by Clee, Adele
Even if Scarlett had been born of nobility, she would still love Damian Wycliff.
The sudden thought stole her breath.
And while she wanted to bask in the warmth her love evoked, she couldn’t help but feel apprehensive about the future.
“No, my lord, I do believe I would be friends with Mr Wycliff, regardless.”
Lord Rathbone’s hand trembled, and he spilt his soup. He glanced at his grandmother as if dreading her reaction. How odd. Scarlett presumed the matron pandered to the lord. That’s the impression she gave.
Lady Rathbone’s discreet shake of the head roused a frustrated sigh from her grandson.
The lord shook off his irritation quickly. “Might I say you look splendid this evening, Lady Steele?”
Scarlett dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “Thank you, my lord. As you know, scarlet is a particular favourite of mine.”
She had deliberately worn red. Something told her she needed the strength of her shield-maidens tonight. Both people seated at the table hid behind shields, too. The question was whose defensive wall would crumble first?
“Jemima has been stirring the hornet’s nest again,” Lady Rathbone said once they had finished the first course. “She told Captain Compton-Burnett’s daughter that you were working the streets around Covent Garden when Lord Steele came to your rescue.”
While Scarlett cared little for gossip, Jemima was a nuisance. If Joshua wished her to keep his secret, he had better do something to silence his sister.
“As I told the gel,” Lady Rathbone continued whilst a footman dressed her plate with delicacies, “your father was the youngest son of a country squire, and you fell upon hard times after his death.”
To hide the secret of her parentage, Scarlett may have been evasive, but she had never lied. If the matron chose to invent stories for appearance’s sake, perhaps it was time to enlighten the lady.
“At no point did I tell you my father was the son of a country squire.”
“I’m certain you did.” Lady Rathbone glanced at her grandson who froze with his fork midair. “If not the son of a country squire who was he?”
Scarlett straightened—her steel backbone being the only thing she had gained from her miserable marriage. “Did Joshua not tell you when he dined with you last month? My parents are dead. My mother—”
“There is no need to explain,” Lord Rathbone interjected. The fellow’s Adam’s apple bobbed unnaturally, and his growing agitation left him red-faced. “Such things should have no bearing on one’s future prospects.”
“No bearing?” Lady Rathbone’s sharp reply proved out of character. “Place is determined by one’s wealth and birthright.”
It was then that good manners abandoned Lord Rathbone. He snatched his napkin from his lap and used it to mop the sheen of sweat on his brow. “Can we not simply finish our meal and discuss the weather?”
“You know we cannot.” The matron expressed a surprising coldness of manner.
The woman’s snobbery came as somewhat of a shock to Scarlett. Why keep company with a notorious widow who once graced the stage when lineage meant everything?
“Perhaps it’s time we all dropped the pretence,” Scarlett said for she suspected she was more a gullible fool than a Viking warrior. “You’d not find a woman kinder than my mother. But as someone recently pointed out, the good ones are so often taken early.”
Lady Rathbone sat rigidly in the chair, every muscle tense.
Lord Rathbone sat with his head bowed, like a man consumed with grief having been forced to take a pistol to his beloved horse.
“And as for my father,” Scarlett continued, resolved that they would hear the truth, “his name was Jack Jewell. He owned a gaming hell catering to dissolute lords, lords who would sell their children for a chance to play another hand of piquet.”
Lady Rathbone jerked back in horror.
Lord Rathbone blanched and shuddered in fear.
“Jack Jewell!” The matron screwed up her aristocratic nose as if the footman had dropped his satin breeches and fouled the white linen. “That name has been the bane of my existence for nigh on four years.” Her jaw firmed, hiding the soft jowls. She glared at her grandson. “I told you she knew and is playing us for fools. Did I not tell you she plans to lure us into a trap? Extort every last penny?”
Lord Rathbone appeared inconsolable. He lacked the energy to do anything other than shake his head.
“Percival!” Lady Rathbone snapped. With an irate wave, she dismissed the servants. “Pull yourself together.”
