A Beastly Kind of Earl

by Mia Vincy

  “It was one of my cleverest exploits!” Percy crowed.

  “One of our cleverest,” Francis corrected. “Why be sorry for that?”

  “Not sorry for that!”

  Thea recalled her intention to warn them they had taken an intoxicant, but clearly they did not deserve the least bit of decency from her. Their roles in society had enabled them to ruin innocents like her for sport; now, she returned the favor. Besides, this complied with her three Rules of Mischief: It served the cause of truth, they were definitely villains, and yes, she was enjoying it.

  “It’s true, you’re very clever,” Thea said. “Now everyone in society knows it. Look at them applauding, dukes and marquesses and earls. But they applaud the actors, not you.”

  Percy sneered. “Stupid dukes and marquesses and earls. They should be applauding me. Me! Applaud me, you fools!”

  “Applaud us!” Francis cried. “Don’t forget me, Percy.”

  Thea leaned close to whisper in Percy’s ear. “This is your chance to ensure society knows how clever you are. Go tell them it was your plan. Tell them now.”

  “Yes, I shall!”

  His feet not quite steady, Percy elbowed aside the people in his way and leaped onto the stage. He shoved away the actors; they stumbled back to watch, as Percy planted himself in the center and thumped his chest.

  “It was me!” he yelled.

  “Don’t let Percy forget about you,” Thea whispered to Francis, who nodded and ran unsteadily for the stage.

  “It was a good trick, wasn’t it, how I ruined Miss Knight?” Percy called out to the spectators, who were watching and whispering and watching some more. “It was my idea.”

  “It was my idea too,” Francis whined from beside him. “Don’t forget me, Percy.”

  Rafe was watching from the other side of the stage, Martha and Sally by his side. Martha wore that impassively curious look she got during experiments. Sally’s hand was plastered over her mouth, her eyes wide with horrified amusement. Rafe’s gaze shifted and found Thea’s. She shrugged and he grinned.

  Then her attention was caught by a man pushing to the front of the audience, recognizable by his long white hair and long black walking stick.

  “Get down from there, boy,” Lord Ventnor hissed at Percy. “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Look, it’s Father.” Percy brayed his donkey’s bray. “Father says I’m not clever, but I fooled him, I fooled you all. We told you tales about Thea Knight, and you believed us.”

  “Silence!” Ventnor demanded from the floor.

  “You pair of disgusting oafs will stop this now,” ordered another voice, as cold and crisp as a winter’s night. The voice belonged to an elderly man, who was not tall but had such presence he did not need to be: the Duke of Sherbourne.

  “What’s that?” Percy said.

  Francis squinted. “It’s a duke.”

  “A duck, you say.”

  “I said duke.”

  “I said duck.” Percy opened and shut his hand, miming a duck’s beak. “Quack, quack, quack.”

  And, of course, Francis did too.

  “Will you make this family a laughingstock?” Ventnor brandished his walking stick, cheeks red, spittle gathering around his lips. “Do not speak thus to the duke.”

  Percy and Francis made no sign of stopping. Instead, they bent their elbows to make flapping wings, stuck their bottoms in the air, and quacked.

  Thea dragged her eyes off their ridiculous antics to study the spectators. The members of the ton were staring at Percy and Francis with disgust and disdain and amused scorn.

  Just as they’d stared at her.

  “Get down!” Ventnor appeared on the verge of tears. Thea recalled how he had misused his power to hurt others, and she cared nothing for his troubles. “Do not expose this family to further ridicule!”

  “Expose!”

  “Stop this farce!”

  “Farts!”

  Percy and Francis looked at each other and giggled. Turning their backs to the crowd, they flipped up their coat tails and fumbled for the fastenings on their breeches, while Ventnor yelled, “No, Percy, not again!” Ladies gasped and men groaned. Some turned away, some covered their eyes—or pretended to—while others stared openly, because this was not a sight they often saw.

  As Percy Russell and Francis Upton dropped their breeches and exposed their round, white buttocks to the ton.

  A quartet of brawny men hauled Percy and Francis away, while the ballroom erupted into a genteel uproar. The pair were unlikely to recover from their thorough disgrace. Thea pressed her lips together to hold back her cheers.

