Becca swallowed hard. “I’m afraid I don’t know where she is, Jasper. That’s the trouble. Liddy has gone missing.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” The pounding in his head built to an orchestral crescendo. “How can a sixteen-year-old girl vanish?”
“She’s seventeen, as of three months past.”
“Yes.” Grey clenched his teeth and tried to focus on anything beyond the throbbing rush of blood in his ears. “I sent her a gift, didn’t I?”
“The necklace is one of her prized possessions.” Becca’s voice broke, and she pressed a hand to her chest. “She never took it off.”
“Have you gone to the authorities? What does my father say? And Alistair?” Why had she bypassed all the responsible men in the family and come to him?
“Only a trusted few know of her disappearance. And now you.” She sat up straight against the cushions but kept her voice low. “I truly believe this involves a passing infatuation with a young man. Informing my husband or the authorities would tarnish her reputation. Alistair can be rather unforgiving about such matters, and telling your father would only cause him to worry. The earl needs all the strength he can muster right now. If we can find Liddy quickly, we might avert lasting consequences. Your sister is too trusting, a bit naïve, but she’s not a wanton.”
Liddy had always been a silly girl, willing to risk her heart and plunge wholeheartedly into a bit of adventure. A rake wouldn’t have to work very hard to gain her trust and lead her astray.
“Who?” Grey cracked his knuckles, already imagining which rotter’s face he’d get to pummel.
“I have my suspicions, but they are only that as of yet.”
“Tell me.”
“She’s quite infatuated with the Earl of Westby.”
Grey frowned. “Westby? What was he doing in Derbyshire?” And why had anyone allowed the infamous scoundrel anywhere near his impressionable sister?
“Phyllida has been in London for the last few weeks.” His cousin’s wife bit the inside of her cheek and cast a gaze out the carriage window. “We wished to give her a reprieve from the gloom at Longcross. My aunt Violet agreed to host her for a fortnight, but Liddy asked to extend her visit.”
“Your aunt Violet is so old she rarely remembers which day of the week it is. No one bothered to inform me Liddy was in town?”
“Why would we?” Becca faced him now, anger flashing in her hazel eyes. She no longer made any attempt to quiet her voice. “You abandoned your family, your home, your title. Alistair is more of a son to your father than you are. Would you wish—”
She continued speaking, but Grey clambered out of the carriage and slammed the door behind him, stomping back into his iniquitous den.
So much truth so early in the morning was doing his head in. He needed to wash and dress and confront Westby immediately. The thought of his sister anywhere near the man made him nauseated.
“Jasper, I’m sorry. My words were cruel.”
He turned to find Rebecca on his doorstep, hesitating as if she did not wish to reenter his nest of sinners.
“You’re forgiven, Becca. Nothing you said was untrue.” He might be a bloody good actor, but he did his best not to deceive himself. He knew what he was and all the ways he’d failed his family. “Alistair has taken on responsibilities I’m content to ignore. It’s a relief to know you both reside at Longcross with Father and . . . ” His sister’s name caught in his throat.
“Let’s go now and speak to Lord Westby.”
“No!” He shouted the word and then worked to tame his temper. “We are not going anywhere. I shall go.”
“What if he won’t speak to you?” Becca took one wary step over the threshold. “I recall how much you dislike the man.”
Grey narrowed his gaze. “You remember my complaining about a schoolmate?” His connection with the earl was years past. Now he only knew the wretch via his reputation for seducing innocent young women.
“I recall your coming home at Michaelmas and not wishing to return to Eton.” That unwavering amber-green gaze of hers reminded him of a time he preferred to forget.
The first visit home after his brother’s death, he’d been awkward and miserable in his own grief. He’d encountered an inconsolable Becca and been completely unable to offer comfort. In fact, he’d railed at her. A childish tantrum. He’d blamed her for his brother’s death. Only later did he realize every vitriolic word had been directed at himself. Neither of them had spoken of the incident since.