Scarlett watched this odd exchange—talk of traps and extortion—feeling she had missed a vital piece of information. How was it a matron of Lady Rathbone’s standing knew Jack Jewell so well?
“Percival.” The woman’s mouth thinned with disappointment. “Your father would have dealt with the matter promptly. He would not have waited for four years.”
“Can we not simply swear the lady to secrecy?” the lord pleaded.
“Secrecy? I’ll not wager everything our ancestors worked for on the hope of trusting a woman who’s lain with Blackbeck’s mongrel.”
With a look that said his world was about to come crashing down around him, Lord Rathbone glanced at Scarlett and said, “What is it you want from us? Tell me my grandmother is wrong and that you possess the integrity of my father, not yours.”
Scarlett blinked in bewilderment.
How dare anyone suggest Jack Jewell was unprincipled? Yes, he may have lacked the capacity to love her, but he was her father, and no doubt he had tried.
“I must call you to task on your error, my lord. My father was respected amongst his peers. Commitment and loyalty flowed like blood in his veins.”
“Loyalty?” Lady Rathbone snorted. Her eyes turned dark with barely contained fury. How was it Scarlett had not seen beyond the matron’s mask before? “Your father was a cheating, conniving ne’er-do-well who sought to bring this family to its knees.”
Scarlett knew little to nothing of the Rathbones’ family history. Had Lord Rathbone’s father or grandfather lost money at The Jewell? Was that behind their contempt? Then another thought struck her. One that had plagued her mind for years. Had Jack Jewell done something monstrous, something that gave him a reason to take his own life?
“My father owned the gaming hell. You cannot blame him for other men’s weaknesses.” Every fibre of her being told her to push out of the chair and leave. But the stubborn streak she’d developed in her marriage urged her to stay, to get to the real reason behind Lady Rathbone’s fake facade.
“We are not talking about the man who raised you,” Lord Rathbone said in a voice weak with nerves.
“No!” Lady Rathbone said. “We are talking about the father who confessed to his sin on his deathbed. The fool who was too blind to see that one silly transaction would see the Rathbone name ruined.”
Scarlett’s head ached. Her temples throbbed.
They were speaking different languages.
She stared at the untouched food on her plate and tried to make sense of the conversation.
Lady Rathbone continued mumbling as if involved in a secret argument with an invisible opponent. The candlelight cast sinister shadows on her face. Who was this strange woman? Scarlett hardly knew.
Lord Rathbone cleared his throat. “Had my father known you were sold like common goods to Jack Jewell, he would have found you and brought you home.” Pity flashed in his eyes. “By birth we are cousins, but my father would have approved a marriage. You must understand we thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” The word tumbled from her lips as she sat there, trance-like, lost in a thick cloud of confusion.
“This can all be solved if you agree to marry me.” The lord’s mouth curled into a weak smile. “We could be happy. We will move from town to my estate in Herefordshire and—”
“No! It is too late for sentimental nonsense.” Lady Rathbone surged from her seat. “You cannot take a mongrel’s mi
stress to your bed. She might be with child. I’ll not have Wycliff’s whoreson raised as a Rathbone.”
They began arguing amongst themselves.
But one thought rang loudly in Scarlett’s ears.
Jack Jewell was not her father.
Disbelief rendered her speechless. These people were mistaken. And yet in her heart she had always known something was amiss. Did that mean the sweet woman who raised her until the age of ten was not her mother, either?
Of course it did.
The sudden lump in her throat made it almost impossible to breathe. Tears sprang to her eyes—hot, burning evidence of her pain. Salty rivulets trickled down her face. The loss left an unbearable hole in her chest.
“Are you saying that m-my father was a Rathbone?” How she found the strength to form the words, she would never know.
“A Rathbone and my uncle,” Lord Rathbone clarified.
“I see.”
She did not want to see.
