An Extraordinary Lord

by Anna Harrington

  Veronica knew better than to answer anything to that.

  “You’re doing quite well for a woman from Saffron Hill,” Madame purred. “In addition to whatever other agreement you’ve struck, you’ve gotten a new wardrobe from him and an invitation to Carlton House to meet the regent.”

  The thought of both made Veronica uneasy.

  “What else do you want from him, hmm?” Mischievousness danced across Madame’s face as she brushed out her hair. “Make a wish, and we’ll do our best to make it come true.”

  “I want nothing else from him except the payment he’s promised,” she answered carefully.

  “Good. You’ll suffer less grief that way.”

  Taking her eyes away from Veronica’s reflection in the mirror, Madame set down the brush, stood, and walked back to the tea tray. “I like you, Miss Chase, so I will give you the best advice I can.”

  “Which is?”

  “Do not set your heart on that man.” Madame contemplated Merritt the same way she did the tea tray apparently—as if he were simply another part of a buffet to sample. “He is a gentleman in every way, and it’s the true gentlemen who are capable of wounding the deepest because they never lead you astray, never lie to you, never take advantage. Yet they also never give their hearts. Oh, they’ll give their attentions, their money—their bodies eagerly, certainly. But their hearts they always keep to themselves.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I don’t want his heart,” Veronica countered, not daring to let herself consider if she were lying to herself.

  Ignoring that, Madame selected a hard cinnamon biscuit and murmured, “I know from firsthand experience the impossibility of wanting a man who is out of reach.” She studied the biscuit in her fingers. “People see what they want to. A woman in fine satin must be special, a woman in worsted wool is not…but the exact same woman, in fact, when all that’s changed is the packaging. They assume the person you are on the outside must match the one on the inside.” She glanced around the room, as if taking in not just this suite of rooms but the entire brothel around her, the long years she’d spent building up her business, and how far she’d come from whatever hell she’d once crawled through to arrive here. “When the two might be nothing alike.”

  Madame snapped off a bite of the hard biscuit between her teeth.

  “Merritt Rivers is a barrister above reproach,” she continued, “a man who should have been recognized as a war hero but wasn’t, yet not for lack of trying. A friend to dukes, earls, and all kinds of important, upstanding men, the likes of which would never darken my door. While you…” She tossed away the rest of the unwanted biscuit and flicked the crumbs from her fingers. “You come from a den of thieves.”

  No. Veronica might have ended up there, but that was not where she came from. She could take pride in that part of her past at least.

  “So leave the snake alone, or you might just get bit,” Madame warned gravely. “And not at all in a pleasurable way.”

  Eleven

  Merritt opened the heavy walnut door to the second floor law chambers he shared with his father near Lincoln’s Inn and stopped in the doorway. He blinked.

  “Well,” he muttered as he stepped into the room, “that’s something you don’t see every day.”

  Slowly, he approached the full-sized tailor’s wickerwork mannequin standing in front of his desk. Good God.

  The form was dressed in a new set of barrister’s robes. Not just any robes either, he recognized immediately as his gaze swept over the mannequin. A black silk gown that fell to just below the knees with its flap collar and long, closed sleeves, a black bar jacket with its long tails and turned-back cuffs marked by three buttons…and to finish it off, a set of new breeches, silk stockings, and the most frilly jabot he’d ever seen in his life—all of it capped by a snow-white horsehair wig with curls hanging at the sides and down the back. This regalia was special, denoting rank as surely as a duke’s four ermine stripes.

  These were the robes of a King’s Counsel.

  A note card was pinned onto the mannequin’s faceless head where its nose should have been. His father’s elegant handwriting informed him that word had arrived last night, that his father wanted to be the first to congratulate—

  Tossing the note onto his desk, Merritt collapsed into his chair.

  “Christ,” he muttered, “I’ve been made a silk.”

  He stared at the regalia. His father must have paid a small fortune to have that made—far more than the ball gown Madame Barnaud was making for Veronica. After all, this gown was from Ede & Ravenscroft, the most exclusive tailors of regalia in England. They numbered among their clientele nearly every peer of the realm, every barrister and judge, most men in Parliament, and an occasional archbishop.

  Of course, in his pride, his father would have ordered the best. Had done so months ago, apparently, to have the whole thing waiting here like this.

  Sadly, this would only be the start. As the list of names of those barristers selected as King’s Counsel hit the chambers at all the Inns of Court, it would be as if a royal wedding had been announced—the popping of champagne, parties one after another, the ceremony itself at Westminster when the next Parliament convened…

  Merritt wanted no part of it.

  When he’d first begun to study law, becoming a KC had been his dream—to take the silks, to follow in his father’s footsteps as a barrister and eventually as a judge. The long nights of study, countless days in the Old Bailey, and hours spent poring over court records had seemed worth it at the time, all of it laying the foundation for the life he’d wanted.

  But then everything changed, and that old life simply wasn’t enough. Frustration burned in his chest. What good was prosecuting criminals and applying justice after the fact, after innocents were hurt or killed?