  And then Lord Ventnor’s voice once more cut through the hubbub. “This is an outrage!”

  He had taken center stage, controlled and dignified, addressing the crowd in his practiced speaking voice. The noise faded and died. When he had the room’s attention, he added, “These claims concerning my son are nothing but falsehoods and fibs.”

  “And yet,” responded the Duke of Sherbourne, who easily commanded attention even from the floor, “your son brazenly confessed to telling malicious lies to falsely ruin Miss Knight. I do believe he admitted that right before he called me— What was it? Oh yes. A stupid, quacking duck.”

  “Your Grace, I must apologize. My son…”

  Ventnor’s narrowed eyes roamed over the audience, coming to settle on Thea. His gaze bore into her. Faces turned to see. Bodies shifted. A circle opened around her, an empty circle with her at its center, alone.

  “It was Miss Knight herself who peddled this humbug about my son,” Ventnor declared. “I’ll wager she put something in my son’s drink to alter his behavior. Why, she is nothing but Luxborough’s harlot!”

  Thea’s skin prickled with cold, even as her blood ran hot. She straightened her spine and held her head high. It was happening all over again: the narrowing of eyes, the lifting of brows, the shoulders turning away. A plague on them. Faster than a heartbeat, they passed judgment.

  The same length of time it took Rafe to bound onto the stage.

  “Careful, Ventnor,” Rafe said loudly. Hundreds of costumed heads swiveled toward him. “I’ve warned you before not to speak thus of my wife.”

  “More lies!” Ventnor pointed at her with his stick. “This woman is your—”

  “Wife.” Rafe loomed, his face hard and unflinching. “That lady is the Countess of Luxborough, and you will show her due respect.” He eyed the audience menacingly. “You will all show her due respect.”

  Then he looked at Thea; his expression softened, and the world faded away. Her senses perceived nothing but this man, her man, publicly claiming her as his own.

  Ventnor was still yammering. “You didn’t marry her. You married the wrong woman.”

  Rafe’s gaze didn’t waver. “She is definitely the right woman.”

  The confusion of the audience was palpable, and through it sliced an imperious female drawl, the crisp voice rising easily above the murmurs.

  “Of course they are married.”

  Thea dragged her eyes off Rafe, to where Arabella was gliding toward Thea as confidently as if she were indeed a warrior goddess, the crowd parting for her like water.

  “I witnessed the wedding myself,” Arabella added, as she reached Thea. “Would you call me a liar too, Lord Ventnor?”

  “And I officiated at the wedding,” declared the bishop, also planting himself at Thea’s side. “Would you call me a liar too, Lord Ventnor?”

  “No question of it at all,” said another man. Thea was not acquainted with this speaker, but given his features and the fact that Helen held his arm, she deduced that this was Beau Russell. “Would you call me a liar too, Father?”

  They were all liars, of course, but as lies went, this one was very nearly true. That gleeful half smile curved Rafe’s mouth, and Thea did not even try to repress her grin. A true aristocrat would never show her feelings this way, but she didn’t care. If any aristocrat w
ished to judge her poorly, they could do it from a nice warm seat in hell.

  On the other side of the stage, Sally and Martha were waving at her. By her side stood Arabella and the bishop and Helen and Beau, and Rafe had claimed her. What cared Thea for anyone else? She caught the Duke of Sherbourne studying her. When their eyes met, he bowed, and she responded with her most refined curtsy. With such an influential leader of society acknowledging her, everyone else would have to follow.

  When the duke had turned away, Thea smiled at Arabella. “Thank you. What about your engagement?”

  “Already done.”

  “And to whom are you engaged? What’s his name?”

  “Oh, some lord or other.” The bluebell eyes revealed nothing, as Arabella waved a dismissive hand. “I am bored with the subject already. My wedding is not until spring, so we have time to discuss it later. Let us direct our attention to you, tonight. You have quite outdone yourself.”

  On her other side, Helen laughed merrily. “Indeed. Of all the mischief you have ever made, Thea, this is easily the best. But you’ll have to stop making mischief once you are a countess.”

