Page 3 of Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone (Dukes in Disguise #2)

Chapter Three

The crowd erupted all around them. Keeping her hands clamped to the shoulder wound, Bess managed to crane her neck around in time to see Lucy haul back her arm, fist curled tight, but as she swung Thornecliff caught her wrist in a move almost too fast to track.

Lucy gave an inarticulate cry of murderous rage that ended up half muffled against the superfine wool of Thornecliff’s exquisitely fitted coat.

He pulled her in close to control her angry attempts to twist free and clamped a large hand over Lucy’s mouth. All around them, his obnoxious companions brayed with laughter and encouragement.

“Get her, Thorne,” cried a sandy-haired gentleman with cheeks almost as red as the blood staining Bess’s gloves.

All of this would be bad enough, Bess thought, despairing—but the worst of it was the expression on Thornecliff’s too-handsome face. She would’ve expected him to be smirking about at his friends, smug at having goaded Lucy into such disastrously impetuous behavior.

And there was a curve to the cruelly sensual line of his lips, but his pitch-dark eyes were fixed upon the girl in his arms. And the look in those black eyes reminded Bess of the look she’d last seen on a fox caught in a trap in the woods behind the Cartwright farm.

Ensnared. And in a bit of a frenzy about it.

Bess blinked, and the expression had smoothed to the faint, above-it-all air of amusement she’d expected, but she couldn’t forget what she’d seen on Thornecliff’s face for that brief instant.

The nearby retort of rifle fire no longer seemed the closest source of danger.

Summoning every ounce of authority she’d earned while presiding over a barroom full of rowdy villagers and farmers, Bess snapped, “Release her this instant, sir.”

He blinked those devil eyes, black as sin. “Why should I? So the little hellcat can have another chance to scratch my eyes out?”

Bess’s near-infinite well of patience abruptly ran dry. “There is a human being bleeding on the ground before you and there’s nothing better you can think to do than taunt an innocent young girl into losing her temper. And all of you so-called gentlemen simply stand about and watch, as if it is the greatest entertainment, offering no help at all. Not one of you is worth the effort it would take to wring your necks! If those ships turned their guns on the shore at this moment, it would be no great loss to the world.”

She broke off, chest heaving and hands trembling with the force of her anger.

“You are all utterly worthless,” she spat. “Is there no man in this godforsaken city worthy of the name?”

“Oh, so it’s a man you’re after, sweetheart?” called out one of the dandies, a gentleman dressed to the nines in imitation of Thornecliff but somehow still looking disheveled, as though he’d been out drinking all night. She’d noted him before as he was the one standing right at Thornecliff’s shoulder and egging him on.

Now, he blatantly reached down and cupped his privates, jiggling the lump in his tight breeches in her direction and sneering, “I’ve got what you’re looking for right here!”

Even as he said it, he glanced at Thornecliff to see if he was watching.

Bess looked the fellow up and down, from the toes of his mirror-polished Hessians to the artfully tousled curl falling over his forehead and into small eyes, set too close together to make him look intelligent.

“I said a man,” she snapped. “Not a silly pup wagging his little tail and looking to his master for pets and praise.”

The crowd of assembled onlookers shouted with laughter and began to bark and howl at the sandy-haired gentleman, who flushed with furious humiliation and took a menacing step toward Bess.

She lifted her chin and stared at him, unwilling to back down, but before the man could make another move, a soft, penetrating voice from beyond the crowd said, “What is going on here?”

The words dropped like ice into a glass of whiskey, cold and deep, resonating with a dominance that made every person present straighten their shoulders.

Everyone except Thornecliff, of course, who merely rolled his eyes and said, “Nothing you need concern yourself with. I’m surprised to see you here at all; surely everyone present is beneath your notice.”

A stranger stepped forward, the crowd parting around him as though afraid to touch him. He loomed over Bess and her fallen sailor, the width of his shoulders blocking out the sun and casting her in shadow. A shiver ran through her whole body, a low, liquid pulse of yearning that shocked her to the core.

It was the way the man moved. With predatory grace, but slow, as though he had no need to hurry.

