Willful Depravity

by Ingrid Hahn

  Putting radical politics aside for the time being, Patience slipped from the carriage. The earth didn’t rumble under her feet, and portentous black clouds didn’t begin to swirl in the sky.

  “You’re coming, then?” He gave her a tentative smile.

  This was part and parcel of the freedom she wanted, wasn’t it? To shrug off the encumbrances of what others might think? She hadn’t imagined the aftermath of her resolution would play out in quite this manner, but the opportunity to be so bold would never come again.

  “Yes. Why not?” She tried to sound breezily offhanded. As if she weren’t quaking with fear inside. If her parents found out—well, they would. And they’d have to live with it, because she had to stand by Ashcroft. If anyone could upstage the Duke of Silverlund, it would be the man’s own son.

  She held out her hands. “I’ll carry that.”

  Fortunately, the man did not stand on a point of pride. He handed the portfolio over without comment.

  Together, they walked toward the door.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Without pausing to be waited upon, Giles strode into the sacred halls of his father’s club, buoyancy and strength pouring from him. The most beautiful woman in all of England walked by his side. Nothing could stop him.

  “Wait, sir—my lord, wait. She can’t—she can’t come in here.” The attendant scurried after them, panic in his voice.

  Giles didn’t look. Didn’t turn. “Too late. She’s here. And she’s staying with me.”

  The little man caught up to them and had no sooner put his hands upon Patience than Giles grabbed him by the collar and stared him dead in the eye. He bared his teeth, spitting out words from between a clenched jaw. “She is with me. Touch her again and I promise you, you shall end up in misery for all the rest of your days.”

  “B-but she can’t be here.” His eyes radiated fear.

  “Don’t worry.” Giles let him go and tossed his final words to the man over his shoulder. “We won’t be long. Then you can resume your priggish ways.”

  Two footmen appeared from nowhere, scrambling to block Giles and Patience at the stairs. Giles made haste, and Patience followed suit. Then they began to run. Well-groomed men gathered at the top of the stairs, practically leering at the spectacle. They might accuse women of being the gossipy sex, but men loved scandal and spectacle as well as anyone else.

  Giles stopped to scan the familiar faces. Many had gone red with indignation and were beginning to make outraged noises about Patience’s presence. The first night of his acquaintance with Patience, Giles had half boasted about the number of men with whom he’d enjoyed a three-way dalliance. More than a few of them were present now, as dark with fury as the rest of them. They’d probably be quick to denounce him, no matter what he knew about their bedroom experimentation.

  He stood tall and caught the eye of one he’d known better than most. Many wanted nothing more than the thrill of watching their wife with another man. Not Lord Trenton. Soon after Giles’s return, he, Giles, and the delightfully large-bottomed Lady Trenton had enjoyed a three-month affair. Lord Trenton was more like him. Predominantly interested in women, but occasionally attracted to men.

  Giles couldn’t think about it now, but Patience had ruined him for all that. Before her, he’d always imagined taking a wife and being trapped with a single partner would give him cause to mourn. With her, he lost nothing. Only gained. The thought of being with another made him shrug with indifference.

  “The sooner the lot of you tell me where Silverlund is, the sooner we will vacate your hallowed halls.” He raised his brows and narrowed his eyes on his quarry, not the least sorry to exploit any advantage. “Lord Trenton, perhaps you would be so good as to help us?”

  The man’s eyes darted around nervously, as if those nearby might be able to scent out the sins of his past. “I think…the card room.”

  Giles glanced to Patience. She, too, was standing strong, her expression nothing but steely resolution. She looked at the men as if daring them to challenge her. His heart soared. What a woman. “Shall we?”

  She gave a single nod.

  “Scatter some of those drawings about as we go, will you?” He grinned. “If we haven’t made an impression yet, we will now.”

  Patience tugged the portfolio’s ribbon free, reached in for a few sheets, and tossed them in the air as they went. They fell where they would.

