Lady Ruthless (Notorious Ladies of London Book 1) Read online

  Mama would never understand that he had a new wife now.

  A new wife who was currently seated opposite him, clutching a book and pen in her dainty hands, making notes in her flowery script. At least he knew what she had been doing yesterday in his absence. The perplexing woman had made a list.

  “What is left?” he asked her now. “You hardly need my approval for household changes. Hire as many domestics as you like. Hang all the pictures you wish. Tear down the wall coverings. Replace the Axminster.”

  “The piano needs to be tuned,” she said without looking up.

  Hell. She had been in the music room?

  “Have it tuned, then.” He paused. “Do you play?”

  She glanced up, her expression startled. “Of course.”

  “I would like to hear you play, after the old monstrosity is in proper working order again,” he said.

  A smile curved her lush lips. “I would like that.”

  If she kept looking at him that way, he was going to ravish her right here on his study desk.

  “Excellent.” He cleared his throat, feeling foolish and overwhelmed with lust all at once. He needed to put some distance between them. With haste. “Was that all you wished to discuss, then? I do have some other matters requiring my attention today.”

  Her expression fell, and he felt like an arse.

  “Oh, of course. Forgive me, my lord.” She turned her attention back to her list. “There is just one more thing. Your butler, Langdon.”

  Ah. Good old Langdon.

  “What of him?” he asked.

  “He is quite deaf, as you know,” she said calmly.

  “He is hard of hearing,” Sin corrected. “What of it?”

  “He also appears to be near-sighted,” she added.

  Sin sighed. Of course she would have taken note, a mere few days into their marriage. She was a dreadfully observant female. And a beautiful, maddening, vexing one.

  “His eyesight has been growing worse of late,” he allowed.

  “Have you kept him on because you could not pay another butler?” she queried, her tone crisp.

  He was not accustomed to discussing household matters with his wife—this was rather a novel situation. Celeste had not bothered to run the household at all. She had deferred all the details to the housekeeper. That Callie was already taking an interest in their home and servants was…pleasing. It was a sign that she meant to take their union seriously.

  A strange sensation slid down his spine.

  How was it possible that the woman he had coerced into marriage—the woman he had not wanted to wed at all—was already a better wife than Celeste? He tried to think upon the first days of his marriage to her, and all he could remember was a vast sea of disappointment and shopping.

  Celeste had adored shopping.

  And gambling.

  And other men’s cocks.

  “Sin?” Callie prodded, bringing him back from the angry maw of the past. “You did not answer my question about Langdon.”

  Sin sighed. The devil of a headache was descending upon him. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I will speak with him. If you deem it necessary to hire a replacement, we shall. But he has been an excellent and trusted retainer, all these years. I would like to see him situated in the country, with a pleasant cottage. Eloise would enjoy that as well, I think.”

  “Mrs. Langdon?” Callie asked, frowning. “I had not realized he was married.”

  “He is not. Eloise is his Skye terrier,” Sin explained. “If you have not yet met her, you shall. She usually accompanies him, keeping near so he does not trip over her. It is the oddest thing, but I vow that little dog knows Langdon has difficulty with his sight.”

  Realizing his wife was watching him with a new, curious expression on her lovely countenance, Sin decided to stop speaking.

  “You allow your butler to keep a pet, and you know the dog’s name,” Callie said, eying him as if she had never seen him before.

  “Of course.” Sin frowned at her. “I can hardly part Langdon from his beloved companion. She keeps him out of trouble.”

  “Hmm,” his wife said, before lowering her head to peruse her list once more.

  He did not particularly care for her noncommittal hum of a response. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You are unexpected,” she said simply. “I am beginning to think you are not at all the man I thought you were.”

  Odd. He was beginning to suspect the same about her. What a pair they were.

  Decker’s words of warning returned to him, reminding him he dared not indulge in such fantasies. He must think with his mind and not his prick. But the trouble was, they seemed to be one and the same.

  “While I am grateful you no longer think me a raving lunatic, do not underestimate me, my dear. You will find I am a more-than-worthy opponent when tried,” he cautioned.

  After all, it would not do for her to think him vulnerable or weak. Or, worse, for her to somehow develop some maudlin notion of him.

  “I have already found that,” she said softly. Sadly.

