Her Notorious Viscount

by Jenna Petersen

  He arched a brow. “I assure you, I do.”

  “You are asking the impossible!” she said on a humorless laugh. “From what I saw tonight, you would need months of training and study to make any good impression as a gentleman.”

  Nicholas clenched his fists. This woman did delight in insulting him. Very few people had ever dared to do that, and he didn’t think any of them had ever been of the fairer sex.

  “Then we shall make an even match, for your request to find a man missing in the underground for two years or more is just as complex and time-consuming.” Nicholas shook his head. “But I will still make the attempt, if you promise to remind me of the niceties of Society.”

  “Why me?” she asked, her hands moving to her hips. “You could hire any number of people to do this for you.”

  He shrugged. To be honest, until his encounter with Lucinda less than an hour ago, he had never even considered becoming a gentleman again. But he could well imagine what kind of hell it would be to hire a tutor. People would know, people would talk. His father would get a huge amount of pleasure out of the knowledge and probably take credit, if he didn’t swoop in and take over the arrangement entirely.

  A childish reason to ask this woman to repay her debt this way, but she was here and she was convenient.

  “You’re a hell of a lot prettier than any ludicrous fop I could hire to do the deed,” he said.

  He could have sworn that a tantalizing pink blush briefly colored her cheeks, but then Jane turned away into a shadow out of the moonlight, and he could no longer see.

  “No!” she said, her voice shaking. “I could never possibly do such a thing. The risk—”

  Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t finding your brother worth a little risk?”

  She sucked in a breath and turned back to him suddenly. All the color drained from her face the moment he spoke those words. And almost as swiftly, Nicholas wished he had not said them at all. They were a cruel manipulation, beneath even him. But he needed Jane Fenton. And he was willing to do whatever it took to have her help.

  Aside from which, if he did, by some off chance, find her wayward brother in his search, she would be thankful for the bargain they had made.

  “I-I—” she stammered. Then she slowly shook her head. “I cannot do this. I cannot.”

  Without looking at him, she yanked the terrace door open and fled down the long hallway toward his front door.

  A strange sense of emptiness remained in her wake. Nicholas hadn’t realized how much he hoped she would accept his terms. Now if he hired a tutor, it would have to be the kind of person his father would approve of instead of a lady who smelled faintly of ripe peaches and had eyes so dark he could surely drown in their beauty.

  Jane took great heaving breaths as she sat in the hired hack while it wound its way back to Lady Ridgefield’s home on Bond Street. Nicholas Stoneworth’s words still rang in her head. His offer and his final question taunted her.

  Isn’t finding your brother worth a little risk?

  Jane groaned in pain. Finding Marcus had been the main focus of the last year of her life. The way she had dealt with the pain of her beloved father’s passing, the shock when she realized just how many secrets he had been keeping to “protect” her, and the betrayal when her cousin took advantage of the situation and had Marcus declared dead.

  And yet she had been unwilling to risk something so pitiable as her reputation to find him.

  “What reputation?” she groaned as she rested her hand against her aching head.

  No one even saw her when they looked at her anymore, except for a handful of women she had once been friendly with. And they seemed to take cruel pleasure in how far she had fallen over such a short time.

  Except Nicholas Stoneworth saw her when he looked at her. And like it or not, she saw him. Not the snarling tiger he’d been at the ball or even the seductive scoundrel who had been expecting a whore as his visitor…but something deeper.

  She had sensed his pain when he spoke of his brother. And she had felt undeniable empathy for it.

  But that didn’t mean she could turn him into a gentleman. She wasn’t even certain that was possible. Seven years of hard living had squeezed gentility out of him, wrung it away like water from a cloth. She could only imagine making him sit at a table with twenty different forks and explain the order. Or forcing him to try to balance a tiny tea sandwich in his big hand while he chatted about the weather. Or spinning around a dance floor, with his hand against her hip, demonstrating the waltz.

  She shivered.

  No, she was not the right woman for such things. The idea of doing them was terrifying, actually. Being alone with Nicholas for half an hour had been trying enough.

  So she would have to find some other way to find her brother. Again.

  She was out of money, there was no way to hire another investigator. But perhaps if she read over her father’s papers one last time she would decipher some clue that she had missed in the past. She’d gone over them a hundred times before, but once more couldn’t hurt.

  But that would mean going back to her old home. Seeing her cousin. Facing the man who had tried to steal her brother’s life.

  Her stomach turned at the thought, but now that Stoneworth had refused her, she had little choice. So tomorrow she would take a few hours in the afternoon and do what she had to do, no matter how distasteful the idea was.

  Because turning Nicholas Stoneworth into a gentleman was not an option.

  Chapter 4

  Jane blinked back tears as she looked around the front parlor of the city estate she had called home for more than twenty years. It looked exactly the same as it had when her father was alive. Memories of him and her mother and her brother came flooding back to her as she waited for her cousin.

  She sighed as she crossed to the broad window seat that overlooked the street. Sinking down onto the cushioned ledge, she looked with unseeing eyes at the bustling scene below.

