Chapter 4
Lord and Lady Ashton’s elegant mansion was the usual crush of people, but within seconds of their arrival, Cuthbert Saint had managed to locate the North sisters and was making his regular play. He bowed low to Alice, and she offered him a tight smile in reply.
When he turned his attention to Patience and gifted her with a heart-stopping smile, a tide of nausea rose in Alice’s stomach. The man was so much like pond slime, she couldn’t bear it.
Still, she had to give Cuthbert his dues. He was immaculately turned out, his jet-black hair perfectly oiled. The cut of his evening suit was so sharp, Alice was certain she would bleed if she touched it.
Why did you have to be so damn handsome? A flaw of any sort would be nice—just something I can highlight with Patience.
“Mister Saint, how wonderful to see you here this evening,” gushed Patience.
“It is such an unexpected delight,” he replied.
Even his voice is silken. Patience never stood a chance.
Cuthbert offered Patience his arm and led her away, leaving Alice standing alone and pondering further dire options. She was still considering whether it was worth the coin to hire a couple of thugs to pay him a visit when a loud cheer erupted close to the entrance to the main ballroom.
Alice turned as a large section of the crowd divided down the middle and a now familiar figure strode into the room. Men and women smiled and applauded alike at Lord Harry Steele. Fans and eyelashes were fluttered in his direction. Several women swooned.
Harry held out his arms and accepted their adulation. His gold walking stick was borne aloft like he was a biblical prophet.
“Gosh. Moses didn’t get that good a reception when he parted the Red Sea, and he destroyed Pharaoh’s army at the same time,” she muttered.
To be fair, Alice didn’t think Moses had ever worn a pure white suit. Nor a bright red codpiece. He most definitely hadn’t sported a silver tiara. Harry’s outfit was a riot of mismatched eccentricity.
And yet he wore it so well.
Other guests clamored for his attention. Hands were thrust out for shaking. Numerous glasses of champagne were quickly offered. Women dipped into low curtsies, the kind that allowed a man a good look at their breasts if he was so inclined.
Harry rewarded them all with a beaming smile. Talk about making an entrance.
And then his gaze met hers and Alice’s heart stopped.
Excellent. She was here. If Miss Alice North had not come to the Ashtons’ ball tonight, all the hours Harry had dedicated to selecting an outfit and dressing for the party would have gone to waste.
She was wearing a shocked and thoroughly disapproving look. Brilliant. The outrageous outfit had worked.
What better way to have London thinking he was a brainless peacock than to dress and act like one in public? He was more than happy to let people believe that they were superior to him and his dandyish lifestyle. Those who were gushing all over him as he made his grand entrance were also the ones who would be making snide remarks about him behind his back, the second he was out of earshot.
And yet one by one, as scandals touched their lives, they would seek him out and pay for his assistance.
Harry wasn’t the least fazed by their insincere behavior; he was counting on it. He was a master at being a chameleon. His father’s library had contained many books, and the hours he had spent studying them meant he was well aware that the most dangerous creatures on earth were those who dazzled their victims just before they struck.
Waving the rest of his disingenuous fans away, Harry made a beeline for the corner where Miss Alice North lurked. He gave a deliberate sexy sway of his hips and her eyes immediately grew wide.
You are so easy to tease and tempt. If you weren’t a client, I would love to . . . hmm.
He stopped a few feet away and bowed. “Miss North, what a pleasure,” he all but purred.
Her gaze roamed slowly over his body. Harry opened his white jacket, showing off the gold lining, inviting her perusal. She might well be doing her utmost to look aghast at his attire, but he caught the telltale signs that she liked what she saw. The mere glint in her eyes. The hand she held softly to her chest. And the tongue that moistened her bottom lip. Oh. Yes.
“Lord Steele,” she said.
Harry frowned. “No. Please. My friends call me Harry. We cannot be so formal with one another.”
He had her money, and in his book, anyone who gave him cash was counted as a friend.
“Harry.” She accepted his offered arm and he led her out of the corner and to a private alcove away from the crush of guests. Even as she took a seat on a cream sofa, her gaze remained fixed on his outfit.
I knew the tiara was the right choice.
His sparkling costume was a stark contrast to her attire. He didn’t even want to consider the dull, dark grey of Alice’s gown. He could see what she had been trying to achieve—the blank-canvas look—but all it did was make him feel sorry for her.
Is pity a color?
Resisting the temptation to sit close to her, Harry took up a seat at the end of the sofa and kept a respectable distance between them. Alice was wringing her hands in an obvious display of discomfort. “I . . . I’m not sure if you are the man for the job,” she said.
He let out a long, seductive sigh. In every contract, there came a time when his clients panicked. When they truly believed that the sum of all he was amounted to what they beheld with their eyes. This moment was always heavily pregnant with risk.
He leaned in and whispered in her ear, “But if I do that, your sweet sister will end up marrying that scoundrel. You owe it to her and your family to use all means necessary to stop that happening. And that includes trusting me.”
The seriousness of his tone seemed to have the desired effect. Alice screwed her eyes shut and clenched her lips between her teeth. Harry always hated this part. When he had to break his clients down in order to help rebuild them and gain their trust.