As though his prey wouldn’t dare to flee.

His angular face was shaded by the brim of his hat, but Bess caught a gleam as his eyes passed over her briefly before focusing on Lucy and her captor.

“Stand back from the ladies,” the stranger said, impassive as a judge. His eyes were unusual, she saw, light and almost colorless, possessed of a strange intensity.

Thornecliff proved his reckless disregard for his own skin by sneering, “Or what?”

The man paused, as though unaccustomed to hearing any response other than a snappy “Yes, sir!”

“You will let her go,” he finally rumbled, still with that disconcerting lack of emotion, “or I will take her from you.”

There was no indication in his voice that he felt one way or another about it. There was no hissing threat or angry bluster. Only a simple statement of fact.

Bess shivered again. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she was convinced that beneath the cold stranger’s blankness…he actually wanted Thornecliff to refuse.

That he would welcome the chance of a little violence.

However, Thornecliff seemed finally to register the danger he was in. Bess noted the brief tightening of his grasp before the reprobate dropped his hands and stepped away from Lucy with a laugh, as if the whole thing had been no more than a joke.

“You may have her, with my blessing,” he said mockingly, shaking the hand he’d had over Lucy’s mouth. “Take care, though, the little cat has teeth.”

Lucy spun away from him and spat on the ground at his feet. The puppy who’d shoved his pathetic prick at Bess swore and jumped backward, knocking into Thornecliff, who gave him an icy glare.

“Have a care, Lord Phillip. Or should I call you Lord Pup?”

The rest of the crowd of gentlemen laughed and jeered, turning on one of their own like a pack of wild dogs. Lucy gave an audible snort of disgust.

Bess set her jaw grimly, already regretting her own part in this mess. She knew better than to rile up a pack of spoiled, entitled young gentlemen—she ought to have bit her tongue.

If word got out about all this, Lucy might just get her wish about returning to Little Kissington. There would be no point in hanging about London if Lucy’s reputation was in absolute tatters.

As if he’d heard Bess’s thoughts, their savior blocked Thornecliff’s retreat. Shooting his snowy white cuffs, the stranger said in a deeply gentle tone, “I’m sure I needn’t point out how unimpressed I would be to hear this incident spoken of. I know some gentlemen are sadly prone to gossip. No doubt they are unaware of how silly and small it makes them.”

To Bess’s surprise, Thornecliff’s high cheekbones reddened as though the stranger had scored a direct hit.

Suddenly, she remembered where she’d heard the name “Thorne” before—he was the Duke of Thornecliff, the villainous ex-friend of Lady Gemma Lively who had exposed her and her entire family to ridicule by passing to the newspapers the story of her new life as the owner of a country inn.

Clearly, the duke didn’t care to hear his infamous activities described as silly gossip. But Bess had to give credit where it was due, the rogue recovered his equanimity with a languid shrug of a single shoulder.

“There’s no need to fret, my good man, because there’s nothing to say. In fact, I’ve already forgotten the whole pedestrian affair.”

With that, and without another glance at Lucy’s pale, furious face, the Duke of Thornecliff swept off with his cadre of admirers and hangers-on.

The man Bess had humiliated—Lord Pup—trailed behind, but not without sending Bess a glare seething with hatred.

Good riddance. Bess felt her shoulders relax minutely, but the stirring of the injured boy recalled her to the true urgency of the situation.

“Sir, I cannot thank you enough for your timely intervention, but we must trespass a bit further on your kindness. This poor boy?—”

“I have already sent word to my personal physician,” the man said. “He awaits us at his surgery in Harley Street.”

Relief washed over Bess. “Good heavens, sir, you are a quick one! You have my most heartfelt thanks?—”

“Oh God! Don’t thank him, Bess,” Lucy cried. She was holding herself as though she might break if jostled. “We don’t need his help. We don’t need anything from him.”

Bess blinked. “Lucy. This gentleman rescued you from a potentially ruinous scandal?—”

She flinched as Lucy’s wild laugh rang out. “Oh, Bess, don’t you know who this is? He’s the reason a notorious rake like Thornecliff thinks he can say and do whatever he likes to me. Every degradation, every slight, every bit of scorn heaped upon our heads can be laid squarely at his feet!”