  They marched back to the card room, Patience strewing drawings behind them. The club’s men realized what they were and clamored to grab them.

  Giles sighted his target at the same moment the duke saw him. The older man’s jaw dropped open, and he pushed inelegantly to his feet, as if disbelief had compromised his balance. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Something you’ll never forget, Your Grace.” With his good arm, Giles reached into the portfolio himself and tossed his drawings up. They fell all around them, on the floor and on the felted table with the forgotten cards. “To remind you that you’ve lost.”

  More of the club’s attendants rushed into the room, all talking at once.

  The duke held up a hand, silencing them, and sneered at Patience. “Mark my words, you peasant whore—”

  “No, Your Grace. You mark my words.” The force of Giles’s words rendered the room silent. Silverlund might have been the duke, but the son was by far the more powerful player. Giles felt every inch of his dominance in a way he never had before. The duke had finally gone too far. “You will never interfere with me again. You will never step foot on my property. You will never come near her.”

  “Or what? How do you think you’re going to stop me?”

  “You killed my horse and burned my work. Sometimes I have a difficult time remembering that you didn’t break my arm. You stole my love of riding. You will steal nothing else. You will never have that much control over me again.

  “As for what you did to Miss Emery, well. You’ve done it. There is a limit to how far you can hurt us. There is, however, absolutely no limit to how far and how deeply I can humiliate you.” He grabbed a drawing from the table, partially crushing the paper, and shoved it in the duke’s face. “But unlike you, I’m proud of what I did. What I have been capable of. What I brought into the world that you tried to destroy. And I will stop at nothing—nothing—to regain what I lost.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A cold sweat on Giles’s brow made the soft curls stick to the skin.

  They were back in his drawing room, and the time to face the thing he feared most was at hand. If the bone setting worked, he would be whole again. If it didn’t, all hope would be lost.

  “Have you ever been or are you currently dependent upon anything that comes from the poppy flower, my lord?” Mr. Kelly spoke with a heavy Irish accent and gave Giles a frank assessment, no clear indication that he had any expectation either way. Kelly was a large man, heavily built. Bonesetters required a great deal of strength. He looked to lack none of what was required.

  “Never touched the stuff.”

  “Pray allow me to be direct, my lord.”

  “I would accept nothing less, sir.”

  “Very good.” The bonesetter bowed in deference. “Discounting childbirth, bone pain is the worst there is, and I will insist you take a significant quantity before I will begin. For your own good. It’s not ideal that you’ve never before tried it. You won’t know how you tolerate it.”

  “I’ll do whatever I have to do, Mr. Kelly.”

  The bonesetter mixed an allotment of laudanum drops in a cup of strongly brewed tea, the glass dropper clinking against the vial when he replaced it. Giles drank the mixture down quickly.

  “You needn’t fear, my lord.” Mr. Kelly took the cup and set it on the side table. “’Tis a rare bone I can’t help.”

  Giles rested his head in Miss Emery’s lap. He reached up his right hand. She took it and laced their fingers together, squeezing gently. “I’m here for you, my love.”

  “I woul
dn’t attempt this without you.” It wasn’t the pain he feared. Pain he could surmount. It was the fear that this wouldn’t work. That the bonesetter was wrong. That Giles would never be restored. “It’s your faith and strength I’m relying upon.”

  “You have it.”

  “If I come through this—if I’m restored, I’m going to ask you to be my wife. Properly this time. I need you. It’s complicated, I suppose, because you’re also the reason I’m doing this.”

  “My answer will be no.”

  Confused, he raised his heavy lids and stared up at her through blurred vision. “Did I hear you correctly, or is the drug lifting the curtain between reality and nightmare?”

  “I said no, my lord. If you ask me when you’re better, I will say no.”

