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WHITE’S, LONDON - JUNE 4, 1816

XANDER

White’s was a hell I was forced to visit on occasion for appearance’s sake, a necessary inconvenience required to maintain the status required of my title. Nothing more, nothing less. To refuse to attend would be tantamount to a statement. One I had no interest in making.

Still, the effort was always a misery. I was not disposed to gambling, and the gentlemen there were prone to little else. At least Wayland’s didn’t offer a pretense of being anything other than what it was, a gaming hell, through and through. No, White’s played at being a social club, but the wagers were every bit as outrageous.

My timing was strategic. On a late-afternoon visit, enough members would be present to notice me, but not so many that I’d be pressured into absurd long shots.

My stomach dropped as I approached. There, in his usual seat at the bow window—free to be admired as he felt was his due—sat Mr. Beckett Beaumont. Unfortunately, peace would be difficult to find. The sight of his fair hair and cruel sneer was almost enough of an irritant to have me skipping the club entirely.

But I hadn’t been in months. And the Hasket men had always maintained membership at White’s. Always. It was a matter of pride. One of the many rules for Hasket men my father had instilled from birth via drawn out, half-drunken lectures.

Except there was no pride to be found there, not truly. Last time I made the effort, the buffle-headed numbskulls had been wagering on raindrops clinging to the window—of all absurd things.

Steeling my nerve, I stepped inside and handed off my hat and coat. I made to slip past the dining area and go upstairs to the reprieve promised in the library. But it was not to be.

A cry of “Rosehill!” rang out from the window as I passed.

Damn .

After screwing my face into an estimation of surprise, I turned. “Beaumont, wonderful to see you.”

“Come, come, sit with me. You know Parker, I trust.” He gestured at the dark-haired man seated across from him. Wesley Parker had moved up in the world—to be afforded such a seat.

“Parker.”

“Rosehill,” he nodded with a poorly concealed sneer.

Beaumont was an unpleasant enough prospect, but something about Parker had always set my teeth on edge in a way Beaumont could never manage. Parker ran in my late brother, Gabriel’s, circle, a world of secret dealings and ill-considered wagers I had never been admitted to.

I did as bid—there was nothing else for it. Beaumont was not to be cut. At least not by anyone wanting to avoid notice. And avoiding notice was my raison d’être.

Restraining a sigh, I settled beside him in the final chair facing the window. I pressed my left hand under my thigh once seated. Only the right remained to be managed.

“How are you, gentlemen?” I asked.

“Better than Parker.” Beaumont chuckled.

I raised a brow at the man in question.

He sighed performatively. From the ruddy flush of his cheeks to the glazed expression in his eyes, Parker appeared to be more than a few drinks into his afternoon. Slumped with his legs sprawled out to the side, he was well on his way to soused. The man had always tried for fashionable, though he usually came up short in some small way or another. Nothing anyone would notice save myself and possibly Beaumont. This time it was the fabric of his trousers; the buckskin was worn dark in the inner thighs. Low on funds then.

“I’ve a strumpet insisting to all and sundry I got her with child. As though she hasn’t fucked every man south of Newcastle.”

I resisted the urge to mention that there was at least one man south of Newcastle that she had not fucked.

“Is that why her father ended the courtship between you two, Rosehill?” Beaumont asked in a tone of false conviviality.

“Who?” I asked, only half listening as I signaled a passing barkeep for my usual drink.

“Charlotte James.”

Damn .

I hummed. It was the sort of vagary I employed often in town, and my use of it now made my stomach turn. Lady James hadn’t deserved my treatment of her years ago, and she didn’t deserve the false implication now. But her father had caught wind of a rumor and that was the end of a perfectly acceptable courtship.

The barkeep brought my usual claret and a refill for the other men. Parker downed his in one swig. Christ, he was going to retch all over the floor. It was a wonder he’d managed a membership in the first place—they’d certainly revoke it for such a display.

“So, Rosehill, I haven’t seen you in an age. How have you been, old chap?” Beaumont asked, apparently finished with Parker’s predicament for the moment.

A comment about his—more advanced—age hovered at the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it. “Oh, you know. There is always much to be done.”

He hummed and opened his ever-present snuffbox, grabbed a pinch, and inhaled before offering it to me. Unthinkingly, I shook my head. Beaumont raised a suspicious brow, but he returned the box to his pocket without comment.

Today, he’d donned a simple navy coat and tan trousers paired with an elaborate cravat. Beaumont was often praised for his style, which emphasized the quality and cut of his garments.

I had always dressed in simple, elegant lines. My coats were impeccably tailored and made with fabrics of unmistakable quality.

