Page 5 of A Lady’s Guide to Scoundrels and Gentlemen (The Harp & Thistle #1)

A fter the fight, Dantes felt like a millionaire and he owed it all to Lady Vivian Winthrop.

Now, he’d known he would win against Sullivan—there had never been a doubt about that. At least, he ’d had no doubt. He’d seen it in everyone else, though, even those who’d cheered for him. But ending the fight within minutes? Comical. All because of a good-luck kiss—he thought so, anyway. After all, he had the skill. But knocking Sullivan out right away was an outcome that had not once crossed his mind.

As soon as Sullivan had collapsed, Dantes had had to find her face, see her reaction. He hadn’t cared about anything else. Had she known how unheard of that outcome was? Maybe not, but she’d figured it out by the reaction of the crowd. He’d seen her shake her head with amusement. And then he’d sworn he’d seen something else.

Pride. And that had felt pretty good.

The crowd had swept him up, he’d looked away for a few moments, and she’d been gone when he’d tried to find her again. Just as well. His father may have been from her world, and Dantes may have spent some of his own life in it, but he preferred grit over gold. For that fact alone, he could never be with a gal like that. No way would an aristocratic woman, with her elegant tea parties and balls, want anything to do with a hideous, hairy, bare-knuckle pugilist who lived above his pub.

Nor would he want anything to do with said tea parties and balls.

But as he lay in bed, his mind trailed back to the moment where he’d held her hand in his. Though it had been a bit daring that he’d removed her glove, a kiss upon a woman’s hand was relatively innocent.

And yet, somehow, a mere “innocent” kiss had seemed to pause the world around him. Her touch… He’d quite literally lost himself in it. In her. He didn’t even know the woman. How could something so simple and inoffensive be so consuming?

Granted, it wasn’t even that he found her beautiful. The world was filled with beautiful women. But a thread had seemed to weave between them when she’d opened up about her mother’s death and confided in him, a complete stranger, that she used to daydream about a life where her mother was still alive. He had never met anyone who understood this aspect of his life.

Dantes would never admit this aloud, but not only had he daydreamed like that as a boy too, he still did it. A grown man in his thirties, nearly the same age his mother had been when she’d passed, and he still imagined a life with her alive.

In that moment, he wondered what she would have thought about Lady Vivian. Probably would have called her a snooty tart or something. He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself a bit, but the humor fell away immediately.

Dantes rubbed his hands over his face, then raked his fingers through his wild hair. It didn’t matter. None of this mattered. He would never see Lady Vivian Winthrop again, which was for the best, and there was no use in dwelling on her.

By the time he’d cleaned up and gone downstairs to The Harp & Thistle, Victor and Ollie were already preparing for the evening crowd.

“It’s about time you got up.” Victor was behind the bar working on some kind of logbook. But when he finally looked up to see Dantes, he stilled. “You look like death, Dantes.”

Dantes grunted in response. He had drunk a bit too much last night after such a quick fight and wanting to forget about Lady Vivian.

Victor watched Dantes make his way to the sink and fill a glass with water. “I’m only tolerating this,” Victor started up again, “because fight nights bring in such a big crowd, especially when you’re up in the ring. It’s not excusable behavior otherwise. You’re a grown man with—”

Anger flashed through Dantes’s mind. “Usually, people follow that with ‘a family.’ I’m a grown man with a pub and two mind-numbingly infuriating brothers, both of whom are as family-less as myself, I might add.” Dantes started chugging his water.

But Victor was unaffected. “I was going to say ‘with responsibilities,’ but since you’re on the subject, the only reason I don’t have a family is because I don’t want one. Not because I can’t get one.”

Dantes narrowed his eyes. The two brothers had always grated at each other to some degree, a power struggle, and that hadn’t changed as they’d aged. Dantes, as a child, had always been the wildest of the bunch while Victor had tried to reel him in—though there were a few times Victor had gotten into mischief with him, and while his brother would never admit it, he’d loved it. When they’d spent those years living on the streets, Victor had been the one who’d acted as parent. Kept them safe, fed, clothed. Well, as best as a twelve-year-old could, anyway.

“You make it sound like this happens all the time. Ten years ago, yes.” Dantes washed the glass, setting it to the side to dry. Back then, at the height of his fighting career, Dantes would fight far more than he did now, would stay up drinking, would stay up with women, until well after sunrise. When he’d woken at supper time, he would be flooded with shame and melancholy. Rinse and repeat. “But when was the last time I slept in with a hangover?”