The afternoon’s events were beginning to take their toll on Bess, and Lucy’s descent into melodrama was not helping. Bess shook her head, darting a glance at the expressionless, shadowy face of the odd-eyed man.

It was a distinguished face, she thought. Arresting, though too hard and sharply angled to be called handsome. “I don’t understand.”

Lucy lifted her small, pointed chin and curled her lip. “I beg your pardon. How ill-mannered of me. Mrs. Elizabeth Pickford, please allow me to introduce you to my half-brother, Nathaniel Lively, the Duke of Ashbourn. The man who has done his level best to ruin my life.”

* * *

Nathaniel watched as the light of gratitude and relief faded from the kneeling woman’s face. It bothered him to a surprising degree. He thought that he would quite like to see her smile at him again.

Instead, she said, with grim resignation, “Ah. I see. Well, much as I would like to tell you where to stuff your offer of help, sir, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Bess!”

She shook her golden head. “Lucy, I don’t like it either. But do you truly wish this poor young man to suffer any longer than he must?”

“Nothing good will come of this, mark my words,” his half-sister muttered darkly, crossing her arms over her chest. “Any ‘help’ he gives will come at a cost. He doesn’t care about doing the right thing, any more than Thornecliff does.”

Abominable rudeness, but Nathaniel paid her no mind. He found he could not look away from the ministering angel at his feet.

The woman gazed up at him with a look of frank dislike that smoothed, even as he watched, into a mask of blank serenity.

She covered her emotions well, and Nathaniel wondered where and how she’d learned the trick of it.

He took his time studying the finer details of her face. She had the creamy skin and pink cheeks of a true English rose. Honey-blond tendrils of hair escaped the simple knot she’d tucked under a plain bonnet adorned with a blue silk ribbon and a single cluster of faux cherries. Her rosy lips were plump, shaped for smiles and kisses and laughter, though at the moment they were pressed in a flat, noncommittal line.

And then there were her eyes. Deep, mysterious pools the color of cognac warmed by candlelight. An invitation to relax, to linger, to be at peace.

Nathaniel blinked away the fanciful thought. Peace was not for him—at least, not the sort that could be found in the arms of a woman.

The closest he came was in the ring, at the end of a fight, when the savagery in his blood was momentarily spent, spilled on the ground to be absorbed by the sawdust like blood or sweat or tears.

No, he would not look for peace with this angel—Bess Pickford—but all the same, he wouldn’t mind another of her smiles.

Not that he’d rescued Lucy hoping for thanks. He hadn’t even been aware she was in Town; a large part of him wished he’d remained in blissful ignorance.

He had already spent more time in the maddening company of his youngest sister than he ever intended.

But when he’d come upon the small knot of jeering gentlemen, he’d recognized the thrum on the air, the dark anticipation—and he’d been inexorably drawn in by it. Only to discover his own half-sister being dragged through the muck, along with their family name.

Intolerable.

He’d had to intervene. And now he was entangled in the complex web of societal expectations and pressures that governed the Ton. Having lent his protection to these two ladies, he could not now abandon them but must see them safely home.

It was the correct thing to do, and Nathaniel always did the correct thing.

Well. Almost always.

So he inclined his head to a precisely judged angle and said, “My carriage is waiting. Perhaps you will be good enough to accompany me, along with your patient. I’m certain he would rest easier on his journey in your care.”

At that moment, as Mrs. Pickford—was she married? Widowed? It didn’t matter, of course, but Nathaniel wanted to know—as she wavered, two burly grooms in the Ashbourn livery arrived, ready to assist the injured sailor to the carriage.

They heaved the groaning boy to his feet and propped him up under the shoulders to help him walk. The way the young man sweated and cursed had Lucy hopping alongside the footmen, babbling exhortations to keep him steady and be careful of his wound.

Bess—no, he must think of her as Mrs. Pickford—braced a gloved hand against the ground and started to struggle to her feet before Nathaniel was able to get a hand under her elbow to assist her.