When Beaumont wore fine linens and silks with elegantly considered designs that emphasized his form, it was considered fashionable. When I began doing the same, years before he did, the ton whispered that it was odd, off-putting.

“Such as?” He drew out the two words, enunciating. He always had an audience here at his table. And he knew how to play to them.

My sister is determined to drive me to an early grave, and my mother is one fabulous gown away from social ruin.

“Oh, the usual responsibilities that come with running several estates,” I replied. My right hand had crept off the table, threatening to dance with the offhand remark. To occupy it, I snatched the glass again and took a sip. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed his lip curl.

Another misstep. Beaumont wouldn’t know about such responsibilities. And he wouldn’t take that comment as the distracted nonanswer I’d intended. No, it was a slight.

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t recall Rycliffe having so many demands on his time…” I sensed a trap there, somewhere. But I couldn’t spot it. Parker shifted in his seat, tucking his legs back in properly. Lord, I hoped he didn’t cast up his accounts on the table.

“Well, Gabriel passed before my father.”

My brother hadn’t had any demands on his time. At least not until Celine. And I very much doubted he would have described his wife as a demand. Or, perhaps he would have, but it would have been accompanied by a self-satisfied smirk and an innuendo about precisely how demanding she was.

“Still, he had a wife.” There was something about his tone. I hadn’t evaded his trap but I still couldn’t name it. And I almost certainly couldn’t avoid it.

“Yes.” I fought to keep the trepidation out of my voice, but some must have slipped through because he straightened. Just a touch triumphant. No wonder he always had so many debts of honor due.

“Perhaps a wife would ease some of the burdens on your time. You should consider it.”

“Perhaps I will.”

“Though… I suppose you have.” A self-satisfied tilt crossed his brow. That was it, the trap. My two failed courtships. The rumor that refused to die.

By now, the other gentlemen milling about had abandoned their pretense of conversation. They turned to watch. I could feel their eyes on my back, waiting eagerly for the killing blow.

I hummed with as little interest as I could manage.

“Why do you suppose a wealthy, handsome, titled gentleman such as yourself cannot catch a lady? They should be queued up and down the street for you. Do you need some advice on how to handle a woman?” The question was accompanied by a crude hand gesture. Parker snorted.

I knew what the trap was, but how he was going to spring it remained a mystery. He was unmarried as well—though he’d had more than one notorious affair. He could hardly use that as evidence of some imagined flaw.

“I can manage just fine. Thank you.”

“The trick is to feast on the cunny, drives them wild. You know, the way you mollies do a cock.”

And there it was. Worse than I could have imagined. My nails bit into my palms as my stomach churned with shocked fury.

I wasn’t alone in my astonishment. Gasps from nearby tables served only to increase the drama of the moment. No help would come from that quarter, though, I needn’t even look.

Never, not once, had I wanted to call a man out. But I did now. Desperately. More than I had ever wanted anything in my entire life. Bullet or blade, it made no difference, I wanted to pierce this man’s flesh.

Not recognizing the difference between my present rage and the humiliation he’d intended, Beaumont continued. “I’d be happy to demonstrate the technique on your sister, if you need a practical demonstration.”

I shot up, my chair screeching a discordant symphony against the wooden floor in the breathless room. It caught on a loose board and tipped over in a clattering climax. Dimly, I was aware of another chair dragging against the boards, filling the deafening silence.

My hand had knotted into a proper fist of its own volition and everything inside me wanted to deck him. Forget swords or guns, hang gentlemanly conduct. The only satisfaction I would have was fist on bone.

Ragged, like that of a taunted bull, my breath came and went in great, furious, heaving gulps through flared nostrils.

But I was a trapped bull, caged and impotent. I could beat him bloody and it would do nothing except add fuel to the rumors, turn them from a flickering candle flame to a raging inferno that left nothing but ashes. I might not care about myself, about the title, about the estate. But Mother and Dav would burn along with me and all the rest.

Between gritted teeth I shot the only pathetic retort available to me. “You’d do well to remember that of the two of us, I am not the one who would suffer the consequences of a duel.”

Beaumont’s eyes narrowed, barely perceptible, but I caught the twitch. He wouldn’t make a scene, but my blow had landed. It may have been a glancing one, but tonight he would return to his let house where every single member of his staff would refer to him as Mister .

I tossed back the last of my drink before storming off, a furious parry regarding Beaumont’s own familiarity with a man’s cock trapped on my tongue. My shoulder knocked against that of the youngest Grayson brother, gaping in the aisleway on my exit. Nothing could have tempted me to stop, to apologize to the gawker. Instead, I threw the door open and stomped into the afternoon light.