  Rage stirred within him. If he didn’t have her by his side, he didn’t have a reason to live. It took all his strength not to fall into a dark abyss. What would he do without her? What would he be? The future stretched long and empty before him. “I don’t understand. Is it because of my father?”

  “Your father has no influence over my decisions.”

  His reality was becoming soft—and it wasn’t the warm welcome of her lap. It was the tincture beginning to work. “That before…at the club, that was as much for you as it was for me. This—the bonesetter—this is for you.”

  “If you’re not good enough for me now, broken arm and all, you won’t be good enough for me afterward.”

  It took a moment for the words to penetrate his thickening skull. Then his heart soared. Or would have—save for one thing. “But I can’t ask you to marry me when I hardly know what I am anymore.”

  “Didn’t you prove exactly what you are today at your father’s club?”

  “My arm—”

  “You are only as broken as you believe you are. And whatever you are is what you’ve always been.”

  “But my painting—”

  “You are not your painting. You are infinitely more.”

  Giles snorted. “Miss Emery, I’m discovering that while you possess a plethora of sterling qualities, you are also the tiniest bit aggravating.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to rescind your promise of an offer?”

  “I thought you didn’t want a promise of an offer.”

  “No, I don’t want the promise of an offer. I want an offer. Now. While the future is uncertain.”

  Giles frowned. “The benefit will be entirely on my side. You won’t gain anything by allying yourself with me.”

  “That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. You’re not a stupid man, and you’ll be far less interesting if you become so. I recommend avoiding that path.”

  “Far be it from me to thwart a lady’s desires, but if you’re going to have the worst father-in-law a woman could ever have…”

  “I should tell you that my own father was an unwanted infant left to die and raised as a foundling.”

  “I don’t give a hang if you were spawned by the gutter and count Titus Oates, Hugh Despenser, Guy Fawkes, the Duke of Cumberland, and King John all together as your antecedents.”

  She smiled down at him. “You see? You’re the only husband I could ever want.”

  And she was the only wife and partner he could ever want. The certainty he’d discovered that morning in the church hadn’t wavered. No, indeed. If anything, it’d grown stronger. “You will then?”

  “Do you want children?”

  “If I have them with you.”

  She squeezed his hand again. “Then I will.”

  The world was disappearing into mist and haze. Any motivation he might have possessed was falling away as he sank deeper into the power of the drug. No wonder people lost themselves to this. They no longer had to care about anything. Pain disappeared. It was as if he’d been folded in the protective embrace of an angel’s wing. And it was all out of a bottle.

  “I’m your fiancé now. You have to listen to me.”

  “Become accustomed to disappointment, my lord, because I plan on exercising my right to say no whenever I please.”

  “Vixen.”

  “Ox.”

  “I love you.”

  “And I you.”

  …

  Patience hadn’t watched Mr. Kelly work on the man who’d been injured in the printing press accident. She’d been nearby, though. The screams would never be erased from her memory—and neither was the visceral sensation of weak helplessness and profound illness that had come over her when she’d heard them.

  Giles, however—and how lovely it was that she could now call him by his Christian name—held it all back. He was soaked in sweat, his face was contorted in pain, but the muscles of his jaw and neck strained as he fought to remain master of himself. Throughout the whole ordeal, he’d remained conscious—which wasn’t terribly usual, according to the bonesetter.

  “The hard part is over.” Mr. Kelly was washing his hands in the basin a servant had brought in. “Now the healing begins. Properly, this time.”

  Thank God for that. Patience had nothing left, but she’d do it all over again if it meant helping the man who was going to become her husband.

  “You think you can keep watch for the night so he doesn’t disturb the splint?”

  “I will do my absolute best, sir.”

  The bonesetter was packed and ready to go, but he stopped to face her. “It’s none of my concern, of course, but if you’ll allow me the liberty of being bold, I’d like to say that I think the two of you suit each other perfectly.”

  Patience flushed with pleasure, feeling unusually formal after the earnestness of the statement. “Your compliment is welcome, and I thank you.”

