Buch lesen: «His Wicked Christmas Wager»

Chapter One

“Are you sure this is the place?” Lady Caroline Fallowfield peered through the window of the hired hack, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

Though from all she had heard, this did look exactly the sort of low haunt Lord Sinclair frequented these days.

“Oh yes ma’am,” Arbuthnot assured her.

“And he’s still inside?” She could not imagine anyone willingly spending their evenings in a hovel like this. When they’d crossed the bridge into Southwark, she had imagined she might end up somewhere quaint and full of character. Not this ramshackle building, its roof slumped over mouldering piles which looked ready to slide into the Thames should the next tide turn with too much vigour.

“Yes ma’am,” Arbuthnot said again. “I’ve had the nipper keeping a close watch.” He pointed to the ragged urchin running up and down outside the Crossed Oars, aggressively accosting every passer-by.

“How can he possibly keep watch while he is so busy begging?”

“Easy,” he said with pride. “Any road,” he added with a shrug, “it’s better for him to have a good reason for hanging about the Oars. If he’d just stood in a doorway, watching like, then somebody would have took him for a spy and moved him on. Reg’lars are always afeard of someone laying information.”

“I see.” She smiled at him. Arbuthnot had turned out to be something of a treasure. The matter in hand was so delicate she had not wanted to employ a private investigator. But Arbuthnot owed her a favour. She had made sure he had medical help, and then compensation for the injuries he’d suffered when her late husband had forced him into the ring against a much younger, fitter opponent. She shuddered at the memory, which was so hard to blot out, of the event her husband had also forced her to attend. It had been sickening to discover that a great many so-called gentlemen could derive so much pleasure from watching one man beating another to a pulp.

“I’ll go in first,” said Arbuthnot, and rapped on the roof, to get the driver to set the horse in motion. When they’d rounded the corner, Arbuthnot heaved his bulk out of the carriage. “I’ve told the jarvey to wait ten minutes,” he said, leaning back into the carriage, his body almost completely blocking out the bitter wind blowing off the river. “Then he’ll go round again, and drop you off right outside. I’ll have found his lordship by then. Wherever he is in the place, I’ll be standing right near, so you can go to him straight off.”

She nodded again. Arbuthnot would stand head and shoulders above whatever crowd might be in there. His plan meant that she would not have to waste time searching for Lord Sinclair.

She pulled her collar up round her throat against the chill which swirled inside as he slammed the door shut. For a moment, she wondered if she could go through with it. But then she reminded herself, as she’d done over and over again on the way here, that walking into a room full of drunken lightermen and mudlarks would be nothing—not after enduring four years of marriage to a monster.

It was just that it hadn’t seemed quite so daunting when Arbuthnot had been in the carriage with her. Now he’d got out, she felt very alone, and small, and defenceless.

She glared at the depression in the opposite seat where the gigantic prizefighter had been sitting. That’s what you got if you ever began to think you could rely on a man, she reminded herself. He rendered you weak, and dependant, and vulnerable.

She firmed her lips and lifted her chin. There was nothing that rabble could do to her that her husband had not already done. And done with more finesse. She’d survived him, and she would survive this.

The carriage jerked into motion, flinging her back against the squabs and putting her moment of doubt to flight.

Everyone was relying on her.

And so she was jolly well going to make Lord Sinclair see sense.

When the carriage stopped, Arbuthnot’s nipper sprang to open the door and pull the steps down. She tossed him a coin from the deliberately meagre supply she’d brought with her and strode into the tavern, head high.

This time it was not just the look of the place that offended her sensibilities. A wave of eau d’unwashed male, topped with a foam of tobacco smoke, with a base note of spilled ale and something she did not care to identify, slapped her directly in the nostrils.

“Ooh, la-di-da,” observed one of the men closest to the door as her hand flew instinctively to shield her nose.

