The ruthless Lord Rule

by Kasey Michaels

  Rachel, with Mary’s permission, had already informed Lucy of exactly what was causing the breach between the lovers, and Mary had come to look forward to Lucy’s daily visits—even if Lucy did persist in being disgustingly optimistic. “Well,” Lucy said now, seating herself cozily on a wide chair, her toes tucked up under the hem of her gown, “at least you’re not still glooming in your chambers, believing yourself to be some sort of Pandora and responsible for every ill to hit this world since the flood. Who knows,” she added brightly, “given another day or two, you might just find you can face the world again—with or without my Master Grump cousin Tristan.”

  And it had been a difficult week for Mary. As Lucy had said, she had taken to her chamber, hiding herself and her shame away from the rest of the world. But it had been the loss of Tristan—and quite possibly Tristan’s love—that had plunged her neck-deep into the dismals. Concern for her charge had prompted Rachel to apply to Lucy for assistance, for if there were ever a better person for looking on the bright side of things, Rachel couldn’t imagine who it would be.

  Lucy had more than lived up to her aunt’s hopes, bearding Mary in her den—her bedchamber actually, but Rachel was fast becoming enamored of her own creative talents—and making the girl see that, although her late father was not the sort one would wish to have immortalized in oils for the family portrait gallery, it did not necessarily follow that Mary should shoulder any blame for her father’s sins.

  From there it was but a short step to the real heart of the problem: Tristan’s reaction to the news. But that too was dismissed with a careless wave of Lucy’s small hand. “It’s all a nine days’ wonder,” she had told Mary confidently. “Tris was always marvelous at ‘causes,’ championing the downtrodden and fighting evil wherever it existed—even if it was only in his own firebrand mind. In his youth, Tristan viewed your father much like Robin Hood saw the Sheriff of Nottingham. Imagine poor Robin’s reaction if his fair Maid Marion had been discovered to be the sheriff’s daughter! Still, I am sure Friar Tuck would still have had a wedding ceremony to perform once Robin realized that, just like in all the stories, true love does conquer all.”

  Lucy’s words had served to break the dam of Mary’s emotions, and the two women had held each other while Mary laughed, then cried, then reached deep down inside herself and began to think clearly for the first time since that fateful day when Tristan had proposed marriage.

  She had rediscovered her own worth, and had found reasons to be confident that Tristan’s love for her—combined with hers for him—was enough to take them across the highest hurdle and gain them the happiness that waited on the other side.

  But for Mary—who had not once in her memory been complimented for possessing a history of displaying ladylike patience—a week was time and enough for Tristan to have come to his senses and ridden back to town to claim her hand in form. While Rachel shook her head and voiced her misgivings to Sir Henry, Lucy looked on in amusement as Mary’s feelings for Tristan ran the gamut from apprehension, to loverlike concern, to breathless anticipation, to impotent frustration, to—as the second week of Rule’s absence began—downright anger.

  “Stubborn baboon,” Mary was saying now with a decidedly militant air as she gathered up the scattered flower petals and disposed of them. “Not only could I box his ears for haring off to who knows where to leave me here with the whole mess of explaining his absence in my dish, but he is taking his sweet time in realizing that he simply cannot live without me.”

  Lucy peered at her owlishly. “Could this be the same watering pot who clung to my skirts blubbering something about having lost Tristan’s love forevermore? I have to point out, my dear, that when it comes to self-confidence, there is little difference between you and my redoubtable cousin.” She shrugged her shoulders and pulled a face. “But what do I know—as I have never been the shy and retiring sort myself.”

  “Wretch,” Mary retorted amicably. “First you do your utmost to convince me that Tristan and I have a glorious future awaiting us, and then you browbeat me for my impatience to begin it. I was a fool to ever doubt that Tris would see that the past has less than nothing to do with us. I admit it freely, but please do not try to hoax me by delivering me a lecture on how I should not be angry with the man for stretching my sanity to the snapping point while he dithers about in the country scratching up the nerve to return to London and meet his fate.”

