One Wicked Night

by Shelley Bradley

  The question puzzled Lucien, but decided to play the man’s game to see where it led. “No, it’s permanent. A shattered kneecap. A little gift from Napoleon’s men.”

  Cripplegate’s thin lips actually lifted in a small smile. “Good. The world has too many perfect people. Now what do you want to know?”

  Lucien wasn’t sure how or why, but he felt as if his injury had helped him to pass some odd test. “I’m given to understand that the Earl of Marsden is a frequent visitor here.”

  Barrymore’s face screwed up into a grimace of disgust. “Yes, and the little bastard owes me money.”

  Lucien held his breath, praying he was on the right track. If he could just get enough evidence together to hang Alastair in court, he could keep Serena safe. “Do you know his uncle, the Duke of Warrington, died recently in an unfortunate highway robbery?”

  The older man emitted a cynical grunt. “Unfortunate, yes. Warrington was a political whirlwind. A simple robbery, doubtful, as you well know, Daneridge.”

  Lucien didn’t pause even a moment to revel in his good fortune. “Did he hire someone to do the job while here? Someone you know, perhaps?”

  “No,” Barrymore answered, bursting Lucien’s bubble of hope. “I did hear him discuss the idea, but where he found the cull and the coin, I don’t know.”

  Damn it! He had been so sure . . . Now what? “Can you think of anywhere else I can inquire?”

  Cripplegate’s small eyes narrowed. “That weasel Marsden owes me four hundred pounds. Will you pay it if I pass on information?”

  Lucien wondered what the man was thinking, planning, but decided to answer. “Gladly.”

  Cripplegate nodded. “Good. Come back in a week. I should know something by then.”

  Lucien nodded and rose. Full of both victory and defeat, he exited the room.

  ****

  The next afternoon, Niles appeared on Lucien’s doorstep, his urgent knock demanding the butler’s immediate attention. Lucien rushed down at the news of Lord Niles’s agitated arrival.

  “Hello, pup,” Lucien greeted Niles upon entering his study. “Is something amiss? Holford said you looked out of sorts.”

  Niles stood, his usual teasing face completely devoid of a smile. “Have you been out today, Clayborne?”

  Baffled by the question, Lucien said, “I—no, other than my morning trip to the graveyard.”

  “Damn,” Niles muttered, fishing something from the pocket of his red and gold embroidered waistcoat. “I assume then you haven’t seen this?”

  He handed a piece of paper over to Lucien. Wearing a scowl, Lucien took it.

  At first glance, he saw nothing more than a common cartoonist’s satire of a member of the ton. During his divorce, he had been the subject of several, along with Ravenna and her lover, Lord Wayland. But upon closer inspection, he saw what had disturbed Niles so: Serena was the object of this cruel lampoon.

  The artist’s drawing depicted both himself and the former duchess being wed upon Warrington’s very grave, with the old duke in his coffin wearing a scandalized expression.

  Lucien swore. “Are these out?”

  Niles nodded. “All over town. It’s too late to buy up the circulation.”

  A silent pause fell between the two. Lucien wondered what he could do to stop the ridiculing cartoon from spreading further into the city’s environs.

  Suddenly, a female scream pierced their quiet. Lucien scrambled out the door to investigate, with Niles close behind. Both men raced to the entrance hall, Lucien trying to determine the source of the sound.

  Again, the high-pitched tone of distress resounded, and Lucien realized with some confusion the cry for help was coming from outside, in his own courtyard. Tightening his grip on his cane, Lucien strode for the door and yanked it open.

  Immediately, he encountered a small mob hurling stones and insults at a black-clad figure huddled on the cold ground. As he watched, another rock hit the form. He heard another distinctly female cry.

  “Ye bleedin’ ’ore,” one man called out. “Yer not fit to lick me boots.”

  “Aye,” another sounded ominously. “I wouldn’t take ye to me bed even if ye offered to spread yer legs fer me. Sluts the likes of ye sicken me, spittin’ on a dead man’s grave!”