She stiffened at the help, but allowed it, likely out of necessity as the skirts of her gown and pelisse were heavy with wet and mud. The slim arm under his hand was lithe, taut with a supple strength that surprised him.

“I must thank you once more,” she murmured, stepping forward so that his hand fell away from her before he was altogether ready to let go. “I had better catch up with Lucy before she gets into any more trouble.”

“She will not leave our sight. Joseph and Henry will make sure no one accosts her,” Nathaniel promised, proffering his arm to escort her with an unaccustomed sense of anticipation.

She hesitated, but he only waited, unmoved and unmoving, until she rested her hand lightly upon his sleeve.

The touch of her hand—a commonplace polite gesture, less than meaningless—went through him like lightning.

Strangely tense, Nathaniel followed his servants and his half-sister at a respectable distance.

They walked along in silence, the roar and jostle of the festival crowd fading from Nathaniel’s notice. He had only attended the demonstration that afternoon in hopes of cornering the Earl of Marsden about the new legislation Nathaniel was putting forward.

Marsden was a weakling and a coward who preferred to dither indefinitely rather than commit his support, and it was easier to find him in a pleasure-seeking crowd such as this than at Parliament. It had taken Nathaniel about five minutes with the man to force a concession.

Most people could not seem to spend more than a moment in his presence without offering him whatever he wished if it would make him leave them alone—the notable exceptions being his half-sisters…and the woman on his arm.

Bess— Mrs. Pickford, damn it —seemed content to walk along in silence. The lack of conversation didn’t bother him; Nathaniel followed the forms of conversation with every attention to the rules of decorum, but he found most of it insipid and empty.

What it was, then, that prompted him to speak, he could not say.

“I take it you are my sister’s chaperone, Mrs. Pickford. You will forgive me, I don’t recognize the family name.”

Her slender fingers tensed slightly. “Of course. Yes. Her chaperone. I am…a distant relation. On the dowager duchess’s side.”

No wonder she seemed reluctant to answer. Any relationship to Henrietta Berring, however distant, must be something of an embarrassment.

This Mrs. Pickford spoke and carried herself like a lady—minor gentry, most likely, or even the daughter of a country vicar or some such. How embarrassed they must have been by their social-climbing relation; though now, of course, if Mrs. Pickford was in a position to need a place in the dowager duchess’s household looking after a hoyden like Lady Lucy Lively, perhaps she was more inclined to forgiveness.

Whatever her past, her current circumstances had placed her squarely under Nathaniel’s protection. Dependent.

Entirely unsuitable , he thought with an unwelcome pang of regret, and then couldn’t explain to himself unsuitable for what, exactly.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the task Nathaniel had set for himself—to be the Duke of Ashbourn, with all that entailed. To restore the title and to erase the memory of his father’s folly from the minds of the Ton.

Everything he did, every move he made, must serve that single purpose. Even his one indulgence, the fights…they honed his senses and sped his reaction times, draining his baser impulses and forging the iron control he needed to accomplish his goals.

The fact that degenerate scum like the Duke of Thornecliff and Lord Phillip Dewbury thought it permissible to offer insult to the Ashbourn name burned in his chest like a live coal.

Though it stung somewhat less than his half-sister’s brazen assertion that Nathaniel himself bore some responsibility for the other gentlemen’s behavior.

Nathaniel clenched his jaw. He knew whose carelessness was to blame for all their family’s woes.

His father. And Lucy’s. Their father had squandered more than money—the previous duke had freely spent the coin of his family’s honor, and his own son’s future, to buy the fleeting happiness of a marriage that he couldn’t force the Ton to accept.

Well, Nathaniel would win back the honor of his family, whatever the cost.

He had no other purpose. And nothing could be allowed to stand in his way.

Not his own resentment of his stepmother or the outlandish behavior of his ill-bred half-sisters.

Not the memory of Bess Pickford’s smile.

So he kept his silence, devoting his attention to navigating the crowd and helping Mrs. Pickford up the steep embankment. Judging by the cheers and general mayhem erupting around them, the mock sea battle was drawing to a triumphant close.

