Miranda Neville

by The Ruin of a Rogue

  Travis accepted Marcus’s needling with his customary serenity. “It’s the duty of a valet to see to his gentleman at all times.”

  “But I’m no gentleman.”

  “Of course you are, sir,” Travis said in his most annoyingly indulgent tones. “And one any young lady would be lucky to have as a husband.”

  “You do realize that it’s in the highest degree unlikely that Miss Brotherton’s guardians would approve such a match?”

  “Then they will have to be persuaded otherwise, sir.”

  “I suppose you’d prefer to serve a man of fortune. One who actually paid wages.”

  “I’m quite content in my situation.”

  Marcus gave up. Travis was wrong. Morrissey would never be “persuaded” to allow the heiress’s marriage to Marcus, unless the girl was compromised. Even then he might still dig in his heels and refuse his consent. This didn’t bother Marcus. Either way was fine but he’d prefer the latter. Matrimony lasted for life and he’d always been leery of encumbrances. A wife would be even more tedious than a servant. If he played his cards correctly, the trustees would buy him off with a fat settlement. The fifteen-year-old daughter of a Genoese nobleman had been mad for his eighteen-year-old self. Her father, on discovering that Marcus hadn’t actually ruined the girl, paid him a handsome sum to absent himself from the city, forever. Marcus, a man of honor when there was no reason not to be, had never set foot in Genoa since. With a richer pigeon in Miss Brotherton, he intended to pull off that trick again. Unless . . .

  “Hand me my dressing gown and bring a pack of cards.”

  “Please, my lord, no.” The valet put his hands behind his back.

  “Yes, and stop the my-lording. Sir is good enough.” He stepped down from the bed and found his own banyan. “Come on.” Travis trailed him into the dismal sitting room, which, together with the bedchamber and the tiny servant’s room, comprised the whole of their cheap lodging. “Sit down. We’ll try Beggar-My-Neighbor.”

  He chose the children’s game because there wasn’t an ounce of skill in it. It was the perfect test of luck. Travis sat stiffly at the coarse gateleg table and accepted half the cards.

  Marcus had once spent an idle evening trying to work out the mathematics of Beggar-My-Neighbor, to see if it was possible for the cards to fall so the game would never end. Certainly it always felt endless. Not today. He watched in detached amazement as Travis won pile after pile of cards, until Marcus was down to two. Travis turned up a king and Marcus produced a knave. He held his breath as his opponent revealed the next card in his hand. Another knave. Marcus’s last card was a worthless five and the game was over. It had taken less than five minutes, surely a record.

  “Damnation, Travis. I swear you bring me ill luck.”

  “Sir!” The man’s indignation managed to be both comical and pathetic.

  “Don’t worry. I don’t blame you. I’ve never held with the superstitions that rule many of my fraternity. It’s all in the odds, and for some reason they’ve been against me for a while. I’ll recover eventually.”

  Brave words! There seemed no end in sight to the longest losing streak in his long career as a gamester. There was no help for it: It would have to be the heiress.

  “I need to know Miss Brotherton’s plans. Will you see her maid today?”

  Travis cracked a smile, always a distressing sight. “If I take Your Lordship’s shirts to the laundress now, I believe I shall meet her going about her business.”

  “Exercise your charms then.” The girl must be desperate to find Travis’s mug appealing.

  “Ahem. I regret to say that the establishment does not care to extend Your Lordship credit.”

  Marcus produced a coin from his dwindling purse. He’d left Italy in a sound financial state but he’d never dreamed of the ill luck that had haunted him since he crossed the Alps. He could only trust his strategy with Anne Brotherton would be more successful than his effort to cheat her cousin. No, not quite cheat, but close enough. And he regretted it. Caro’s late husband, Robert Townsend, had been his best friend, and he and Caro had been close. The Townsends’ house had been a welcoming haven during his visits to London. Now Robert was dead and Caro, the new Duchess of Castleton, refused to speak to him. He missed them far more than he missed cards. Gaming was his profession, not his passion.

