by Stacy Reid
Whatever God he appealed to did not listen, for she stole into his dreams as she had done every night for the last several days. Keeping his eyes closed, he felt the phantom dream of her lying beside him, curved into his side, her lush mouth nuzzling into his throat.
Nicolas groaned, his cock twitching, his arms reaching out to grasp the air. It felt so damn real, as if she were really there. His dream lover bit his lower lip, then trailed that lush mouth down his neck and his chest.
Racoons do that.
That sultry murmur wrapped him in heated anticipation, and he drifted off to sleep with her tormenting him with her tongue and dry wit.
…
When Nicolas surged awake several hours later, his cock was heavy and straining against his belly, and his balls damn well ached. The dream was reluctant to leave—hell, he did not want it to leave, for in it, his little minx was wickedly caressing her tongue over his manhood, her beautiful eyes laughing at him and tempting him in the same breath. The memory of the wild and sensually wanton way she had come undone for him in the greenhouse rose in his thoughts. The hunger grew even as he felt discomfort with the recollection of how badly he had wanted her.
You made me tremble…my heart pounded and such cravings I’ve never known torment me for days.
Still lying on the bed, he threw an elbow over his forehead, and gripped his cock with his other hand. With a groan, he stroked upward, squeezing the head to prevent himself from releasing like an untried boy.
“Fucking hell,” he whispered in the dark of the room. “How can I want one woman this badly?”
He willfully pictured her thighs split wide on this very bed, her delicate fingers gripping his sheets, pillows propped under her hips arching her, and he on his knees tonguing her plump cunny. His Maryann was a screamer. She would yell her pleasure, possibly even clamp his head between her thighs.
He grunted when his cock flexed at the idea. That made him wonder if she would be able to take his girth. Then he remembered how damn wet she had been that night in the conservatory and how she had trembled under the lash of his tongue. The next time he had her in his arms, he would test her tightness and…
She is a lady, you blackguard, he reminded himself fiercely, pushing aside his lustful musings. Perhaps he should take the time to figure out if she had a place in his life at the end of everything. Clearly he would not be able to simply dismiss her from his thoughts or awareness. Nor do I want to. He had never met another lady like her and doubted he ever would again.
“I will need a wife eventually and heirs,” he said, his mind turning over the matter. Lady Maryann was a lady of quality and good-natured charm. He was sure his family would fall in love with her. Christ. The way his heart raced at the thought of Maryann being his wife shocked him.
She would be a suitable candidate to be his marchioness. More than suitable. He liked her. She was intelligent and had a little bit of cunning inside her. That, he appreciated more than he thought he would. She had a vibrant and unflinching spirit he admired. Her loveliness and damn smile always tossed his heart into disorder.
To court her, he would have to reshape the reputation he had in the ton from wild and wicked to a proper marquess. It had taken years for him to build this reputation. He couldn’t imagine what he would have to do to dismantle his dastardly notoriety. Worse, he felt like that part of him stamped upon his bones was simply another facet of himself he hadn’t known existed until he was forced to explore it.
Would her parents be open to his courtship even with his reputation?
What if the black Dahlia is her brother?
Ice congealed in his gut. There was no forgiveness for the men who took part in Arianna’s demise, and it was beyond him to show mercy to any of them.
He released his cock, ruthlessly expelling Maryann from his mind. It was a bit damn shortsighted to even be wondering about her until the path he had set for himself was over. But when would it actually be done with? A month from now? A year? Would she still be there when he was ready, or would she be forced into marriage with Stamford or another man, and Nicolas would then lose his chance with her forever?
With a hiss of irritation, he pushed from the bed, padded to the windows overlooking the square, dragged open the massive green drapes. The sun had lowered in the sky and the night revelers were already pouring from their homes. Turning away, he rang for a tray to be sent up and a bath.
It was time to prepare for facing the duke.
An hour later, dressed in the heights of current fashion, Nicolas elected to walk to the duke’s home, given that they both resided in Grosvenor Square, his silver-headed cane which held his blade in his hand. Upon entering the man’s home, Nicolas handed over his coat and hat, but retained his walking cane as he made his way down the hallway to the duke’s study.
The butler preceded Nicolas to announce his presence, and then he was allowed entry into the study that was well lit with gas lamps.
“I am surprised you came,” the duke said, not bothering to rise from his desk.
“What is surprising about it?” Nicolas asked blandly. “Did you not invite me?”
The duke’s gaze was shrewd, but desperation also lurked in the depths of his gray eyes. “I also invited three other friends over the course of the last week,” he spat. “None came.”
“To what do I owe the invitation to your home?” Nicolas drawled, taking in the duke’s disheveled appearance.
“Sit,” he commanded, still trying to retain a measure of control of those around him, as if he exercised the same powers he had done a year or more ago. The power of those in the ton always rested in money. If that money was threatened even temporarily, his position and reputation would be endangered.
Nicolas lowered himself into the armchair opposite the fire, and smiled, barely, but the duke’s bleary eyes narrowed. The duke retrieved an enamel snuffbox from his pocket, opened it, and took a pinch.
