Read The Devil Is a Marquess (Rescued from Ruin Book 4) Online
Authors: Elisa Braden
The Devil Is a Marquess (Rescued from Ruin Book 4)
The Devil Is a Marquess
by Elisa Braden
Copyright 2016 by Elisa Braden
Kindle Direct Publishing Edition
Cover design by Kim Killion
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form by any means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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For more information about the author, visit
www.elisabraden.com
.
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BOOKS BY ELISA BRADEN
Rescued from Ruin Series
The Madness of Viscount Atherbourne (Book One)
The Truth About Cads and Dukes (Book Two)
Desperately Seeking a Scoundrel (Book Three)
The Devil Is a Marquess (Book Four)
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There’s much more to come in the Rescued from Ruin series! Connect with Elisa through
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DEDICATION
To my readers.
Because I never had to ask if you wanted Chatham’s story.
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CONTENTS
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CHAPTER ONE
“Devils do not renounce their wickedness simply because they inherit a title. If that were so, Parliament would be forced to devote every session to such declarations, leaving no time at all for ruining the empire.”
—The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to Lady Gattingford upon said lady’s musings about the scandalous new Marquess of Rutherford.
March 26, 1818
London
Something about a woman’s naked back beguiled Benedict Chatham. The spine’s sloping curve. The skin like cream poured from a pitcher.
“I am ravished, my lord,” purred Mrs. Knightley from her tangled nest of bedding. “As always, you were inexhaustible. A rarity, to be sure. Little wonder you are my favorite.”
Lazily, he eyed red-flushed buttocks, a poured-cream back, a blond cascade tossed artfully over one shoulder, and lips swollen with three hours of satisfaction. He raised his glass to her then tossed back another burning slide of whisky.
From his perspective in the chair opposite her bed, Chatham fancied her a perverse painting. Something by Boucher, perhaps. A lush, depraved beauty surrounded by white linen and sky-blue silk. An angel who relished hell’s pleasures.
Except that Mrs. Knightley was not and never had been an angel.
She rolled onto her side, exposing dark-flushed nipples, and dropped her gaze past his bare chest to his crotch, now quiescent and covered by trousers. Her lips settled into a pout. “I shall miss him.”
He glanced down then met her greedy eyes. “What’s to miss? I see no reason to alter our arrangement.”
She propped her head on her wrist. “Come now, darling. You may not be hauled off to the Fleet as a debtor, but you will have to marry a fortune if you do not wish your father’s creditors to hound you for the rest of your days.”
He raised a brow and set his glass gently on the windowsill. “Your point?”
Her eyes listed as she slid her arm sensually above her head and laid her cheek along her forearm. “Whatever will the future Marchioness of Rutherford think of how you earn your funds?”
His half smile held no humor. Nothing about his present circumstances was amusing. “You assume there will be one. Even if there were, a wife would have no say in the matter.”
She chuckled, the sound low and husky. He calculated she was on the edge of sleep. Good. Their conversation was sapping what little strength he had left. Already, his head swam, causing the light to ripple around her haloed hair.
“Darling Chatham,” she sighed. “Now Rutherford, I suppose. No, I shall always think of you as Chatham. My wicked lord. My purchased pleasure.”
Carefully, he rose from the chair, one hand unobtrusively braced on the window frame. Tiny black dots frolicked like fairies in his vision. He waited for them to calm, nonchalantly reaching for the white linen shirt draped over the chair’s back and dragging it over his head. The cloth scraped against Mrs. Knightley’s claw marks. He took care not to wince.
“This rings of a farewell,” he said, shrugging quickly into his waistcoat and last season’s tailcoat. Every garment smelled of her—lilac and musk. Three hours ago, the scent had been unobjectionable. Now, it turned his stomach. Perhaps it was the liquor.
“What shall I do with all that Scottish whisky?” Her voice was slurred now, her eyes closed. “No one drinks it except you.”
Because of England’s excise laws and onerous duties strangling Scotland’s finest product, most who favored the drink obtained it from illicit distilleries. That only made whisky more satisfying, in Chatham’s estimation. “Sell it to Reaver,” he suggested.
“I have never met him.”