  The mob rushed forward, rocks in hand. Lucien surged ahead to meet the indignant crowd. To his shock, the figure on the ground took on a familiar shape as he approached.

  “Serena!” he shouted. Fear pumped through his blood upon recognition. Ignoring the sharp needles of pain in his leg, he raced toward her, with Niles close behind.

  “Leave me be!” she called to the mob, struggling to rise to her feet.

  “Ye hussy!” a woman yelled, brandishing another rock—and one of the cartoons. “I wouldn’t have ye marry me dog, much less a marquess.”

  Lucien reached Serena’s side before the mob did. With Niles’s assistance, he lifted her to her feet.

  He pulled her stiff, trembling form into his embrace, her eyes spitting anger and fear. He held her to his chest, feeling her fright in the thump-thump of her heart. His urge to protect her surged to white-hot anger.

  He growled to the crowd, “This is private property and you are trespassing. Get off and leave my wife alone.”

  Fully expecting the indignant mob to swell and surge forward with their rocks and their dirty mouths and stone them all, Lucien was puzzled when Serena’s attackers did no more than mutter a few more angry oaths before disbanding. Niles chased them down the walk and into the street, stopping some to ask questions.

  A moment later, Serena pulled herself from Lucien’s embrace, her eyes silently damning. He examined her face, noting she had been hit in the cheek. The spot of blood marred that honey perfection. Another trickle of blood wound its way to her golden brow where a second rock had found her forehead. He cursed beneath his breath.

  He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed the wounds. “Are you hurt?”

  Tears pooled in her eyes as she pushed him away. “Hurt, no. I am humiliated!”

  Lucien absorbed her anger. Whatever her sins, Serena hardly deserved to be treated like a common whore. Rage shook his fingers as he finished wiping away the blood on her face.

  She grabbed the handkerchief from him. “Don’t touch me.”

  Lucien stared at her in surprise. Her jaw clenched in rigid lines; her face seethed. Damn. She blamed the incident on him.

  “I plan to do much more than that,” he reminded.

  “Not in public.”

  “No,” he conceded. “I would prefer that we be quite alone.”

  Her face flushed a beguiling shade of pink. “I’m going inside.”

  “Good idea.” He waved at Niles to join them when ready.

  Once seated in his study, Lucien poured her a glass of wine. She drank it quickly, without question, silently telling Lucien how disturbing the incident had been for her.

  He sat beside her. “What were you doing outside?”

  Avoiding his gaze, she touched a hand to her hair, its golden strands falling from the confines of her pins. “I had gone out to stroll in the park—”

  “Alone?” he prompted, incredulity blazing inside him.

  She winced. “I usually take Caffey with me, but this morning I wanted to be . . . alone.”

  “This morning?” he growled. “You do this every morning?”

  She blinked in apparent confusion. “Yes. I always have.”

  “Are you daft?” he questioned. “Marsden wants to kill you. Do you want to make that feat easy for him?”

  She frowned, then sighed. “Sorry. I thought I would be safe so close to your house. But it’s as if the mob was waiting for me. One . . . one man hit me with a rock. I ran and fell. I tried to get up. They hit me again.” She looked up then, tears shimmering from her eyes, and a new rage struck him. “That cartoon was awful. And the hideous things they said to me . . .”

  “This is why you must stay here, inside, for the time being
. It’s the only place you’re safe.”

  She rose and paced across the room. “Do you see what you’ve done to me with this mockery of a marriage?”

  “Oh, no,” he retorted. “I am not the one who died and left you a bloody fortune.”

  She tossed her shoulders back, as if ready for battle. “But none of this would be happening had you not seduced me.”

  He laughed, the sound bitter even to his own ears. “No, none of this would be happening had you bothered to tell me you were married the night I fucked you.”

  Serena gasped. Her eyes narrowed, as if she wanted to slice into him with her sharp tongue, but Niles entered.

  “You are vulgar,” she hissed at Lucien before she presented him the stiff line of her back and fled the room.