Nicolas did not rush to fill the silence, though he suspected that was what the duke wanted. A man who fancied himself above others and had always enjoyed his superiority would find it uncommonly distressing to ask for aid in any way. But this was the place Nicolas had worked to take him, three years of systematic assault on his wealth and holdings.
“Are you by chance seeking a wife, Rothbury?” the duke finally asked after some contemplation.
Now that was interesting. “A wife?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Are you really determined to only marry when you are forty?” he asked, his brows drawing together.
“That was just idle chatter.”
“I collect you, like many gentlemen, find my sister to be ravishing,” the duke said, with faint amusement in his eyes. “I’ve entertained a number of offers for Lady Sophie’s hand, but I think she needs a man of your stature, one who will be able to keep her in the elegances and luxuries she deserves.”
With his back flushed against the wall, and the odds now against him, the man thought to sell his sister.
“And so, you offer her to me?”
Farringdon smiled. “I offer her to you.”
“I fear you’ll have to consider one of her previous suitors. I am not a contender.”
The duke’s jaw slackened. The man had believed Nicolas would be salivating over Lady Sophie’s beauty.
“Come, man,” Farringdon said with an incredulous laugh, leaning back in his wing-back chair. “Do not pretend to be unmoved by her prettiness. My sister is incomparable!”
Nicolas lifted a quizzical brow. “Incomparable? I find her to be spiteful and an undeserving creature who bullies others she deems below her. Her charms are quite lost on me.”
The snuffbox dropped from the duke’s hand to clatter onto the surface of his desk. “How dare you?” he slung with outrage.
“I dare whatever I want,” Nic
olas said with icy civility. “I am sure you did not ask me to come to discuss your sister’s merits or lack thereof.”
They stared at each other, and the duke grimaced.
“I was hoping to be more delicate about it, but I believed you may be obliging enough to help me remedy a spot I find myself in—but not for long, I assure you, not for long.”
“I am listening.”
“My initial thoughts had been my sister’s hand in marriage for one hundred thousand pounds and shares in the copper mines you have in Cornwall.”
The duke had clearly used up her dowry living his reckless extravagant lifestyle.
“I am not interested in marrying your sister,” Nicolas said, keenly observing the duke.
“You truly do mean it,” the duke said, apparently at a loss.
Another man not bent on retribution or not tied into knots over Lady Maryann might have fallen on his face to wed the ravishing creature. The only thing Nicolas felt in regard to her were thoughts of wringing her pretty but scrawny neck for the vile plot she’d set against Maryann.
Farringdon leaned forward, resting his elbows on the over polished surface of his oak desk, his mien growing serious. “If I do not find a solution soon, we will be obliged to exercise the strictest frugalities and I might even have to remove myself to the country and let the town house to stop the bank from calling in the mortgage. Sophie and I might head to the poorhouse soon, and her immediate marriage is the most sensible remedy.”
“A man with three country estates and a town house can hardly believe himself to soon be poor.”
The duke scrubbed a hand over his face. “You do not know the full of it,” he growled. “I am damnably broke. All the money my father left: all gone. All the investments I had made over the years have fallen through. I cannot credit that much to pure bad luck.” He shoved at his desk with violence, jerking the sturdy oak with the strength of his anger. “All my creditors called in at the same time and the banks refused to extend me any more credit, as if they do not know who I am. I am the bloody Duke of Farringdon, and they dared refuse me! I swear it is as if I have the very devil himself after me and all he has laid at my feet is disasters.”
Dark pleasure filled Nicolas at the man’s obvious fright. “What do you want from me?”
“You are filthy rich,” the duke said bluntly. “I had my man of affairs check. You can easily afford to blunt me one hundred thousand pounds. I will repay it in good time, my man. That you can trust on.”
The duke waited with an air of expectation. Nicolas stood and held his hands over the fire. Keeping the duke in his periphery, he replied, “No.”
The man flinched. “Rothbury, if you will not take my sister in marriage, I will avail my other assets to you, of course,” he said coldly, as if he had been the one offended.
Nicolas smiled mildly, satisfaction settling deep in his gut. “I would not spot you a loan when I have been the man behind your present trouble.”
The duke froze. “What did you say?”
Nicolas faced him, his cane held in his hand. “You heard me.”
The duke stood, fisting his hand at his side. “By God, Weychell was right. He noticed that while our finances were being dealt blow after blow you remained flushed in the pockets.” He tossed his head arrogantly, a cruel sneer curving his mouth. “You would dare make enemies of us?”
“I would dare. Men stripped of their money and their connections sullied have no power. Surely you know this,” he murmured, allowing the facade he wore around them to melt away, and stared at the man, not bothering to hide the hatred that lingered in his heart. “There is no way out for you. You’ve gambled recklessly, losing thousands of pounds and a few unentailed estates in your arrogant idiocy.”
The duke flinched, and wariness settled over his face. He stared at Nicolas for several moments before standing with a scoff and saying, “You really expect me to believe you are the architect of the problems I am now facing.”
