Page 2 of The Devil Himself (The Devil You Know #1)

Two

L uc studied Emrys Grey, noting how different he was now from when Luc had known him as a lad in Gloucestershire.

He still had glossy raven’s wing hair and eyes as gray as smoke. But he was honed now, all youthful softness gone, lines carved around his eyes and mouth. There was a dangerous air to him that befitted a gaming hell owner rather than the fourth son of a marquess…

He pursed his lips, evincing disapproval. “You haven’t been answering your correspondence.”

“Certainly I have. Just not any that originates from my family. Those I don’t even open.”

“You’re going to want to hear this.” Luc glanced about. “Is there somewhere we can speak privately?”

Rys’s fists clenched at his sides, and a muscle ticked in his jaw.

Luc knew this was going to be difficult, but he hoped Rys would at least listen.

“Come along, Fitzwilliam.”

He followed when Rys turned on his heel and strode away, wondering if Rys called him by his surname because he was unaware that Luc’s father had passed, or if he just didn’t care to call him Angelsey, which was his designation as the current earl.

They walked to a hall just off the gaming floor, lined with opulently carved doors. He wondered if these were where the ladies of the club plied their trade, but when Rys opened the door, he saw it was a private gaming room, and that it lay empty.

Rys closed the door behind them. “I’m a busy man, as Jack said. You have five minutes.”

“I’ll get right to the point then.” He moved farther into the room, putting a bit of distance between himself and Rys, because he’d been able to feel the intense heat of Rys’s body standing so close, which disturbed him. “Your brother Owen, the marquess, has passed.”

Rys’s expression remained mostly impassive. It was the slight widening of his eyes, the way his well-shaped mouth went the tiniest bit slack… those things told Luc how shocked he was. “I see. Well, you have delivered the news. I am not expected to attend the wake, I am sure.”

He blew out a frustrated breath. “Rys.”

“No.” Rys slashed a hand through the air. “My father made it very clear when he tossed me out on my eighteenth birthday that I was dead to him if I didn’t do what he commanded. Owen never countermanded that when he took the title.”

That much Luc couldn’t argue with. Rys was the fourth son of a marquess, and he’d been more than just a spare. He’d been downright superfluous. So even though Rys had wanted to buy a commission and become a military officer, his father had decided Rys would be a vicar.

Clearly, he was unsuited to that. The man ran a gaming hell, for God’s sake.

“I know that was difficult for you, Rys, but?—”

“Do you, Lucian?” Rys drawled out his name and raised one dark eyebrow. “You are your father’s golden boy.”

“My father died five years ago.”

Now Rys blinked, then his expression changed to one of chagrin. “My sympathies, Fitzwilliam. I had not heard, and I try to keep informed of the peerage.”

“My father had vacated Town for the country house to convalesce. It’s not surprising you didn’t know if you weren’t reading letters from the family. It hardly rated a mention in the scandal sheets.”

“Well, I apologize for my unwise words.”

“Fair enough.” In fact, Luc hadn’t expected the apology, and he appreciated it.

Rys strode to a sideboard tucked along one wall, lifting a bottle. “Whisky?”

“I would take one, yes.” What he had to convey to Rys was unpleasant at best, so they might both need the fortification.

Luc studied Rys as he poured liquor into two cut crystal glasses.

There was an opulence to the Devil’s Playground that he’d never seen in a hell before, a sheen of sophistication that hid the sin just enough to make it seem imminently desirable.

And that stood to reason, as the club sat along the same street as White’s and Brooks’.

And then there was Rys. He was hardly the gangly young man Luc had last seen nearly twelve years before.

He was the picture of dangerous masculine grace. And beauty. Which he shouldn’t notice.

“So what is it you want, Fitzwilliam?” he asked, coming to hand Luc a glass. “Or should I call you Angelsey?”

“You may call me Luc, Rys. You’ve known me since you were five.”

“Mmm.” Rys sipped his whisky. “So?”

Impatient bastard. “As I said, your brother has passed.” And Luc had been Owen’s best friend, which was how he knew Rys in the first place. He was five years older than Rys, two years younger than Rys’s oldest brother Owen, and this whole situation made him itch with rage.

“And I said thank you for the news. I’m sure Owen’s son will be a fine marquess.”

Luc gritted his teeth. “There’s more to it.”

“Do tell,” Rys drawled with heavy irony in his voice, but his silvery gaze had sharpened.

Luc took a deep breath, knowing what came next would pour oil on the flame he’d already set ablaze. “Owen was murdered, Rys.”

Rys tightened his hand on his glass of whisky to keep from dropping it. Of all the things Lucian Fitzwilliam could have said, that was the least expected.

“Well, if you are concerned that I am the culprit, I assure you, I have not seen Owen in perhaps five years.”

“I am well aware of your disastrous last meeting.”

Rys chuckled without any real humor. Yes.

When his father had passed, he’d gone to the funeral procession and graveside service, since he had not been invited to the wake.

Owen had confronted him angrily, his other brothers backing Owen’s play, and he’d left before seeing the old bastard in the ground.

“I am running out of patience, Luc. Tell me what it is you want.”

“I know you had your differences but, unlike your father, Owen was a good man, Rys.”

He would not dignify that by scoffing, and he controlled his face with steely resolve. “He was your best friend, so I shall allow you to think that.”

