The Earl I Ruined

by Scarlett Peckham

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to cause you offense,” she said evenly, for he was not addressing the substance of her points, and she did not like to be dismissed when she was right.

  “You haven’t,” he said, obviously lying. “But that’s not what I came here to discuss. Please let the matter drop.”

  He looked pointedly into her eyes, as if waiting for her solemn oath. But she did not make unreasonable promises to people who failed to explain themselves, even if they became less handsome when they were cross with her.

  “I simply don’t see why you won’t invite them if it will be helpful to our cause. Why don’t you ever wish to explain yourself?”

  A tendon in his jaw twitched. “I don’t want them involved in our engagement, Constance, because of the way that it will end. The scandal will horrify my mother and reflect poorly on my sister. Remember, not every woman can afford to be as blithe as you about her reputation.”

  Ah. As usual, it was about her money, and his lack of it. Nothing made men less willing to speak sense to you than knowing you had something that they lacked.

  The old, familiar note of judgment in his tone was all the reminder that she needed that she was not in love with him. Not even slightly.

  “Very well. I assume you did not come here strictly to forbid me to bring shame upon your family with my wealth and dissipated character, so what would you like to discuss?”

  “The matter you mentioned last night,” he said briskly, now every inch old, humorless Lord Bore, “concerning the actress. Might we sit?” He gestured at the chairs in the center of the room.

  “Certainly.” She walked past the chairs and sprawled in a rather insolent pose on the sofa.

  He perched stiffly across from her, as if by achieving the perfect degree of straightness in his spine he could straighten out the aspects he found wanting in her character. “I must insist you tell me everything that you’re aware of, and then give me your assurance you will not probe any further.”

  If there was a single word she hated having leveled at her, it was must. She liked it even less when paired with lofty masculine dismissal of her proven abilities. If he did not trust her to help, she saw no reason to be candid. She knew the potent effects of her investigative powers; of his, she had grave doubts.

  She yawned. “All I know is that the woman who was spreading rumors about you appears to be connected to the Theatre Royal. You were probably right to dismiss it as idle speculation. I’m sure I was being dramatic in thinking it was anything beyond coincidence.”

  Apthorp looked at her gravely, in a manner that conveyed he was not fooled. “You must tell me exactly what you know,” he said. “In detail. From the beginning.”

  How bothersome. She vastly preferred her fake betrothed when he was giving touching defenses of her character or cuddling her in the shadows at the opera. Where had that man gone?

  She decided to start very early in the story. Perhaps he would grow so bored by the circuitous nature of the tale that he would leave her to get on with the business of saving his life in peace.

  “Well,” she drew out, “I suppose our odyssey begins when I decided to match you to Miss Bastian.”

  He drew up his brows in a rather forbidding fashion. “You were trying to make a match of us?”

  She had been quite assiduously trying to do just that. Why he looked so outraged by this notion, she could not hope to understand.

  “I was indeed. Did I not make that clear before?”

  “You said you thought I wished to marry her. You did not mention you were attempting to induce such an outcome.”

  He said this as though he had just discovered she had attempted to have him deported to New South Wales rather than to secure him a wealthy bride he had everything in common with.

  “You needn’t look so unhappy. I was trying to do you both a favor.”

  He smiled tightly, with no warmth. “Would you consider it a favor if I tried to inveigle you into marrying someone entirely unsuitable?”

  “Miss Bastian is not unsuitable. She is rich, attractive, poised, and fashionable. I thought you suited one another. I thought you were alike.”

  He looked like she’d put a fish bone in his tea. “Alike. I see. And I assume it has not escaped you that Miss Bastian is vapid, tiresome, and dull?”

  No one was less pleased with Gillian Bastian at this moment than herself, but even so, his contempt of her friend was irritating. Miss Bastian was not vapid, precisely—more like singularly focused on her own interests, which were mostly limited to shopping. A pursuit that Constance did not find dull in the slightest.

  “Is she vapid, tiresome, and dull, Lord Bore? Well, you can see how I thought she was perfect for you.”

  He glared at her, profoundly unamused. Then he stood, walked from the chair to the window, pressed two fingers against the glass, and was silent. His stillness made her vaguely nervous, so she was relieved when he finally turned back around.

  Until she saw his face.

  His eyes were lit with such a strange, dark energy that she could not tell if he was moved by anger, calculation, or some foreboding combination of them both.

  “If you think dullness is what I’m after, Constance,” he said, inspecting her face carefully, like she was a portrait of herself rather than a person, “then you should be much, much more careful. For one wonders if you understand anything about me at all.”

  His eyes met hers, and he smiled in a way that held no warmth, and yet, somehow, made her feel like she was burning.

  No. She didn’t understand him when he looked at her like that.

  And she was no longer certain she ever had.

  What Lady Constance Stonewell could not imagine, because she was far more innocent than she knew herself to be, was that dullness had never been among the traits he coveted in ladies.

