by Vincy, Mia
“Everyone” being the upper classes, who escaped the city’s heat and stench for the seaside, a fashionable spa, or their country estates. Unfortunate, then, that Ventnor still skulked about town.
“If the neighbors were here, they would have tossed you in jail,” Rafe said. “Quiet it down, would you? Ventnor won’t know.”
The actor scanned the pristine street, as though the viscount lurked in a drainpipe. “Lord Ventnor knows everything. What he’d do to me if…”
“Yes, I know,” Rafe sighed, and went inside to wash off the London grime.
* * *
Rafe emerged from his bath to learn that the Bishop of Dartford was taking tea in the front parlor.
Furthermore, the butler informed him nervously, a pile of bills was growing on his lordship’s desk, which matched the pile of parcels growing in the countess’s sitting room. In the time it took the butler to explain what the countess had got up to that day, three more deliveries arrived from smart Bond Street shops: parcels for the countess, bills for him.
Clutching the bills, Rafe wandered into the front parlor, where Nicholas was seated before a plate of cakes, pouring himself tea from a floral-painted teapot, the voluminous sleeves of his bishop’s shirt billowing at his sides. He looked up, eyes twinkling over the fragrant steam, thinning gray hair a mess.
“Rafe, my boy, lovely to see you,” Nicholas said.
“You too,” Rafe replied, full of fondness for the old rascal. “What mischief are you up to now?”
The bishop beamed, the picture of pink-cheeked innocence—if innocence was a ten-year-old boy who had just put a frog in his governess’s bed.
“I don’t know why you put up with that.” Nicholas gestured with his teacup at the window, through which came the faint strains of Dudley doing his job. “Accusing people of witchcraft is against the law.”
“It’s Ventnor’s doing. If I had Dudley put in jail, Ventnor would simply replace him with someone else.”
“Dudley? Oh, that’s William Dudley, of course.” He put down his cup and crossed to peer out the window. “That’s where I recognize him from. The theatre. I saw him playing opposite Sarah Holloway. Marvelous actress. Shame she disappeared. Such splendid red hair and a wonderful pair of—”
“Nicholas.”
“—lungs.” Nicholas grinned. “You used to enjoy the theatre. Come sometime with Judith and me.”
“Maybe I will.”
“A miracle! Rafe Landcross has agreed to be sociable!”
“I agreed to go to the theatre,” Rafe corrected irritably. “Where I shall be exceedingly unsociable. I’ll not talk to a single person, and I’ll scowl so hard the actors fall off the stage.”
Chuckling, the bishop returned to his tea. Rafe lounged against the window and perused the bills, to see what Thea had bought on his account. Silver buttons. Lace handkerchiefs. Snuff boxes. All small items, very easy to resell. No, indeed, he would never make the mistake of thinking Thea Knight a fool. She would have a tidy sum when she resold this lot.
She must really need money, though, to have jeopardized her scheme like this, with the risk of anyone discovering she was not Helen. If only he could tell her that she would receive her own dowry.
“The smoky flavor of this tea is heavenly,” Nicholas said. “Judith would adore this.”
“You can have it. It was a gift from my new father-in-law, Mr. Knight.”
Nicholas lowered his cup with a clatter. “You talked to him? I thought you intended to keep your mischievous scheme quiet. Or does he know the truth?”
“No. He believes I married his perfect Helen. I got Thea her dowry. They just cast her out, and did not believe her side of the story. She deserves better, for all that she is a royal pain in the neck.”
“Is she, Rafe? Is she a pain in the neck? Because that look on your face when you say her name…”
Rafe waved the bundle of bills in his hand. “She took the Luxborough carriage and a servant in Luxborough livery, told everyone she is the Countess of Luxborough, and has bought up half of Bond Street.”
“I like her already.” The bishop smiled like the angel he wasn’t. “What about you? Do you like her, Rafe? Do you?”
“Oh no, you don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t you put on that innocent face for me, old man. If you’re hoping to meet her, forget it.”
