Not for the first time, Cole had wished he’d killed the greasy man right then and there. It would be no less than he deserved. Usually men didn’t lie to him, not when he had his good hand wrapped around their throats and the sharp metal of his hidden wrist-blade at their sacs. But back when he’d confronted the pimp and game-maker, he’d been barely released from the hospital. Weak, frail, and desperate.
What if del Toro had lied to him? What if the man had more guile than Cole had credited him with? What if … he’d kept Ginny for himself? Taken her to Sicily, perhaps.
The very idea made Cole’s skin crawl and his stomach clench. Every lead had gone cold, and the woman he’d pined for these past three years had simply vanished into the London mists.
“Perhaps your associate, Blackwell, has contacts in Sicily, and could find del Toro for me. I think it might bare new leads, interrogating him once more.”
“After this long, Trenwyth, the odds of finding her are approaching nil. Not one of the whores who worked with her stayed at the Bare Kitten. None of them remembered much about her either,” Ravencroft said carefully as he drew up behind him. “Och, I’m not accustomed to speaking to the back of a man’s head, Yer Grace,” he chided. “Are ye admiring yer own reflection in that window, or have ye found something that’s better to look at than my brutish face?”
“Neither.” Trenwyth opened the drapes further to share the view. “I was simply watching my insipid neighbor make as much of a disaster of trying to paint as she does of everything else.”
Ravencroft peered over his shoulder past the hedgerows that hid a stone and iron fence, on the other side of which the Countess Anstruther had wrestled her canvas and easel back into place. She currently settled herself into her uprighted chair, spreading a stained apron over her blindingly pink skirts.
The marquess gave a low whistle. “Well now, that’s a bonny view ye have there.”
“Her?” Cole snorted. “Hardly. She’s nothing more than a grasping opportunist that can afford a garish wardrobe.”
“She’s not wearing much of that wardrobe now.” Ravencroft chuckled. “Ye canna say ye hadna noticed.”
“Dressed or not, she is beneath my notice.”
Only … she wasn’t.
He’d noticed the day he’d returned to Trenwyth Hall that if the weather was clear, Lady Anstruther habitually took advantage of the light in her garden. Almost every afternoon she’d pack her art supplies into the sunlight, eschewing the help of servants, and set up in this very spot. The canvas would face the sun to the west, and she’d sit facing the east. The room he’d picked for his study happened to give Cole a perfect view of her. How could he help but notice her?
He noticed that, if the day was warm, she’d strip off her blouse, painting only in her chemise and corset as she did now. He noticed that she hadn’t the sense to use a lawn umbrella or parasol, so what occasional sun London enjoyed tinted her skin an unfashionable shade and darkened the freckles that marred her nose. He noticed that her hair was too golden to be called red, and too red to be called blond.
He even noticed her vivid expression of emotions that he’d never again hoped to experience as she daintily pressed her brush to the canvas with the most whimsical, almost unbridled movements. Inspiration. Nostalgia. Contentment …
Peace.
Lord, how it irked him. How little he regarded her, but how much he noticed her.
“I take it ye’re not friendly neighbors?” Ravencroft surmised.
Cole made a caustic sound. “Her late husband, Lord Anstruther, was a particularly decent man. She some-bloody-how got her claws into him as the old man—seventy if he was a day—malingered on his deathbed. They were married only nine months before he expired, and now she is the sole proprietor of his fortune, as he had no heir, and his estate was not entailed.”
“Is that right?” Ravencroft asked, conveying only mild interest. “I suppose that’s an infrequent occurrence among our class.”
“There’s the rub. The woman has no class. No family, title, or money. The daughter of an impoverished merchant, she was his nurse at St. Margaret’s, if you’d believe it. I’ve looked into her a little to see if I could wrest Anstruther’s legacy from her, but the documentation is ironclad. She certainly helped him put his affairs in order before she likely helped him to the grave.”
“That’s a substantial accusation,” Ravencroft remarked.