“I understand men like Westby, Becca. Many would say we’re cut from the same cloth.” Though Grey took care never to beguile innocents. He favored women who shared his desire for discreet, short-lived affairs.
Becca frowned, assessing him in an apparently unimpressed perusal. He hadn’t looked in a mirror in days, but he imagined his unshaven state of dissipation failed to inspire much confidence.
“Go back to Derbyshire. Alistair will wonder where you’ve gone.” For once in his life, Grey needed to do something right.
Taking two more steps inside the townhouse, Becca insisted, “You must find her quickly. She’s due back at Longcross next week. Your father and Alistair will begin asking questions if she’s gone any longer.”
“I understand.” He wouldn’t need a week. Energy fizzed in his veins. He’d tear London to shreds to find her, if that’s what it took.
“Here.” She slid a folded bit of paper from the wrist of one of her gloves.
“What’s this?”
“A list of Liddy’s acquaintances in London, including the gentlemen she mentioned in her letters home.”
“She kept extremely busy, I see.” There were four gentlemen’s names listed, all of whom Grey was sufficiently familiar with to know none was a suitable match for his sister.
“Wouldn’t you, if you were seventeen?” Becca glanced toward his shambles of a library. “Perhaps you still do.” After pulling up her hood, she started toward the door, then stopped and glanced back at him. “Good luck.”
Grey offered a reassuring grin. Yet as he watched Blessing assist her into the Fennston carriage for the long journey back to Derbyshire, one thought dominated.
Luck wouldn’t help him now.
He needed what he did not possess. After years of indulging his urges and investing as little of himself as possible, he’d given up on being the kind of man his brother would have been—courageous and honorable.
He squinted at the list of names Becca had given him. All were men he’d known in youth or met through his family’s social engagements. None was a friend. He had few of those left from his old life. His gut twisted at the notion of any rogue harming Phyllida, deceiving her, breaking her too-vulnerable heart.
“Bloody rotting hell.” He was the wrong man to save anyone. What a sodding irony. The Earl of Stanhope’s most debauched offspring was now tasked with preserving his sister’s honor.
His twin talents in playacting and seduction would be of no use.
Liddy deserved more than a reprobate actor searching for her. Yet she also deserved more than a lifetime of judgmental glances for what was likely a bit of youthful recklessness. He didn’t wish her to begin adulthood burdened with regrets.
He’d chalked up enough of those for both of them.
CHAPTER TWO
“Chance is the detective’s greatest ally. An investigator must be prepared to seize upon every opportune moment that comes her way.”
—CASEBOOK OF EUPHEMIA BREEDLOVE, LADY DETECTIVE
Sophia Ruthven never intended to plaster her palm against the man’s shapely backside.
In fact, she hadn’t intended to encounter the Earl of Westby at all. True, she had stolen into the man’s private study. But his sister, Lady Vivian, who’d invited Sophia to speak at her weekly ladies’ book club tea, insisted her infamous rake of a brother was not at home.
How could Sophia have known that a simple request to use the ladies’ washroom would lead her past the half open door
of the earl’s study? Who could blame her for succumbing to the mingled aromas of smoke and book leather wafting out of the room?
The chance to inspect a notorious scoundrel’s lair was simply too tempting a prospect to ignore.
Purely for research purposes, of course.
For months, Sophia had been working on a story about her fictional lady detective, Euphemia “Effie” Breedlove, but the details weren’t right. Her rakish villain lacked verisimilitude. A sheltered upbringing in the countryside had provided few opportunities to observe scoundrels firsthand.
Now her hand was pinned between the room’s dark wood paneling, a firm muscled posterior, and the green velvet curtain she’d hidden herself behind. The man and his companion had burst into the room as Sophia stood inspecting the items on the earl’s desk. Thankfully, the long drape-covered bay window had been near enough to offer concealment.
“Now. Right here on my desk. You’ve kept me waiting long enough, sweetling.” The man’s husky tone drew a moan from the young lady, interspersed with the squelching sound of wet kisses. Who gave with such fervor and who eagerly received, Sophia couldn’t be sure.