“Few have,” he answered. As the owner of a decadent club catering to gentlemen’s thirst for risk and luxury, Sebastian Reaver understood the value of secrets. While he collected those of his patrons, he guarded his own jealously. An armor, of sorts. Many young lords and spares had lost entire fortunes within Reaver’s gilded walls, and some were rather fond of their dueling pistols.
Chatham did not often lose at the gaming tables, but then, he’d always had a way with numbers. And women, for that matter. Between gaming and benefactresses such as Mrs. Knightley, he had lived quite comfortably for seven years. Until last November. Until apoplexy had seized his father in its grip and sent the second Marquess of Rutherford to join his first wife in the hereafter. Left his son, the disgrace, to claim the title and inherit every bloody bad decision the previous Rutherford had made, more debt than he could possibly pay in a lifetime. It was true that, as a peer, Chatham could not be tossed into debtor’s prison. But already, he had been forced to sell everything his father had not. And it was not enough.
Somewhere, his father was laughing.
Chatham gathered up the gray velvet pouch from the rosewood table beside the chair. The coins pinged together as he weighed them in his palm. Dizziness rocked his head, shook his hands. He needed a drink. But he could not stay here any longer.
Tucking the pouch inside his coat pocket, he retrieved his walking stick from behind the chair. Mrs. Knightley sighed and rustled the bedding as she turned in her sleep. He did not glance behind him as he slowly sauntered across her bedchamber, descended into her red-walled foyer, opened her black-painted door, and stepped out onto a bright Marylebone street lined with rows of similar brick houses.
“Reaver’s, m’lord?” his father’s coachman asked quietly.
He nodded and climbed into his father’s old coach. It smelled of mold and dust and age. Even this must be sold. Sighing, he leaned his head against the seat. Closed his eyes. Resisted his mind’s urge to start spinning. Plotting. Planning.
Fruitless, the lot of it.
Whisky was wearing off. He needed more. A bath, too. His head lolled to one side. As the coach turned onto Oxford Street, then south into Mayfair, his eyelids drew down, the weight in his muscles a kind of ache. When they blinked open once again, the coach had stopped with a jerk in the small square off St. James where the unassuming brick and distinctive red door of Reaver’s waited.
Chatham attempted to clear his head by giving it a shake. An error in judgment, he discovered a moment later, as his head stilled but the world did not.
“M’lord?” The interior of the coach was brighter with the door open. “Are you well?”
He grinned at the coachman—a reflex only. The man’s graying, top-hatted head swam and bobbed in the square of sunlight.
Perhaps I should have eaten before visiting Mrs. Knightley,
he thought. But he hadn’t been hungry. Not for years.
“Top of the trees,” he answered, careful to make use of his walking stick as he descended from the carriage. The cobbled ground came too quickly to his boots. The light burned his eyes. Lilacs and musk teased his nose.
He entered through the red door, pausing beside the goddess Fortuna spilling her bounty for any man to collect. Deceitful bitch. But the figure’s false promise matched the interior of the club—gilt-framed mirrors and gold-silk walls and ever-lit chandeliers. It was ornate without a hint of subtlety.
Shaw, the majordomo, approached from his mysterious door beneath the stairway. The lean, brown-skinned man arched black brows and commented with tact and delicacy, “You are appallingly gray, my lord. Shall I summon a physician or an undertaker?”
Chatham’s lips quirked. “Leave the quips to me, cheeky bastard. You haven’t the talent for them. Why don’t you summon a bottle of whisky and a bath? There’s a good man.”
Within an hour, Shaw had done just that, adding a tray of sliced tenderloin and warm bread from Reaver’s French cook. After soaking away a night of lilacs, musk, and depravity, Chatham lounged in his rooms on the third floor of the club, enjoying the darkness supplied by heavy draperies, the false luxury of a gold-painted mirror, and the sting of illicit whisky burning his throat and stomach. He should eat some of the meat. He did not want it. Perhaps some bread, instead.
He tipped his glass and finished the final swallow, then rose to sway toward the sideboard, where the bottle waited. A comfort. A friend. He poured more, watching the pale-gold liquid splash against white glass. Reaver’s whisky was smoother than Mrs. Knightley’s. Warmer, like vanilla and amber and oak. It stung against his tongue and lips. Blotted out all memory of her.
He liked Reaver’s whisky much better.
A knock sounded. Shaw, undoubtedly. He waited for the Indian to grow impatient. It took less than a minute for the door to open. The man must be worried Chatham’s corpse would be creating a stench by now. “My lord, Mr. Reaver will see you in his rooms.”