“You think me a fool, but I promise I will save Patience. From my initial investigations, your instincts about Cuthbert Saint appear to be sound. But before I go into that, I need to ask you some questions,” he said.
She frowned at him. “What sort of questions?”
“Well for a start, where the devil are your parents? They can’t be blind as to what is happening. But probably of even greater importance is the question of how far you are prepared to go in order to help your sister.”
If it came to it, would Alice be prepared to hold a pistol and point it at Cuthbert Saint?
Chapter 5
Alice could just imagine how this all looked to Harry. She came from new money. Established London society tended to hold an unfavorable opinion of her people. It was said that people who had made their money in trade had nice houses and good clothes, but no common sense or breeding.
Her folk didn’t lack breeding; they had been landed gentry sometime in the dim and distant past. The North family had fallen on hard times only to resurrect their fortunes through trade with the colonies. Her father could buy most of the assembled guests here several times over and have change in his pocket.
And they would still look down on him.
Unfortunately, the gibe about a lack of common sense was a little more accurate. Her parents had raised their children in a free-living household. They had been allowed to choose their own bedtimes from an early age. Few restrictions had been placed on any of the North siblings as they grew up. And at times, it showed.
But even her parents would draw the line at Patience marrying a fortune hunter.
“You mean why haven’t Mama and Papa put a stop to all this nonsense? They are somewhere in France. They are not expected back in England until Christmas at the earliest. I cannot wait to do something until they return, because I fear by then it will all be too late,” she replied.
She could just imagine what Harry was thinking right this very minute. What kind of parents trotted off to Europe a
nd left their unwed daughters behind? The reckless kind.
But she wasn’t paying him to pass judgement on her family. Harry had a task, and if he wasn’t up to it, then he had better say so.
He slowly shook his head. “And I thought my family were a disaster. My mother subscribed to the same sort of madness for a time. She got mixed up with the Cavendish crowd who tended to let their offspring run wild. Fortunately, my father finally saw sense and put his foot down.”
“I wouldn’t say my parents have raised us in complete chaos. They have just allowed us to make our own mistakes and learn from them.”
I can’t believe I am having to defend my family to a man wearing a red codpiece and a tiara.
Harry brushed a hand over Alice’s cheek. She held her breath. He was the strangest creature she had ever met, but there was something about him which drew her in. If handsome men like Cuthbert Saint were Patience’s weakness, perhaps interesting and slightly oddball chaps like Harry Steele were hers.
He wagged a ring-laden finger in her direction, disapproval evident in his voice. “But you are not prepared to let your sister make her own mistake when it comes to Mister Saint. So, what you are saying is that your free spirit only goes so far. Considering your own propensity to wander the streets of London on your own, some may suggest that your attitude could be construed as more than a little hypocritical.”
She shot him a hard glare. “Others may say that of me, but I don’t care. You know as well as I do that marriage is a mistake which cannot be easily erased if one does not choose their life partner wisely,” she bit back.
A shrewd smile crept to his lips. Damn him. He was testing her. Alice wanted nothing more than to grab a hold of Harry’s beautifully constructed suit and crush it in her hands. And then bludgeon him with his walking stick. Condescending, self-assured rogue.
“Good. Then you have the right mindset for what needs to be done,” he replied.
She blinked at him. He was agreeing with her. She hadn’t seen that coming. “What sort of mindset?”
“One that is capable of making hard decisions. We need to rid your sister of Cuthbert Saint, or whatever his real name is, because I would have a guinea on him not being any sort of saint.”
It was a struggle to keep up with Harry. One minute, he was all light and ridiculousness. The next, he was planning a war strategy.
“What do you know about him?” she asked.
“A little. I have my contacts checking the rest of his supposed life story. According to my sources, he claims to have attended Eton and also worked somewhere in a government ministry. It shouldn’t be too big a task to get to the truth of his history, after which we can pull on the loose threads and see which ones begin to unravel.”
He waved over a passing footman and collected them both a glass of champagne. Alice stared at hers, unsure as to whether it was wise to drink it. Patience and Cuthbert had already disappeared from the ballroom and she should make an effort to track them down.
Her gaze searched the immediate area, but they were too far out of the way for her to get any real idea as to who was in the room. She went to rise.
“I must go and find them. Lord knows where they are.”
He took her gently by the arm and pulled her back onto the sofa. “Drink your champagne and try to relax. I have several people watching them. The minute Cuthbert makes a move to whisk your sister into a dark corner of the garden, he will find himself in the company of new and rather insistent friends.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I made a grand entrance just now, but I actually arrived some time ago, and while swathed in a black hooded cloak and staying out of sight, I observed Mister Saint.”
She bit back tears and whispered, “Thank you.” Finally, someone was on her side. The spark of hope which lit her heart almost made Alice giddy.
At times, it was like she was alone in being the only sensible one in her family—never more so than in the current circumstances. Her parents were several hundred miles away, her brother somewhere loose in Ireland, and as for her sister . . .
Alice was beginning to get a sense of Harry. The man behind the showy exterior. One who, it would seem, was in possession of a sharp mind. It was comforting to know that she had underestimated him.