  She sent word to her parents that she was well and safe, but that she would not be returning home for the night. The whys and wherefores she didn’t attempt to address. It would not do to tell them in a message anyway. What she’d written would no doubt send her mother into hysterics, but better that than being away from Giles in his moment of greatest need.

  She sat with him through fantastical mutterings, as he wandered in and out of consciousness, and his numerous attempts to get up for reasons he incoherently tried to explain: he needed to have words with the fishmonger who’d sold his cook a cod that wouldn’t stop singing; he had to climb up to the ceiling to stop the rain from pouring in; and he needed a vessel to get him down the canal for a ball.

  By the faint glow of dawn, Giles finally rested peacefully. It was nearly eight of the clock, if the piece on the mantel were correct, when he cracked his lids and squinted at her. His lips were pale, his skin damp. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “Did we do what I think we did or was it a dream?”

  “It was no dream.” She carefully arranged his head on the pillow and called for tea, bidding him to remain seated while she stood. “You need a drink.”

  “You never told me what it was he did.”

  “Now’s not the time.”

  Giles scowled, red-rimmed eyes widening as far as they could while being so puffy from sleep. “Patience. Tell me.”

  “He burned my father’s printing house.”

  He made no response because the tea arrived. Patience fixed it. “Remember when I first came to Glenrose and you fixed me tea?”

  “My father—”

  They were interrupted again by the entrance of an older woman with the stately assurance of one well used to being the highest-ranking person in any room.

  It wasn’t difficult to know why. The woman had the same tilt to her chin and the set to her mouth as Giles, who’d risen to his feet at her entrance. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

  Giles’s next words confirmed the connection. “Mother, this is Miss Patience Emery.”

  The duchess gave Patience an absentminded assessment, then, after a polite “Pleased to meet you, Miss Emery,” put her full attention back on her son without waiting for a response. “There’s a rumor flying about of you having stormed White’s and confronted the duke. Is it tr
ue?”

  “True. But there is a far more interesting tidbit I think you’ll want to know.”

  The woman’s brows rose. She looked apprehensive. “There’s more?”

  “Miss Emery here is the woman I’m going to marry.”

  The duchess’s blue gaze landed upon Patience with new interest. “You? You’re going to…marry m-my son?”

  “I am, Your Grace.” Patience curtsied prettily.

  “And you’re quite sure?”

  “Yes.” The reply came out huskily, but there was no other answer. Patience wouldn’t give him up. Not for anybody. Not for any reason.

  The duchess paled, her eyes huge and unblinking on Patience. A stark silence engulfed the room. Without warning, Her Grace burst into sobs.

  Patience’s stomach turned. She’d expected his mother to react somewhat negatively to the idea. But this? She pressed a hand to her mouth, about to be sick.

  Without warning, the duchess threw her arms around Patience and bussed her cheek, wetness from the tears damp on Patience’s skin. All thoughts of the duke seemed to have vanished. “Oh, my dear, you will never know how happy you’ve made me.”

  The marquess replied drily. “Mother, you wound me.”

  “Oh, Giles, I never thought…” Her face rumpled as she tried to hold back more tears. She took the handkerchief he offered and dabbed her face. Even the way she attended to the mundane was elegant.

  The duchess froze, blinking at Patience through tears. “Forgive my indelicacy, my dear, but are you increasing?”

  “No, Your Grace.”

  “Oh.” The woman deflated. Then she rallied. “Well, that’s all right. Soon, perhaps.”

  “Mother.” A warning edge gleamed from Giles’s voice.

  “You’re to be married.” She clasped her hands together, eyes shining with wetness she hadn’t bothered wiping away as much as with bright joy. “Such things must be thought of.”

  “You realize you won’t be able to kidnap any child of ours, don’t you?”

  She tsked. “Oh, Giles.” The duchess looked at Patience again. “Do you really love him, my dear?”