  As a child, she had sat here while her mother read her stories in the afternoon after tea. Later, she had laughed here when her brother told fantastical tales of his days in school. And more recently, she had cried here when her father passed of a sudden apoplexy and she was left utterly alone in the world.

  “Good afternoon, Jane.”

  She stiffened as she got to her feet and watched her cousin Patrick enter the room. He was a tall man, though not as tall as Nicholas Stoneworth. And certainly not as muscular, but no one could call him fat, either. Actually, he was a rather handsome man, with the strong features that were common to so many of the men in her family. His dark green eyes were just like her father’s. The lock of black hair that fell across his forehead put her to mind of her brother.

  Which made the fact that he had betrayed that same family all the more distasteful.

  “Good afternoon,” Jane said with barely concealed disdain. She would not call him “my lord.” Not ever.

  “I am pleased that you came,” her cousin said as he motioned to the two chairs that were situated before the fire. “Especially since you have left my past three missives unanswered.”

  Jane clenched her fists as she sank into the chair slowly. Her desire was to refuse his polite overtures, but she couldn’t do that.

  “I had nothing to say to you after our last argument.”

  Patrick pursed his lips. “If only we did not have to argue at all, Jane. I wish you were not so insistent on making me out to be a villain. I know you don’t understand—”

  Drawing in a harsh breath, she snapped, “I understand perfectly. You want my brother to be dead so that you can have the life that was meant for him.”

  Her cousin’s cheek twitched. “Jane,” he began, his tone a warning.

  One that she ignored, although her rational mind screamed at her to be civil. It was impossible to heed that call. Patrick forever brought out the worst in her and made her say things she shouldn’t.

  “Somehow you managed to convince t
he justice that my brother is dead. I don’t know how you did it, though I assume it involved a great deal of money. But I am not so easily swayed as some greedy barrister. I know Marcus is not dead. And I will use every breath in my body to prove it and take back what you stole.”

  Patrick drew in a deep breath, but he did not get angry. He never got angry, even when they argued. That fact drove Jane mad. She wanted to rile him. To make him as frustrated and annoyed as she was every time she looked at him.

  “How could you do this?” she asked, and hated how her voice broke.

  He shook his head slowly. “I did what needed to be done to protect the family name, and continue the family line. You may not wish to believe that, but it is the truth. And I offered to help you, to marry you. I still would.”

  Jane surged to her feet. “Please do not claim that your distasteful offer was made to help me. You did it only to legitimize your claim to the title and to soothe your own guilt over your betrayals. Nothing more. I told you then that I will never marry you, and I meant it. But I will find my brother, and then you will be revealed for the charlatan and liar you are.”

  Patrick got to his feet slowly. He looked at her, and his expression was one of sadness. Pity. Which caused the anger that boiled out of control in Jane’s chest to burn even hotter.

  “You may continue to try, Jane,” he said softly. “But you might do better to accept what has happened. And accept help. You do not have to continue on as a companion to Lady Ridgefield. At the very least, I could sponsor another Season for you, I could—”

  Jane turned her back, and the action silenced him midsentence. “I did not come here for your false charity, Patrick. I came to review my father’s papers once more. In fact, I would like to take them with me, so that I will have access to them at all times.”

  Patrick sighed. “I have told you before, those items belong to the estate. You may make as many copies of the information as you like and visit as often as you care to for examination. But I cannot allow my uncle’s papers to leave this house.”

  Jane spun on him, fists shaking at her sides. All the emotion she normally tried to control was alive at that moment. Transformed into the powerful hatred she had developed for the man before her. He was a person she had once thought of as a friend. But now she could see only his detestable qualities.

  “Fine,” she finally managed through clenched teeth. She wanted to say so much more, but feared Patrick would use his power to keep her from reading over her father’s papers at all if she continued to press the issue.

  “Then I will have Jenkins show you to the archive. I assume when you are finished with your work, you will not want to see me, but if you do I shall be in my office. Good day.” Her cousin turned and quietly exited the room.

  As Jane waited for the butler who used to serve her to come and collect her, she paced the small parlor restlessly. Her cousin’s words echoed in her head. Patrick had told her to accept help. He meant his own, of course, but that was not a scenario she would ever allow herself to become a part of.

  However, another man had offered his help. With a price, of course, but if Nicholas could find her brother…perhaps he was right that the ends would justify the means.

  And how hard could it be to “train” a man to be a gentleman?

  She shut her eyes as she thought of Nicholas Stoneworth. An image of him came far too quickly, standing in the cool moonlight, his bright blue eyes glittering with sensual promise and debauchery.

  It would likely be impossible to transform him into the kind of man who would be welcome in the ballrooms of the best of the ton. But he didn’t have to know that. She only had to help him until Marcus was found. Then she could renege on their bargain. That was not honorable, perhaps, but neither was asking a lady to pay for the help of a gentleman.

  She didn’t have any choice. With Patrick keeping her from any kind of private investigation and without money for any other search, Jane needed Nicholas Stoneworth.

  And as long as he needed her in return, then she would have a little bit of power. She could only hope it would be enough.