Perhaps you are the man for the job.
He sipped at his champagne. From the way he barely drank any of it, Alice could tell he didn’t particularly like the bubbles.
When their gazes met, he raised an eyebrow. “If I drink sensible, manly spirits like brandy or whisky in public, it makes me appear too much like other men. I expect you have already perceived that my intent is to stand apart from them. For people to find me a source of interest and amusement.”
She nodded. “Yes, I had gathered that. I also think you do it deliberately as a sleight-of-hand. People think one thing of you while you are doing something else entirely. It is a clever trick.”
The wicked grin he gave in response to her words had Alice swallowing deeply. She was drawn to this dangerous man—wanted to know so much more about him. He was the most interesting man in the room.
He set his champagne glass on the floor and she followed suit.
“Can I ask you a question?” she ventured. Harry was the son of one of the richest men in all of England; he shouldn’t have to work. Everyone knew the Duke of Redditch got about town in a gilded coach.
“Hmm. And the answer is I need the money.”
How had he known what she was going to ask? Am I that easy to read?
“I did some things which did not sit well with my father. I am a fourth son. We are usually relegated to the church, or the army, or some far-flung foreign post. I refused to do any of that, and he didn’t take too kindly to my impertinence,” he explained.
“So, he cut you off?” Alice had heard of such things, but until now had never actually met a disinherited son. She had thought they were simply rumors put about by parents to make their offspring behave. But in Harry she was getting her first real glimpse of what refusing to toe the line could mean to the son of a noble house.
“Yes. Not a penny. Threw me out of the house almost a year ago and told me not to come back. Two days out from Christmas Eve, if you don’t mind. Fortunately, I have friends, and we’d already been working on a plan to make money. We each use our particular skills to earn a living. In my case, that is scandals. I used to start them; now I manage them.”
Hearing his words, Alice’s heart grew light. Harry Steele might well be the most bizarre and uncommon man she had ever met, but there was something about him that gave her the courage to continue. Strengthened her resolve to save Patience from making a grave error. “Harry, if you can rid Patience of her blind devotion to Cuthbert Saint, I will double your fee,” she said. She held out her hand, intending it to be for them to seal the deal.
Harry took one look at it, grabbed a hold, and pulled Alice to him. Before she could object, he had placed a soft, tender kiss on her lips.
Harry’s arm went around her waist and he held her captive in his embrace. As his tongue slipped into her mouth, Alice thought to slap his arm. His behavior was outrageous, beyond the pale. She was his client. They were in Viscount Ashton’s home. The whole thing was simply impossible.
And yet, she was powerless to stop him.
All her sense of control and decorum went straight out the window as Harry deepened the kiss. What he was doing with his soft, warm lips set her heart racing at a furious pace. If she fainted away in a deep swoon it wouldn’t surprise her in the least.
And I wouldn’t care, just as long as it was in his arms.
Alice could have sworn her heart let out a pained whimper when Harry finally released her from the kiss and loosened his hold. She held a hand to her pounding chest, sucking in deep breaths. What on earth had just happened?
When their gazes met once more, a pair of cool green eyes stared back at her. There was a mischievous light in them—one Alice didn�
�t trust.
As a sly, knowing grin crept across Harry’s face. The happy bubbles which had danced delightfully in Alice’s stomach only a moment ago burst. Pop. Pop. Pop.
In their place sat a burning, simmering anger.
“See, I knew you were the sort of girl who a man could kiss in public and she wouldn’t stop him.” He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, “Alice, darling, I understand you better than you think. You can try and deny it all you like, but deep inside you know given half a chance, you would hand your soul over to a man like Cuthbert Saint. Or even a man like me.”
Alice’s hand landed at high speed on Harry’s face. The bright mark which immediately colored his left cheek was deeply satisfying.
Bloody, self-assured, arrogant . . . urgh!
“I take back my words of praise. You, Lord Harry Steele, are nothing better than a scoundrel.”
He lifted a hand to his reddened skin, then slowly shook his head. “Not a scoundrel—just a rogue.” His eyes glinted with danger. “And the only man with the skills and daring to save your sister.”
Chapter 6
Harry made his way over to the offices of the RR Coaching Company in Gracechurch Street the following morning. The small coaching business which operated as the cover for the group’s illicit operations was situated next door to the Spread Eagle Coaching Company.
But while their neighbors ran a highly respectable establishment, managing coach routes all over England, the small office door marked RR fronted a more secretive and less reputable place. It was the perfect setting for the Rogues of the Road to conduct their dubious business transactions.
The old coach which had been abandoned in the rear yard was now repaired and being used to transport smuggled goods up from Portsmouth. If things all went well and they had enough money, Harry and Monsale intended to launch a legitimate passenger service in the near future.
However, on this overcast morning, Harry’s thoughts were not of coach timetables but rather Cuthbert Saint. Who was he, and where had he come from? Only once he had a firm understanding of the man would Harry be able to put together a plan to unmask Patience North’s paramour and bring the blighter down.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Scandal: a Christmas collection of Historical Romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 1) Page 4