The Bridegroom (3 page)

Penrith’s eyes focused slyly on Reggie. “There’s a match I would pay to see. Such a man would soon put you in your place, young lady.”

“Oh?” Reggie said, arching a disdainful brow.

Becky shot her a beseeching look, but Reggie was still stinging from her encounter with Carlisle and was in no mood to back down. “What place is that?” she demanded.

“Lying beneath him,” Penrith said, his eyes glittering.

Becky gasped. “How dare you—”

Penrith’s hand lashed out and caught Becky on the mouth. The slap was loud in the carriage, and the sound of it echoed—along with Reggie’s cry of alarm—in the silence that followed.

Reggie was already half out of her seat when her sister cried, “No, Reggie!” It took every ounce of restraint Reggie possessed to sit back down.

She watched, tight-lipped, as Penrith reached out with a trembling hand to touch the edge of Becky’s lip, where
blood had begun to seep. “I did not mean—I would never—” he stuttered. “It was an accident.”

Becky fumbled to open the drawstring on her reticule, and Reggie reached across and opened it for her, drawing out a lace handkerchief and thrusting it into her sister’s shaking hand. Head bowed, Becky pressed the cloth against her wounded lip.

Reggie was still in shock. She had known Penrith was not the best of husbands, but during the entire four years Reggie had been living with Becky in London, she had never—not once—witnessed any physical mistreatment of her sister. But there was no denying what she had just seen. Reggie felt sick to her stomach, wondering what Becky might have been enduring behind closed doors.

What Reggie found most difficult to credit was Penrith’s evident remorse. She watched in disbelief as he brushed a trembling hand across Becky’s hair, smoothing a stray curl from her brow, and pressed a gentle kiss to her temple. “Forgive me,” he pleaded. “Please.”

Becky glanced across at her, then looked down at her hands and said, “I forgive you, William.”

Reggie’s nose curled in distaste. It could have been the offal she smelled on the cobblestones as they drove by. But it was not. Her teeth were gritted, and her fingers were so tightly threaded she could feel the bite of her fingernails, even through her gloves. Penrith’s behavior could not be allowed to continue. She would inform Papa of the situation in the next mail, and he would—

Reggie realized that was exactly what she could
not
do, for the same reason she could never tell Papa how Lord Carlisle had treated her this evening. Papa would
demand to meet William on a field of honor. Reggie was not willing to take the chance that William’s aim with a dueling pistol might be true. Even worse, if Papa killed William in a duel, three-year-old Lily would be left without a father.

But there was someone who might be able to help.

“I have been thinking of inviting Michael O’Malley to come for a visit,” Reggie said. “What do you think, Becky?”

“I think Papa needs Mr. O’Malley to help oversee his estate in Scotland, especially now, with Kitt due to deliver at any time.”

“I shall write to ask Papa if Mr. O’Malley can bring the news of whether we have a new brother or sister in person,” Reggie said. “Surely Papa will let him come.”

In the flickering light from the gas lanterns on the street corners, Reggie could see that Becky’s face looked stricken. And well it should. Ever since their father had brought Michael O’Malley home with him as a gangly boy of thirteen, he had been like an older brother. Mick would be incensed when Reggie told him how badly Penrith was treating Becky.

Reggie was sure that together, she and Mick could come up with a way to make certain that William never laid another violent hand on his wife … even if it meant finding a way to end the marriage.

“If I am not mistaken, Rebecca, you enjoy Mr. O’Malley’s visits,” Penrith said. “I will add my letter to Regina’s.”

It was clear to Reggie that Penrith’s offer was intended
as an olive branch. She watched to see whether Becky would accept it.

“Very well,” Becky said at last. “I will prepare a room for his arrival.”

As they left the carriage and entered the Penrith town house on Berkeley Square, Reggie reached out and squeezed her sister’s hand. “Shall I say I am ill and ask for your company tonight?” she whispered.

“Please don’t,” Becky whispered back. “All will be well. Go to bed.”

Reggie watched as William solicitously escorted Becky up the stairs, as though the blow had never happened. She would not sleep tonight until she had written to her father and to Mick. It would not be fair to Becky to tell Mick precisely what had happened tonight, but she could hint at some trouble Becky was having that required Mick’s assistance and encourage her father to send him to London.

But even after she had written her letters, Reggie tossed and turned in bed, plagued by a pair of dark dragon’s eyes that would not give her peace.

“Revenge is a dirty business. I thought you had decided to leave the second chit out of it.”

Clay Bannister eyed his solicitor, and former classmate at Oxford, Roger Kenworthy. “My plans changed,” he replied, returning his attention to the precise mathematical he was creating with his neck cloth.

Roger settled back more comfortably in the wing chair in the far corner of the Earl of Carlisle’s dressing room. “When did this change of heart occur?”

Clay smiled at his friend in the looking glass above his dressing table as he struggled with the resistant neck cloth. “The instant I laid eyes on her. Or rather, the moment she laid eyes on me.”

“You were not so enchanted when you met her twin. What makes this one so different from the other?” Roger asked.

“Everything.”

Roger chuckled. “Well. That clarifies the situation.”

“You would have to see them together to understand. They are identical, and yet as unlike as a rose and a peony, as a terrier and a spaniel, as a Thoroughbred—”

“You are determined to have her?”

Clay’s eyes narrowed. “She will make a formidable weapon in my hands against her father. I will make Blackthorne rue the day he had me transported to Australia for a crime I did not commit.”

“You are not the same man I knew at Oxford,” Roger said quietly.

Clay’s eyes took on the look of obsidian, cold and hard. “That blameless boy died twelve years ago. In his stead was born the Sea Dragon, merciless pirate, plunderer, plague of the Seven Seas.”

“Are you sure you did not conjure this marauder from a lady’s novel?” Roger asked, his lips curling with amusement.