  “Bachelors never walk eyes open into the bridle, Mary,” Lucy pointed out, speaking from her own personal experience as she pretended to inspect her nails, “but eventually they do all break to the saddle.” Then, unable to hold her woman-of-the-world pose, she collapsed into girlish giggles, trying to imagine her dear Julian with a set of reins dangling from his aristocratic neck.

  “You may laugh, Lucy,” Mary told her, the light of battle in her eyes, “but Tristan is still heaven knows where and I am still sitting here stewing, waiting for him to come to his senses. I don’t mind telling you that for every moment I spend contemplating getting a little of my own back for the misery he is causing me, I spend two fretting myself sick that he will feel it his duty to spend the rest of his life doing penance alone atop some far-off mountain for the dastardly sin of falling in love with the daughter of his most hated enemy.”

  “It is a maddening mull, isn’t it?” Lucy commented sympathetically. “Perhaps it is time I sent Julian to Tristan. A little man-to-man talk might be beneficial. Where is Tristan, anyway? In Surrey?”

  “He can be in Jericho for all I care.” Mary sniffed, feeling her recently acquired firm resolve to put a cheerful face on things beginning to crumble a bit at the foundation.

  “Really?” Lucy asked doubtfully.

  “No!” Mary rallied, hopping to her feet to cross the room briskly in answer to the knock that had just come at the door. “I asked Aunt Rachel that I not be disturbed unless it was something about Tristan. Do you think he might have at last settled all his demons and is even now waiting for me downstairs? Do I look all right? Oh, Lucy, I don’t want to murder him, really I don’t!”

  She flung open the door to see one of the under-footmen standing in the hallway, a folded letter in his outstretched hand. Grabbing it with more haste than grace, she fairly slammed the door on the poor fellow’s nose before skipping back to the bed, ripping open the plain, wax seal as she wiggled her bottom into a comfortable spot in the middle of the satin bedspread.

  “It’s from Tristan, I just know it is!” Lucy declared delightedly, scrambling onto the bed to peer over Mary’s shoulder as her friend read the contents of what was sure to be a most intriguing communication. “His handwriting was always as atrocious as my spelling,” she said by way of excusing her nosiness. “You may need me to interpret for you.”

  But before Lucy could catch so much as a glimpse of the letter, Mary had hastily crumpled it and pressed the paper against her breast. “What’s the matter?” Lucy coaxed gently, seeing that Mary had suddenly turned very pale. “It is from Tristan, isn’t it?” Her eyes narrowing dangerously, she continued, her voice deepening to keep pace with her darkening emotions: “If that lamebrained, looby has gone and done something stupid like setting sail to India to think things out, I will personally travel to Surrey to pull off his nose and stuff it in his ear! Of all the mad starts that idealistic moron has perpetrated, this one beats them all hollow! Why, I—”

  “You can’t pull off his nose, Lucy, if he is already aboard ship,” Mary pointed out quietly, turning to look her friend in the eye. “Besides, this letter isn’t from Tristan at all. The servant must have just assumed it was.”

  Lucy let out a deep sigh of relief before realizing that, whether the communication was from Tristan or not, it certainly contained something that had greatly upset her friend. She made a grab for the paper, but Mary quickly held it up out of her way.”

  “Lucy,” Mary said earnestly, “your Aunt Rachel has told me what a scapegrace you are. If you will swear yourself to the deepest
secrecy—promise not to breathe a word of this, even to Julian—can I count on you to help me?”

  Lucy lifted her chin, willing herself to look competent and worthy of Mary’s confidence. “Need you ask?” she pronounced dramatically. “But what about Tristan? If you need help, surely he is the one to whom you should apply. Besides, it would certainly serve to send him hying back here to London posthaste, if he believed his fair damsel to be in peril from some dragon.”

  Mary shook her head, dismissing the idea, much as it appealed to her. “Don’t make me think about Tristan right now, Lucy, as it will only serve to make me even more angry than before, seeing that it is his fault that I am in this coil at all.”

  “How?” Clearly Lucy was confused. “Will you please stop holding that letter above your head like some sort of dark cloud and tell me what is going on? What is Tristan’s fault?”