  He was the cause of that sadness, and he knew a sharp stab of pain at the reminder.

  Preposterous, that. Why should he care? Why should her upset bother him at all? She had done her damnedest to make a mockery of him before all society and make certain he had no hopes of saving himself from ruin.

  He cleared his throat. They were venturing into dangerous territory. “Will that be all, wife? As I said, I do have other matters requiring my attention.”

  “Of course. That will be all for now.” She rose and dipped into a formal curtsy as if he had not just shagged her silly hours before and torn her nightdress into shreds. “Will I see you at dinner?”

  No, he wanted to say, for it would be far safer to keep his distance.

  He stood and offered her a cursory bow in return. “Yes.”

  Sin opened the door to the large, private apartments where his mother lived and stepped over the threshold, closing the door hastily at his back. There was a large sitting room, where she almost never sat any longer, and an adjoining bed chamber overlooking the small gardens where she had once tended roses. These days, she was often in her bed.

  A quiet, withered shell of her former self.

  The nursemaid was seated in his mother’s favorite chair, working on a piece of needlework. She stood at his entrance.

  “My lord,” said Miss Wright, dropping into a passable curtsy. “I was not expecting you to visit today, so soon after your nuptials.”

  “I wish to see my mother,” he said coolly.

  His dislike for Miss Wright was palpable, crawling up his throat, clenching his gut. Already, he had begun undertaking the task of finding a more suitable replacement. She was tall and broad, but spare of form, rather like a wizened oak. And although she was calm and composed in his presence, he had seen bruising in the shape of fingerprints on his mother’s wrists not long ago that had sent him into a fury. He had warned her.

  Miss Wright had claimed she knew nothing of the bruising, that perhaps his mother had gotten them during one of her nighttime wanderings. She had suggested he install a lock on the inside of his mother’s apartments so that she could not leave without the key. But he had balked at locking his mother inside her apartments like an animal in a menagerie.

  “Of course, my lord,” Miss Wright said. “She was just napping now. I gave her a touch of laudanum to calm her about an hour or so ago. She was in another one of her fits.”

  He searched the nursemaid’s eyes, wondering if she had tippled from the laudanum herself as well. He had no proof that she was consuming his mother’s laudanum aside from the rapidity with which it disappeared, according to his ledgers, and the alacrity with which Mama found her way out of the apartments in the evenings.

  “I will not wake her if she is asleep,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Miss Wright inclined her head and dipped into another curtsy, this one more abbreviated than the last. He stalk
ed past her, for the first time in a year or more noting the disparity between his mother’s apartments and the rest of his home. Toward the end, he had forbidden Celeste from visiting Mama for more than one reason. Her blatant thievery had been chief amongst them. His mother’s apartments were cheerful and decorated with the pastoral landscapes she preferred, along with many pictures of the Shropshire countryside, the place she had spent much of her girlhood.

  Everything that would comfort her.

  Nothing that would further upset her.

  Anything for his mother.

  He opened the door to her chamber and found her sitting up in bed, propped against pillows, her snow-white hair unbound and wild around her face. Her sky-blue eyes seemed far away at first as she took him in. But then she held out her hands.

  “Ferdy, my love, is that you?” she asked, sounding confused.

  His heart broke as he stepped forward and took his mother’s hands, seating himself in the chair alongside her bed. He had learned long ago not to correct her unless it was an absolute necessity. She grew confused and disconsolate when anyone tried to separate the past from the present. Sin no longer existed to his mother on most days, and it was something he had been forced to accept.

  “How are you, my dear?” he asked instead of answering her question.

  Pretending to be the German archduke who had most likely sired him gave Sin no pleasure at all. But for Mama, he would do it if he must.

  “I am well, Ferdy,” she said, sounding like a breathless girl in spite of her advanced years and the toll her illness had taken upon her. “I do so miss dancing with you. What was it we danced that night?”

  “The mazurka?” he guessed, for it was a dance she had oft mentioned.

  “Oh yes.” Her gnarled fingers tightened upon his, and a beautiful smile lit her face. “The mazurka! How could I forget? I dare say my feet scarcely even touched the floor. I have never felt as at home as I have felt in your arms, Ferdy.”

