The Heart of a Scoundrel

by Christi Caldwell

  Oh, God. Not trusting himself to speak, Edmund turned on his heel and left. A volatile fury with a lifelike force fueled his movements. He strode through the corridors and with each angry step he took, he lashed at himself with the memory of his wife, injured, assaulted, nearly raped for his crimes. Rage roiled in his belly and he fed the familiar, safe emotion. He reached the foyer and bellowed for his horse.

  A short while later, his mount was readied and he swung astride the magnificent black beast with one purpose in mind. Edmund guided Lucifer through the crowded streets, the fashionable end, onward to the hallowed halls of White’s. He dismounted before the famous, white façade structure and tossed the reins to a nearby street urchin. The boy accepted the reins and waited with the promise of coin as Edmund strode inside the legendary club. The club he’d taken membership at for the company it afforded him, but had studiously avoided through the years, unless it suited his purpose of revenge. As such, Edmund knew all those men who owed him a debt and where they spent their afternoons. He stepped inside the respectable club feeling like the sinner stepping through the church doors for Sunday sermon. Ignoring the buzz of whisper generated by his presence, he strode through the crowd, scanning the crowded tables, in search of one.

  And then he located him at the far right corner of the room, with a bottle of brandy and tumbler before him. Thoughts of Phoebe and her tear-stained cheeks and her marked neck filled his mind, and Edmund increased his stride. Just then, Lord Brewer glanced up and his gaze landed on Edmund. All the color leeched from the bastard’s face. The faint trail of fingernail tracks upon his cheek stood as a stark contrast.

  Madness lapped at Edmund.

  Phoebe’s fingers. Fighting when she shouldn’t have had to.

  He came to a stop at Brewer’s table.

  With courage he didn’t know the other man possessed, or perhaps it was mere idiocy, Brewer gave a cocksure grin. “Rutland.” He raised his glass in salute. “How is the marchion—?”

  Edmund hauled the man from the seat by the lapels of his jacket and dragged him so they were eye to eye. “If you ever touch my wife again, by God I will kill you dead. I will take you apart with my bare hands and relish the sounds of your screams while I do it.”

  The muscles of the viscount’s throat moved up and down. “Y-you who’ve made a c-cuckold of most gentlemen in this room would issue that threat?” In the absence of a pledge to steer clear of Phoebe, Edmund buried his fist in the other man’s nose. Brewer cried out as blood spurted from the broken appendage and he stumbled into the table and then landed hard on his back.

  The viscount pressed a hand to his face. Blood seeped through his fingers and he continued undeterred. “If it is not me, it will be another,” Brewer spat and a chill ran through him at the final reckoning of his sins. He would not pay the price, but rather Phoebe. By God, she’d not pay for his crimes. “And you will be no different than any other m—” He cried out as Edmund came over him and punched him in the face again. Edmund rained down his fists, pummeling the other man so that crimson stained his face and through it, he saw this man’s frame atop her. Her cries. Her pleas. Because of my sins. He reached for the barely moaning, limp viscount’s neck, when hands scrabbled at his back. Powerful hands hefted him from Brewer’s frame and dragged Edmund back. He kicked out at Brewer with the toe of his boot and fought against the stranger’s powerful hold.

  “By God, Rutland, I detest you but I’d still not see you spend your days in Newgate for offing one like Brewer.”

  Edmund wrenched free of the man’s hold and turned to face the Earl of Stanhope. Panting from his exertions, the earl’s hair fell over his brow and he glared at Edmund.

  Edmund glowered back and Stanhope must have sensed his intention to go and finish Brewer for he wrapped a powerful hand around his forearm and forcibly dragged him through the club. Edmund fought against his hold. “By God, let me go, Stanhope,” he hissed.

  The earl, this man who’d competed with him for another woman’s affections eleven years ago ignored his commands and continued propelling him through the club.