  His tastes ran to naughty women.

  And if she called him Lord Bore one more time, he might set about teaching her in vivid detail the many, many other things she had misjudged about him.

  He was tempted to begin this very moment, because the expression on her face—like she was seeing him for the first time—made him itch to cast off years of hiding his attraction to her behind good manners.

  He wanted to find the nearest powdering closet and demonstrate just how very bad his manners could be.

  Were it only that he did not need to get the blasted story of his ruin out of her.

  “I digress,” he said, removing his eyes from her face in such a way that he was sure she would feel the loss of his gaze and miss it. “You intended to marry me off to Miss Bastian. And then what happened?”

  “Well,” she said, her voice rather more shaky than it had been, “the night of Lady Palmerston’s masque, I was watching you dance with Gillian.” She coughed, and seemed to recover her composure. “A woman in a stunning navy gown came and struck up a conversation. Her dress was a fabric unlike anything I’d ever seen. Gorgeous. I’d love to get something like it—”

  She was nakedly stalling. “Get to the point, Constance.”

  She pursed her lips into a precious little rosebud. “I am. If you knew anything about poetics, you would infer the gown shall feature later as a relevant detail.”

  “Please, then, continue,” he gritted out.

  “She observed it was your second dance with Miss Bastian and asked if I thought you had hopes for her. I said I thought good news might be imminent. She became very quiet. And then she whispered that she hoped Miss Bastian would not suffer regrets, given what she’d heard about your Wednesday nights.”

  Wednesday nights. That was, indeed, a rather specific detail.

  “She mentioned Wednesdays?”

  “Yes. And she said it in such a mysterious, ominous way that I, of course, immediately asked her what she meant.”

  “And what did she say?”

  She glanced up at him from below her long, pale lashes and smirked. “But don’t you know?”

  He fervent
ly hoped he did not.

  “Constance. What exactly did she say?”

  “She said she hoped Miss Bastian had a taste for leather. And observed that it’s often the prettiest men who are the most perverse.”

  Ah. Not nearly the whole of it, though the word perverse sent a flash of irritation through him. His practices were not perverse. “I see. And from this, you determined I enjoy a whipping and exposed me in your papers?”

  At the word whipping, Constance blushed, which pleased him in a way he was not proud of. The petty wounded man in him liked knowing she was not as nonchalant about these matters as she acted. The petty wounded man in him wanted to leave her with the distinct impression that there were many, many things about which a person like himself might educate her.

  “As you might understand,” she said primly, “I was taken aback. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but the dance ended and she moved off into the crowd before I could gather my wits.”

  He tapped his fingers on the window, no longer pleased at all. He should really inure himself to how little he had meant to her, but each time he learned a new detail, the extent of her indifference stung him fresh.

  “Am I to understand,” he said, “that you destroyed my reputation over a rumor from a total stranger?”

  She winced. “No. In fact, I intended to ignore the rumor entirely, because it was so laughable. I mean, imagine, Apthorp, you frisking about a bawdy house.”

  He turned around, stepped forward, and looked directly in her eyes.

  “Yes, Constance. Imagine.”

  She blushed so deeply that, despite his barely checked fury, he had to bite his cheek to keep from smiling in a most unseemly way.

  “In any case, I had no intention of pursuing the matter, until later that same evening when you asked me about betrothal gifts.”

  What he would give to take that moment back. It had been pitiful. He’d found her alone in the Palmerstons’ library, for once not attended by Hilary or her motley of friends, and she’d asked him whether he thought his bill would pass, and he’d been so flattered by her interest, so thrilled to be alone with her, that the words had just slipped out.

  What do you think a lady might like if a man who loved her were to declare himself?

  He was determined not to color at the dreadful memory. “So you gathered from my question that I intended to propose to Miss Bastian.”

  “Yes. And from thence decided I should make sure you were not, in fact, perverse, as Gillian is quite particular about men, and I had encouraged the match.”

  “Particular about men? My God, she’s about to marry Harlan bloody Stoke. Do you have any idea what he’s—”

  “Yes,” she shot back. “I do.”

  Her face was now crimson. He thought back to that week in Devon—one he’d tried fervently to forget—and had the uneasy feeling that something even less savory had transpired there than he’d originally suspected.

  “You must understand,” she said, before he could formulate that uneasy feeling into a question that possessed the degree of delicacy it merited, “that I had no idea Gillian was attached to him. She’d given me reason to think she was very fond of you. So for my own peace of mind, I decided to look into it.”

  “Look into it how?” He was instantly awash in dread at the notion she’d done more probing. There was a reason he’d always been on his finest form in Constance’s presence; her chilling aptitude for discovering people’s most inconvenient secrets.

  “Since the woman mentioned Wednesdays, it seemed easy enough to simply consult your diary.”

  “You read my diary?”

  “Well, you do tend to leave it on your desk, where anyone could find it.” She said this defiantly, like the fact that it had been possible to invade his privacy excused that it was childish and wrong. “And since you were living here at the time, I simply asked my maid to distract your valet while you were out, went inside your rooms, and consulted your notations.”

