The Infamous Rakes

by Amanda Scott

  “Oh, pish tush,” the duchess exclaimed. “How could anyone publish an announcement of that sort without discovering all there is to know about the gentleman in question? You cannot have thought, sir, for she is said to be an earl’s daughter, so where is the earl in all of this? That is what I should like to know, for surely he cannot have allowed such an announcement to be sent in without taking a hand in the matter himself. You will learn, I make no doubt, that her father knows precisely what he is doing, and to whom he is doing it.”

  “At present,” the duke said, turning his chilly gaze upon his son, “I wish only to learn how she became sufficiently acquainted with Baron Hopwood to think he means to wed her.”

  “I doubt she ever did,” the duchess retorted. “I am persuaded that she created this farrago of nonsense out of whole cloth and has never so much as laid eyes upon poor Josiah.”

  Thorne’s temper had reacted instantly to his father’s tone, but his mother’s fierce defense brought a smile to his eyes if not to his lips, and he said much more calmly than one might have expected, “I wish I could say she has not laid eyes upon me, Mama, but though I doubt she would recognize me if we came face to face—I am quite certain I would not recognize her—the fact is that we met briefly in October, and the circumstances were such that I thought it best to introduce myself as Hopwood.”

  “Oh, October,” the duchess said, nodding. “When you went to see about purchasing Mr. Haver’s yacht. You went to a party, I daresay, and met the girl in passing. I have once or twice been tempted to introduce myself as Mrs. Nobody of Nowhere, but people nearly always know who I am without my saying anything.”

  Thorne barely heard her, for a vision had leapt to his mind of a piquant face surrounded by a tangle of wet curls, of large, frightened eyes, a tip-tilted nose, and swollen, kissable lips. He could almost hear again Lady Gillian’s surprisingly dignified voice, and he suspected he was being untruthful when he said he would not recognize her again. Firmly, however, he said, “There was nothing in our meeting to suggest to anyone that we were ever likely to see each other again, let alone to suggest the formation of a more intimate relationship between us.”

  “There, you see,” the duchess said to the duke. “’Tis just as I said it was, my love, and you have been most unfair to take poor Josiah to task.”

  The duke’s stern gaze remained fixed upon his son as he said dryly, “Despite his many other faults, I have never found ‘poor Josiah’ to be untruthful, so I am inclined to believe him, but that does not alter the present situation one whit. If she were some nobody’s daughter, or if ‘poor Josiah’ had been a paragon of virtue all his days, no doubt the Gazette could merely print a second announcement, explaining that an error had been made. But neither option describes the case. Therefore, Josiah, since you have been at some pains to build your reprehensible reputation, you must now attend to its consequences with similar care.”

  “Oh, I will attend to it, sir. Of that you may be certain. There is nothing about it that need concern you.”

  “Make no mistake,” the duke said harshly. “I will have no more scandal attached to our name, nor will I allow you to ruin Lady Gillian’s reputation. Even if she has brought this business upon herself, you must see to it that the tattlemongers discover nothing to twist their tongues in her direction. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

  “I cannot speak for the Lady Gillian, Father. If she has created this tangle, I can scarcely be expected to protect her from its consequences. I will do what I can to keep the business quiet, however, and in less than a week from now, you will have the pleasure to read that she has cried off from her engagement.”

  “You much mistake the matter if you think that alone would give me pleasure,” the duke said.

  The duchess said sharply, “But what do you want then, Langshire? I protest, sir, you confuse me.”

  Thorne agreed. “I, too, am confused.”

  “Then you have not thought the matter through,” the duke said evenly. “If you did not lead this young woman astray—You needn’t poker up like that, but I believe you might have done so unwittingly. There are few other ways in which this can have come to pass. Either she is an unconscionable liar or she has been coerced by someone who recognized a minor title. In the first instance, she deserves to be punished, but without undue publicity. In the latter case, she certainly does not deserve to suffer as the result of someone else’s wickedness.”

  Thorne shrugged. “In any case, I still do not see why she cannot simply be forced to cry off.”