But she was sure of one thing. The feminine voice beyond the curtain belonged to Miss Emmeline Honeycutt, a fellow guest at the ladies’ tea. Sophia had been introduced to the girl not half an hour ago. She guessed her to be quite young, not many years older than her own seventeen-year-old sister, Clarissa. She couldn’t stand by and allow the girl to ruin herself.
Shifting her hand, she pushed at the heated swell of the man’s derriere.
“What’s that?” He stilled, pressing his weight against Sophia’s palm. “We don’t wish to be caught out, little minx. Seems we must wait a bit longer. You should get back to my sister’s gathering.”
After a few moments of whining protest and what sounded like the thud of dainty feet stomping thick carpet, Miss Honeycutt retreated with the swish and click of beaded fabric. When the study door slid shut, Sophia reached up to stifle a sneeze. She couldn’t get the taste of the earl’s pungent cologne off her tongue. Spicy and overly sweet, the scent was laid on so thick it tickled her nose.
“You can come out now, whoever you are.” His voice had taken on a hard edge, as firm as the contours of his backside. Not at all the warm murmur he’d offered Miss Honeycutt.
Thankfully, he’d moved enough to free Sophia’s hand, but she still hesitated a moment before pulling back the curtain and facing the man she’d read the worst sort of stories about in the gossip columns.
With one push at the drapery, she managed a step forward, keeping her chin up and back straight, lest he think her as brazen as the young woman who’d just left his arms.
“My lord, I can explain . . . ”
But she was apparently going to have to plead her case to an empty room. He’d gone, leaving her with nothing but flame-filled cheeks and the knowledge that, in future, she needed to stem her raging curiosity and keep out of scoundrels’ private spaces.
A clock chimed over the mantel and panic set in. She’d been gone too long. Even longer than the silly girl who’d nearly given herself to the earl on his desk.
Starting toward the door, she tripped on the velvet drapery clinging to her ankle.
A vice grip enclosed her wrist to keep her upright. No, not a vice. A hand, large and long fingered, and exceedingly strong, judging by how her own fingers had begun to numb.
“Lord Westby.”
With his dark clothing, the man blended into the room’s shadows. He’d been watching without her sensing him at all. Cursing her flawed powers of observation, Sophia snatched her arm from his grip. He released her and she quickly righted herself, yanking her boot from the drapery and moving toward the center of the room.
“You’re a foolish woman,” he whispered, “but I suppose men forgive that once they get a look at your face.” He stalked toward her until he was close enough for her to see the glint on his obsidian eyes. Moving slowly, he began circling her like a predator, deciding how he wanted to begin consuming his prey. “And those breasts.”
“I must return to your sister’s tea, my lord.”
“You should have considered as much before hiding away in my study.” He drew closer, looming at her back. As his damp breath rushed against her neck, the cloying sweetness of his cologne caught in her throat and burned her eyes.
“I allowed my curiosity to get the better of me, my lord.” Sophia started toward the door. “A mistake I shan’t repeat.”
Westby came around to stand before her, blocking her progress.
Sophia studied the scoundrel for the first time. Dark hair, coal-black eyes, and an arrogant smirk above a strong, squared jaw. Symmetry and sensuality conspired to give the impression of male beauty, as long as one ignored the coldness of his gaze and the cruelty in the set of his mouth.
He seemed to enjoy her perusal. Lifting his arms out at his sides, he urged, “Do your worst. How may I satisfy your curiosity? With a body like that”—he fixed his gaze on the overly ample bosom she’d spent most of her life trying to bind and conceal—“satisfying you would be no burden.”
Sophia took his fixation on her breasts as an opportunity to escape. She started past him, gathering a handful of her skirt to keep from tripping on her hem. By the time she reached the study door, he’d sprung into action, rushing up to slam a palm on the panel above her head and pin her against the wood.