The man who struggled to love her had paid for the best education. Jack Jewell had seen to it that she had something to call her own, even if it was ownership of a gaming hell. But what of the man whose blood flowed in her veins? He had discarded her as if she were a stone in his shoe.
Did no one want her?
Was she a burden to everyone she met?
A wracking sob caught in her throat and she knew she must leave. She pushed out of the chair, her mind disconnected to everyone and everything. The matron and grandson continued to disagree, but their raised voices sounded muffled now.
“I must go.” With an unsteady gait, she navigated the dining table. Through the chaotic haze, she focused on the door.
But Lady Rathbone grabbed Scarlett’s sleeve and tugged hard. “You’re not going anywhere, dear. You’re the only person alive who knows the truth.”
The action took Scarlett by surprise. When the matron yanked harder, Scarlett lost her footing. Arms flailing, she tumbled back. The thud as she hit her head on the corner of the table reverberated through her body. A scream burst from her throat and then her world faded into darkness.
Chapter Nineteen
Damian heard Scarlett’s scream as he stood at Lady Rathbone’s door, about to storm past the snooty butler when he refused to grant him entrance. His blood ran cold. Flannery was right. Why the bloody hell had he let Scarlett come alone?
“Had I been born a gentleman, I might have said excuse me.” Damian pushed the butler aside, knocking him back into the console table. “But I’m a bastard by name and nature.”
The butler straightened his periwig. “Stop, else I shall send for the night constable.” He dashed towards Damian and grabbed the sleeve of his coat.
Damian growled, and the terrified servant let go.
“Send for the damn constable,” Damian shouted as he raced along the hall as if the devil were at his heels. “Though I suspect it will be your mistress carted off to a cell.”
As Damian burst into the dining room, it took him a moment to absorb the shocking scene.
Fear rendered him frozen.
Scarlett lay sprawled on the Persian rug, pale and lifeless. Her eyes were closed, as if she had already taken her last breath, already said goodbye to the world. Blood? Thankfully, no sign of blood. Lady Rathbone loomed over the body, her mouth twisted in a wry grin. Lord Rathbone sobbed as he knelt at Scarlett’s side, his frantic hands patting her arms and chest.
The burning need to murder the one responsible saw Damian charge at the lord, grab him by the scruff of his coat and drag him backwards. “That is not how you check for a pulse.”
Damian dropped to his knees and captured Scarlett’s wrist. Trembling fingers made it impossible to feel the beat of life. He silently cursed and tried again. Coldness seeped into his bones. A cavernous emptiness consumed him to the point he struggled to breathe, too.
“T-try the base of her throat,” Lord Rathbone said in a grave tone as he came to his feet. “Sometimes the p-pulse is stronger there.”
Damian tugged at the high collar of Scarlett’s dress and pressed the pads of his fingers to the delicate skin on her neck. The weak yet rhythmical pulsing of her heartbeat tore a relieved gasp from his lips. He stared at her chest, trying to focus on the light rise and fall that confirmed she was alive and breathing.
The thought that the only person he treasured might have been taken from him, too, made him lean forward and touch his forehead to hers. A terror like nothing he had experienced before clawed at his mind, concocting horror stories of her waking with impaired memories, with a mind that no longer recalled all they had shared.
Anger surfaced then.
The devil’s fury made him jump to his feet and turn on Lord Rathbone. “What the hell did you do to her? Did she spurn your advances? Did she tell you her affections lay elsewhere?”
The lord gaped and raised his hands in surrender. He was about to speak when Lady Rathbone said sharply, “She choked on a fishbone and fainted. Now, get out of my house and let me send for a doctor.” The matron glanced over Wycliff’s shoulder to the door. “Osmond! Osmond! Throw this miscreant out.”
“A choking woman cannot scream.”
“Not that I need answer to you, but Lady Steele screamed when Percival thumped her on the back. And it’s a good job he did, for the bone might still be lodged in her throat.” She sucked in a breath. “Now, remove yourself at once. Osmond! Oh, where is the fool?”