  The duchess, doing a swift turnabout, said, “Oh, but you must see that, my darling, for although her connections are excellent, she has never even been to town—at least, not that I know about. No one knows her, so everyone will believe the worst. Even if she is the one to cry off, people will assume either that you actually ended it or that she is both foolish and stupid to whistle your fortune and title down the wind. In any event, her reputation would suffer much more than your own.”

  “Just so,” the duke agreed, “and that I will not allow. Understand me, Josiah. You will sort out this business without displaying it before the public eye, or you will spend the rest of the year sorting out some rather tiresome estate business in Ireland. Perhaps, since you have once or twice in the past attempted to thrust your oar into running the estates, you will enjoy it, but since you have not yet managed to take the time to learn about them, I doubt it. Nevertheless, if you bungle this, you will go, and that, sir, is my final word on the subject.”

  Thorne had managed to remain fairly calm throughout the ordeal, but the duke’s final remarks aroused resentment that he had no acceptable way to vent, and thus inflamed his temper to such a state that by the time he departed for South Devon the following morning, neither his coachman nor his valet dared venture so much as a comment upon the excellence of the weather.

  2

  Carnaby Park, South Devon

  THE EARL OF MARRICK’S eruption into the green parlor shortly after midday startled the room’s four occupants so much that his lovely countess and his elder stepdaughter both exclaimed aloud, only to fall silent again when they saw the angry expression on his face. The silence lengthened while he stood glaring at them from the threshold, until the tension in the room grew nearly palpable. The earl was not a large man, being only of middle height with the form of one who has spent many hours in the hunting saddle, but his rage was awesome nonetheless. His complexion, customarily ruddy from so much time spent out of doors, was choleric now. His cheeks puffed in and out. His chest swelled.

  Gillian, who had been writing letters, looked up from her work and waited patiently to hear what he would say, but Lady Marrick was not so forbearing. Collecting herself and setting aside the fashionable magazine she had been perusing, she said with practiced hauteur, “Is something amiss, my dear sir?”

  Marrick sputtered, turning his fiery gaze upon her in incredulity. “Amiss? You may well say so, madam. Amiss! What a word for it! I tell you, I could not believe what I read with my own eyes. Look at this!” He waved the paper he carried.

  “Is that the Times, then?” Her beautiful blue eyes widened. “How very prompt the second post has been today, to be sure.”

  “It is not the Times, madam!” he bellowed. “The Times never arrives before three. Indeed, you may be thankful that it is not any London paper. For that small fact we may all be thankful!”

  “I do not understand you, husband,” Lady Marrick said, her voice rising and falling in a familiar chirping manner that Gillian instantly recognized as an imitation of an elderly dowager the countess had called upon several days before. “If we are to be thankful, sir, then why are you distressed?”

  “Distressed! Madam, I am not distressed. I am incensed!”

  Knowing from experience that her stepmother would continue to question the earl in this manner until he either threatened to throttle her or stormed out without explaining himself to them at all, Gillian put down her pen and said gent
ly, “What is it, Papa? What has put you out so? Pray, tell us.”

  “I am surprised you dare to ask, miss, for it is yourself, as you must know. Aye, you have put me out, that you have.”

  “I? But what have I done?”

  The earl strode toward her, waving a newspaper that she recognized as the South Devon Gazette, the weekly paper from the nearby town of Honiton. “You dared to take part in clandestine behavior the likes of which no gently bred lady ought ever to be party to. Don’t deny it! The proof is there beneath your nose, my girl, and I have learned precisely how it came about!”

  The paper was certainly thrust beneath her nose, and Gillian managed only with an effort not to pull away from it. The terrier curled on the sofa beside her sat up abruptly and growled at the earl, but no one paid Marcus the least heed.

  Gillian took the newspaper from her father’s hand. Though it had undoubtedly been given to him as all his papers were, smoothly ironed by one of the footmen, it was well creased now. She tried to smooth it, to find the news that had upset Marrick.