  When Travis left, Marcus took up the volume on Roman antiquities of Bath. The author was no stylist, and he found the work hard going. He’d barely taken in enough to convince Miss Brotherton of his familiarity with its contents when he was gratefully interrupted by a knock at the door. Marcus opened it to find a man carrying a small trunk that he recognized at once.

  “Mr. Lithgow?” Evidently the fellow was unaware of his acquisition of a peerage. “Had the devil’s own time finding you. Delivery from foreign parts.”

  During his childhood, the box had been a familiar sight, accompanying him and his father between shabby lodgings and angry victims. It hadn’t been among Lewis Lithgow’s effects when Marcus arrived in Naples to find his father dead and buried. He had no key, but picking a simple lock was a skill he’d acquired along life’s way. The lid opened with a creak. Laid on top of some folded cloth was a letter addressed to Mr. Marcus Lithgow, England, in a hand he guessed was German. No, Austrian. From Vienna.

  Dear Mr. Lithgow. Perhaps you know my name, he translated. Your father has perhaps mentioned the Countess von Hoffenburg. We became acquainted in 1784. The year after his father left England for good, leaving the eleven-year-old Marcus to the care of his mother’s uncle.

  The countess explained that Lewis was forced to leave Vienna in a hurry. Not the first time he’d found a city too hot for him. I always looked for his return but it was not to be. Some poor deluded female who didn’t realize how lucky she was that her lover had abandoned her before he took her for all she was worth. When he was cruelly torn from me, he left this trunk. He intended to return but made me promise that if I heard of his death I would send it to you in England. I lately heard the sad news of dear Lewis’s demise. So I keep my promise and send this to London, hoping it will find you there. The son of so distinguished a man must be well-known in the English capital.

  Distinguished? Distinguished only as a scoundrel.

  Marcus was sure the contents would be worthless. It wasn’t like Lewis to leave behind anything of value. Still, he couldn’t help hoping there would be something. Even a small coin or two. He pulled out a black silk domino. His father always enjoyed a masquerade.

  As expected, his inheritance proved sadly meager.

  A velvet mask. A pair of dice.

  Marcus tossed them. Double sixes. And again. Loaded.

  A pack of cards. These he knew well. A barely perceptible and intricate system of pinpricks identified each card in the deck. Lewis had made the young Marcus learn those marks by heart, over and over until he could recognize each card by a glance at its back. His father’s idea of education. He drew one and examined the back. Queen of hearts. Correct. Ten of spades. Right again.

  He’d always had an excellent memory. Much later he studied the odds and learned to win honestly—unlike his father. Under Lewis’s approving gaze, he’d cut his winning teeth by cheating stable boys and bootblacks out of their wages.

  He returned to the trunk. A single shoe buckle, a pair of white gloves, soiled, and another letter. This time he knew the writing.

  Dear Marcus,

  If you are reading this it means I am dead. Thanks to a little trouble with some angry Russians I have to leave Vienna in a hurry. My intention is to return soon and complete my plans, but if I surrender to force majeure in the form of the prince’s unreasonably brutal servants, I want you to know that I left handsome insurance when I departed England last year. Your uncle Hooke has it in his care, though he knows not what a treasure I left in his hands. I doubt he would approve. Find it, and you will be set up for life. Never say that I haven’t been a good father to you. I close in haste.

&
nbsp; Yrs affectionately,

  L. Lithgow

  A year or so earlier, Marcus had unwillingly traveled by ship from Lisbon to Naples at Lewis’s urgent behest. He liked Lisbon, finding the Portuguese poor cardplayers and amiable losers. Why he allowed his sire to exercise any pull over him, he didn’t know. Reluctant fascination at what the old man was up to, he supposed, along with a battered remnant of filial deference. He arrived to find Lewis had been dead a week, and buried too—they didn’t keep bodies lying around in southern Italy—and that he, Marcus, by a twist of genealogy, had inherited an obscure viscountcy from his father’s distant cousin. The letter informing his father reached Naples after his death. As usual, Lewis had the last laugh. Not only was there nothing of value among his possessions, but Marcus had to pay for his funeral.

  Now, it seemed, he had a legacy beyond his thorough education in villainy. But what?