“More a speculation than accusation,” Cole admitted. “But I’d stake a rather mighty wager on it.” From Cole’s vantage, he could trace the errant breezes that riffled through the glinting fall of her unbound hair as though carefully choosing which strands to pull away from her shoulders and across her heart-shaped face. She tucked at it with a long and graceful finger, stained with blue, and she left a streak of it in her hair that she didn’t seem to be aware of. “She’s even presented her younger sister to society, to the queen!” he scoffed. “Pretty girl, but who would lower themselves to have her?”
Ravencroft shifted more to his right, leaning farther into the window to catch a better view. “Ye can never tell these days,” he stated blithely. “The Anstruther fortune may not be as vast as our own estates, but it is significant. I imagine many impoverished noble families might come up to scratch. The world is changing. More and more land-owning peers are forced to swallow their pride in favor of a much-needed dowry. The little sister of a countess might look better to us blue bloods than shipping an heiress from America.”
Though his face tightened in a grimace, Cole ceded the point. “I suppose, but … a nurse? It’s just so bloody obvious. The man was still mad for his saint of a dead wife. I can only imagine that lust or lunacy could have driven Anstruther to marry again, and if that was the case, couldn’t the man have found a decent-looking debutante who’d know what to do with his legacy?”
“Who would settle for decent-looking, when a man could have a ripe beauty like that making his last few months on this earth merry?” The laird chuckled. “I love my wife’s mind, her wit, and her soul, but they’re not what I’m appreciating when she’s trouncing about with no blouse on.” He gestured to the shamelessly garbed woman, who now held a paintbrush in her teeth as she used a cloth to correct some mistake on the canvas.
Cole supposed some men would find her beautiful. Indeed, they might see the way the sun had moved the shadow of an elm to dapple her bare shoulder in dancing silhouettes and appreciate the honeyed hue of her smooth flesh. Or they’d find the arch of her darker russet brow charming as it accentuated the depths of her concentration. Perhaps the bow of her full lips would be considered excruciatingly sensual to some as she nibbled on the tip of her paintbrush whilst inspecting her work.
But not him. He preferred midnight curls to straight, fair locks, and porcelain skin, not freckles and honey. Slim, shy wraiths enticed him. Not the hearty type that romped out of doors practically in the altogether.
If she was beautiful, it was like a viper was beautiful. Best to be appreciated from afar, and given a very wide berth.
“Perhaps ye shouldna be so hard on the old man’s memory,” Ravencroft admonished lightly. “I’ve noted this sort of thing too many times in my life as an officer to discount it. Nurses and soldiers, ye ken? There’s something about the gentle healing touch of a pretty, kindhearted woman that a man who’s been kissed by death canna seem to resist. It evokes a powerful emotion … obsessive even.” Flicking Cole a meaningful glance, he dared, “Besides, nursing is a great deal more respectable profession than whoring, wouldna ye agree?”
Cole’s returning glare was full of warning, though he had no retort when presented with his own hypocrisy.
“Doona mistake my point for censure or judgment.” Ravencroft put up his hands as though to ward against attack. Even so, his features remained as good-natured as the savage-looking Scot could attain. “I’ve fallen prey to the curse, myself. I’ve married a woman who’d been in an asylum, after all. Disgraced, besmirched, and dishonored, she
still makes an excellent marchioness.”
“Yes, well. She’d have to possess a certifiable measure of insanity to consider marrying the Demon Highlander,” Cole retorted, with no real heat in his scorn.
Trenwyth actively hated the contented warmth in Ravencroft’s wry laugh. “Then I am to assume your recent marriage is a happy one?” he asked.
“Happy doesna seem an apt enough word,” the marquess answered rather enigmatically. “Last year was … eventful. I lost a brother and gained a wife.”
Cole crossed his arms, tucking his metal hand against his opposite bicep. They’d never spoken of it. Of the dreadful time that Laird Mackenzie had brought Major Hamish Mackenzie to the Home Office and thrown him upon the mercy of the crown. Hamish had been a monster by that time. A monster. A murderer.
A traitor.
To his crown and to Cole.
They’d charged him for innumerable war crimes, treason, and hanged him shortly before Christmas. Cole and Liam had been allowed to attend, even though the crown had outlawed public executions in 1866.