They reached the carriage just in time, as the wave of humanity behind them began to break apart and flow in from the riverbanks back towards the streets of London. Lucy was already installed upon the squabs, a solicitous hand upon the clammy forehead of the young, injured sailor. She appeared to have lost her gloves somewhere.

Nathaniel suppressed the urge to frown as he handed Mrs. Pickford up into the carriage.

He could maintain his equanimity for as long as it took to deliver an injured man to his surgeon, and to set these provoking ladies down wherever it was they were staying in London. There was no need to involve himself further than that.

“How is he?” Mrs. Pickford inquired, settling herself opposite Lucy with a grimace at the mud streaking her skirts and transferring itself to the maroon velvet of the seats.

“I think he lost consciousness after the grooms set him down. I hope the driver will be quick. Oh, Bess, I cannot believe I was so excited to come here today and see that, that—barbaric display! How can all those lords and ladies, even the king! How can they all laugh and applaud at the violence, the pain caused to their fellow man?”

“Perhaps they didn’t understand that any part of it was real. You yourself thought, this morning, that it would all be nothing more than a show,” Mrs. Pickford said gently.

“But it only took a moment of actually observing it to see that real people were being really hurt,” Lucy argued, her cheeks flushed with the force of her emotions.

Nathaniel observed her with begrudging interest, this half-sister he had barely ever spoken to. She was so full of life. It seemed impossible that they shared any blood, any connection whatsoever.

Except this disdain for the audiences who came to observe the shedding of others’ blood. Nathaniel didn’t fight to entertain, and he felt nothing but contempt for those who came to his fights for entertainment.

But he had no choice. The boxing salons other gentlemen frequented, with their staid rules and careful civility, did not assuage his need. Only the anonymous violence of The Nemesis would serve.

“People like the Duke of Thornecliff—we ought to pity them,” Mrs. Pickford said. “It’s sad that they have so little purpose to their lives, so little to do that is of use to anyone else, that they must seek constantly to feel any small spark of pleasure. To make them feel alive.”

Her words struck a place deep inside Nathaniel, like the clear ringing of a bell that reverberated all through him. The years before his father had died and passed on the title, the years and years of waiting for his life to begin—Nathaniel knew that barren wasteland of purposelessness. He knew what he’d done to feel alive, in those years.

Though it wasn’t pleasure he’d sought, but pain.

Lucy, less convinced, gave an inelegant snort. “Well, I don’t pity Thornecliff one jot. No one forced him to become a wastrel. He has every road open to him and he chooses to be an ass.” She looked directly at Nathaniel, a challenge clear on her elfin face. “A common theme among the dukes of my acquaintance.”

Nathaniel did not allow himself a smile, but he was conscious of the urge. She looked as if her palm itched to make contact with his face.

If he wasn’t careful, he might start to like this wild half-sister, more than ten years his junior. Fortunately, there wouldn’t be time for that.

The horses pulled to a stop and the ladies burst into a flurry of motion, arranging the fallen sailor to their liking, and getting in the way of the footmen attempting to lift the young man out of the carriage and up the steps of Dr. Perry’s surgery, where Mrs. Perry awaited them with calmly folded hands and a palpable air of competence.

“I’m going in with him,” Lucy announced, already halfway out of the carriage. “To see him settled and make sure they know to keep us informed of how he gets on. I’ll only be a minute. Bess, will you come?”

Nathaniel looked at the chaperone, who looked back at him consideringly for a moment before replying, “No. I’ll wait for you here.”

Lucy absconded without a backwards glance, leaving Nathaniel staring across the dim interior of the carriage at his sister’s companion. The look Mrs. Pickford gave him back, unafraid and unimpressed, seemed to brush against his skin like a touch.

Nathaniel didn’t enjoy being touched, as a rule. Unaccustomed to it in childhood, he’d never acquired the taste for it. But somehow this particular woman sent a prickling wash of awareness over his skin that made him restless.

“Forgive me if I have misunderstood,” that restlessness finally drove him to say. “But is it not a chaperone’s job to…chaperone?”

“Certainly.”

“That may be difficult to achieve when your charge is out there and you’re in here.”