Nicholas pouted over his teacup. “Only to check she’s good enough. I should meet the girl you’ve married.”
“I haven’t married her! You knew I had no intention of marrying her when you issued the license. So stop it. This is not a real marriage.”
“Not yet it isn’t,” he replied, singsong.
“That’s it. Out now. Out.”
“But I haven’t finished my tea.”
Rafe grabbed the teacup and emptied it into a potted palm. “Yes, you have. Look. All gone. Now—out.”
“You can’t talk to me like that,” the bishop protested through his laughter. “I’m a holy man.”
“You’re a holy pain in the neck. And when you start nagging me to marry, it’s time for you to go.”
Nicholas merely poured himself more tea. “So you don’t find her appealing, then.”
“Of course she’s appealing. She’s… She’s…”
Thea in the moonlight, bright and brave and all alone in the world. Her palms cupping his cheeks, standing so close he could have slid an arm around her waist and pulled her into his embrace.
He caught himself pressing his knuckles to his cheek and lowered his hand.
“She’s perfectly nice-looking,” he finished.
“Does your face frighten her?”
Rafe snorted. “She jokes about it.”
“And would she hate to be married to you?”
“Don’t even think it,” Rafe said. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not getting married again. I’m not good at it.”
“It’s marriage, my boy. No one’s good at it. That’s what makes it so much fun.” Nicholas sipped his tea, his bright eyes fixed on Rafe. “This girl sounds perfect for you.”
“We are lying to each other.”
“So perfect.”
“Besides, she likes people.”
“Oh, heaven forbid. Not people!”
“One week at Brinkley End and she’d be moping about, desperate to get back to London.”
That was all there was to it: Rafe did not have it in him to make someone happy. He had one wife buried on his estate. He did not need a second one there too.
“You don’t know that,” Nicholas persisted. “Let me ask her.”
“No! You’re each as mischievous as the other, and who knows what you would cook up together.” He shuddered. “You should go before she gets back.”
“I’d behave myself.”
“You have never behaved yourself.”
Nicholas drained his cup and stretched his arms with a loud yawn. “Very well, I’ll be off. I wish you wouldn’t run back to Somersetshire so soon. Judith complains she never sees you.”
“Tell her I look the same as I did last time she saw me, but older and more miserable.”
“You should have gone to the seaside with Christopher and his family. Christopher’s boys have been asking about you. They want to learn how to hunt a jaguar.”
Christopher was one of the few people Rafe felt truly comfortable with, but the thought of his younger brother’s family—Christopher’s beloved Mary and their gaggle of children, three or four or twenty or however many they had now—unsettled him.
“I don’t know how to hunt a jaguar,” Rafe said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, the jaguar won.”
“If the jaguar had won, you’d be dead.”
“Right. And Christopher would be earl, and there’d be a proper family in Brinkley End again, and all would be—”
“Don’t say it!” Nicholas slapped his hands down on the table and the tea things rattled. He launched to his feet, suddenly s
erious, fury flashing in his eyes. “Don’t you dare say it, Rafe.”
From outside came screeching about witches; from inside the banging of a door. Rafe’s jaw ached with the effort of locking down his throat.
He unclenched his jaw. “And all would be right in the world,” he finished defiantly.
“Brinkley End—”
“Is not my home,” Rafe said. “It never was. It never will be.”
“Not if you think like that it won’t.”
That sounded like something Thea would say. What a pair they were, Thea and Nicholas, chatty and sunny and knowing nothing at all. Rafe wheeled away and paced across the room.
“You did all you could for Katharine,” Nicholas said.
“This has nothing to do with Katharine.”
“Her death was not your fault.”
Rafe stopped short. “She rode recklessly through a storm to escape from me. I promised to look after her and I failed.”
“You keep telling yourself this story, but what if it isn’t true?”
“I was there, Nicholas. I know what is true.”
“You allow your guilt—”
“Guilt has nothing to do with it. I’m simply not made for…for marriage.”