Ollie answered first with a wide grin. “Two years ago. You idiots had the exact same conversation.”

Dantes couldn’t help but laugh. “See? Maybe let loose yourself every once in a while, too. Perhaps we’d be able to stand you.”

Victor sighed and returned to what Dantes now realized was the inventory books. Knowing his brother preferred silence for the task, he grabbed a rag to wipe down the tables and a broom to sweep up. A bit later, Victor’s voice cut through the silence, his voice softened from earlier. “A note came for you while you were still asleep.”

Dantes turned to see Victor holding a piece of paper up for him to grab. “Who is it from?” He immediately crossed the room.

Victor hesitated, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “Lady Vivian.”

Surprised, Dantes plucked the note from his brother’s hand and read it, an odd caution snaking through him.

To Mr. Edmond McNab,

I take my pen in hand to write a quick note requesting your presence at your earliest convenience. I understand time is a precious commodity to al, and will patiently await your arrival. I have a pressing matter to discuss.

Yours sincerely,

Vivian Winthrop

He eyed the address she’d included. He really didn’t care to make a visit all the way over there—he preferred it here, where he could tell someone he needed to talk to them instead of having to send a vague, flowery letter that left the true urgency of the matter in question. Then again, if she’d made the effort to send a note so quickly, it must have been something rather important. Hopefully, it would be worth the effort to visit.

*

When he rang the bell at the address from Lady Vivian’s note, a rather stoic-looking butler answered and gave Dantes a quick once-over of evident suspicion, his eye hovering over the long scar upon his face. The butler asked if he had a calling card, which of course Dantes did not, and the butler nearly slammed the door in his face. However, when Dantes revealed the note, he was led into the receiving room, where a large group of dandies were lounging about.

The butler didn’t leave the room. Instead, he began to search for something in the drawer of a sideboard. Dantes turned his attention to the men about the room, recognizing nearly all of them. Many of them he knew from boarding school or university, the rest from the years his grandparents had hoped he would find a debutante to marry and settle into their aristocratic lifestyle. To their disappointment, however, not one grandson of theirs had embraced the life they’d tried to bring them into. It had been a valiant effort, but it never would have worked. The McNab boys were too wild, their blood too muddled, for the aristocratic vise.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” It was Thomas Crosby, a cad he’d known from boarding school. The biggest cad of them all, really. “It’s comical to even see you show up here, McNab. It doesn’t matter your grandfather is the Duke of Invermark. Your father’s legacy is a joke. And a duke’s daughter would never choose a gutter rat over one of us.”

Dantes coolly shoved his hands into his pockets, his wide shoulders loose and relaxed. “I received an invitation.”

All at once, the room filled with raucous laughter. Crosby knuckled a tear from his eye. “You’re so full of it, even now.”

The too-familiar shame of being himself pounded against his heart, but outwardly, he shrugged without care. “All right.”

Crosby stood to assess Dantes better, a cocky grin plastered on his face. Unwavering, Dantes eyed him back, his face level and at ease, but blood-red rage pumping through his body. He could take Crosby down—he always could have—but Crosby was constantly surrounded by his little weasels. Dantes may have been larger and stronger, may have known how to fight, but even the biggest man alive could not take on more than ten grown men at once.

Crosby sniffed, loudly. “Do you ever miss our Eton days, Edmond?”

Dantes kept his mouth shut. Boarding school had comprised the most miserable years of his life and Crosby knew this. He’d been the cause of the misery, after all.

“I remember those days quite fondly.” Crosby looked over his shoulder to his weasels and received numerous chuckles in response. He then returned his icy gaze to Dantes. “Do you recall the time we tied you to a pillar in the dead of winter? What good fun we had together.” Crosby ended this with hearty laughter, as if the two were old chums sharing a humorous story from boyhood.

Of course Dantes remembered. The only reason he hadn’t died that night was because one of the older boys had snuck out to see a girl and returned later than intended, stumbling upon Dantes in the process. Nor did he forget the time they’d tied him to the foot of his bed, each of the boys unleashing punches and kicks to his face and body. That had lasted an hour, and would have been longer if the headmaster hadn’t stumbled upon it. Of course, no one had gotten in trouble. Like Crosby had said, it didn’t matter Dantes’s grandfather was the Duke of Invermark. His father had abandoned his duties and married a commoner. A poor one, at that. To Crosby and his ilk, Dantes was a street rat.