She had expected trouble. She had briefly considered donning a disguise and attempting to blend in. But only briefly. In her experience, timidity only made bullies look upon you as an easy target. And so, instead, she’d emphasized her station. She’d donned her newest winter coat of dark green, with its wide lapels and trio of capes on the shoulders. Though it was based on a man’s redingote, the profusion of velvet trim, and the matching bonnet with all its ribbons and feathers, made the outfit indisputably feminine, high fashion, and costly.

“Lost, are yer darling?” asked another, eyeing her tightly-fitted bodice, or perhaps the double row of large silver buttons running down its length. “Mebbe I can show yer the way…” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“There’s summat I could show yer,” said another, lewdly clutching at the front of his breeches.

She lifted her chin a fraction, though that was the only sign she gave that she’d heard a single word. Their talk was all for show. Not one of them would dare do more than throw crude jibes her way, so long as she kept her nerve. She was a lady, and everyone knew the penalties for tangling with a member of the Quality.

Besides, she’d brought Arbuthnot with her, just in case.

And speaking of Arbuthnot…she scanned the throng swiftly. Even through the haze of tobacco smoke he was easy to spot, leaning nonchalantly against one of the supporting timbers, away to her left.

Directly in front of him, his booted feet stretched towards a blazing fire, slouched her quarry.

Lord Sinclair.

Her heart squeezed to see he had a woman sprawled across his lap. He was using one hand to stroke her thigh, while the other held a tankard very similar to the one clutched in Arbuthnot’s massive paw.

She rebuked herself for minding so much as she stalked across the room toward him. Naturally, he would have had women over the years. But she managed to blank out the catcalls and vulgar gestures that came her way with greater ease than she could deal with the vicious pangs of jealousy. The woman made matters worse by nuzzling at his ear. She could see why the woman appeared so fond of him. Although the Lord Sinclair she was looking at was a far cry from the youth with whom she’d so disastrously fallen in love six years before, he was the kind of customer she would have favoured, had she been a whore. Even with more than a day’s growth of beard darkening his jaw, his clothing neither new nor all that clean, and his blue-black hair straggling down almost to his shoulders, he was still the most compellingly virile male she’d ever seen.

So greatly did her hostility mount, with every step she took, that when she reached the table at which they sat, all she had to do was raise one haughty eyebrow, and the woman he’d been groping scrambled off his lap as though he’d turned white hot.

“No, Molly, don’t go,” Lord Sinclair drawled. “I like you.” Molly had offered a kind of comfort he’d sometimes needed after Caroline had casually destroyed him. And she had the gall to look down her haughty nose at them both.

Lady Caroline gave Molly a hard smile as she sat down on a bench on the opposite side of his table.

“We can conduct our discussion with Molly on your lap, if you prefer,” she said. “It makes no difference to me.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” he sneered. “You always do just as you please, and to hell with everyone else.”

She quirked one eyebrow. “Really? I rather thought that was your particular speciality.”

He could hardly believe his ears. She was accusing him of selfishness?

“Sebastian and Phoebe want you home,” she said. “The wedding…”

“Wedding?” Molly took a swift backward step. “I ain’t wasting my time with you if you’ve got marriage to some gentry mort in mind.”

“No, Molly, you’ve got it wrong…”

But it was too late. She’d flounced off.

“Happy now?”

He lifted his drink to a suddenly dry mouth, thanking God he’d suppressed any outward sign of how the mere sight of Caroline had affected him. When she’d walked in through the door, in spite of all she’d done, his heart had pounded, his stomach had clenched, and he’d gripped Molly’s leg so hard he’d probably left a bruise.

But she’d only come to deliver yet another message from his brother. So far he’d resolutely ignored all the increasingly impassioned requests to watch Sebastian marry Lady Caroline’s younger sister, telling himself he couldn’t be bothered. But the way he’d reacted when she’d stalked into this hell-hole was a mocking reminder that his reasons for avoiding the ceremony went so much deeper.

Lady Caroline watched him glaring at her over the rim of his tankard as he drained it to the last drop. Happy? She could not recall the last time she’d applied that word to her state of mind. Before the last time she’d seen him, probably. When she’d had dreams of marrying for love, to a man who claimed to love her too.