Ravencroft and Trenwyth had always respected each other. The lieutenant colonel, almost a decade Cole’s senior, had been his commanding officer for a time, until Cole had taken a commission with the Special Operations Corps. Ravencroft earned his moniker, the Demon Highlander, on the open battlefield, where he dominated with the savage brutality of his Jacobite ancestors.
Cole never earned a moniker, for his brutal deeds rarely left witnesses.
On paper at the Home Office, his work was filed under diplomacy. In the field, it was no less than espionage, intelligence, and, in most cases, assassination.
It was the elder Mackenzie bastard, Hamish, who’d followed Cole into the Special Operations Corps. And then he’d betrayed him to the Turks in order to save his own skin.
Ravencroft hadn’t known he’d been rescuing his own brother’s victim when he’d been sent in to retrieve Cole from the Ottomans. The marquess had accompanied the American consul, the British ambassador, and the Irish-American reporter Januarius MacGahan to Bulgaria under the guise of intelligence gathering, as the Ottomans denied the Bulgarian uprising ever occurred. They’d scoured towns of once seven thousand souls with only two of their thousand left remaining. They’d searched heaps of bodies rotting in the streets with no one left to clear them. Rummaged through the decaying skulls of maidens and the babies skewered by bayonets. Fifty-eight massacred villages. Five desecrated monasteries. Thirty thousand corpses were combed through while the dogs feasted.
The aftermath of the horrors Cole had witnessed. Had battled against. And somehow survived.
Then they’d heard that more than a few important prisoners had been marched east toward Constantinople, and it had still taken several months for Ravencroft to find him. Their relationship had been forged anew when he’d dragged a beaten and emaciated Duke of Trenwyth back home.
The American journalist wrote an exposé on it, and the English press and the people began to call for answers. Oscar Wilde, Charles Darwin, Victor Hugo, they used their influence to force an investigation, for Britain, or rather, the whole of Europe to take action.
Ravencroft and Trenwyth had joined the ranks, hoping that Britain would do more than sanction the Ottomans for their villainy. As time passed, it seemed, their cause was lost in the cogs of capitalist bureaucracy.
Regardless, they’d forged a deeper acquaintance during that tumultuous time. But it wasn’t until the day they both watched the man they’d once called brother kicking at the end of a rope that their bond had been solidified. Cole confided in the Scottish laird like no other. Though Ravencroft resided mostly in his Highland castle with his two children and relatively new bride, he’d still been instrumental in Cole’s tireless search for Ginny.
“Are you in London for the duration?” he queried flippantly, hoping to change the course of his dark thoughts.
“Aye, my daughter Rhianna is presented to the queen and having her season. My life is naught but bloody ball gowns, ceremonies, waltzes, tedium, and yer terrible English food. I’ve considered impaling a few of my daughter’s favorite young lads on my dirk, just to enliven the evenings if nothing else.”
“Sounds bloody awful.”
“’Tis.” Ravencroft scratched at his ebony hair, which he kept past shoulder length. Cole surmised that it was to hide the few locks of silver that shone at the temples. “I’ll be a pauper and a murderer before the season is out, mark ye me.”
They both knew this to be a lie. At least the part about becoming a pauper. Ravencroft was responsible for more deaths than almost anyone in the history of the empire, surely, but he owned some of the best land in all the Highlands. His estates and distillery were more than profitable, they were enviable.
“Havena even had a proper honeymoon,” the burly Scot groused.
“A pity,” Cole replied, distracted for a moment as Lady Anstruther lifted her long hair and coiled it into some sort of knot on top of her head, stabbing it through with an extra paintbrush. Lord, had her neck always been that elegant? “It’s not as though you need to get an heir on her or anything,” he muttered, shifting a little to relieve an uncomfortable tightness in his trousers.
“If ye’d met my wife, ye’d understand my need to drag her away from all distraction and keep her naked for days in some warm, exotic place. But I canna do that until my stubborn daughter has bewitched and broken every limp-wristed, useless aristocrat in this godforsaken city.”
“Another ball tonight, I take it?” Cole smirked, grateful he’d escaped the peculiar responsibilities of fatherhood.