“Don’t you want a taste before you go? One kiss to remember me by?” He drew his fingers across her cheek and chills raced down Sophia’s spine. “I certainly want to taste you,” he whispered, his lips hovering near her ear. “Are you the flavor of honey, like the shade of your hair? Or strawberries, like the flush in those perfect lips?”
Blood raced in her veins, flooding her cheeks, heating her chest and neck and the tips of her ears. Her skin pulled taut, muscles cramped.
She’d never been kissed, but she’d been this close to a dangerous man once before.
Flirtation and seduction meant nothing to Westby’s sort. But to Sophia, her first kiss was more than an item to tick off the list of all that she’d yet to experience in life.
She still hoped for marriage and even had a prospect in mind. Research for her book was not worth forfeiting favors to a blackguard who reeked of oversweet cologne.
“I’ve been gone too long,” Sophia insisted. The rush of blood in her ears wasn’t enough to block the ticking of the clock. Why had no one come to look for her after all this time?
Lord Westby tucked a hand around her waist, twisting her to face him. With one brusque slip of his hand, he palmed her breast, pushed until he’d pressed her back against the door.
“I’ll have a kiss before you go.” Westby hooked a hand around her neck, sliding his fingers into her pinned hair.
She was on the verge of stomping her foot as Miss Honeycutt had done, but forcefully and on his toes, when Westby dipped his head. A current of shock rioted through her when he swept his tongue across the seam of her lips.
She recoiled, pressing at his chest with one hand and lifting the other to swipe across her mouth. Something had to eclipse the soppy wetness of his tongue, like a warm slug slithering across her lips.
“You do taste like honey,” he enthused.
He tasted like cigar smoke and the rose water he’d apparently licked off the lady he’d been kissing moments before.
“Enough of this nonsense, my lord. Let me go.” She twisted her body, pushing at him with her hip to create distance between then.
When she finally had the man at her back and the study door latch in her hand, he gripped her arm and whispered, “Did you hear that?”
Somewhere in the house a woman raised her voice. A man shouted in reply, though Sophia couldn’t make out his words. Heavy footsteps shook the floorboards, louder as they continued, growing closer to the earl’s study.
“Get behind the drape.” The earl shoved her toward the window. “Don’t look at me like that. Yo
u were quite content there a moment ago.”
Sophia loathed his dictatorial tone and rough handling. She rubbed at the spot where he’d left a bruising sting around her arm.
“Look, you little fool,” he growled, “a forced marriage will never be my fate. And I trust you don’t wish to ruin your reputation entirely. Get behind the damned curtain.”
Sophia scowled at him as she sheltered behind the velvet drapery. The moment she drew the fabric across her body, the study door swung open.
“Winship?” the earl called out. “Good God, man, it’s been an age. I wasn’t sure you were still among the living.”
“That must be why your housekeeper was so reluctant to admit me.” The visitor’s voice was as rich and smooth as warm honey. But there was more underneath, a note of barely leashed ire.
“Well, you’re here now. Care for a scotch?” Westby seemed oblivious to the thread of fury in the man’s tone.
The clink of crystal indicated the earl had turned his attention to the liquor trolley. Sophia sensed the other man moving, the rustle of clothing and thud of his footsteps as he circled the room.
“Did you rip this ribbon off a lady, or did she offer it as a token?” The visitor’s voice was humming with anger.
Westby let out an ugly bark of laughter. “Let the fripperies fall where they may, I always say.”
Sophia held her breath. She needed to hear the stranger speak again. Something about his voice was oddly familiar.
“You bloody knave, where is she?” He no longer attempted to hide his anger, and Sophia no longer doubted his identity. Westby might call him Winship, but the man’s appealing voice gave him away as Jasper Grey, her brother’s theater friend.
“What the blasted hell. I don’t—” The earl began to sputter before his words cut off, followed by a sickening wallop of flesh colliding with bone.
“Phyllida is besotted with you, as you well know. Tell me where she is, and I’ll consider letting you live.” Mr. Grey’s tone had tempered to a deadly calm.
“Liddy? What business would I have with your sister? Check the bloody nursery.”
A Study in Scoundrels Page 2