  Mary lowered her arm and handed the letter to her friend. “Someone must have seen me that night in Green Park while I was playing the spy for Tristan’s benefit. I’m to buy this person’s silence about my scandalous behavior by stealing some papers from Sir Henry’s desk. I don’t believe it, Lucy, it’s almost as if Tristan wished this catastrophe on me! I’m being blackmailed!”

  JULIAN RUTHERFORD HAD ALWAYS had a rather high opinion of himself, and even if Lucy’s advent into his life had brought with it the realization that he was merely human after all, he was not about to believe that he had become so insignificant as to appear to be transparent.

  Yet that was how he must have looked to his wife later that same night as he entered their town-house bedchamber with romantic dalliance in mind. Walking up behind Lucy as she sat before her dressing table absently drawing her brush through her dark locks, he leaned down to nibble delicately on her left earlobe, a location he had long ago discovered to be one of his favorite nuzzling spots. Needless to say, her response of, “Julian, please, I have no time for that now,” was not exactly the soft purr of pleasure he had been expecting.

  He retreated a moment, then attacked from another angle, running his fingertips in soft, lazy circles slowly up and down her bare back, which lay exposed above the low neckline of her dressing gown. Lucy twitched her shoulders as if to shoo him away and complained, “Stop that, it tickles!”

  Julian straightened, looking into the mirror at his wife’s reflection. Uh-oh, he thought, remembering that particular expression on her face all too well. Loosely encircling her slim neck with both his hands, he asked in his most offhanded way, “Whose demise are you planning, dearest? Dexter has promised to abide by my decision to approach Toland with an offer I believe the man will find hard to resist, so you can’t be plotting my maggoty cousin’s next attempt at elopement. That leaves Tristan and Miss Lawrence, I believe. To be truthful, pet, I’d rather you refrain from poking your pretty little nose into Rule’s affairs. I fear he might just take exception to your well-meant interference and break mine by way of retaliation.”

  “Tristan wouldn’t do any such thing,” Lucy argued, leaning her cheek against Rutherford’s hand. “He likes you too much. At least,” she added almost as if she were talking to herself, “he won’t if he understands that you didn’t know anything anyway, and therefore couldn’t have told him, which you wouldn’t because you’re a man of your word, and I would make you give me your word before I told you—which I won’t—so the whole question is silly, isn’t it?”

  “Dear me,” Julian drawled after a moment of stunned silence, applying just enough pressure to Lucy’s shoulders to have her rising from her seat so that he could turn her to face him, “I do believe I shall have to ask you to explain that last muddled statement. The only thing I have found to be worse than one of your harum-scarum ideas, my love, is to find out about it after the fact.” Lowering his eyebrows menacingly, he prodded. “Lucy…out with it…now. I’m your husband, and wives should have no secrets from their husbands, should they?”

  Lucy dropped her chin onto her chest, admitting defeat. “All right, Julian, I’ll tell you,” she said, sighing. Her voice was muffled against the front of her dressing gown as she added, “But you aren’t going to like it above half.”

  He pulled her comfortingly against his broad chest, suppressing a manly smirk of satisfaction that would have had her ripping a good-sized strip off his hide if he had been foolish enough to allow her to see it. This marriage business wasn’t so bad, he had discovered in the past year, just as long as he made sure to remind his wife occasionally just who was in charge.

  Perhaps it was this preoccupation with his own brilliance in bringing his adorable widget of a wife to heel that blinded the Earl of Thorpe to the fact that his wife, now snuggling kittenishly beside him in the middle of their wide comfortable bed, was smiling in a way that would have warned him that she was telling him only what she wanted him to hear.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TRISTAN WAS IN HIS BEDCHAMBER packing his belongings with a fervor only marginally concerned with neatness. For the first time since he had ridden his curricle neck or nothing out of London behind his blacks nearly two weeks earlier, he lamented his decision to leave his valet behind, preferring to sacrifice his comfort for speed.

  But now, now that his hard-won decision had at last been made, he could only wish for Bates to be with him, so that the necessary packing—and a more useless, time-consuming exercise he could not imagine—could be taken out of his hands.

