If You Give a Rake a Ruby
Page 1
Copyright © 2013 by Shana Galen
Cover and internal design © 2013 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration by Judy York/Peter Lott Reps
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For my readers. I have the best readers in the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Cytherian Intelligence column,
Morning Chronicle:
…and so our flaxen-haired Duchess of Dalliance exits the scene with her Dangerous Duke and becomes a duchess in truth. We suppose this is the last mention of her we will make in this lowly column as we are concerned with the doings of the demimonde, not the haute ton.
Now to the question on everyone’s lips: who will snare the next gentleman of the ton? Perhaps one of the two remaining diamonds will set the parson’s mousetrap for an earl or even a marquess. The ladies of Society flirt and simper with newfound desperation, fearing their ranks will be further sullied.
And fear they should. Lately, one cannot but note the ravishing Marchioness of Mystery has been courted by none other than the Duke of E—, Lord K—, and even H.R.H. Could the gypsy queen be our next English queen?
Not if the Princess of W— has anything to say about it!
But who is this dark-eyed, enigmatic beauty? From whence does she hail? One dear source insists she is the daughter of a fallen maharaja. Oh, fair Fallon, we beg one paltry clue. We shall feast on the rumor crumbs from your table for weeks.
Diamonds are the hardest natural substances on earth.
One
“Lord Kwirley,” Fallon said with a pointed look at the bracket clock on the brass-inlaid drawing-room table. “The hour grows late, and I would like to go to bed.”
Kwirley smiled suggestively, and Fallon’s upper lip itched to curl in disgust. But she controlled the impulse, as she had been taught, and imagined Lady Sinclair nodding in approval.
“Why, Marchioness, that was my thought exactly.” He rose and held out his hand, seemingly unfazed by Fallon’s icy stare. Kwirley was not a small man. He was tall, well-built, and handsome in the most conventional way. Fallon could understand why the ton insisted on pairing the two of them. Kwirley with his dark hair, dark eyes, and tanned skin complemented her own dark features perfectly. His height was better suited to Juliette, who was tall and willowy. Fallon was petite, which was Lady Sinclair’s polite way of saying she was short. Fallon did not mind her diminutive size. It meant others often underestimated her, and that usually worked to her advantage. Not tonight.
“Why don’t you show me to your boudoir, Fallon?”
Fallon raised a brow. “You overstep yourself, my lord. I have not given you leave to use my Christian name. Nor have I expressed any interest in taking you to my bed.”
“You’re a courtesan,” Kwirley said, his eyes narrowing in annoyance, “you’re paid to take men to your bed.”
Fallon was still sitting, Kwirley still standing, and her neck was beginning to ache from looking up at him. What a boorish lout—or, as her bastard of a father would have said, what a bloody clodpole. How dare Kwirley stand when she, a lady, was seated?
Simple, she supposed. He did not consider her a lady.
Very well, then. She rose. “My lord, you are exceedingly arrogant.”
He laughed, which was not unexpected but certainly not the response she’d hoped for. He was going to make this difficult. She rolled her shoulders. Perhaps difficult was not such a bad thing. She needed to keep in good form.
“And you are exceedingly coy,” Kwirley said, stepping closer. “I had not expected as much. In fact, I have been led to believe you are quite the tigress in bed. Roar.” He lifted his hands to make claws.
“Unfortunately, my lord, you will never know. Shall I ring for my butler to show you out or can you find the way yourself?”
Kwirley lowered his hands. “I don’t think you understand, Fallon.”
“I’ve told you not to address me as such, my lord.”
“I am the most sought-after man in London. I am doing you a favor by becoming your lover.”
“Really? The only woman I know seeking your favor is your wife. And, if I’m not mistaken, she is quite heavy with your child at present. Do you not think you should be home with Lady Kwirley?”
He took a step toward her. “My wife is my business.”
“Then I suggest you attend to your business, my lord. Good night.”
She turned and strolled toward the drawing room doors. She knew she would not reach them unmolested. She also knew she could ring for Titus.
But that would be too easy.
Kwirley was slower than she’d anticipated, and she had almost gained the towering mahogany doors before he caught her elbow and spun her around. “Not so fast—” he began.
Fallon kicked him in the belly, sending him sprawling backward. He knocked over a pedestal holding a jeweled lamp, and she had a moment’s worry because it was one of her favorites. But a quick glance reassured her the lamp was not broken.
