Harlequin Historical February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: Never Trust a RakeDicing With the Dangerous LordA Daring Liaison

by Annie Burrows

  ‘It is why you run your refuge house in Whitechapel, why you seek to help those women who wish to escape prostitution. And why you never gave yourself to any man before me.’ He understood at last.

  She nodded. ‘I swore I would not make the same mistakes as my mother. I hated Rotherham for what he had done. But, much as I loved my mother, I hated that she had let Rotherham do it. I thought she was weak. Because she loved him, you see, despite everything. She always told me a woman could not choose who she fell in love with and I did not believe her, not then.’ She paused. ‘Not until I met you.’ She met his gaze. ‘I am sorry, Francis. I should have told you myself, a long time ago. Before we were married. Before it was too late. But I was too ashamed.’

  He took her hand in his and raised her to her feet, staring into her eyes all the while. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of. I love you, Venetia. Nothing changes that.’ He stroked a stray tendril of hair from her face. ‘But I know how painful and private this part of your past is for you. We do not have to do this with Robert. No one need know of your mother.’

  But she shook her head. ‘People think you did it, Francis, that you are the viscount that got away with murdering a duke. They think we struck a deal, that you bought me off with marriage.’

  ‘It does not matter what they think. We know the truth.’

  ‘It does matter. I saw what it did to you to have even your closest friends and family believe so readily in your guilt.’

  ‘They had good reason. Clandon is right, I am a villain, Venetia.’

  ‘No, Francis. You are a good man and an honourable one.’

  ‘You have not asked me what I would have done had Rotherham not left London when I threatened.’

  ‘Would you have killed him? she asked softly.

  ‘I cannot say that I would not.’

  ‘And you cannot know that you would. What matters, Francis, is that you did not kill him. Everything that you have done was to protect your family. The world needs to know you are an honourable man. And that is why I will not back down from this.’

  Their eyes held.

  ‘Even if they hang him?’ he asked.

  She nodded, but she could not stop the tears that welled in her eyes or their escape to roll down her cheeks. She glanced down.

  He tilted her chin and raised her face to look into his. ‘What if they were to transport him instead?’

  ‘It would be a mercy.’

  ‘Then we will ask for mercy, Venetia...from those who hold influence.’ She followed his gaze to his silver wolf’s-head walking cane, that leaned against the wall by the side of the fire, and saw the glitter of the two emerald eyes.

  * * *

  The trial had not been easy for Venetia. Robert spilled his guts on her mother, but it was not as bad as Venetia expected. Indeed, there was a curious sense of liberation in having the secret exposed. She had nothing more to hide. Linwood loved her, all of what she was, and all else paled in comparison to that. Robert was found guilty of the murder of his father and sentenced to transportation to Australia, never to set foot in England again.

  A week after the sentencing, Venetia stood in the early morning light at the drawing-room window of their home in St James’s Place. She wrapped her dressing gown more tightly to cover her nakedness and stared out at the first flurry of snow that fell like tufts of soft cotton to lie on the street below. Winter had come. Soon it would be Christmas. And she thought how much her life had changed in the turning of one season. All of her core beliefs of the past, of herself and the future challenged and reformed. From celebrated scandalous actress to viscountess. Success and power, fame and fortune, did not make for true happiness. That came from the heart, from loving another, wholly, completely, and knowing that they loved you. Her heart felt expansive and warm and brimful with love for the man who lay sleeping in the next room.

  A soft noise sounded and Linwood, still naked and warm from their bed, came up behind her, slipping his arms around her waist and brushing a kiss against her hair.

  ‘I thought you were still sleeping,’ she said.

  ‘Not without you,’ he murmured. He glanced out at the snow scene and then his beloved dark eyes moved to hers. ‘Have you things on your mind, Venetia?’ The words echoed those that had passed between them on a theatre balcony a lifetime ago.

  ‘Only good things. And all of which you know.’ She smiled. ‘I am glad that your name is finally cleared.’

  ‘Thanks to you.’ He whispered against her ear. ‘I love you, Venetia.’

  ‘I love you, too, Francis.’

  Out of secrets and a game of dark deceit had come a love that was brilliant and glaring in its honesty, a love that would stretch to all eternity.

  He smiled and nuzzled her neck. ‘Come back to bed, my love.’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled and, slipping her hand into his, let him lead her to their bedchamber.

  They had the rest of their lives to live in love and in happiness. And as if to mirror the wonder that was in both their hearts, outside, the snow, so pure and white and radiant, fell in silent joy to render the London streets beautiful.

  * * * * *

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  London, April 1822

  Charles Hunter always sat with his back to the wall to avoid unpleasant surprises—a tactic he had learned from his superior at the Home Office, Lord Wycliffe—and the Black Dog Tavern was not a place where one would want to be surprised. Charles watched Wycliffe come toward him now, wondering why he had arranged this meeting outside the office. The grim look on his face was not reassuring.

  Trouble, then. Serious trouble, and highly sensitive if they couldn’t they talk about it at the Home Office. He took a deep drink from his mug and gestured to the waiting tankard, which Wycliffe lifted promptly.

  “Hunter,” he said as he sat.