  Thea favored them both with her haughtiest look. “Not at all. All the best countesses make mischief, and my kind of mischief is exactly what this crowd needs.”

  Rafe could not have foreseen the events of this evening; all he had done was gather up the pieces—William Dudley with his theatre company, Sally with her stage appeal, Martha with her drugs—and arrange them like dominoes, to fall as they may.

  Now, the pieces lay unexpectedly like this: He and Ventnor stood on a stage, under the riveted attention of hundreds. Only a fraction of society was present, and it was hard to take them seriously given their array of ludicrous costumes, but it was enough.

  It had been enough to redeem Thea. Enough to ruin the two dastardly knaves.

  And it would be enough for Rafe to settle his final score.

  He took three paces across the stage; faces swiveled, tracking his every move. He took three paces back; again the faces followed him, waiting for the next line. It seemed everyone enjoyed a spot of theatre, whether commoners in a tavern or members of the haut ton. Rafe was surprised to find this attention rather gratifying. Perhaps he should have joined his family’s theatre performances as a boy.

  “I grow weary of your lies, Ventnor.”

  Certainly Ventnor liked to put on a show, for he shuddered with self-righteous indignation. “How dare you thus impugn my honor, Luxborough! I speak only the truth.”

  Rafe laughed. “You, with your shiny walking stick and spotless hands, you who send ruffians to do violence in your name— You dare speak of truth and honor? Now, if we were to speak of truth…”

  Ventnor’s eyes narrowed. “Do not do this. You will regret it.”

  “This man—” Rafe addressed himself to the crowd, gesturing with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “This man tried to kidnap and imprison his daughter, my first wife, and that is why she died. All because she—”

  “She died fleeing you!” Ventnor screeched. He, too, directed himself to the audience. “He poisoned her. He brutalized her. Look at him. That is the face of a brute.”

  “This is the face of a botanist who experienced an unfortunate encounter with a wild animal. How fanciful you are, Ventnor. Do you mean to repeat those far-fetched stories you started that I am a witch? That this cat scratch is the mark of the Devil?”

  But before Ventnor could voice his predictable protests, the actor William Dudley popped onto the stage, with such exquisite timing they might have rehearsed it.

  “I can testify that Lord Ventnor hired me and other actors to spread these rumors,” Dudley announced.

  Ventnor whirled around. “Nobody asked you, man. Away with you!”

  William Dudley planted his feet and did not move, while the Duke of Sherbourne added his consequence to the stage.

  “Is this true, Lord Ventnor?” the duke asked. “You paid people to spread these ludicrous, illegal rumors about the Earl of Luxborough?”

  “That man is an actor,” Ventnor said. “Your Grace is too wise to believe an actor.”

  Sally took that as her cue and glided onto the stage with such presence that everyone else might have vanished.

  “Then I daresay no one will believe me either,” she said, “when I confirm that Lord Ventnor sent ruffians to kidnap his daughter. I would know: I shot one in the shoulder.”

  Ventnor brandished his stick at her. “Do not muddy the waters. I only wanted my daughter to receive proper care. It was never my intention to cause her harm.”

  “Indeed, my lord.” Sally made a show of thinking. “I recall you said as much to me. You said, and I quote, ‘I never meant for Katharine to die.’”

  “Yes. Yes!” Ventnor was nodding his head furiously. “Well done, my dear. An actress, of course, will remember the exact words. Exactly what I said.”

  “Then you said, ‘Her death was not the solution I intended, but it was a solution nonetheless.’”

  Gasps of horror echoed across the room. Ventnor looked about wildly, lips moving in protestations he had no chance to speak.

  “Get a soul,” Sally hissed, advancing on him. “You destroy things, beautiful things, because you are incapable of seeing their beauty. You failed to see the beauty of your own daughter’s life, because all you saw was your own fear and shame. You fail to see the beauty of love, because all you see is the dried, shriveled husk of your own unused heart. What a pitiful creature you are.”

  The air was taut with embarrassment. Something flickered in the viscount’s pale eyes, the last hope of a man who did long to see beauty. A final hope that guttered and died, and once more, Ventnor sneered.