  His gaze drifted to the framed watercolor hanging on the wall between the two windows, between his desk and his father’s. A landscape of the sea at Brighton on some forgotten summer afternoon…whitish haze lying over the gray-blue water until it was almost impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began, a stretch of pebbly beach in tans and browns across the bottom of the canvas. Far from exciting. Ordinary. Done by an amateur artist who had braved the wind, the relentless sunshine, and the bite of salt air to capture that moment in time. Done by Joanna.

  He stared at that painting and was borne back into the past to that night when another riot had terrorized the city. To the night when Joanna had been killed.

  No matter how tightly he squeezed shut his eyes, he couldn’t stop the images from swimming behind them… A mob of rioters swarming through the midnight streets near Covent Garden, coaches trapped in the melee, their carriage surrounded by a group of men and women who rocked it violently back and forth while the driver did everything he could to keep the team from trampling into the crowd. The fear on Joanna’s face, the scream that tore from her when the carriage door ripped open and they were dragged outside into the street. The sickening helplessness that bubbled up even now like bitter acid on his tongue that he could do nothing to stop them.

  She’d tripped as she’d tried to run away. She fell, hit her head against the cobblestones—

  No. That was a goddamned lie. But that was what he let everyone believe because it was less painful than the truth. That one of the rioters had slammed a hammer into the back of her head.

  He clenched and unclenched his hands as the images barraged him. They grew more distant, more faded with each passing year, until their edges blurred as if looking at them through a rain-streaked window. Distorted. Smeared. Still he forced himself to remember everything about that night, not because it was his last glimpse of the woman he’d loved but because it was his punishment.

  Five years later, the ghosts haunted him as much as ever. No matter that he’d dedicated his daylight hours to bringing justice to men who harmed inn
ocent victims. No matter that he patrolled the city’s streets night after night like some wraith prowling through the darkness. Always, he saw the scarred face of the man who’d killed her, whose features had been seared into his mind. Always, Merritt hunted for him.

  Only during the past few days had that unending circle of darkness changed, when he’d been with Veronica. When he hadn’t thought of Joanna at all.

  With a curse, he shoved himself out of the chair and began to pace. But there wasn’t enough room in the book- and paper-strewn chambers to burn off the agitation boiling inside him. It was Veronica’s face he saw now when he closed his eyes, not Joanna’s. It was her scent and softness that he craved, her arms where he wanted to seek both pleasure and comfort. The guilt was eating him alive.

  A sharp knock rapped at the door only a heartbeat before it was flung open. Instinctively, Merritt’s hand dove for the knife beneath his sleeve.

  “Well, well,” Clayton Elliott called out as he strode into the chambers. “If it isn’t the newest King’s Counsel. And all along I thought you were nothing more than a poor excuse for a former soldier.”

  The tension eased from Merritt’s body, and he let his hand drop away. He was in no mood for Clayton’s teasing, yet he welcomed the distraction from his own dark thoughts. “Shouldn’t you be out doing Home Office business and saving England from itself?”

  Clayton grinned and wisely ignored that. “I just heard the news this morning.” He set a bottle of Kopke port onto the desk and announced, “I’ve come to celebrate with you.”

  “Or commiserate,” Merritt muttered, nodding toward the mannequin.

  Clayton raked his gaze over the new court regalia and let out a low whistle. “Congratulations, Cinderella. You’re all set for the ball.”

  Merritt grumbled, “Thanks.”

  “Actually, I think this might be a great idea.” Clayton folded his arms over his chest as he circled the mannequin and pretended to study it. “You can send this into the Old Bailey in your place. They’ll all welcome a barrister who doesn’t talk.” He muttered, “God knows I would.”

  Merritt gave a faint chuckle. He appreciated what Clayton was attempting to do. During the time they’d served together, they’d become as close as brothers, and Clayton knew him well enough to know how Merritt would react to the news and so had come bearing liquor. Thank God. “The court dress is a gift from my father.”

  “He’s proud of you.” Clayton propped a hip onto the corner of the desk. “So are all of us at the Armory.”

  Merritt’s chest tightened. He didn’t want attention called to him among the men there. He didn’t mind having their respect for his fighting abilities, but this was completely different. Most of the men who were part of the Armory were still finding their way since leaving the army and returning home. Some still hadn’t secured respectable employment. He didn’t want to remind them that he’d picked up his life right where he’d left off, while they hadn’t.

  He didn’t want to remind himself of that either. Yet he murmured, “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Clayton warned. “The Duchess of Hampton and the Countess of Sandhurst have already started planning a celebration for you.” When panic registered on Merritt’s face, Clayton clarified, “Just a small affair. You and your father, the men of the Armory…” He grinned at Merritt’s expense. “And every barrister practicing at all four Inns of Court.”

  “Good God.” Merritt grimaced. “I need a drink.”

  He crossed to the bookshelves that covered the side wall of the chambers and were filled floor to ceiling with thick legal tomes.

  “When you become a judge, you’ll need an entire distillery,” Clayton added.