  Niles tiptoed into the study with a low whistle. “She’s none too happy, I see. Is she hurt?”

  “No.” He loosed a long sigh, rubbing aching temples with his fingertips. “Serena is angry and embarrassed. And she blames me.”

  “She shouldn’t,” Niles answered. “I stopped one of the thugs, and for a little coin he was willing to tell me that a ‘fancy gent’ paid to have this incident staged.”

  Lucien’s eyes widened. Was this the break he needed to put Alastair away? “Really? Do they know his name? Have a description?”

  “Unfortunately, no one saw his benefactor personally. But it has to be Marsden.”

  “Of course,” Lucien answered. “But how can we prove it? The word of East End riffraff pointing the finger at an unnamed ‘fancy gent’ won’t do.”

  Niles nodded. “The man also confessed they were instructed to stone your wife. To death.”

  Shock rippled through Lucien’s already tumultuous emotions. “Christ, that’s crazy!”

  “It’s bizarre but ingenious. And I would say that well describes the earl, my friend,” Niles answered. “Mob violence is a common, blameless crime. They cannot hang an entire crowd—and you can never prove he ordered it.”

  Lucien voiced his agreement with an angry oath and decided to step up his efforts to lock Alastair in Newgate forever.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Lady Harcourt is here to see you and Lady Daneridge, my lord,” Holford announced.

  Lucien glanced up from his glass of brandy and cast his gaze to the mantle clock. Eight p.m. Two hours above the time for an intimate to call. He found the observation less than reassuring.

  “You may tell her my wife is sleeping, and we will call tomorrow.”

  “He will tell me no such thing,” a slender, silver-haired woman asserted from the portal, dressed in a bright slash of blue. “Seeing a gentleman alone was scandalous in my day, too, but in light of the fact I am twice your age, I hardly think anyone will be appalled if we converse alone.”

  He suppressed a smile from the saucy older woman. “Please, come in.”

  “Indeed.” She drew herself up to her full five feet.

  Lucien cleared his throat to conceal a laugh and gestured to the sofa directly across from his chair.

  “Tea?” he offered. “Or wine, perhaps?”

  She peered into his glass on the table between them, then raised a brow in challenge. “A brandy would be lovely.”

  Lucien bit back a reminder that ladies did not drink strong spirits and rose to fetch her a glassful. Clearly, she was much less inhibited than her granddaughter. Moments later, he set the snifter before her and sat. “As I said, Serena is asleep.”

  “That’s just as well, young man. I spoke with her two days since, just after you were married. I should like to speak with you now.”

  The smile slid off his face as he settled back against his chair, bracing himself for confrontation. “About our marriage, I presume?”

  She nodded crisply. “If you’ll allow an old woman to meddle, could you not have waited three or four months, at least, before shoving the poor girl to the altar? A few weeks is hardly discreet.”

  Direct and to the point. Lucien tossed back his own swallow of brandy. “Even one day alone in her house could have been too long since Marsden is trying to kill her.”

  “He is tiresome, I agree. However, Serena could have hired someone to protect her until a more sufficient mourning period had passed.”

  Since the lady preferred direct discussion, Lucien decided to respond in kind. He set his snifter aside and leaned forward. “Not to be indelicate, but your granddaughter is carrying my child. I was not willing to take any risks with her life or the babe’s. I should think you wouldn’t be, either.”

  Serena’s grandmother sighed. “Serena is special to me, and I have long waited to hold her child close. But you have made Serena the talk of society, and that does not set well with her. Too reminiscent of her mother’s scandalous days.”

  A reference to her mother again. What the hell did it mean? Not that her mother’s doings would have made any difference in his decision to marry. Still, the knowledge might provide insight. “Serena mentioned the woman, but I’m afraid I cannot recall her.”

  Lady Harcourt brushed an imaginary speck of dust from her dress with a white-gloved hand. “My daughter, quite frankly, was spoiled. I granted Abigail too much freedom, I suppose. She demanded to be the center of attention, and would do anything to attract notice.” She sighed, grimace tight. “When Abby was a child, the penchant was merely annoying. As she grew and married, it became an embarrassment.”