“Did I request a meeting?”
“He did. And I would not call it a request.”
“Ah.” Chatham set his glass down and picked up his walking stick, lifting it in a casual gesture. “Lead the way.” He followed Shaw down a carpeted, muffled corridor, past seven doors to the eighth, which was tucked around a corner and into a recess.
This door was dark wood, rich and plain. It suited its occupant.
Inside the antechamber was Reaver’s secretary, a young, earnest man with the nervous habit of adjusting his spectacles. Like many things inside this club, his appearance was deceiving. He could immobilize an unruly guest in less than ten seconds. Reaver himself could do so in three, but still. For a small man, Mr. Frelling was quite skilled.
“Lord Rutherford.” Frelling nudged his wire rims with a knuckle and cleared his throat. “Yes, indeed. Mr. Reaver will be pleased you came so quickly.”
“I live to please.”
Shaw closed the door with a soft click as he departed, and Frelling waved Chatham toward the next room. Sebastian Reaver sat behind an oversized desk made of dark-stained oak. It was heavy and huge, lacking any kind of elegance. Much like its owner.
When standing, Reaver was half a head taller than Chatham, who was two inches over six feet. His shoulders were easily twice the width of Chatham’s own, which were admittedly rather thin at present. Perhaps he should have eaten the Frenchman’s offerings.
Dark eyes flashed from beneath heavy brows. Blunt features formed a speculative expression. “You will be dead by winter if you keep on this way.” The voice was so deep, it was a rumble.
Chatham sank into the hard wooden chair in front of the massive desk. For the owner of a club wreathed in ostentation, the man was positively Spartan. “I presume the invitation to converse in your”—he glanced around at the dark wood, the bare walls, the plain furnishings—“private quarters has a purpose. Apart from prophesying my demise, of course.”
Reaver sat back in his chair and folded heavily muscled arms across a heavily muscled chest. “Down to your last farthing, and you behave as though nothing has changed.” The man’s jaw—as square as his desk—clenched briefly. Dark eyes dropped to a book of accounts. A blunt fingertip traced from one side of the ledger to the other. “I can give you until Tuesday next. Shaw will assist you in packing.”
Chatham maintained his silence as Reaver made a notation. “It appears one’s usefulness in your eyes is reduced to his timeliness with the payment of rent.”
“Your usefulness is not the problem.”
He gave the oversized man a nod. “Naturally not. My influence has purchased your success, after all. Perhaps our misunderstanding is a question of ingratitude.”
The rumble became a chuckle. “You were helpful, Chatham. That does not entitle you to permanent residency.”
“All the young lordlings who shadow my heels followed me here.”
“I do not dispute it.”
Chatham tilted his head and braced his fingertips together. “The scandalous secrets of the beau monde that you so enjoy collecting? I delivered those, as well.”
“Sold
them to me.”
“I can give you your bloody rent,” Chatham said softly, hoping Mrs. Knightley had not shorted him.
Reaver’s eyes hardened, flashing briefly. “For how long? A fortnight? To extend your credit would make me an imbecile, given your prospects.”
Chatham felt deadly resolve arise like billowing smoke inside him. He put every ounce of it into his reply. Standing and leaning negligently with one hip against the edge of Reaver’s desk, he smiled into the club owner’s granite face and said, “And yet, you are only too willing to betray an ally upon whose influence your golden empire was built. Before you mark my account closed in your little book, consider whether the tide of such influence may be reversed. Imbecility comes in an endless variety of patterns.”
Reaver did not stand. He did not flinch or look away or even blink. His gaze was steady, like an executioner who performed his duties with reluctance and merciful swiftness. “If you could see yourself right now, Ben, you would know how absurd your threat sounds to me.” His eyes, black as coal, dropped to where Chatham held himself steady between the desk and his walking stick. Reaver had always seen through him. Bloody maddening, it was. “One day, you may judge this as benevolence rather than betrayal. Assuming you survive that long.”
“Care to make it a wager?” Chatham snarled, his temper burning in his stomach, sour and acidic. He pushed himself away from the edge of the oak.
Reaver’s hard-edged lips curled into a smile, faint and brief. It was a rare sight. “A bit of advice from an old friend.”