Crosby grinned again. “How about Eleanor? Would you like to know how she is?”

Dantes made sure he did not move a muscle. “No.”

Crosby responded with another cocky laugh.

However, Dantes was pulled away from the heart-warming reunion when a deep voice interrupted. “Pardon, Mr. McNab, but Lady Vivian is ready to receive you now.” It was the butler. Dantes blinked. Had the man ever left the room? Had he heard the entire conversation? Dantes wasn’t about to ask. But as he followed the butler out of the room, Dantes glanced back at Crosby—the man remained planted in place, looking utterly perplexed.

Lady Vivian was in her drawing room, an airy, light-green room awash in sunlight. As Dantes crossed the threshold, the butler turned and asked him to wait a moment at the door and went to have a private word with Lady Vivian. Dantes watched as she listened intently to words he could not hear, her hands clasped together neatly in front of her. As she paid no mind to him in the moment, he allowed himself to take her in. She wore a peach dress with a high collar that climbed up her long, delicate neck, her dark hair swept up to a soft and opulent bouffant, revealing sparkling, blue sapphires at her ears. He watched her lips move as she said something to the butler. When his eyes trailed up to hers, he realized she was now looking directly at him. And she was blushing.

“My rat catcher is here.” Lady Vivian let out a recovering laugh. But when he only responded with a face of confusion, she turned to her butler. “How does no one ever get my jokes?”

“Your sense of humor is far more refined than ours,” the butler responded with a smile.

Lady Vivian laughed again, a rather loud but bright sound that filled the large, quiet room. “You always know what to say, Heaton. Mr. McNab.” She now had her attention back on Dantes as Heaton, the butler, left them alone in the room. “May I offer you tea?”

But he shook his head. He didn’t want to be here any longer than necessary and was itching to escape post-haste. “No need to make a fuss over me, Lady Vivian. We can get right down to whatever is on your mind.”

“Then, please, come sit.” She seemed to float as she walked over to a sofa, extending a hand to where he was meant to sit. She took an armchair nearby, and he sat after her. “I prefer to get right to it as well. I dislike small talk. I’ve never been particularly good at it, and I find it tiresome.” Her hands folded neatly into her lap. “I wish to discuss my brother with you. The marchioness came to me in tears quite late last night. I’ve learned my brother has been…” She took a deep inhale. “Leading quite the double life.”

Dantes already knew all about it but waited for her to continue.

“I wish to discuss the debt Bernard owes you.”

“I won’t accept your money.” He’d already told her this yesterday. Had he really needed to come all the way here to repeat himself?

“I want to make a deal. I will cover his debt—”

“No.”

She ignored him. “In exchange for your help.”

He kept his mouth shut, now curious to see where she was going with this.

“Heaton told me you knew the men in my receiving room.”

“That’s right.” So the butler had been in there the entire time. Had she put him up to it, or had that been of his own volition?

“Are they gentlemen? And I mean in figurative terms. I know they all call themselves that.”

“Not at all,” Dantes replied immediately.

“Not one of them?”

“Not one.”

Lady Vivian crossed one leg over the other and Dantes had to make a concerted effort to not watch her little slipper peeking out from under the hem of her skirt.

She released a sigh. “Last night, I mentioned my receiving room has become swarmed with men since I took over the estate. I don’t speak to any of them, yet they return every day. I wish I could ignore them for eternity, but the fact remains I do need to get married, and I refuse to marry a scoundrel. I refuse to marry a man like my brother, a man who does secret things behind his wife’s back. Other women, gambling debts, addictions, all those horrendous diversions that make a man a scoundrel. The problem is men are so good at hiding this aspect of themselves that I cannot pick out the scoundrels from true gentlemen. I couldn’t even recognize it in my own brother.”

Where was she going with this?

“I want you to teach me how to recognize a good man.”

Dantes furrowed his brow. Was she serious? “What, you mean like some kind of matchmaker?”