  “There!” The earl’s bony finger stabbed at the item.

  She read the announcement, and her eyes grew wide. She looked up again, red-faced but bewildered. “Papa, I knew nothing about this, I promise you.”

  Lady Marrick held out one slim, smooth, well-tended hand and said regally, “May I see that, please?”

  Gillian turned to her and said, “’Tis an announcement of my betrothal to Baron Hopwood, but I assure you—”

  “Betrothal!” Twelve-year-old, flaxen-haired Clementina, who had been listening avidly from her place on the claw-footed settee in the window embrasure, clasped her small hands together at her chest. “Are you really betrothed, Gilly?”

  “Hush, darling,” the countess said sternly. “A lady does not shriek. But you cannot marry a mere baron, my dear Gillian, for as daughter of the Earl of Marrick and niece to Viscount Vellacott of Deane you must marry much higher. Of course, it is a great oversight that you have not had a proper Season before now, but I am persuaded that when we take you and Dorinda to London at the end of the month, you will make a good showing. Of course, you are not so well favored as my beautiful Dorinda, for with her golden curls and quite elegant figure she is a diamond of the first water, as I believe those in the first circles would say.” She gazed complacently at her elder daughter, whose looks were nearly a mirror reflection of her own. Dorinda had returned to her tambour frame and, but for her scarlet cheeks, appeared to be oblivious to the accolade. “Surely,” the countess continued, “there can be no prettier girl in the metropolis than she, but you will do well enough, Gillian, surely better than a mere baron. Why, barons must be a penny the dozen in London!”

  “Madam,” roared the earl, “will you be silent!”

  Lady Marrick drew herself up and fixed him with a basilisk eye. “Do you address me, sir? Dare you take such an offensive tone with your own countess? I will not have it, and so I tell you most plainly. Have a care, sir, in how you speak to me.”

  He grimaced, making a hasty, dismissive gesture. “I meant no offense, but dash it, Estrid, I’ve never been so angry in all my life. How could the girl have done such a thing?”

  “I am right here, Papa,” Gillian said. “Pray, do not speak as if I had vanished. I feel already as if this whole business must be a bad dream from which I shall soon awaken. For weeks—no, ’tis months now—you all have made it clear that you did not even believe in my rescuer. I cannot imagine why you should be so quick now to think I would indulge in a clandestine relationship with him. I would not do so with any man, certainly not with one I had met only once—and in the dark, at that, so that I would most likely not even recognize him if I were to see him again. Moreover, I can assure you that I would never forget my position so much as to place my own betrothal announcement in any newspaper. Why, the very notion is absurd.”

  “Aye,” said the earl with a growl, “and so I thought myself, which is why I sent one of the lads into Honiton to make inquiries at the newspaper off—”

  Forgetting her warning to Clementina, Lady Marrick shrieked, “My lord, pray never say you did anything so indiscreet! Make inquiries? As well tell the world! Surely, you were not such a fool as to let them suspect there is anything out of the way.”

  “Hush, woman,” the earl said, but his tone was more controlled than before. “I sent one of my own lads, and I told him precisely what to say. He rode in this morning and returned less than twenty minutes ago. As it happens, he knows a chap that writes for the paper, who told him the young lady herself handed in the announcement at the end of last week to be printed today. It was the talk of the place at the time. Never occurred to any of them that it wasn’t God’s own truth.”

  Gillian said, “But I never—”

  “If it was handed in last week, why wait until today to print it?” Lady Marrick demanded, glaring her to silence.

  “It’s a weekly paper, that’s why. Still, there’s something dashed odd about the business, and that’s plain fact.”

  Clementina said reasonably, “Why didn’t you tell us, Gilly?”

  The earl glared at the child. “Why ain’t you in the schoolroom, for goodness’ sake?”

  Lady Marrick said, “Because I gave her governess a week’s leave to visit her mama, that is why. Furthermore, she asks a very good question. Why did you not tell us, Gillian?”