  Wedging his new black brocade waistcoat down inside a satchel to rest cheek by jowl with one of a pair of muddy riding boots, he cursed himself yet again for being a blind, stubborn fool. How could he have—even for one moment, yet alone the better part of a fortnight—ever thought Mary’s parentage meant anything? What sort of blistering idiot was he to toss away his only chance at happiness because Jules St. Laurent, dead and buried these last ten years, just happened to be the father of the woman he loved?

  He had reacted, that’s what he had done. What he had not done, he reminded himself with yet another swift mental kick, was think! Damn him for the hotheaded fool everyone who loved him swore him to be. He had behaved like some lily-pure candidate for sainthood who had nary a mar or blemish on his own record.

  Well, nearly two weeks of searching his own conscience had revealed to him that not all of his actions during the past war would hold up very well under scrutiny. He may not have played both ends against the middle, he may not have acted only on his own behalf, and damn the lives lost by his treachery, but the news he so carefully ferreted out and sent back to Sir Henry had more than once resulted in someone’s death. Indeed, there were several men now below ground that Tristan had personally sent to meet their Maker. Yet he had never stopped to ask himself if Mary could learn to live with the blood that was on his hands.

  Jules St. Laurent had been a villain of the first water, there was no doubt about it. That he had succeeded in siring such a splendid, loving creature as Mary went against all the rules of nature, not to mention Tristan’s long-held notions of right and wrong, black and white, truth and falsehood. But Mary did exist, and Tristan knew he could not love her more if her father had been the exemplary Sir Henry Ruffton himself.

  If only it wasn’t already too late. If only Mary could find it in her heart to forgive him for the damned presumptuous ass he had been that fateful day when he had learned of her parentage. “Oh, God, what a dolt I was!” he exclaimed now as he remembered how she had strode away from him that day, her chin held high, as he had bid her a stiffly polite farewell. “Pluck to the backbone,” he said out loud as he threw his closed satchel at the servant who had just entered the room unannounced, thinking that any woman who could withstand the shabby treatment he had served up to her that day and not crumble was a jewel he could hardly believe he was worthy to possess.

  “Move it, man, I want to be on my way before the sun rises another inch in the sky or know the reason why,” he said to the servant, who had caught the satchel in self-defense and was standing there holding the thi
ng as if he was still wondering how he had come to have it in his hands.

  “But—but, milord,” the man squeaked timidly (for all of Rule’s servants, recipients of a rare dressing-down once the master had finished inspecting Rule’s Roost, were more than a little in awe of their employer), “George jist come in wit some post, an’ seein’ as ’ow ever one’s fer yer, Oi—”

  Tristan suppressed an impatient oath and held out his hand for the mail pouch. He’d give its contents a quick read as he gulped down some breakfast and then be on his way. Loping down the wide stairs two at a time, he quickly scanned the letters, five in all, and felt a small shiver of apprehension skitter down his spine.

  They were all from London. “And none of them,” he muttered darkly under his breath, “is an invitation to tea.”

  Once seated in the breakfast room, he tore them open one after the other and read the signatures. Julian. Lucy. Rachel. Sir Henry. Dexter. Dexter? Good Lord, that scatterwit was so averse to writing that Tristan had once seen him ask the dealer in some gaming hell to scribble his vowels for him and he would then add his initials at the bottom. Something very serious must be going on if Dexter felt it necessary to take up a pen.

  He threw down all the letters, then picked up the first that came to hand, which proved to be a mistake. Lucy’s florid handwriting, overpopulated with swirls and curlicues, was nearly impossible to decipher, and her sentences, hinting of dire happenings, seemed to run on forever without saying anything at all.

  His Aunt Rachel’s missive was no better, which set his inner alarm bells to ringing all the more, for Rachel could always be counted upon to keep a cool head in a crisis, and Sir Henry’s note, probably because he had long since perfected the art of concealing information, did no more than comment on the crowds descending on London for the coming fetes and request Rule’s own presence for the festivities.