  Charles nodded. “What is this about?”

  “It’s on the hush, Hunter. I can’t make you take the venture, but it would be good for your career if you did. Probably get you that assignment to the Foreign Office you asked about. That’s why I thought I’d give you first chance at it.”

  The Foreign Office? That was a plump little carrot to dangle in front of him. He’d wanted to get the hell out of England for months now. Maybe a transfer would clear his head. Ever since he’d been wounded last fall, he’d been restless, angry and a bit reckless. Standing by one’s best friend as he was shot through the head could do that to a man, he’d been told.

  “What’s it about?”

  Wycliffe sighed and looked down into his ale. “Long story. First, have you met the late Lady Caroline Betman’s former ward, Georgiana Carson, currently known as Mrs. Gower Huffington?”

  Charles covered his surprise and damned the quick twist of his gut at that name. Did he know her? Hell, he’d been about to propose to her when her guardian informed him that his feelings were not returned. But that was before she’d married for the first time. She’d been so fresh. So beautiful. So duplicitous.

  “We’ve met,” he admitted.

  “What do you think of her?”

>   “I’ve always thought she is a stunner. Intelligent and self-possessed, though guarded and...”

  Wycliffe nodded again, as if confirming Charles’s opinion. “Inscrutable?”

  Charles shrugged. He’d been about to say deceitful, but perhaps that had only been his experience. “Aloof, I’d say. And not given to emotion.”

  “Odd for a woman who’s been married twice.”

  “And widowed twice, and hides in the countryside now, from what I hear.”

  “Then you didn’t know?” Wycliffe narrowed his eyes as he sat back in his chair. “Mrs. Huffington has come back to town.”

  The connection was lost on him. What did Georgiana Huffington, née Carson, have to do with Wycliffe’s assignment? He rubbed his shoulder, still aching from the ball he’d taken when his friend was killed last October. “Aye, she’s come back to town and...?”

  “Good Lord, Hunter! Where have you been? Allow me to catch you up.” Wycliffe leaned forward again and lowered his voice as if he feared they might be overheard. “Rumor has it that she killed her husbands.”

  Charles stared into his ale, remembering his obsession with the woman seven years ago. He’d been taken with those olive-green eyes—and the promise of lush curves beneath her demure girlish gowns. She’d been shy, sweet and possessed of a gentle humor he found endearing but there had always been a hint of darkness and mystery about her. “She doesn’t look like the type.”

  “You, better than most, know that appearances can be deceiving. Why, you’ve witnessed things that would shock the ton into speechlessness—with the possible exception of me.”

  Aye, the deceit and duplicity he’d seen beneath innocuous appearances no longer surprised him. He was a jaded man.

  “But I am glad you find her appealing. That will make your job easier.”

  A job involving Mrs. Huffington? Never. Charles laughed and shook his head. “I am on holiday. Personal matters to settle.”

  “Come, now, Hunter. I know you are not spending your leave playing with the demimonde and dancing with new country lasses fresh into town for the season. Not while Dick Gibbons is still at large.”

  Gibbons. That misbegotten, vile, flea-infested bag of manure. Gibbons was the personal matter he intended to settle before taking another assignment. He’d wager all he owned that Gibbons was the man who’d killed his friend and put a bullet in his shoulder. “I have business of my own to attend, Wycliffe. I am not inclined to help you with any ‘unofficial’ problems at the moment.”

  Wycliffe sat back in his chair and tapped the table with one finger, a jaded expression on his face. “The truth is that you need to kill Gibbons before he kills you, eh? I’ve seen all kinds, Hunter, but the Gibbons clan is beyond my comprehension. I cannot think what could account for their felonious nature.”

  “It’s in their blood,” Charles murmured. “It’s who they are and what they were born to be.”

  “I’ve known good men with no better beginnings. You do not really believe in ‘bad blood,’ do you?”

  “Aye, I do. And I believe if it’s birthed a Gibbons, you’d do the world a favor to exterminate it before it can spread.”

  Wycliffe gave a short laugh. “And nature and upbringing have no bearing? Are inconsequential?”

  Charles shrugged. “I’d say they count for very little.”

  An arched eyebrow was Wycliffe’s reaction. “I can see this is not the night for a philosophical discussion.”

  It certainly wasn’t. Charles brought the conversation back to the point. “So if you think the Huffington woman is guilty of something, put someone else on her trail.”

  “That’s precisely why I need your help. It isn’t official, you see. Not yet. It is...delicate, and requires someone who is socially adept, accepted at all levels of society and who has a light touch.”

  “If it is not official, why are we poking our noses in what doesn’t concern us?”

  “Requests from some rather prominent people. Her former husbands’ families are suspicious of the nature of the deaths. Too coincidental, they say. Too convenient. For her.

  “She has profited nicely from both deaths. And her last husband, Gower Huffington, was quite wealthy. No immediate family, but he has a distant nephew who was expecting to inherit. He thinks Mrs. Huffington cozened his uncle into changing his will and thus cheated him of his due.”

  Disgruntled relatives looking for an inheritance were not reason enough to drag his attention from Dick Gibbons. He shook his head again. “Not interested.”