  Jane stood at the back door of Nicholas’s town home, rapping on the hard surface. She shivered, though the spring night’s breeze was far from brisk. Nervousness caused the motion.

  The door came open and a disapproving female servant stared at her. From the apron she wore, she appeared to be a cook.

  “Another one?” she snapped with a cluck of her tongue.

  Brow wrinkling with confusion, Jane said, “I am here to see your master. Will you tell him that Jane Fenton has returned?”

  The cook turned her back with another harrumph. “Not my job to show his hussies around.”

  Jane took a step inside, though she hadn’t yet been invited. “Madam, I am not a hussy, I am—”

  “You again.”

  She looked up as the butler who had shown her in the night before came down the three steps into the kitchen.

  “G-good evening,” she stammered, thrown off by the tall, thin man’s utter disdain. “I have come to see your master.”

  “Clearly, but I’m afraid I cannot allow that. Lord Stoneworth has asked not to be disturbed tonight. I shall be sure to tell him that you called.”

  He started to depart the room, but Jane rushed toward him before he could utterly dismiss her.

  “But he is expecting me.”

  The man turned and speared her with a look full of disbelief. “I somehow doubt that.”

  “Please, won’t you ask him? It couldn’t hurt, could it?” she pleaded, hoping her mournful expression could manipulate the situation a little.

  She had to make Nicholas agree to her scheme as soon as possible, before he changed his mind or found another tutor and she was back where she started.

  “It will hurt far more than you imagine, miss,” the butler said. “Do you have any intention of leaving?”

  Jane shook her head quickly.

  He shut his eyes with a long-suffering sigh. “Then follow me.”

  He led her through the halls a second time, but tonight he took her to a small parlor rather than the terrace where she had met with Nicholas before. She tapped her toe restlessly as she awaited the man’s return.

  Looking around her, she took in the room, which was in some state of disarray. Not dirty, of course, but as if someone had moved the furniture and it never quite found itself back in the right place. She made a mental note to include lessons on the maintenance of one’s home as part of the gentlemanly instruction she would conduct if Nicholas agreed.

  He would agree. He had to.

  She heard masculine voices in the hallway and rushed to the door. She staggered back at what she saw. Nicholas was with his servant, but he was not dressed. He wore a black silken robe, tied negligently around his hips. Tanned skin, rippled with ropes of muscle, seem to be everywhere she looked.

  Was he doing that on purpose to stymie her?

  She forced her hands to stop shaking and tried to appear bored as he entered the room.

  “Miss Jane Fenton,” he drawled, not even looking the slightest bit embarrassed at his lack of attire. “I did not expect to see you this evening. Or ever again. Last night you made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me unless it was on your own, rather narrow terms.”

  Jane forced herself not to stare at his bare, muscular legs, or the expanse of chest that was revealed in the deep vee of his dressing gown, or his broad shoulders. Instead, she stared straight into his pale eyes, but found them almost as distracting as his shamefully uncovered body.

  “I-I—” she stammered.

  “Stone?” came a female voice from the door.

  Jane froze, then slowly peeked around Nicholas to see a disheveled blonde smiling at the viscount. His face briefly tightened with what looked like annoyance before he turned.

  “Lydia, I thought we had already said our goodbyes,” he said as he made his way to the door. The pair of them spoke for a moment quietly before the
other woman pulled a childishly pouting face and then left.

  Jane opened and shut her mouth in shock. So he had been…been bedding that woman when she arrived. That was why he was wearing naught but a robe. Strange emotions troubled her at the realization. Embarrassment, of course, but she was also intrigued. The cook had said “another one” when Jane entered the house, so she must have believed Jane was there to join in the viscount’s fun.

  Did women actually share men in bed?

  And another emotion made itself known. Faint, but still there in a troubling degree.

  Jealousy. She didn’t like the idea that Nicholas Stoneworth had been upstairs pleasuring some lightskirt while she was downstairs awaiting him.

  Which was ridiculous! She was being foolish to even consider it, just overly emotional after her troubling encounter with Patrick and her terrifying decision to accept Stoneworth’s bargain.

  She was not, she could not be jealous of this man’s conquests.

  Nicholas gently shut the door, the sound ricocheting off the walls like a gunshot. She stared at the barrier with a frown.

  “My apologies,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry for anything. “I did not intend for us to be interrupted.”

  She pursed her lips. “Indeed.”

  “Now what were you saying?” he asked as he continued to move toward her step by long step. “Something about why you came?”

  Suddenly Jane was having a hard time recalling her reason herself. All she could think about was how tall Nicholas Stoneworth was.

  “How did you blacken your eye?” she found herself asking. She shook her head the moment the question left her lips.

  He stopped stalking toward her and stared at her. Then a little smile quirked his lips. “Is that why you came here? To inquire about my eye?”

  She frowned. He was toying with her. “Of course not,” she said, though her tone was not as harsh as she had wanted it to be.

  “I was punched,” he explained without any indication of how he felt about that fact. “In this very room, in fact.”