The glance also revealed Kwirley was getting up. Blockhead. “Go home, my lord. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Really?” He wiped his hands on his breeches. “Because I would like to hurt you. I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re going to pay for—”
She sidestepped him, spun, and booted him in his lower back. The blow set him off-balance, and she had a moment to grab a book and hurl it at him. Her aim was perfect, and the book’s spine hit him in the center of the forehead. “Ow, you little bitch!” He charged her, and Fallon shook her head. He wasn’t even thinking, simply acting blindly. She easily sidestepped him again, and he rammed into a settee, knocking it over. While he struggled to rise, Fallon dug her heel into the back of his neck and pressed him down.
“Had enough?” she asked. “Or would you prefer to go another round?” Because she was tired and wanted to go to bed, she ground her heel into his neck.
“Enough,” he mumbled.
“Good.” Without lifting her heel, she reached for a little silver bell and rang
it. The sound tinkled softly in the room, and the drawing room doors opened immediately to reveal Titus.
Titus was close to seven feet tall and easily twenty-five stone. He had a thick head of bright red hair, shocking blue eyes, and a mouth full of crooked teeth. His hands were as big as puppies and his legs tree trunks. He did not walk so much as lumber, and Kwirley began protesting the moment Titus entered the room.
“There’s been some sort of mistake. I didn’t intend any disrespect.”
Fallon sighed. “Titus, I might have known you would be standing right outside.”
The giant shrugged, his shoulders small mountains. “I like to make sure there’s no trouble, my lady.”
Fallon had told him a hundred times she was no lady, but he insisted on referring to her as such anyway. Who was she to protest? It wasn’t as though anyone else was clamoring to call her a lady.
She pressed her foot into Kwirley’s neck for good measure then lifted it and stepped away. “Would you be so kind as to show Lord Kwirley out?”
“I’ll show ’im out,” Titus said. “But I won’t be kind about it.”
Kwirley gave her a panicked look, and Fallon was sorely tempted to shrug helplessly. But at the last moment, she took pity on the man. “Titus, be nice. Don’t throw Lord Kwirley farther than the lamppost.”
She strode out of the drawing room, listening to Kwirley sputter and then plead for mercy. Titus was a gentle giant to anyone he loved. He was an ogre to anyone who but looked askance at someone he loved. But she couldn’t feel too sorry for Kwirley. Her father—she hoped he burned in hell—always said when you started feeling sorry for those who want to take advantage of you, then you’ve gone soft and deserve what you get.
Of course, he hadn’t said it quite that politely.
She lifted her skirts and climbed the stairs, nodded to Mary, one of the chamber maids, and blew out a long sigh. She was exhausted.
The past few days had been grueling. She’d been to one social event after another—balls, routs, masquerades, soirées, musicales. At this point, if she never saw another ballroom, theater, or pleasure garden, she would not mourn the loss. Normally she enjoyed the whirl of the Season, but without Juliette, everything seemed different.
Juliette, Lily, and Fallon were no longer The Three Diamonds. Now it was only Lily and Fallon, and they both missed Juliette terribly.
And, if Fallon was honest, she envied Juliette. Who wouldn’t envy a woman married to a wealthy duke who obviously adored her? Fallon had never really believed in love. Her father hadn’t loved her mother. He’d used her charms to run scams or make ends meet. And her mother hadn’t loved her father. She’d been a dim woman who needed a man to tell her what to do.
Fallon hadn’t loved either of her parents. She thought she’d fallen in love once, but the experience had taught her she’d been right all long.
There was no such thing as love.
Except… when she looked at Juliette and her Dangerous Duke, Fallon wondered.
She strode down the corridor toward her boudoir. Her booted feet made shushing sounds on the thick rug, and even though she was now quite used to living surrounded by opulence, she paused a moment to savor the plush rug, the paintings on the walls, the expensive upholstery on the Sheraton chair she’d just passed, and the fine silk of her gown.
She had no illusions as to how fortunate she was. Unlike the daughters of duchesses and earls Fallon often glimpsed at the theater or a ball, she had not grown up in such privileged circumstances. She had been lucky to have something to eat and shoes on her feet.
She did not take any of this for granted. It could all be taken away from her with the snap of a finger if anyone ever found out who she really was. There was a reason the Prince Regent had dubbed her the Marchioness of Mystery. No one—save Lady Sinclair, Juliette, and Lily—knew the truth about her. The ton was greatly diverted by conjecturing as to her true identity.
Some said she was the daughter of a maharaja. Little did they know, Fallon had been obliged to ask Lady Sinclair for the definition of maharaja. Other rumors hinted she was a gypsy queen or a princess from a secret kingdom. Fallon wished there was a tiny kernel of truth in but one of the rumors. Anything was better than the reality.
She opened the door of her boudoir and stepped inside. Strange. Usually Anne had the fire roaring and several candles lit. But the room was dark and cold. Fallon shivered, crossed to her bed, and pulled the cord to summon her lady’s maid. She reached out and felt the edge of her bed—the soft silk of her counterpane felt light and inviting as a cloud. Fallon rolled her neck, then sank down onto her bed.