  Sitting at the table, mindlessly throwing the loaded dice, he tried to guess what the insurance was. Hard to credit Lewis had left anything that was both valuable and easily carried behind him when he left England. And supposing he had, it was by no means certain he hadn’t returned to retrieve it. As far as he knew, Lewis had never again set foot in his native land. Whatever brouhaha drove him abroad, it was bad enough to send him into permanent exile. But Marcus had too much respect for his father’s cunning to eliminate the possibility he had crept back sometime in fifteen years.

  Marcus considered, and rejected, posting down to Hinton. On such slender grounds, the price of a journey to Wiltshire looked a poor investment, not worth more than the price of a sheet of paper, for the delivery of which his mother’s uncle, Josiah Hooke, would have to produce a sixpence or two.

  Which left Lewis’s other legacy, a concrete one.

  Marcus took the marked pack and dealt a hand of piquet. Without looking at the telltale markings, he examined his cards. Not bad. In fact, quite good. Unless the other hand possessed a guarded queen of spades, he’d win. Nothing spectacular, but better than he’d enjoyed in months. Perhaps his luck was turning at last. With practiced ease he calculated the odds and found them in his favor. He eyed the extra cards available to the other hand and read the minute combination of pinpricks and ink, invisible to any eye that wasn’t looking.

  Queen of spades. Eight of spades. Seven of spades.

  Unbelievable.

  He, one of the best piquet players in Europe, couldn’t even beat an insentient opponent with marked cards. It would definitely have to be the heiress.

  Chapter 3

  Travis had struck up an acquaintance with Miss Brotherton’s maid at the laundress’s establishment and advanced to friendship based on fervent and mutually held opinions regarding the correct application of starch. Well-informed of the heiress’s habits and movements, two mornings after their meeting Marcus entered Dangerfield’s, the Berkeley Square circulating library. Across the spacious reading room he spied Miss Brotherton perusing a section of shelves devoted to history. Rather impatiently, she stood on tiptoe to reach a volume on a shelf above her head, without calling an attendant for library steps.

  “Allow me.” He reached over her shoulder. “Was this the one you wanted?”

  She jumped a little, but when she turned to face him she didn’t seem displeased. “Thank you,” she said with a faint blush.

  He read the spine of the stout quarto as though he didn’t know exactly what it was, from the previous afternoon’s reconnaissance. “The Medallic History of Imperial Rome? Interesting.”

  “I think it must be. Do you know it?”

  “Never heard of it. You must let me know.”

  “I came to find the book by Mr. Warner you told me about. Dangerfield’s doesn’t have it.”

  “What a shame.” He reached for the first of a set of volumes. “Have you read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?”

  She averted her eyes. “I would like to but my grandfather was particular about what I read. He told me it wasn’t a proper book for a lady.”

  “Do you know Greek and Latin?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Then you should be quite safe. The questionable passages are in the footnotes, in the original languages. As schoolboys we found them quite an incentive to study.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are there many such passages?”

  “Not nearly as many as schoolboys wish.”

  “I shall take the first volume, and this one. Then I think I’ll walk to Piccadilly and see if Hatchard’s has the Warner book.”

  “Are you alone? May I keep you company?”

  “My maid is waiting for me, studying the latest edition of La Belle Assemblée.” Then, after grave consideration, “I would be happy to accept your escort, but we haven’t been introduced.”

  He made a play of looking about him. “I was hoping to find a mutual acquaintance to perform the office, but I don’t see a soul I know. We shall have to remain in ignorance of each other’s identities.”

  Since she smiled at his joke, he summoned his luck, as he did when about to cast the dice with a large sum at stake. “Viscount Lithgow at your service, ma’am.”

  “Oh.” Oh, indeed. Then, happily, she smiled again. “Lord Lithgow! Caro’s friend Marcus! I’ve heard about you for years.”

  “Nothing bad, I trust.”

  “Oh no!” The way she averted her eyes told him she wasn’t being entirely truthful. How could she? No one ever heard of Marcus Lithgow without hearing something bad. He trusted she had heard only old stories of his wild youth, rather than any recent and specific sin. God bless Caro for her loyalty. She might be furious with him, but she wouldn’t carelessly blacken his name to others. He had bet on Caro keeping the cause of their quarrel to herself—and won.