  “Ignore this woman. She is a…a Sapphist!”

  Sally regarded him coolly. “That did not bother you when you were my patron.” She turned to the audience. “He offered his patronage so I would not reveal that he tried to kidnap his own daughter. But I can speak of it now, because he withdrew his patronage. He withdrew it by sending his ruffian to chase me away from London, under the threat of carving up my face.”

  The crowd was murmuring and muttering, uncertain, uncomfortable.

  Straightening, Lord Ventnor wrapped his dignity around him like a cloak. “I am a peer of this realm. Am I to be tried thus, as a piece of theatre, and not in the House of Lords as is my due?”

  “Enough,” agreed the Duke of Sherbourne. “The Prince Regent will arrive soon, and it would be tedious to explain this farce to him. We will review these accusations later. Lords, ladies, and gentlemen, please return to your festivities. I declare tonight’s theatre closed.”

  Thea was almost light-headed with triumph when Rafe leaped off the stage and took her hands.

  “Now that’s done, let’s go,” he said.

  She squeezed his fingers. “You were magnificent. Will anything happen to Ventnor, do you think?”

  “Hard to say. The privilege of peerage protects him from punishment for most crimes.”

  “That’s so unfair! I wish he could rot on the other side of the world.”

  “Many wish the same. I’ll see what I can do. But we have a more important matter to attend to tonight, so let’s get Nicholas and go.”

  Before they could speak to the bishop, a couple stepped across their path: Ma and Pa. Thea stopped short. She curled one arm around Rafe’s. He wove his fingers between hers.

  “By my buttons!” Pa said, a grin splitting his face. “What an extraordinary evening this has been.”

  “Oh Thea, what a to-do!” Ma patted Thea’s shoulder. “Why did you not tell us you had married the earl? This changes everything.”

  They were beaming at her. Beaming! A faint growl sounded from Rafe’s throat.

  “You turned me out,” Thea reminded them softly. “Twice.”

  Ma’s smile faded, sorrow shadowing her face. “Thea, darling. We didn’t know the truth.”

  “You refused to listen.”

  “De
arest Thea,” Pa said, his eyes earnest. “I wish you would forgive us. Such foolish mistakes we made.”

  Thea looked from one to the other, her fingers digging into Rafe’s palm. “Do you come to me because you truly regret not believing me and supporting me, or because he is an earl?”

  Stark silence blanketed them. Thea was still searching for words when Helen joined them. Helen placed one hand on Thea’s shoulder, one on Ma’s.

  “Please forgive them, Thea,” Helen said. “They are our parents.”

  “Perhaps one day I shall forgive you, but it will not be tonight,” Thea replied. “I have another family now.”

  Helen’s hand slipped away as Thea turned her back on her parents. She concentrated on Rafe’s solidity at her side, as he guided her back to Arabella and the bishop.

  “I’m tired of this blasted costume party,” Rafe said. “Can we go home?”

  “Best if we did.” The bishop’s eyes twinkled as he whispered, “Now we’ve lied to, well, everyone, we had better get you two married.”

  Rafe had not been to many weddings in his life, but he was fairly sure that his own, which took place that night in his townhouse, was not quite usual, given that the celebrant was a mischievous Shakespearean fairy, and the witnesses were a Roman goddess, a Royal footman, and a retired actress in a golden gown. Gilbert and the other servants crowded around too. Rafe saw only Thea, whose eyes smiled at him as they spoke their vows.

  “Is that it?” Rafe demanded, shoving the signed paperwork back at Nicholas. “Are we married?”

  “You are.”

  “Good. Then you can all get out of my house. Now.”

  The servants eagerly left, to celebrate in their hall. Thea crossed to say her farewells to Miss Larke, and Rafe turned to the bishop and his sparkling brown eyes.

  “I told you so,” Nicholas sang.

  Overcome with laughter, Rafe gathered the older man into a fierce hug. No sooner had he released him than Thea approached, grinning at them both.

  “Bloody hell, don’t you two start chatting, or we’ll be here all night,” Rafe grumbled.