Lady Vivian wrung her hands. “It sounds rather silly when you put it that way, but yes, I suppose that’s what I’m looking for.” As she said this, Heaton reentered the room with a silver tray. She thanked him as he set the tray down on a small table next to her and left the room again. “Let’s say I’m at a ball. A supposed gentleman asks me to dance. I want to know if he is worth my attentions after the dance. How do I do that? Do I ask him what his favorite card game is and run if he says poker instead of old maid? Is there a certain way he carries himself, how he talks?”

That was what she wanted? That would be easy. “No, just ask me.”

She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“If he gambles, if he goes to brothels, I’ll know. I can tell you.”

Lady Vivian gave him a look of suspicion before her eyes slid over to the silver tray and she lifted a random card. “Lord Jonathon Trundell. What can you tell me about him?”

“Alcoholic.”

Her eyes widened and she set it to the side, grabbing another random card. “The Honorable William Baker IV.”

“Womanizer.”

Another card. “Mr. Arthur Greene.”

“Got his sister’s lady’s maid pregnant.”

“My word!” She dropped the card as she said this, hastily picking it back up and putting it with the rest. She grabbed one last card.

“Mr. Thomas Crosby.”

That name, coming from her lips, made his skin crawl. Why did she have to go and pick that one? “He’s the worst of them all, Viv.”

Her eyes flashed in surprise. At Crosby’s label? Or at using such a casual nickname for her? He hadn’t even meant to say it, either. It had just come out. Yet surprisingly, Lady Vivian—Vivian—didn’t remark on it. “And why, may I ask, is Mr. Crosby the worst of them all?”

Dantes’s gaze didn’t waver from hers as he weighed what to tell her. It wasn’t exactly a story to tell a lady, and he absolutely didn’t want her to know about it. As he grappled with this, she seemed to understand he wasn’t going to explain, that it was personal.

“Anyway, there is a ball coming up to which I’ve received an invitation. As much as I wish to decline, I can no longer avoid social events and the pressure builds for me to attend. I would like you to accompany me so I may identify any good men there worth my attention.”

Unease roiled in his stomach. “A ball?”

Vivian nodded, somehow making such an innocuous movement graceful. “Yes, it is the first of many for the queen’s seventieth birthday this year.” As Dantes opened his mouth to respond to this detail, she hurried onto the next thought. “And I would request your expertise at any social events I must attend. I promise I won’t command too much attention from you, and the events will be limited.”

Letting out a breath, Dantes leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He very much disliked the idea of having to reenter high society to help her find a true gentleman. But if he declined, she would certainly end up with the most idiotic of cads. And he definitely hated the thought of that .

Vivian moved from her chair and plopped down directly next to him, gently placing a hand on his arm, sitting so close, he got a whiff of her perfume. Roses. He wondered where she’d applied it.

“Please, Mr. McNab. I’m sure it sounds awful to you, and you couldn’t have a more yawn-inducing companion. But I do need your help and you will get your money owed in return. Everyone wins.” She smiled up at him.

The money. He’d forgotten all about that part, and he still didn’t like it. But it was clear Vivian wouldn’t give up until he accepted her money. For whatever reason, this woman was intensely loyal to her brother. And he hated that Winthrop was taking advantage of her and she didn’t seem to know it.

“Also…” Mischief shone in her eye. “I will not let you leave until you say yes .”

“You would hold me hostage?” He gave her a crooked smile.

“I would.”

Dantes sunk back into the sofa and studied Vivian for a long moment, her long, delicate fingers remaining upon his forearm. Her touch branded through to his skin, a strange sensation that raised caution. He met her dark eyes, so close, he could see the long, dark lashes that framed them.

He did have the information she wanted. But he already knew which aristocratic men remained unmarried. Presuming she would be happiest with someone near to her age, excluding older widowers and freshly of-age men a decade younger meant there really weren’t many left. And they were all men who’d either put off marriage to indulge in their favorite sins, or men with such awful reputations no title or amount of money, even these days when estates were collapsing, could win a bride. While Dantes was not a marrying man himself, not that she would even consider him—a true gentleman had manners, morals, and a bespoke wardrobe that made even the hideous marginally attractive, traits Dantes did not possess—the thought of putting her with any of those idiots made him sick.

Perhaps, though, he was unaware of the one perfect gentleman for her and would find him at one of the infernal events she thought she had to go to.

So, he agreed on her deal and promised to meet her at the insipid ball in two weeks’ time.