  “You haven’t heard the rest.” Wycliffe finished his ale and pushed his chair back. “About her and Adam Booth.”

  A cold feeling settled in the pit of Charles’s stomach at the mention of his friend. “What about Booth?” Adam had taken a bullet that had been meant for Charles, and Charles had been carried away with a bullet in his left shoulder. Dick Gibbons had been gunning for Charles, not Adam. His friend had just gotten in the way. And what did any of that have to do with Mrs. Huffington?

  “He’d been courting Mrs. Huffington. ’Tis rumored they’d signed marriage contracts the day he was killed.”

  Charles remembered Booth’s interest in the widow, but he hadn’t realized how serious it was or he’d have warned his friend against her. He took a long, slow drink, digesting this information.

  Wycliffe pressed his advantage. “Furthermore, Mrs. Huffington’s former guardian, Lady Caroline Betman, died rather suddenly. Her death is being seen as yet another convenience for Mrs. Huffington. Each death was ruled accidental, save Lady Caroline’s, which was thought to be natural. That is why the investigation must be kept unofficial. There is no new information that would warrant reopening the inquiries. Gathering that information would be your task.”

  Charles was forced to admit that Mrs. Huffington looked guilty of something. And he’d known unlikelier killers. “I only knew her briefly seven years ago, and have no way of knowing what she may or may not be inclined to do. In fact, I can think of no reason to take this assignment. I need to find Gibbons before he finds me.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Maybe it isn’t Gibbons you are looking for.”

  For a moment—just a moment—Charles thought Wycliffe was suggesting... “Mrs. Huffington?”

  Wycliffe spread his arms wide. “Why not? If she is guilty of killing her husbands, then why not Adam Booth? Even his father has paid a visit to the secretary. You always said it was not like Gibbons to miss, nor was a pistol his first choice of weapons. What if it wasn’t Gibbons holding the gun that night after all?”

  That supposition gave Charles a moment’s pause until logic took over. “What could her motive be? She wasn’t married to Booth, so she did not stand to inherit. Would she not have waited until the nuptials?”

  “Lady Caroline had negotiated a nominal settlement should Booth not wed her, no matter the reason. Afraid he’d back out, no doubt.”

  Bloody hell! Was everything he’d believed wrong?

  * * *

  “Two husbands? And both of them dead?” Lady Sarah Travis asked without preamble, her violet eyes wide with astonishment.

  Georgiana Huffington was well aware that the Wednesday League book club had convened an emergency meeting on her account. The ladies were quietly dedicated to helping women who, for one reason or another, found themselves in a pickle.

  She gave a decisive nod, feeling the color rise to her cheeks. It was always the same—this reaction. Perhaps it was because she was only three-and-twenty. Or perhaps they were wondering how she could possibly have had such colossal ill fortune. They might as well know the worst immediately. “And one fiancé,” she admitted with a breathless sigh.

  Grace Hawthorne leaned forward and placed her teacup on a low table. “My dear! That is...too heartbreaking.”

 
Lady Annica Auberville and Lady Charity MacGregor, the other two women present, nodded their agreement.

  “Is this why Gina has brought you to us?” Lady Sarah prodded with a sideways glance at her sister-in-law, Eugenia Hunter.

  “She said you might be able to help me.”

  Lady Annica placed her teacup beside Mrs. Hawthorne’s and studied Georgiana intensely. “I confess I do not know how.”

  Dizzy with the implications of what she was about to say, she took a deep breath before she could say the words aloud. “I have begun to wonder if their deaths were altogether natural.”

  She expected protests, or at least some sort of reassuring denial. But the ladies merely studied her as if she had said something perfectly reasonable. For a long moment, the only sound in Lady Sarah’s elegant sitting room was the rhythmic tick-tock of an ornate tall case clock in one corner.

  Finally, Lady Sarah nodded. “Please rest assured that anything revealed in this group is utterly confidential. And we shall expect the same of you.”

  She heaved a sigh of relief and nodded her agreement rather vigorously. What she was about to say was bad enough, but to risk it being repeated was untenable.

  The women smiled and Lady Sarah inclined her head. “Could you give us a brief summary, Mrs. Huffington?

  A sick feeling settled in the pit of Georgiana’s stomach. “I was first married at seventeen, barely three months after entering society. His name was Arthur Allenby. The night of our vows he tumbled down the stairs, having had a bit too much celebration.”

  “Consummated?” Lady Annica asked in a very frank manner.

  Dear sweet Allenby. He’d been so eager for the marriage bed, and then... “No. He fell before, well, you know. Mr. Allenby’s family returned my dowry, added considerable compensation and sent me back to my aunt Caroline’s at once. I was a reminder of the tragedy, they said. Then, after my mourning and an extra year, came Gower Huffington. We wed two years ago. In December. We traveled to his country estate for our honeymoon.” This time there had been a consummation. He’d been quite eager and quick—over before she’d been able to ease the pain. And once again, for good measure Gower had said. She had dared hope she would come to tolerate it in time. “A day or two after we arrived, he went for a walk and did not return. By the time the woodsman found him the next day, he was quite dead. His heart gave out, the coroner said.”