  Carefully, Gillian said, “I did not know anything about this, as I have already said. I told you all precisely what occurred that day last October. I have not seen Lord Hopwood since that evening, and since no one believed me when I described what happened then, I can imagine no good reason—”

  “Is that why you did it, Gilly?” Dorinda asked sweetly. She had put down her tambour frame at last, and was regarding Gillian with wide-eyed, angelic wonder. “Is it because no one was taken in by your idiotic tale of a knight in shining armor arriving just in time to save you? I should think that being the reigning belle of all Devon would be sufficient for any young lady, that she would not need to play tricks to make herself interesting.” She sighed. “I had hoped that someone might pay heed to me for once at Lady Halstead’s party tonight, but I can see now that you will be the center of attention as always, since everyone will be agog to learn the details of your betrothal. I wonder what you will say to them. Will you confess ’tis all a hum?”

  Clementina said, “Do not tease her, Dorrie. You must know Gilly would never do such a thing as this. Someone jealous of her popularity is having a game with her. I am certain of it.”

  Dorinda looked at her little sister as though she would debate the point, but when Clementina only smiled and shook her head, she fell silent and picked up her tambour frame again.

  Lady Marrick said, “I believe Dorinda has the right of it. One cannot be surprised if poor Gillian, as small and dark as she is, does not suffer pangs of jealousy whenever she must be seen with her more beautiful sister. Still, it is not the thing for her to be putting announcements in the paper, and certainly not announcements about made-up barons.”

  “He is not made up,” Gillian said.

  The earl glared at her. “I’d never have thought it of you, daughter,” he said. “Not before you dreamed up that nonsense when we were at the castle, at all events. But since then—”

  “To be sure, my lord,” Estrid said with a sigh, “the poor girl has not been at all the same since our dear little John was born. Such a severe blow to her to lose her inheritance like that. One can understand that she might behave a trifle oddly.”

  “Well, I’d not have thought it of her,” the earl said, glancing guiltily at Gillian. “And it ain’t as if she forfeited her entire inheritance, Estrid. As I’ve told you, she still has what her mother left her.”

  “Oh, but what is a woman’s wedding portion, sir? It can certainly be nothing compared to what poor Gillian has lost.”

  “Papa,” Gillian said, “I have done nothing wrong, and I do not feel the least bit displaced
by little John—or, at all events,” she amended honestly, “certainly not enough to do all the things of which I presently stand accused.”

  “Come now,” he protested. “To pretend that someone snatched you from the jaws of death was bad enough—”

  Lady Marrick laughed behind her hand. “Really, my dear Gillian, you simply cannot expect anyone to believe you climbed one of those dreadful rocks jutting up by the cliff tops near the castle. Why, no gently bred lady could do such a thing, and certainly not with a dog clutched in her arms. Indeed, none would even make the attempt, not under any circumstance.”

  “Madam,” Gillian said grimly, “I believe you underestimate the capabilities of anyone whose choice lies between improper behavior and the certainty that death must result from one’s failure to attempt it.”

  Stiffening, Lady Marrick cast a compelling look at her husband.

  Obedient to the look, the earl said, “You are impertinent, daughter. It will be as well for you if you seek your bedchamber until such time as I have got this business sorted out.”

  “Oh, dear,” Dorinda said sympathetically, “does that mean that Gilly will have to miss Lady Halstead’s party this evening? I am sure all her friends will miss her sadly.”

  “You will know nothing about it,” the earl told her, “for you will not be there either. I see no good reason to provide the gossips with any more titbits than they’ve got already.”

  The countess shook her head. “You go too fast, sir. This is none of Dorinda’s doing, and you will not want to spoil her pleasure. Moreover, though I agree that Gillian is in no case to go into society tonight, particularly if she means to deny the truth of the matter—or even if she does not, for all that—it will spark much more gossip if none of us attends. You know we have sent our acceptances. The only excuse for us not to go now would be an indisposition or a drastic change in the weather. We shall simply inform her ladyship upon our arrival that Gillian quite unexpectedly found herself too ill to accompany us.”