  “Forgive me,” he said, “but should I know you?”

  “I am Caro Townsend’s—the Duchess of Castleton’s, I mean—cousin Anne Brotherton.”

  He seized her hand and shook it heartily. “How extraordinary! Caro’s cousin Annabella. I would never have guessed. You don’t look anything like I expected.”

  “Oh? How did you expect me to look?”

  “More like Caro, small and redheaded. I wouldn’t have looked for an elegant dark girl.”

  “Elegant? I think not.”

  “You will be once you buy whatever modish wonder your maid has discovered. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to go straight to the mantua maker?”

  “I’m not sure I should go anywhere. I’m staying with Lady Windermere and she will be worried.”

  Marcus hastened to weaken her resistance, which seemed to have been raised by his casual compliment. “What a coincidence. I know Windermere but I haven’t seen him in years and I never met his wife.”

  “Windermere went abroad soon after their marriage.”

  “Shall I escort you to Hanover Square instead?”

  “The bookshop will do very well.” Her manner softened infinitesimally. As he watched her take her selection to the attendant and order it delivered to Windermere House, he pondered their recent exchange. Whether she was haughty or merely deeply reserved remained to be discovered.

  Anne had been pleased at knowing Lithgow’s identity. She’d grown up hearing about Caro’s friends, who always sounded such fun. Her own life had been spent in the country with her elderly grandfather. A year after the latter’s death, she’d come to London, staying first with Caro and now with Cynthia, Lady Windermere. She still lived quietly, aside from an occasional evening party. Lithgow was the most interesting person she’d met in months.

  But Anne was naturally cautious, especially when it came to single gentlemen. The prospect of the Camber acres did strange things to unmarried men.

  It had been too much to hope that a man she liked would also be a suitable match. Lithgow was hopelessly ineligible, despite his recent succession to a viscountcy. As long as she resisted any flirtation, she could enjoy the acquaintance. Where was the harm?

  Feeling agreeably dari
ng, she set off down the street on his arm, her maid trailing behind. After their first meeting she’d been unable to give Cynthia a satisfactory report on his appearance, having been overcome with delight by his ability to tell the difference between a Greek original and a Roman copy. Now she took inventory while he kept up a flow of inconsequential chatter. His straight brown hair, worn longer than the new fashion in London, suited a rather handsome forehead. His nose was likewise straight and well-shaped, his chin firm; and his cheekbones prominent. When he turned to listen to a reply she determined that the eyes were a catlike green. How had she missed that?

  To her disappointment, Hatchard’s didn’t have Mr. Warner’s book. “I’ll have to order it,” she said to Lithgow.

  “Since the printer is in Bath it could be weeks before you receive it. I know a bookseller in Soho who makes a particular point of carrying such books. Walking shouldn’t take more than a quarter of an hour, unless you prefer to go by hackney.”

  She told herself that she really wanted Mr. Warner’s Illustration of the Roman Antiquities Discovered at Bath. Now. To read that very evening; nothing else would do. “It’s a fine day and I like to walk.”

  Anne’s maid did not. The middle-aged dresser sent heated glares into Anne’s back. Not that she could see Maldon’s sullen expression, but the woman had attended her for most of her life and they knew each other very well. By the time they passed Burlington House, awareness of Maldon’s resentment and sore feet distracted her to the point of spoiling the conversation. It would be unkind to make Maldon walk farther, yet Anne was enjoying herself. Just for once she didn’t want to do the right thing.

  “Maldon,” she said firmly. “Please return directly to Hanover Square and tell Lady Windermere where I have gone.”

  “I shouldn’t leave you, miss.”

  “I wouldn’t wish Her Ladyship to be worried, and Lord Lithgow will look after me.”

  Her unwonted strength of command cowed the dubious maid and rendered her obedient. I pay her, Anne told herself. I may have no control over my money but it is mine. I should be allowed to do what I wish. A startling thought.