“Katharine’s situation was unusual. There is nothing more you could have done.”
Rafe shook his head, tired of this argument. It suited the bishop to absolve him, but Rafe would never escape his failure to look after his wife. He would never escape the truth that he could look after nothing more complicated than a plant.
Their thick silence was broken by the sound of a carriage pulling up outside.
“Is it her?” Nicholas dashed to the window, eager as a boy at Christmas. “Oh, it’s her!”
Rafe found himself at the window too, watching as Thea’s manservant Gilbert helped her down from the carriage. She certainly appeared the part of a countess, in a sleek blue-striped pelisse and large, elaborate bonnet. The wide-brimmed bonnet did a fair job of hiding her face, until she paused and looked up to admire the house. The light caressed the angle of her jaw and slid down the smooth column of her throat.
“She looks delightful,” Nicholas said. “Please, may I talk to her? Please, please, please?”
“No!”
With both hands on the laughing bishop’s back, Rafe marched him into the hall and ordered him to leave through the kitchen. A moment later, the butler had opened the door and Rafe was in the doorway, looking at Thea.
“Begone, fair lady!” Dudley screeched at her, bouncing on his feet. “We be in the Devil’s lair!”
Thea paused mid-step. “Oh, is that what they call Mayfair these days?”
“Here lives a wild man! He consorts with demons!”
“Don’t be silly. He doesn’t consort with anyone. All that talking.”
Behind Rafe, Nicholas chuckled. “This one’s going to liven you right up.”
Rafe twisted around. “I told you to go.”
“Not a chance, my boy. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Chapter 7
Thea had intended to walk straight past the man in black. As a Londoner, she was familiar with such men. Every market square in the city had people like this, yelling warnings at the world, while the world either ignored them or threw slops at their head.
Besides, her day in London had left her weary. First, she had gone with Gilbert to deliver her manuscript to Arabella’s publisher and to meet Mr. Witherspoon, the man who would oversee her advertising campaign. He was as excellent as Arabella promised: He listened to her wishes and suggested improvements, before briskly stating how he would achieve each item, how many delivery boys he would hire, which artists he would commission, and, of course, how much it would all cost. The amount made her heart sink, but she confidently assured him the money would be forthcoming, and dashed off on her risky shopping expedition, praying no one would recognize her.
She had hoped to get home before Luxborough did, so she could plead a headache, lock her door, and avoid awkward questions about her shopping.
And perhaps she would have succeeded, if not for her rash decision to have the carriage stop in Warren Street, a little down from the blue door with the brass mermaid knocker. Ma had planted pink flowers in the window boxes and changed the curtains upstairs.
As Thea sat watching, that blue door had swung open to reveal Ma, as if she sensed in her heart that her eldest daughter had come home. But then Pa had dashed up the stairs with his usual vigor and they were both laughing as he whirled Ma about, and they laughed harder when Pa clutched at his lower back.
Thea had blinked away tears, though she smiled for them too. It was too soon to hear from Helen, so the Knight family must have scored some other victory. If only Thea could share in their celebration! If only she could skip through that blue door, wink at the brass mermaid, and know that she was home.
But then another carriage had rumbled past, blocking her view, and when it had passed, her parents were gone and the blue door was shut.
Nothing to do but wait until her pamphlets were ready, and never forget that the Earl of Luxborough was her enemy, and it signified not at all that he was kind to weeping women and plants.
Neither did it signify, she reminded herself sternly, as Lord Luxborough stepped through his front door, his dark hair curling damply over his forehead and collar, that his lordship looked deliciously fresh after a bath.
Dismay shot through her. At least, she thought it was dismay, though it felt like a mix of excitement and pleasure. Their eyes met, and she was reminded of their very first encounter, for that same glee lit his brown eyes as he slowly descended three steps.
Suddenly, Thea didn’t feel so tired after all.
She was preparing to greet Lord Luxborough, when she was distracted first by the appearance in the doorway of a grinning, gray-haired man, whose sleeves marked him as a bishop, and then by the zealot, who addressed her again.