“Actually, she’s chaperoned tonight by my late wife’s mother, her grandmother.” The marquess didn’t exactly sound relieved, more resigned. “Lady Ravencroft has enticed me to attend a benefit this evening. A new charity project she’s rather passionate about.”
“By enticed, you mean coerced.”
Ravencroft made a noncommittal sound. “I doona mind so much, it’s a good cause and I hear the food will be grand. So, there’s that.”
Grunting in response, Cole glared down at Lady Anstruther, reminded of another reason to dislike her. “Let’s hope your wife has the sense to keep the charity down in the slums where it belongs.”
“I doona grasp yer meaning.” Ravencroft’s voice slowed and lowered, as though he wondered whether or not to be offended on his lady-wife’s behalf.
“Don’t get your kilt in a bunch, I mean nothing against your beloved marchioness.” Cole gestured once again out the window where the candid countess was pressing a damp cloth to cool her neck and shoulders, dipping it below her bodice. Beads of moisture glittered on her skin, as though someone had sprinkled her with stardust. Cole suddenly forgot what he’d been about to say as he traced their eventual paths over the expanse of her chest and into her décolletage.
Abruptly seized with a great thirst, he reached for his own snifter of Scotch and tossed it back in one great, scorching gulp.
“Then to whom were ye referring?” Ravencroft pressed.
“That woman,” he spat. “If you’d believe, she has opened her mansion here in Belgravia to a handful of harlots, unfortunates, and unwed mothers.”
“The conniving bitch!” Ravencroft gasped, his mocking sarcasm as thick as his burly chest.
Cole sent him a droll look. “She’s trying to convert one of London’s finest and most magnificent homes into a haven for pickpockets and dock whores. Everyone in the borough is in a foaming frenzy over it. They barely tolerate that actress Millie LeCour living on the other side of her because they’re terrified of her husband, who I understand is another connection of your curious new associate of Blackheart fame.”
“Christ, Yer high-and-mighty Grace, were ye always such a snob?” The laird nudged him with his elbow.
“Probably.”
“Perhaps ye should check next door amongst the so-called handful of harlots for yer long-lost Ginny.”
He already had.
&nb
sp; “Ginny was no common prostitute. She was … different.”
“How so?”
Cole poured himself another drink rather than answer, which opened him up for more of the laird’s irritatingly astute observations.
“Could it be that the only difference yer Ginny possesses from the other … ladies of the evening is nothing more than that she means something to ye?”
Cole took a sip, glaring down at the Anstruther garden, desperately trying not to remember what del Toro had revealed to him that night.
The bastard had sold him her virginity.
And he’d been too drunk to notice.
Cole had been her first lover, and it tormented him to consider how many men might have had her since. That they might have used her roughly. That the kindness, the innocence, she’d shared with him could have been extinguished in the time they’d been apart.
Because he’d not been there.
“Look, see there?” He pointed with his prosthetic hand, unwilling to put down his glass. “That buxom wench she’s embracing.” Ravencroft moved in closer, peering down to observe the outrage to which he was referring. Lady Anstruther stood grasping the hands of a voluptuous woman with a stunning wealth of auburn hair. “The countess is barely dressed and receiving guests in her garden. And that other woman, she’s obviously a wanton.”
“Aye, that she is.”
Something in Ravencroft’s tone prompted Cole to glance up at the man. “You say that like you know her.”
“I do. That buxom, wanton wench would be my wife, Mena Mackenzie, the Marchioness of Ravencroft.”
CHAPTER TEN
If ever Imogen hated herself for being easily coerced, it was tonight. Why, oh why, had she ever allowed Millie LeCour to talk her into hostessing this event? At first, Imogen had been terrified that no one would bother to attend; now she fretted about having enough room to accommodate them all. Especially for dinner.
Upon Mena Mackenzie, Lady Ravencroft’s, advice, she’d invited an excess of guests in hopes that a mere percentage of them would attend. It seemed that her initial guest list was enough to entice half the London ton to accept. Not only did the Demon Highlander’s marchioness sponsor the event, but the powerful and controversial Earl and Countess Northwalk advertised their attendance, as did Millicent LeCour, her neighbor to the west, who happened to be the empire’s most beloved celebrity.
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