  They reached the front of the club and a majordomo pulled the door open in eager anticipation of Edmund’s departure. He braced for the other man to toss him, but the earl followed behind him out into the street. They stood at the front steps of the club with passersby casting the rumpled pair curious looks. “I well know this isn’t your usual choice of establishment, nor will you find yourself welcomed with this showing,” the earl muttered, as he yanked a kerchief from his jacket and dusted off his brow.

  Edmund eyed the doors, contemplating entering the club once more and destroying Brewer. He took a step toward the club.

  “Do not,” Stanhope said in clipped tones, anticipating his efforts.

  He flexed his jaw. “He touched my wife,” he said on a hushed whisper.

  The earl arched an eyebrow and stuffed the white fabric back into his jacket.

  A dull flush heated Edmund’s cheeks as Brewer’s charge melded with Stanhope’s accusatory look. In a bid for revenge against the man who’d dueled him for Margaret’s hand, he’d orchestrated his own wife’s ruin and then sealed that ruin with his own kiss. He swiped his hand over his face. Who had he been?

  Stanhope slapped a hand on his back. “Come with me.” It was not a question.

  And the man Edmund had been fifteen days ago would have sneered at Stanhope and had a mocking rejoinder for that request. The man who’d been shaped by Phoebe’s good and his own desire to be more followed the earl to his carriage. One of Stanhope’s grooms pulled the door open and then motioned him inside. He hesitated, as too many years worth of wariness reared its head. Perhaps it always would.

  Edmund climbed inside.

  But then mayhap he was strong enough to battle that guardedness. He claimed a seat on the bench and through hooded lashes studied Stanhope who whispered something to the groom. The young man nodded and closed the door behind him. The earl claimed the opposite bench, rapped once, and the carriage rocked into motion.

  He sprung forward on the edge of his seat. “My—”

  “My man will see to your horse,” he assured him.

  “What the hell do you want?” he snapped fisting the edge of his seat.

  “To talk.”

  He blinked several times. “What could you have to say to me?” By rights, Stanhope should attempt to bloody Edmund the way Edmund bloodied Brewer just moments ago.

  “Other than go to hell?” Stanhope drawled. “You’d be surprised.” The ghost of a smile died on his lips. “I have hated you for years, Rutland.”

  With that statement the earl could keep company with most of polite Society.

  “I do not any longer.”

  Edmund went still.

  “I pity you.”

  There it was. That unwanted, loathsome emotion. It was on the tip of his tongue to say he didn’t need anyone’s pity, but yet, the truth was, he’d been a pitiable creature these years. A soulless beast.

  “I let go of my past,” Stanhope continued quietly. “While you,” he nodded his chin at him. “You remained firmly stuck there and I would have been stuck there right alongside you if it wasn’t for my wife. Whom I love. And any man who reacts the way you did this afternoon at White’s is also very much in love with his wife.”

  The air slipped from his lips on a hiss as Stanhope, this longstanding enemy found his weakness. He braced to have that discovery turned against him as a weapon to inflict a lethal blow. Stanhope winged a blond eyebrow upwards. “You are wondering how I’ll use that information against you.” A crooked grin formed on his lips. The carriage rocked to a slow halt and he rapped once on the roof of the carriage. “I’ll use it against you by helping you. Go to your wife and put your past behind you.”

  Before Phoebe had entered his life, Edmund would have scoffed at Stanhope or any man who dared believe he could change. Or, for that matter, that he’d want to change. The muscles of his throat bobbed up and down. H
is wife had forced him to look at the parts of himself he’d long buried; his secret hunger to be viewed as more man than beast…and more than that, a man capable of being loved and loving in return.

  Edmund looked out the window at the façade of his townhouse. He looked at Stanhope squarely. “Why?”

  “Oh, do not mistake me,” the earl said rolling his shoulders. “I still think you’re a miserable bastard but life does that to all of us, then. And if we are fortunate, then we can accept saving in the unlikeliest place.”

  He furrowed his brow.

  “With the love of a lady.” Stanhope’s driver pulled the door open. “Now get the hell out, Rutland.” He eased those words with a half-grin.

  As he stepped down, Edmund tried to force out the appropriate words. He turned back and stuck his hand inside the carriage. “Thank you.”