“Yet you visit his devil’s lair, my lady,” the zealot said, continuing their peculiar conversation. “Be you a witch?”
She bestowed upon him the imperious look she had been practicing all day. “If you please! I am the countess.”
After a quick glance at Luxborough, the man recoiled in horror. “You came back from the dead!”
“I did what?”
“First did he kill you with his sorcery!”
“He did what?”
“Then did he raise you from the grave!”
Thea hesitated. As ludicrous as the rumors about Luxborough’s first wife were, she could not quell her curiosity about the kind of woman he had married.
“I am his second wife,” she said quietly, so Luxborough could not hear. “What can you tell me of the first one?”
“He poisoned her, ensorcelled her, enslaved her to his devilry.”
“That sounds like a lot of work. Why would he do all that?”
“Because he is a demon! A witch! A sorcerer! A—”
“Yes, yes, I comprehend that part,” she interrupted impatiently. “But if he has all this power, why use it to harm his wife? This has always puzzled me. Consider, if you will, the plight of a woman accused of witchcraft because two days after she argues with her neighbor, the man gets a pox on his tickle-tail. And this man, he says, ‘By George, that woman must have caused this pox through the power of the Devil. If she can do magic, she won’t use her magic to get a decent house or some gold, by George no, her only use for magical powers is to put a pox on my tickle-tail.’”
The zealot blinked at her, then tugged at his hair. “Have you a demon inside you, my lady?”
“I am rather hungry. Does that count?”
“Beware the beast! Kill you, he will!”
Oh, for pity’s sake. Thea was hungry and her feet hurt, and the best way to stop nonsense was with more nonsense.
“But after he kills me, he will raise me from the dead,” she proclaimed loudly. “Like he did his first wife. Like he did a thousand women.�
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“He… What?”
“Oh yes!” she cried. “A thousand women, killed and raised to make an army of the dead! Beware the day when an army of dead wives marches on London. Beware, little man, beware.”
The zealot stared at her, wide eyed, and when he spoke, his tone was perfectly rational. “You’re mad.” He looked past her to the earl. “She’s mad.”
Thea turned. Up on the steps, the bishop was laughing, holding his belly as his shoulders shook. Luxborough elbowed him in the ribs, which only made the older man laugh harder.
Yet a smile played around Luxborough’s lips too, as he came down the last steps toward her. He was in his shirtsleeves, which might be why his shoulders looked so broad, and his wine-red waistcoat hugged a narrow waist and hips. How fascinating it was, that a man could have such broad shoulders and powerful thighs and yet such narrow hips.
Until Luxborough, Thea had never noticed how fascinating men could be.
“You continue to astonish me, Countess,” Luxborough said. “That you make such a response.”
She dragged her gaze off his torso and looked up to meet his eyes, humor glinting in their brandy-colored depths. Again, she felt that little skip of dismay-masquerading-as-excitement. “Response to what?”
“You were screaming at Dudley about an army of dead wives.”
“Oh. Yes. Right. I forgot.” Then his words sank in. “Dudley? You know him?”
“His name is William Dudley and he— Oh hell.” Luxborough’s curse startled her. He gripped her forearm, and she was so surprised by the firmness of his fingers that she did not seek the cause of his alarm, until he said, “It’s Ventnor. Go inside now.”
Needing no encouragement, her knees so weak she feared they might fail her, Thea picked up her skirts and ran inside. She raced straight past the bishop and into the front parlor, where she stood behind the curtain to watch, heart racing, nausea building, as Lord Ventnor’s carriage arrived.
* * *
It was a grand coach-and-four: a shiny black carriage pulled by four perfectly matched gray horses. The viscount’s coat of arms was emblazoned on the side, and on the back rode three footmen, also perfectly matched: all the same height and build, dressed in the same royal-purple livery, with the same white wigs on their heads. They leaped down the moment the carriage stopped. One pulled open the door, one folded down the steps, the third unrolled a royal-purple carpet on the street.