Damian squared his shoulders. “Fear not, I am leaving and taking Lady Steele with me. Then I shall return to discuss the matter of how Christopher Rathbone repaid his debt to Jack Jewell.”
The blood drained from the matron’s face. Guilt lay in every line and crease. Her arrogance faltered for a few seconds as her eyes flicked nervously back and forth in their sockets.
“My son died four years ago, having spent more than a decade abroad.” Lady Rathbone composed herself and stared down her patrician nose. “How might he have run up debts in London when he lived in Paris?”
Few aristocratic ladies knew the name Jack Jewell let alone that he ran a gaming hell in London. “You seem remarkably informed. And Christopher Rathbone’s debt to Jack Jewell was repaid before he left for the Continent.”
“That was twenty-two years ago! Gossip is twisted to ridiculous lengths over the course of an hour let alone decades. Though I’m surprised a man of your inferior breeding would take notice of tales.”
Possessed of a desperate urge to take Scarlett to a doctor, Damian knelt down and scooped her up into his arms. “Tales? I am a man who deals in truths, not petty lies.”
“That is hard to believe knowing both your parents,” Lady Rathbone countered.
Her reply gnawed at his insides. And yet his father had never lied about his involvement with Maria Alvarez. “You are hardly one to claim the crown for bearing respectable offspring. And your point is moot. I hold proof of the transaction, a transaction that bears your son’s signature.”
Damian wasn’t entirely sure what the term cargo meant. Fear had led him to bang on Lady Rathbone’s door and demand to speak to Lady Steele. Instinct told him that the woman in his arms was the only thing of value Christopher Rathbone had to sell.
“Selling a person for money is immoral,” Damian continued, hoping to draw the truth from the matron. “Selling one’s daughter to pay a gambling debt is downright despicable. What would your friends say, Lady Rathbone, if they discovered your son had lied about his daughter’s death? The scandal would ruin your good name, tarnish your pristine reputation.”
“Be quiet, mongrel!”
“Indeed, one might go to great lengths to keep such a secret.”
Lady Rathbone harrumphed. “Leave now, or I shall have you removed. Osmond!”
Damian was about to say he loved a good fight, but Alcock came bursting into the dining room followed by the harassed butler clutching his bloody nose. One look at her mistress lying helpless in Damian’s arms and the woman bared her chipped teeth and growled l
ike a ravenous hound.
“I thought I instructed you to wait with Cutler.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but you ain’t my master.”
Damian suppressed a frustrated sigh. The woman was a law unto herself. “Your mistress is alive, Alcock, but if you want to help her, punch Lady Rathbone if she attempts to leave this room.”
Alcock stepped in front of the door, her bulky frame making it impossible for anyone to push past. “Right you are, sir. I’ve no qualms in hitting her ladyship.”
A whimper escaped the matron’s lips, but she gathered herself and stamped her foot. “You cannot tell me what to do in my own house.”
“Have no fear, my lady,” Osmond cried from the safety of the corridor. “I have sent for the night constable.”
“You fool, there is no need for the constable.” For the second time this evening, fear flashed in the matron’s eyes. “This is nothing more than a misunderstanding.”
“There’s every need for a constable.” Now he had come this far, Damian would have the truth from this deceiver’s lips. “Perhaps he would like to hear how you’ve spent years secretly hounding Lady Steele. I also have the note you sent to the runner offering a reward once he’d dispensed with her in a warehouse in Shoreditch. An expert will surely verify the handwriting.” Or more than likely not. “And the runner’s confession will give the magistrate much to contemplate.” He omitted the part about the runner’s dive to the bottom of the Thames.
Lady Rathbone gulped.
A tense silence ensued while everyone awaited her response.
A faint murmur from Scarlett’s lips broke the stillness. Her eyes flickered open, and she looked at him. “D-Damian?”
Regardless of the onlookers, he kissed her forehead and whispered, “Rest, love. This will be all over in a minute. Alcock will take you to my carriage, and we will seek the advice of a doctor.”