  This man who’d battled him for another years ago, looked at the offering a moment, and then put his hand in his. There was something freeing in the broken chain that tied him to a dark, ugly past he no longer wanted a part of. “Go,” Stanhope said again.

  With that, Edmund turned from his past and stepped toward his future.

  Chapter 26

  From her perch on the windowseat overlooking the streets below, for the tenth time, Phoebe read the familiar words in The Times.

  In a not uncharacteristic show of ruthlessness, the Marquess of R, violently assaulted the Viscount B. No one can glean the details surrounding the incident, however…

  She tossed aside the paper where it landed in a soft thump at her feet. Phoebe knew precisely the details surrounding that particular incident. Following her admission yesterday afternoon, he’d stormed off and she’d not seen a glimpse of him since.

  His defense could be explained by purely self-serving reasons as her friend had suggested. Edmund’s concern for being viewed as weak and made a cuckold of before other gentleman could surely explain away the vicious fire in his eyes or the primitive growl as he’d stormed from the room. Yet, Phoebe had seen more there. A more that indicated this had not been entirely about him, but rather her.

  A knock sounded at the door and she glanced up.

  “His Lordship has requested your presence in his office,” the servant politely informed her.

  Phoebe swung her legs over the edge of the bench and settled her feet on the floor. He would summon her. Her heart slipped. Edmund could not be bothered to find her himself and speak to her on whatever matter he wished to speak to her. With a murmur of thanks, she woodenly shoved herself to her feet and made her way from the room, through the halls, and to Edmund’s office. As she walked through the corridors, servants rushed past her, arms filled with valises and trunks. Her trunks. Edmund’s request forgotten, with a frown on her lips, Phoebe followed the flurry of activity to the end of the hall. The front doors opened, sunlight streamed into the marble foyer as servants carried her belongings outside.

  It appeared as though her husband had tired of her. What did bored gentlemen do with new, unwanted wives?

  “My lady, do you require any help?” a servant asked at her shoulder.

  Phoebe gave her head a clearing shake. “Er, no. Thank you,” she added absently and then turned on her heel, making her way to Edmund’s office.

  The office where he plotted the ruin of men. She thought of her own name in that book. Honoria’s. And young ladies. No one was spared from, as the gossip columns called it, his ruthlessness. Who knew the gossips could be correct about anything. Phoebe stopped outside his closed door. She should be glad he wanted her gone. And yet, regret stabbed at her sharp and painful as a dull dagger sticking at her heart. You are a fool, Phoebe Eloise. She raised her hand to knock and then thought better of it. Edmund could send her away but regardless, this was now her home. She pressed the handle. And she’d not rap on the door like a recalcitrant child summoned by her father. Phoebe opened the door and stepped inside.

  Her heart started. Edmund stood with his hip propped along the edge of his desk, arms folded at his chest, elegant in his repose. Why did he have to be so blasted handsome? Phoebe pushed the door closed behind her and then leaned against the wood frame, borrowing support from the wood panel. “You wished to see me?” she asked quietly. Having seen her belongings being packed up, she rather knew what this meeting pertained to. Hurt twisted her belly in knots.

  Edmund remained casually leaning, so impossibly cool and calm when her every fiber thrummed with awareness and regret.

  “I did,” he said simply.

  Her gaze fell to the loathed, damning black leather book at his side.

  He followed her stare and, picking up the book, shoved himself to standing. With the leather tome in his hands, he strolled over to her, fanning those pages as he walked. “I lied to you again.” Phoebe stiffened.

  “I pledged that I’d never again write a name in this book, but that was a lie.”

  Her heart slipped.

  His thick, black lashes swept downward. “Here.” He held out that detestable book.

  Phoebe clutched a hand at her throat. She didn’t want to see that name. Didn’t want to know that he could not, nay would not, change.

  “Take it,” he urged, his tone a blend of steel and warmth. Wetting her lips, she accepted it with numb fingers and scanned past name after name.