“He was, at least as far as his duty to the title was concerned. The tenants loved him, the estates flourished, and his wife?—”

“Christ.” His wife. Rys scrubbed a hand over his face. “How is Hannah?”

“Devastated.” Luc sighed, tossing back some of the whisky in his glass. “But she’s going to be fine, provided the person who killed Owen doesn’t come after her children.”

“Good God.” Shaking his head, Rys waved his free hand in the air. “If he was such a good man, why would someone kill him? Trust me, my dear Fitzwilliam, in my long experience with the seedier side of life, good men don’t get murdered.”

“They do when they have two utter bastards for brothers.” Luc dropped that like someone dropping a dog turd in the punchbowl at a society ball. And it floated there between them for long moments.

Rys went still except for his heart, which started to race. “Surely you do not think that Daffyd or Arthur had aught to do with this?” The two brothers between him and his oldest were hardly fine, upstanding paragons, but murder?

Luc’s eyes flashed blue fire, his hand clenching on his glass. “I do. And so does Hannah. Which is why I’ve come to you.”

Rys stared. “I have less to do with them than I did with Owen.”

“I know. Which is why you can help me to figure out what happened. They will never believe you would bestir yourself to help with Owen’s wife and son.”

Stunned, he shook his head. “They would be right. Why would I do that?”

“Because you have access to a world far beyond the peerage, and contacts within it as well, that I cannot begin to fathom. You can put out inquiries.”

Rys wasn’t sure what the feeling was that squeezed his chest. His disdain for his family and his longstanding pain at their rejection mixed with his long-suppressed care for his brother, who he had adored and admired as a child, tagging along with Owen and his friends on so many occasions.

“No.”

“Rys—”

“I said no. It is not my affair.” His brothers could go to the devil.

“Hannah and the children are living in fear, Rys,” Luc said quietly, stopping his pacing to watch him intently.

“They are afraid to leave the house, afraid to eat the food the servants give them. Young Gareth is the legal heir to the title, but he is under Daffyd’s guardianship until he reaches majority. Who’s to say he won’t be next?”

“How old is the child now?” Rys asked, unholy curiosity prompting him.

“Fifteen.”

“Ah.” He could see the conundrum for his brothers, if they were indeed colluding to take over the title.

At fifteen, young Gareth was old enough to know if the guardianship was being mismanaged, because Owen would have been grooming him to take over since he was in short pants. “Nearly a man, then.”

“Yes. And yet still a boy.” Luc sighed, then drank down the rest of his whisky. “And a danger to anyone who might be looking to fleece the estate.”

Fascinated in spite of himself, Rys leaned his bottom on the gaming table, crossing his booted feet at the ankles. “Do you really think Daffyd or Arthur did this? How did Owen die?”

“He was shot in the chest leaving his club. The ball took him in the heart, killing him almost instantly.”

“A footpad then.”

Luc snorted, the sound indelicate for such a finely dressed gentleman of the Ton. “You know as well as I do that most miscreants in the city cannot afford firearms. This was a deliberate assault.”

“And what makes you think my other brothers did the deed?”

“Or commissioned it,” Luc interjected. He set down his glass to start counting off on his hands.

“One, Daffyd has recently been gambling to excess at the Carnival of Dionysus, among other more usual clubs, such as Brooks’.

I have no doubt he’s deep in debt by this point.

And Arthur is known for spending lavishly on his mistress, a stage performer who is open to the highest bidder, as it were, and on his horses, which he procures at Tattersall’s. ”

Rys watched, his attention arrested by Luc’s hands, which were long-fingered, lean, and yet powerful instead of delicate. He looked like an angel, as his mother had always said, but he was all male. And Rys was a fool to notice.

“Two,” Luc said as he pulled down another finger. “Hannah tells me there were some bitter, loud arguments in the weeks leading up to Owen’s death. She wasn’t privy to the subjects, but she could hear the raised voices, and Owen was left quite tense.”

“But he did not confide in her? Or in you?”

“No. I asked him about it when I saw an exchange at our club between him and Daffyd, and he told me he was looking into the entailment’s accounts but had nothing he was able to share yet.”

“Is that it? It could be coincidence.” All men of the Ton had some dissolute proclivities. It hardly made them murderers.

“It could. But since Owen passed, Daffyd has been gambling every night, and Arthur is in the process of procuring a townhome.”

“I’m sure my father left them an inheritance. There was a great deal of money that was not entailed with the title.”

Luc’s smile was razor sharp and false, and he ticked off another finger. “Three. Your father left everything to Owen to administer. Daffyd and Arthur got an allowance. Your father determined that Owen was the only one he trusted of the three.”

Hearing that had him gritting his teeth, his jaw aching with the force of his molars grinding. Once again, he was confronted with the fact that he had been disowned, and that his hateful old bastard of a father had not thought about him at all, not even in his plans for death.

“Yes, well, how droll.” Rys strode to the door, opening it and gesturing through the portal. “As entertaining as this has been, I have no intention of helping you, so I suggest you take your leave.”

“Rys…”

“My answer is no. Goodnight, Fitzwilliam. I shall send an attendant to see you out.”

Instead of waiting for Luc to leave, Rys fled.

He couldn’t bear to be in the man’s presence, feeling the weight of his stare and his judgment, a moment longer.