“He is real enough. And ruthless enough to take the vengeance that is his due.”

“In the year since you reappeared, the duke has made an honest effort to undo the harm he did. He has had your name cleared by the House of Lords and your title restored.”

“Too little, too late,” Clay said bitterly. “Blackthorne must pay.”

“To what purpose?” Roger questioned. “Revenge will not bring back what you have lost. Why not forget the past and go on from here?”

“I cannot. I want Blackthorne to know the depths of despair, the loss of all hope. I want him to know how it
feels to lose what he loves most in the world. I want his life ruined, as he destroyed mine!”

Clay realized his hands were shaking and grasped the neck cloth more firmly to hide his agitation from his friend.

Roger rose and crossed to stand at Clay’s side. The two men eyed each other in the looking glass. One was the epitome of British manhood, blue-eyed with fair hair cut in a stylish Brutus. The other was dark, his skin bronzed by the sun and weathered by the sea wind, his unruly hair the color of soot, his eyes as black as his soul.

“Bringing about the financial ruin of Blackthorne and his family is one thing,” Roger said. “Despoiling an innocent is another thing entirely.”

“You knew what I planned when you agreed to act as my solicitor.”

Roger shook his head. “I did not realize the extent of your hatred for the man.”

“Are you quitting me, Roger?”

“I would like nothing better. However, I think I may have more chance of convincing you of your folly if I stay involved in your affairs. If the chit is everything you say, perhaps she will not be as vulnerable to your wiles as you believe.”

Clay gave a wolfish grin. “She will be a challenge. Of that I have no doubt.”

Roger reached for the bouquet of wild red roses that sat on the dresser to take a sniff, yelped when he got pricked, and dropped it. He brought his forefinger to his
lips to suck on the wound. “Be careful,” he warned. “Roses always come with thorns.”

“You forget, my friend. Before I became the Sea Dragon, I spent five years under the lash on one of His Majesty’s frigates. I’m not likely to be brought down by anything less than a wound to the heart.”

“That is precisely what I’m afraid of,” Roger muttered as he took his leave.

“Never fear. I know what I’m about,” Clay replied as the door closed behind his friend. “Pegg,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m ready to be poured into that jacket.”

A huge man stepped through the door that led from Clay’s bedroom into the dressing room. He wore a small gold hoop in his left ear, a patch over his left eye, and his left leg ended at the knee and had been replaced by a wooden peg. The burly Scotsman had been transported to Australia on the same convict ship as Clay, and they had been together ever since.

“Ye did a fair job with the neck grabber,” the giant conceded as he held up an exquisitely tailored jacket.

Clay eyed the mathematical critically in the looking glass as he allowed Pegg to drag the tight-fitting garment up his arms and onto his shoulders. “Symmetrical, at least,” he conceded.

“Chokes ye just the same, whether it be tied foul or fair,” the big man mumbled.

“Agreed,” Clay said. “But my purpose is to appeal to one of the fairer sex, who have definite ideas about what is proper fashion for a gentleman of the
ton
. So, Pegg, will I do?”

Pegg studied him, then snorted in disgust. “Seems a
lot of bother for one small girl. Ye should just steal the lass and run. What could her father do?”

“Kidnap her?” Clay said in surprise.

“Why not? The
Sea Witch
is tied up at the London docks. We could set sail with the mornin’ tide. The duke’d never find us.”

Clay considered the possibility. It might come to that, if he could not convince the girl to wed him. But his revenge would be all the sweeter if he could flaunt the chit’s misery—and he would make her miserable—right under her father’s nose. He could take her to his estate in Scotland, which bordered Blackthorne’s property to the north. When the duke’s daughter had given him a son to replace the one he had lost, he would take the child and abandon her.

“No kidnapping,” he said at last. “We will try this course first.”

“Foul weather ahead,” Pegg muttered.

“Yes, Pegg,” Clay said grimly. “Foul indeed.”

Clay was too engrossed in his own thoughts to acknowledge the smiles and nods of those he passed in his curricle during the journey from his town house on Grosvenor Square to the Penrith town house on Berkeley Square. The instant he lifted the knocker, his heart began to thump harder.

His revenge had begun a year past, when he had returned to England after an absence of eleven years. He had begun by making certain Blackthorne found no ready market for his wheat during the harvest. He had arranged to meet Lord Penrith and gained his trust. And he had begun a search for the missing Mr. Ambleside,
Blackthorne’s former steward in Scotland, the villain who had embroiled him in the affair that had led to his arrest, and who must certainly share in Blackthorne’s fate.

Clay regretted nothing he had done so far in the name of vengeance. The more harm he caused, the better. Lady Regina was a chick ripe for the plucking. What she had gleaned from gossip did not tell the whole story, and it was plain she had no inkling of how much hatred he harbored toward her father. And he had no intention of enlightening her.

Clay had been careful not to show any overt animosity toward the duke since his return to England, though he had consistently refused to see Blackthorne on those occasions over the past year when the duke had presented his card and sought an audience. He did not want to hear the duke’s explanations or his apologies. He did not want to hear Blackthorne’s plea for absolution. There was no forgiveness in his heart.

It had been easy to justify his financial manipulation of Blackthorne’s son-in-law. Lord Penrith knew the whole story, had even been a part of the House of Lords all those years ago, insisting that if Carlisle had done what Blackthorne accused him of doing, he should be stripped of his title and transported. Clay had befriended the man, pretending that the past was the past, advising Penrith to invest in ventures risky enough to cost him a fortune. It would not be long before the duke’s elder daughter was married to a financially ruined man.

But Roger was correct in his conjecture that ruining a woman’s reputation was another matter entirely. And
Clay did plan to ruin her—to wed her and bed her and then abandon her.