  Miss Margaret Dunn

  The Earl of Stanhope

  Lord Alex Edgerton

  She continued turning page after page.

  The Viscount Waters

  Miss Honoria Fairfax.

  Phoebe. She paused on her name, her own weaknesses staring back at her. He’d known her so very well that he’d known precisely what mattered to her and forever marked it upon his page. With a drawn sigh, she turned the page—

  And froze.

  Phoebe shot her gaze to his and found his face a blank, expressionless mask. She quickly looked to the page and read and reread the two sentences. One name. Nine words marked in his hand.

  Edmund Deering, the Marquess of Rutland. Weakness my wife.

  Emotion swelled in her throat and she quietly handed the book back over to him. He refused to take it and she let it fall to her side. So that is why he’d send her away. A man like Edmund who thrived on power and resented all hint of weakness, would not want to be riddled with the constant reminder of a person who inspired anything less than ruthlessness in him. “I don’t want to be your weakness,” she said softly. She wanted to be his partner through life, making one another stronger with love.

  He brushed his knuckles along her jaw, forcing her attention back to him. “Turn the page.”

  “What game do you play, Edmund?” she asked, shaking the book. “Why can you not say what it is that you want me to read in these pages?”

  “There is no game,” he said, his tone gruff. He took the book from her hands and tossed it aside where it landed with a noisy thwack upon the hardwood floor. “Would you know what those words say on the next page? They say Edmund Deering, Marquess of Rutland. My strength is my wife.”

  Her heart stilled a beat as with infinite gentleness he took her face between his palms. “You are my strength. You do not make me weaker. You make me stronger just by your spirit and courage and convictions.”

  She shook her head, trying to make sense of his words. “I don’t understand.” Her voice emerged as a breathless whisper.

  “How can you not know? I love you,” he said softly.

  No. He couldn’t. “But you do not—?”

  He silenced her words with the pad of his thumb; rubbing the flesh of her lower lip. “But I do. I spent all my life fearing any emotion that could weaken me and do you know what I discovered, because of you, Phoebe?”

  She managed to shake her head.

  “I didn’t like the man I was—a man who took his pleasures where he would.” With women who’d been equally miserable and lonely. By the flash of regret in his eyes, she knew he’d followed that unspoken thought. “I do not want to be that man again. I
will not be that man.” He brought her hand to his chest and placed it where his heart beat. “What I feel for you, this love, it fills me with lightness, it lifts me from darkness, buoying me in ways I’ve never been.” He lowered his brow to hers. “How can this emotion be worse than the darkness that has weighted me down all these years? It is freeing and healing and makes me stronger, not weaker.”

  Phoebe pressed her eyes closed and a tear squeezed past her lashes. Edmund brushed it away with the pad of his thumb. “I love you,” he said again. “And I do not expect after my treachery that you should return those sentiments—”

  “Why are you sending me away?” she blurted. Why, if he loved her would he let her go?

  “I want you to have what you’ve always wanted. I’ve arranged for you to have your Captain Cook Adventures, your travels to Wales.” He drew in an audible breath. “I would go with you,” he said on a rush, as though fearing her response, “because if you were to board a ship without me, I would take it apart with my bare hands before I let you leave.”

  At those words she’d once given him, a sob escaped her. He drew her into his arms. “You deserve a gentleman, a lord with pretty words and an honorable soul, and I know there is little use with the heart of a scoundrel, but I’d give it to you, anyway.”

  “Oh, Edmund.” Phoebe captured his face between her hands and looked into his eyes. His eyes slid closed a moment, as though with her words, she’d given him an absolution of sorts. She waited until he looked at her once more. “I love you.” She managed a watery smile. “I don’t need the heart of a gentleman with pretty words. I just need the heart of a good man who loves me.”

  A slow smile turned his lips up at the corners and this was pure, honest, devoid of all cold artifice and pretense. “Then that is what you will have,” he whispered. He claimed her mouth under his in a gentle kiss.

  And that is all she’d ever wanted.

  Epilogue

  Spring 1817

  One month later