“I think of myself more as Lucy’s friend. I know her well, you see.” The woman smiled, but it was not a smile designed to warm—rather, it sent an interesting chill down Nathaniel’s spine.

“Lucy doesn’t need someone hovering over her, correcting her posture and her deportment and her mode of speaking. Lucy is naturally graceful and sweet; she cares about others and is thoughtful about the world. But she can be impulsive—and she has a young person’s view of the future. As in, she believes it to be something far off that she need not concern herself with.”

“And that pertains, somehow, to the way you see your role as Lucy’s chaperone?” he guessed, intrigued despite himself.

“I am not here to help Lucy navigate the London social season. That would be absurd; I don’t know anything about it, myself. My upbringing was…” She paused. “Quiet. I’ve spent all my life in the country. I don’t understand the intricate, arcane rules that govern your world. But I do understand people.”

Nathaniel waited, the air between them thickening with a tension he couldn’t pinpoint.

She cocked her head, ever so slightly. “I understand you, I think.”

The way she said it, her words so even and measured and calm, nevertheless contrived to make Nathaniel feel as though she was passing along a warning.

Maybe the warning was in her eyes. There was no fear, no threat, no guile in her look—only deep, warm brown that shimmered with hidden depths as she gazed back at him across the carriage.

Instinctively, Nathaniel responded the way he did in the ring. He sized up his opponent, keeping all his senses alert for any movement that might predict what she would do next. His blood surged, pumping harder through his veins and readying his muscles for whatever he might call on them for.

“What is it you think you understand?” he asked, surprised at the rasp of his own voice.

She leaned forward. “You are thinking that you would love nothing more than to be rid of us. You cannot wait for this entire episode to be over so that you can wash your hands of us and never see us again.”

Perhaps Mrs. Pickford was less perceptive than she thought, if she didn’t realize how little Nathaniel relished the idea of never seeing her again.

He frowned, unsure where that thought had come from.

“Yes, very good.” Mrs. Pickford nodded approvingly. “Try to intimidate me with that thunderous brow.”

Nathaniel scowled harder, caught between the urge to smooth his brow to prove her wrong, and the annoyance of evidently not being sufficiently intimidating.

“Not at all. Perhaps what you are perceiving as intimidation is mere bewilderment. If you have a point, I pray you will come to it soon.”

“The point, Your Grace, is that you are looking at this situation—at your sister—as a mishap to be swept under the carpet and covered up as quick as you can. When in reality, you ought to view this chance meeting as a wonderful opportunity.”

Unbidden, Nathaniel’s mind produced an image of the opportunities he’d like to take with Mrs. Pickford’s delightfully smooth curves and radiant, silky skin. But that likely wasn’t what she meant.

“Enlighten me. How is it wonderful for me to find my half-sister engaged in an extremely public brangle with the most notorious rake in London?”

“Because this is your chance. Your chance to make things right with your family and do as you should have done two years ago when your father died.”

Nathaniel stiffened, with affronted anger and something else, too. Something much more like shame than he was accustomed to feeling. “You dare.”

The witch had the temerity to shrug her slim shoulders. “I suppose I haven’t much to lose by offending you. Though I don’t say this to upset you, Your Grace, only to point out that surely you won’t want to miss this chance to do what is right.”

He ground his back molars for a moment before saying, “And what is right , in your opinion, Mrs. Pickford?”

She blinked slowly, a tiny smile curling her lovely pink mouth. “Why, obviously you will wish to invite the dowager duchess and Lady Lucy to quit their rented lodgings and come stay with you, at Ashbourn House.”

She thought she had him, that there was no polite way to refuse, no decent path to escape the fate she’d laid out so neatly for him.

But Nathaniel had not waited thirty years to become Duke of Ashbourn only to crumple like an over-arranged cravat at the crook of her slender finger.

He leaned forward as well, resting his forearms on his spread knees in a way that he knew made his hulking size appear even more monstrous. He let the mask of the duke slip, only a little, just enough to let The Berserker glower out at her through his eyes. His lip curled, too, but into a snarl rather than a smile.

“I would sooner burn the place to the ground.”