“Ouch!”
She bolted upright and stifled a scream. There was a man in her bed.
An uninvited man.
Two
Warrick Fitzhugh did not relish an audience with the Queen. He did not know how it was he’d become her personal lackey, and he didn’t give a bloody farthing. All he knew was the woman was mad. Daft as a resident of Bedlam, if he was any judge. And people claimed the King was mad. Well, those people hadn’t met the Queen.
He sat in his club and rubbed his temples. Warrick had no problem taking orders. He’d been taking them from the Secretary of the Foreign Office for years, but now the Queen’s cousin had been killed, and she wanted to give orders too.
It wasn’t as though Warrick wasn’t already investigating the death of his fellow Diamond in the Rough. He’d been turning every stone he could find for weeks now. He might be retired from the Foreign Office, but he wasn’t going to leave his friend’s murder unavenged. Warrick supposed that spending the rest of his days acting the profligate his father always assumed him to be would have to wait.
And so Fitzhugh sat at White’s and waited for Pelham to meet him for their appointment. He resisted checking his pocket watch and instead surveyed the club. It was filled with the usual stoop-shouldered, gray-haired men with gnarled fingers turning crisply ironed pages of the Times. Earlier Warrick had noted his father, the Earl of Winthorpe, seated in his usual chair near a painting of Charles II and his various dogs. Warrick glanced over again and met his father’s gaze.
Warrick lifted his glass and saluted. His father gave him a stony look and lifted his paper again.
Warrick drank from his glass—since it was raised anyway—and wondered if his father was going to blame him for the rest of his life. It wasn’t as though Warrick hadn’t tried to stop Edward.
They’d all tried to stop Edward from joining the military.
Impatient now, Warrick pulled out his pocket watch. Pelham was never late, but he was also a newly married man. He had been less than enthusiastic about leaving his bride to meet Warrick. But Warrick had insisted, most persuasively.
And he could be very persuasive when necessary…as evidenced by the sight of Pelham striding into the dining room. His clothing was perfectly in order, his blue eyes clear and hard, his mouth set in a firm slash. But something was different about the man. Warrick narrowed his eyes. Pelham’s hair, perhaps? It appeared a bit…tousled.
He rose when his friend spotted him and didn’t hide his grin.
“What are you looking so cheerful about?” the duke asked, taking a seat without being invited.
“Do I look cheerful?” Warrick sat, signaling to the waiter to bring the port he had already requested. It was a vintage Warrick knew Pelham liked. “Have you done something different?”
Pelham glanced at him sharply and shifted. Oh, now Warrick was going to enjoy this. Making Pelham uncomfortable was one of the few joys he had in life. “Your coat cut differently?” He pretended to study Pelham’s conservative coat. “Your cravat tied in a new sort of knot?” He reached out and touched the perfectly tied neck cloth—perfectly tied in the same fashion Pelham had always worn it. “No, that isn’t it.”
“Stubble it, Fitzhugh. There’s nothing different.”
“My hair is exactly the same. Now why the devil did you call me here?”
“I don’t believe so.”
The waiter set the port in front of Pelham and Fitzhugh waved the man away.
“It looks a bit tousled. That’s how the dandies are wearing it these days.”
Pelham slapped the table with his palm. “I’m no bloody dandy. Stop looking at my hair.”
“Can I assume this is the new Duchess of Pelham’s doing?” Fitzhugh asked with a satisfied smile.
“I don’t wish to discuss my hair. If that’s the only topic you want to converse about—” He stood, and Warrick yanked him back down.
“What the devil are you about?” Pelham adjusted his sleeve. “Have you gone quite mad?”
“No. I have a serious matter to discuss with you.”
Pelham narrowed his eyes. “It had better not be the state of my cravat.”
“No. I fear we must suspend our fashion discussions for the moment. I need to ask you about one of your wife’s friends, one of The Three Diamonds.”
Pelham drank his previously untouched port, swallowed, then said, “Why?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that. I can say it’s a matter of state.”
“I thought you’d retired from the Foreign Office.”
“On occasion I am still called upon to exercise my skills.”
“I see.”
“What do you know about the Marchioness of Mystery? She calls herself Fallon, I believe.”
Pelham shrugged. “Not much. She’s not as friendly as Lily.”
“She’s secretive,” Warrick remarked.
Pelham sipped his port. “I don’t know that I’d say that, but I don’t believe all that rot about her being foreign royalty or a gypsy queen.”
“No, that’s rubbish,” Warrick murmured.