  “Not enough whisky in all of Scotland for that,” he muttered beneath his breath. He pulled down a volume that was half a foot thick and reached behind to the store of fresh glasses and half-empty bottles of liquor his father kept hidden there. He didn’t have to glance at the tome’s title to know. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. As his father always said, any dive into the legal system should always be followed by a stiff drink.

  “But you’re getting a dashing new wardrobe,” Clayton reminded him. “From the looks of it, you’d think barristers were as prissy about their dress as all those unmarried misses at Almack’s.”

  “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. The parasol contingent has nothing on the Inns of Court.” Merritt pulled two glasses from their hiding place and carried them back to his desk. “When you get all of us together in our black silks, it’s like a murder of crows.”

  He opened the bottle of port and poured out the fig-colored liquid.

  “You have more robes coming soon, don’t forget.”

  His hand jerked at the reminder, splashing drops of port over the rim of the glass and onto the desk. His baronial robes. Good Lord. He’d blocked that from his mind.

  “You’ll need at least two sets, you know. A parliamentary set for gatherings of peers and another for coronations.”

  Twisting his lips, he frowned as he finished pouring and set down the bottle. “I only need coronation robes if the monarch dies.”

  “If?” Clayton repeated. “It will happen eventually, you know.”

  Merritt handed over one of the glasses. “Isn’t it considered treason to discuss the death of the monarch?”

  “Technically, we’re discussing fashion.” Clayton raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to dressing you like a peacock!”

  “Thanks,” he grumbled. “Nothing like friends to make a man feel better.”

  Clayton grinned with brotherly affection.

  Merritt took a healthy swallow of port and let the rich liquid cascade smoothly down his throat. That he could easily take comfort in.

  He sank back onto his desk chair and muttered into his glass, “Parliamentary robes, coronation robes, coronet, ermine… Good God.” He gestured at the mannequin. “That’s why my father bought those. He knows I have to buy the other robes and was most likely afraid I couldn’t buy these, too, on my income.”

  “That you wouldn’t buy them, you mean,” Clayton corrected, “and so try to avoid becoming KC.”

  “Would that work with being a baron, too, do you think?” he asked with mock sincerity. “Because if I don’t have a robe, I can’t assemble with the other lords, and I could just go on with my life as if none of this stuff and nonsense ever happened.”

  “Except for one small thing.” Clayton leveled his gaze on Merritt. “The judge.”

  His father. He blew out a hard breath.

  “Your father’s proud of you,” Clayton said quietly. “If for no other reason than that, let him have these moments. He deserves them.”

  “I know.” He lifted his glass. “To the Honorable Mr. Justice Rivers.”

  “Hear, hear.” Clayton followed in the toast by taking a long swallow. Then he gestured at Merritt across the desk with his glass. “Seriously—why aren’t you out celebrating?”

  “I came here to work.” When Clayton’s brow arched up at that, Merritt glowered at him in annoyance. “I do have a real job, you know, and bills to pay.” He counted them off one finger at a time. “Town house lease, stabling fees, ticks at various chophouses and stores—”

  “Gold coronets and ermine robes,” Clayton interjected, fighting back a laugh at Merritt’s expense. “All the usual household expenses.”

  Merritt shot Clayton an irritated scowl. Then his gaze fell to his desk and the papers and files stacked there, and he admitted seriously, “I’ve neglected my work over the past few days and came here to catch up.”

  “Hmm. And speaking of Miss Chase—”

  “We weren’t.”

  Clayton crooked a knowing grin and took a sip of port. “I expected you to have her on a short leash. Where is she?”

  “Le Château Noir.”


  Clayton choked on the port. Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he forced out, “Where?”

  “You heard me.” He kicked his feet onto the desk. “Our investigation into the riots has taken an interesting turn.”

  He took a moment to fill Clayton in on the meeting with Danker, Smathers’s speech at the Ship’s Bell, the Earl of Malmesbury’s carriage, and his plan to use the regent’s ball to discover who might have been inside the carriage. He conveniently left out everything else.

  Clayton swirled the last of the port in his glass. “I’ll post a man to the Ship’s Bell. It’s unlikely Smathers will return there, but perhaps someone else will take up recruiting in his stead.”

  “It takes a lot of men to populate a riot,” Merritt mumbled into his glass. “Smathers can’t be doing this alone. We should consider other taverns where former soldiers might gather.”

  “I might be able to reassign half a dozen men or so, put them into the streets, see what they turn up.”

  “Let’s talk to the men in the Armory, too, especially Nate Reed. He’s still in the horse guards and might have heard rumblings among the soldiers about other rabble-rousers.”

  Clayton thoughtfully swirled the port in his glass. “You think Malmesbury’s behind the riots?”

  “I don’t know.” But he was damned well going to find out.

  “Then we’d better hurry. The Home Office has soldiers waiting at the ready to put down the riots by force if they continue.”

  Dread filled his chest. “Under whose command?”

  “Major-General Horatio Liggett.”