  He thought back, with sickening panic, to what he might have written about his activities on Wednesdays. He exhaled. Nothing detailed enough to be incriminating. He rarely recorded his day in more than snippets.

  Session at Charlotte Street with L. Naughty girl. Left bruises.

  M. tonight. Purchased ropes for the occasion.

  Saw F. Christ, the sounds she makes.

  Snippets that were, nevertheless, just colorful enough for an inexperienced girl to form conclusions without understanding anything at all.

  That she could somehow have such a detailed and yet incorrect picture of this most absolutely private aspect of his life was so offensive and intrusive that it made him want to gag.

  Instead, he said only: “How dare you?”

  She stuck out her chin. “I’m tired of being vilified for doing what I thought was right. I invite you to live as a woman and enjoy the choices we are blessed with, and then judge me for sharing information about what men do in private. I have kept such secrets before, out of discretion, and lived to very much wish that I had not. I didn’t mean to harm you; I only meant to protect Gillian. And however much I regret that my words were used against you, you cannot deny that they were true. Were they not?”

  He was not going to answer that. If she was going to be so smugly righteous about her own moral superiority, she could account for why she had not told him the truth from the beginning.

  And now he wondered how much she might be leaving out.

  “Here’s a question, Constance. Why didn’t you tell me you know Henry Evesham?”

  She sighed, like he was being tiresome. “I make it my business to know everyone. You know that. Don’t change the subject.”

  “I’m not changing the subject. How did he come to receive your poem?”

  She gasped. “You aren’t suggesting that I gave it to him?”

  After today, there was little about her he would not believe.

  “Did you?”

  “Of course not!” she snapped. “If I had wanted to ruin you, I would not be subjecting myself to this public indignity of having to pretend to like you.”

  They glared at each other, and he believed her, but not in such a way that made him less inclined to seethe.

  “Finish your story. How do you know the woman is an actress if you don’t even know her name?”

  “Yesterday I saw a sample of her gown at my dressmaker’s.” She paused. “You will recall I did say the gown would be important. We call that foreshadowing.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “That particular gown has only been sold to one person: the costumer at the Theatre Royal. Which means the woman was likely an actress. My mantua-maker is going to inquire who the dress was worn by. And then we’ll have another clue.”

  “No,” he snapped. “I already asked you not to pursue this. Do not consult further with your dressmaker. And whatever you do, do not say a single word to Henry Evesham. He’s circling the story and I don’t want him to think that either of us is taking the slightest bit of interest in it.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Do you have any further unreasonable and self-defeating demands or will that suffice?”

  “That will suffice. Good day.”

  He turned around and walked briskly for the door.

  “Wait,” she said coldly, half-rising from the sofa.

  He could only assume she was going to apologize, so he paused.

  “Forgive me for being frank, as I know you despise it when ladies display candor. But since today is Wednesday, I would be remiss if I did not ask you to break your usual appointment.”

  He stared at her. Her expression was defiantly blank.

  “You must be joking.”

  She rose fully to her feet. “I assure you, Apthorp, I am not.”

  To think what had been going through his head at lunch. This is how it would feel if she really were in love with me. And the traitorous thought that came after it: What if she wasn’t pretending?

  Bile splashed up in his
throat for indulging in such foolishness.

  The only thing that was real was her low opinion of him.

  He shook his head. “My God, the things you think of me.”

  “Not think,” she corrected quietly. “Know.”

  He was so angry he was shaking. He looked at her long and hard.

  “You know nothing, Constance. And though you believe courtesy to be beneath you, I would ask that while we must bear each other’s company, you grant me the small decency of considering what you are implying about my character when you say such things.”

  “All I’m implying is that your usual Wednesday habits are not conducive to our current goals,” she said with infuriating calm.

  “I wouldn’t observe my usual Wednesday habits, Constance, because in addition to being very foolish with Evesham circling, it would show a distinct lack of care or respect for my supposed future wife. Would it not?”

  “Yes,” she said peevishly. “It would.”

  He threw up his hands. “And yet you think I would do it anyway? You think I would risk humiliating you for a fuck?”

  She was silent, her face pinched into a bitter frown.

  He moved closer to her, until he was close enough that she was forced to look at him. “You are very quick to assume that I am a careless person. Someone who harms other people without a thought to the consequences. Have you ever stopped to consider why that is?”

  She stared at him angrily. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, I think you do. You’re observant enough to have gathered that we often loathe the qualities in others we most dislike in ourselves.”

  Chapter 9

  Apthorp’s meaning hit her like a sack of bricks between the shoulder blades, making it difficult to breathe. The old familiar claim. Wicked, harmful Constance. Never to be trusted.

  “I see,” she said slowly, so he would not hear that she was trying not to cry. “You believe I think these things of you because they are true of me. You think I harm people.”