“Of course. Did you not wonder why the navy canceled their lucrative agreement with your ships on the high seas? Or why your tin mine got flooded without any of your workers being hurt and unwilling to return working for you? A mass exodus of almost two hundred men? Or is it that all of your unentailed properties’ mortgages were called in? That devil you wondered about…” He held out his hands, saying, here I am, before lowering them to his side.
Nicolas waited, allowing it to resound with the duke that all his financial losses of the past three years that had taken his dukedom to this level of insolvency were all at his ends.
When it dawned, his face flushed with rage. “You goddamn bastard! Why would you do this?”
“Because the ruination of Miss Arianna Burges demands it,” Nicolas said with icy contempt.
Bewilderment settled on his face. “Who?”
“The Golden Lion Inn. The only time you were ever there with your friends. All four of you were cronies from Eton who were studying at Oxford. Together you visited a friend in Wiltshire for a garden party. All five of you returned to town and stopped at the inn with plans to stay overnight. As you laughed, ate, and drank, a lone young girl entered and caught your attention.”
He twirled the head of his cane, fighting down the dark rage stirring in his gut and the pain in his heart. Nicolas continued dispassionately, “She was young, sixteen years of age, and astoundingly pretty. Her clothes and the knowledge she traveled alone would have revealed her station. Not her speech. For it was I who taught her to read…to write…and to play the pianoforte. She was invited to sup at your table. Which she did…because there was a wolf amongst you whom she trusted.”
The duke staggered, knowledge seeping into his gaze. His throat worked on a swallow, and he glanced away briefly into the fire before looking back at Nicolas, his gaze rage filled. “That was years ago.”
“Ten,” Nicolas snapped. “And three months!”
“I was but nineteen and only having a spot of fun, and for that…for that you have ruined me financially and my sister for a goddamn no-account gel?”
“A spot of fun,” Nicolas murmured, the need to draw his sword and slice open the man’s throat to let out the blood beating in his veins. He fought back the need, for he had committed no proven crime so that his family would not lose him to prison, which was where he would surely head if he killed a peer of the realm. It had also been the reason he had not challenged them to duels, not wanting to be pressed into fleeing England and to leave his sisters behind. So Nicolas had waged his well-calculated war to take the things from them they loved—their wealth, beautiful homes, and the vaunted reputations they enjoyed.
“You all violated her…except for one who stood silent, too afraid to partake, but too much of a coward to fight for her. But those who stand in the face of evil and do nothing…are just as complicit!”
The duke’s throat worked. “Goddamn it, it was not like that! She…” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “We gave her coins after. It was not like that.”
A sound of rage trapped behind Nicolas’s throat.
My tears are like endless rainfall.
Another line from her letter left behind whispered in his head in her haunting tone.
“Which of your friends stood by and only watched, and who did she see at your table and thought a friend?”
The duke stiffened. “By God, you do not know who we really are, do you?”
Nicolas stared at him. If not for the signet ring Farringdon wore, he would not have suspected him of being Arianna’s dragon. Nicolas had known them all from his days at Eton and they had been friends with several other young future lords. “Viscount Barton, Viscount Weychell, You, Earl of Marsh…and one other. Who is he?”
Nothing in the duke’s expression gave him away, and a sneer twisted his lips. “You are guessing. Lord Barton you have proven was clearly there since you’ve run him
out of England nearly two years ago! And now me! If you were so certain that Weychell and Marsh were involved, why have you not ruined them, too? All this for a damn nobody!”
“How loyal you are,” he drawled bitingly.
The first of them he’d ruined, Lord Barton, a well-loved golden boy, had been the same. Nicolas had ruthlessly taken out one of the man’s teeth and given him a day to rethink his answer. Upon Nicolas’s return to the man’s home, he had packed and left for Europe. Nicolas hadn’t wasted any time chasing the viscount.
Nicolas carefully kept his expression composed lest he revealed the doubt around the wolf’s and the black Dahlia’s identity. “I will see every one of you ruined without any chance of return. She was precious to me, her father, and her mother. She was precious to many friends, and her life held the same value as yours—or even more than yours, you vile shite.”
Pain sliced through Nicolas’s soul. “All your creditors will come calling tomorrow. All the newspapers and scandal sheets will be printing the knowledge that you are broke…and of your interest in a particular house in Soho.”
Then he turned, opened the door, and walked away.
Once in the hallway, a shout of rage sounded behind him, and he turned in time to see the duke lunging at him with a rapier. He jerked back, gripping the head of his cane, twisted and drew his blade in one smooth motion. Savage satisfaction darted through Nicolas when the duke attacked him again, and he parried, all the rage and guilt carried with him for the last ten years rushing through him in a chaotic storm.
Within three moves he disarmed the duke and held the point of his rapier at his throat.
“You have ruined me,” the duke said, his eyes red with tears.
“You cry, but not because you feel remorse,” Nicolas said, disgusted.
A thin line of blood beaded on the tip of his blade, and several cries echoed behind them. A quick glance revealed the butler and three maids hovering in the lengthy hallway, their faces stark with horror.
“Accept the punishment for the pain and horror you inflicted on an innocent girl,” he snarled. “She flung herself into the river. You have life. Be satisfied you were left with that.”