halfway up his back. The resulting howl could have raised the dead.

“Quiet!” commanded Quartermaine.

Silence fell like a shroud.

“Release him,” Quartermaine ordered, “
now
.”

“But the blighter tried ter slip past me!” The portly doorman swelled with indignation. “Reckon ’ee finks I’m dumb as I look.”

“Which would be his mistake,” said Quartermaine in a voice quiet as the grave. “This, however, was yours. Ah, Peters. There you are. Pinkie, you’re within an inch of incurring my wrath. Kindly get out.”

Pinkie snarled again at Reggie as he passed by Peters, then thumped the door behind him as he exited.

“I want that upstart dismissed, Peters,” snapped Reggie.

“Thank you,” said Peters smoothly, “for your opinion.”

Without asking either to sit, Quartermaine circled around his desk to hitch one hip on its corner. Absent his coat and cravat, his shirtsleeves still rolled to the elbow, it was a pose of utter relaxation. A pose a man might assume late at night in the comfort of his own home—which this was.

“Good evening, Lord Reginald,” he said evenly. “Peters tells me you’ve come to settle your debts with the house.”

Reggie’s uneasy gaze flicked toward Peters. Then, with a sound of disdain, he gave his lapels a neatening tug. “I can’t think what sort of establishment you mean to run here, Quartermaine,” he muttered, “what with those Whitechapel thugs shadowing the doors.”

With a faint smile, Quartermaine made an expansive gesture. “My apologies, Lord Reginald,” he said, “but it may shock you to know there are occasionally gentlemen who do not mean to settle their house accounts. Ah, but my terminology is amiss, is it not? Such a fellow would not actually
be
a gentleman, would he?”

Reggie shrugged as if his coat were still uncomfortable. “Indeed not.”

“But there, enough about our paltry establishment,” said Quartermaine silkily. “Let’s talk about you. Specifically, you propose some sort of bargain?”

Resignation was dawning in Reggie’s eyes, but he was far too clever to admit it. Instead, he reached inside his coat and extracted a fold of letter paper.

No, not letter paper, Quartermaine realized when Reggie handed it to him. It was a legal document. After reaching across the desk for his gold-rimmed spectacles Quartermaine separated and scanned the papers, quietly refolded them, then lifted his gaze to Reggie’s.