  Lucien frowned. “Forgive me, but how did flirting earn such a scandalous place in everyone’s eye?”

  Serena’s grandmother cleared her throat. “She did much more than flirt, and she did so with every man who turned his head in her direction.”

  He could see how Abigail’s cuckolded husband might be shocked, but the ton? “My lady, the behavior you have described hardly makes your daughter different than many of London’s ‘well-bred’ ladies.”

  She fingered the lace at her sleeve. “But most of London’s well-bred ladies make a pretense of keeping their indiscretions a secret.”

  A clearer picture developed for Lucien. A woman who loved a man’s attention. A woman who would stop at nothing to catch the notice of the gentleman she desired, and everyone around her.

  A woman much like Ravenna.

  He drummed his fingers against the arm of the sofa. “And based on her mother’s doings, Serena would prefer to keep her sins to herself?”

  The older woman shook her silver head. “You misunderstand. Serena spent her most of her life in Sussex with her aunt, living in religious study. Quite contrary to her mother, she has no sins to hide. She never wanted any.”

  He absorbed the information with a skeptical ear. “I hate to be crass, but it isn’t as if Serena accomplished the second immaculate conception.”

  “Exactly! She horrified herself with her own behavior and has spent every moment since trying to repent and praying to avoid ugly gossip. Your untimely marriage has made her the very subject of scandalbroth. And the ugly whispers suggest that she must certainly be her mother’s daughter, in all respects.”

  He retrieved his glass. “Sometimes the truth is ugly.”

  The woman squared her shoulders and tossed him a pointed glare. “Serena is very unlike Abigail, I assure you.

  “Not from my vantage point.”

  “Do you deny you were the first man to touch her?”

  Lucien looked away, certain the woman was about to impart some piece of feminine logic designed to baffle men. “No, but—”

  “She has hardly had the time or inclination for a lover since,” the woman said.

  “That says nothing of her future, and based on my knowledge of your granddaughter’s ways— ”

  “But you do not base your ‘knowledge’ on my granddaughter at all,” she argued. “You, Lord Daneridge, are reflecting on your ex-wife’s ways, are you not?”

  Lucien felt his stomach clench. “Ravenna has no bearing on this discussion.”

  “Except to cloud your opinion,” she contradicted. “In tru
th, Serena spent three years in marriage to Warrington before she encountered you. That hardly makes her a light-skirt.”

  “Nor does it make her pure. But as long as we are discussing Warrington, why did the man never bed Serena? Had he no interest?”

  Shock flared across the older woman’s face, displayed by wide eyes and paling skin. She rose hastily. “If Serena has not told you herself, I should hardly be the one to impart such information.”

  Dismayed by the woman’s retreat, Lucien stood. “Wait. Perhaps if I understood—”

  “I have meddled far too much already, I suspect. I merely came today to ask that you keep her from the ton’s notice as much as possible until the scandal of your marriage has dwindled. Such would set her mind greatly at ease.”

  With that, the diminutive woman was gone. Lucien sank down to the sofa once more, frowning. Everyone, it seemed, knew the truth behind Serena’s marriage to Warrington but him. Bloody hell.

  And this bit about judging his current wife by the previous one’s behavior . . . perhaps so. But no matter how nicely Lady Harcourt phrased it, her granddaughter had committed adultery. It was possible that Serena had inherited more of her mother’s blood than Lady Harcourt wanted to admit.

  True, Serena seemed to dislike the gossip swirling about her, but the woman also possessed the capacity for explosive passion beneath that proper surface. He vowed to experience her sensuality again, the erotic curl of her fingers against his skin, the aphrodisiac of her moans, before someone else did.

  He took another swallow of brandy, admitting that he was not willing to share his wife with another man. Not this time. If Serena needed fulfillment, then by damned, he would be the man to give it to her. Today, if possible.