What a goose she’d been!

“No,” she said bluntly. “But that is beside the point.”

“The point being?”

“Oh, don’t be so obtuse. You know very well why I’ve come. You said as much.”

“That damned wedding,” he snapped. “Do you seriously think there is anything you can say that would induce me to attend that farce?”

“It is not a farce! Phoebe and Sebastian love each other.”

“Love,” he snorted with contempt. “There’s no such thing.”

Her heart, which she’d long since thought immune to anything that anyone could throw at it, abruptly revealed she had been wrong. Once, this man had said he loved her. Passionately. Devotedly. Madly enough to defy the world and create a scandal that would have set the ton rocking on its heels.

She smothered the memory before it grew strong enough to wound her, took a deep breath, and said, “Even if that was true, your brother and my sister believe in it.”

“More fool them.”

She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. “If you don’t believe in love, what is there to keep you away from their wedding?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, come. Everyone is saying you mean to stay away because you are still broken-hearted over me. That you cannot bear to see me, especially not at a wedding. But if you don’t believe in love…” She leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “…then what is the reason you have so far refused to attend?”

My God, but she was a cold, hard woman. Every word had been like a dagger thrust to the heart.

But he would be damned if he let her know just how accurately she’d summed him up.

“Perhaps I don’t wish to waste my time watching my baby brother making a fool of himself over a female from your family,” he snarled.

“And I can see how profitably you normally spend your time,” she retorted, casting a swift glance around the shoddy tavern in which he looked very much at home. “From the rumours abounding about your life, of late, one would think your brother would be glad you have so far adamantly refused to answer his invitation. What man of good ton would want someone like you to darken his doors, after all? A notorious womanizer, gambler, drunkard, and even, if the latest on dit has any substance to it, a man who is not beyond breaking the law.”

“Your point being?”

The lazily lifted left eyebrow made him look every inch the viscount, in spite of the shabby clothing, and the situation in which she’d found him, in spite of the fact that he had not denied even one of the accusations she’d flung at him.

“The point being,” she replied, “that no matter how low you have sunk, your family still care about you. They love you, though you would deny the emotion exists. They want you to be there to celebrate the event with them.”

He knew that! His brother had done all he could to prevent his downward slide. Even when he’d sunk about as low as a man could get, Seb had taken pains to get word to him that the door would always be open.

And part of him yearned to go back.

If only she weren’t going to be there, this wedding would be the perfect opportunity to start mending fences.

“It would mean so much to them if you could just…” She gave him an exasperated look. “…clean yourself up, and pretend, just for a few days, that there is still some remnant of the gentleman left in you.”

He glared into his empty tankard—a remarkably apt symbol of his life.

“Oh,” she said, in such a way that he braced himself for what was coming next.

“It has not occurred to anyone that you might not be able to afford to purchase decent clothes, let alone stand the cost of travelling all the way to Berkshire. Is that the case Crispin? If so, I can give you the money…”

“Damn you, Caro,” he growled, slamming the empty tankard down on the rough table that separated them, his face contorted with fury. “Do you think I would touch a penny of the money that bastard Fallowfield left you?”

“Probably not,” she conceded. “But I had to at least try.”

“Why?”

“You know why. You would not have gambled away your entire fortune, and be living like this if I had not…” She could not look him in the face, any more than she could end that sentence.

And so her eyes were gazing into the fire as he ended it for her, in a low voice that throbbed with hatred. “Shown yourself to be a mercenary, scheming, deceitful jade?”

She opened her mouth to refute the allegations he’d levelled at her before. But would he be any more willing to hear her side of the story now? She’d been a widow for the best part of two years. If he’d really wanted to know the truth, he’d had plenty of time to find her and ask her to explain. But he had not.

Which meant he didn’t really care.

And if he didn’t, then neither did she.

“If I am so worthless, then there is nothing to keep you away, is there?” She smiled at him with the smile she had perfected through the years of her marriage. The one that told the world she cared nothing for its opinion—that, in fact, she rather despised it.