  Sin swallowed against a rush of pain that his mother more often than not no longer recognized him, not even on her good days. Instead, she mistook him for a former paramour.

  “How is Miss Wright treating you?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Not well,” his mother pronounced grimly. “I hope her cunny falls off.”

  Sin battled his shock. His mother had always been a quiet and polite woman. One of the first signs of her ailment had arrived in her inability to control her tongue. Suddenly, she had been cursing and muttering oaths at dowagers and spouting all manner of vulgarities, without qualms.

  “What has she done?” he pressed. “Has she hurt you in any way? Has she handled you in a rough manner?”

  “I asked for cocoa tarts,” Mama said, raising a brow, “and the bitch gave me pudding.”

  “Scandalous,” he managed. “Have you been walking in the evening again? Rearranging the busts?”

  “I don’t like their eyes,” his mother said. “Sightless eyes. Not looking anywhere. Preposterous little villains, always watching me. What are they looking for? Miserable, gloomy arses, the lot of them.”

  He could not argue about the busts as he did not care for them either. “You know you are not to be lifting them,” he chided gently. “You could do yourself injury.”

  “I am always doing everything wrong, am I not?” Her eyes welled with tears.

  And for the second time that day, he felt like a complete arse. “I am merely concerned with your welfare, dear heart. Do not fret over it. The busts have all been restored to proper order. It is you I worry about.”

  “Oh, my darling lad. Do not worry over me.” Mama smiled, then released his hands. “I have never felt finer. When will my grandchild be born? Celeste told me, you know. Where is that girl?”

  Her abrupt change—going from mistaking him for her Ferdy to realizing he was her son—was also commonplace. But nevertheless, navigating it remained difficult. He did not know precisely when his mother had become frail-minded. Years ago, perhaps. It had begun slowly, with simple things.

  She had forgotten words. Names. Places. Later, it had grown worse. She forgot him. She became paranoid. One day, she had become utterly convinced that Langdon was planting spiders in her chamber. Another, she had cursed her best friend, and then announced she was not wearing her drawers at a garden party.

  But it had been some time since she had mentioned his dead wife. And her grandchild, which had been stillborn. Sin’s daughter. At least, he had believed Opal had been his. Another wave of sadness hit him at the memory of the little angel brought into the world too soon. Years had passed, but he would never forget.

  “Mama, do you remember me?” he asked softly, focusing upon his mother’s seeming lucidity instead.

  She had sudden, beautiful flashes when she seemed to return to herself, like a sky after a brutal rainstorm. But always, inevitably, the clouds returned. Eventually, he knew, they would forever remain.

  “Justin,” she said. “Of course I know you, my wonderful son. Why do you not visit me more often?”

  “I visit you almost every day,” he reminded her. “If you ever have need of me, I am here. Ask Miss Wright or any of the staff.”

  “Oh Ferdy,” she said, smiling again. “What would I do without you?”

  And just like that, she was gone.

  Again.

  “Would you take some tea with me?” he asked her.

  “Oh, yes Ferdy. I will always take tea with you,” Mama said.

  He could not keep himself from wishing that once, just once, his mother would take tea with him again. But he also knew that was not likely. Her glimmers of lucidity grew fainter by the day.

  Soon, there would come a time when she would not know him at all any longer.

  He had never dreaded another day more, aside from the day his daughter had been commended to the earth.

  “I will ring for the tea,” he said, rising.

  “Have the girl ring for it, Ferdy,” Mama called. “What is her name, again? The trollop ought to earn her bloody keep. And you will tell her I want tarts, won’t you? Not the pudding. I have never been able to abide by pudding. I would sooner eat a fucking shoe.”

  “Of course,” he agreed, wondering where the devil his mother had gotten her colorful vocabulary.

  Then again, perhaps it was best he never knew. Some secrets were best kept.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Do you know how delicious it is, dear reader, to fool everyone around you? To know that you have murdered two innocents and you will never be imprisoned for your crimes? It is a wondrous secret, and yet, confiding in you is equally thrilling. Sooner or later, the truth must be told…

  ~from Confessions of a Sinful Earl

  Her husband was keeping a secret from her, and Callie did not like it.

  Not.

  One.

  Bit.

  He had been attentive that morning in the bedchamber. Even in his study, he had been patient. He had listened to her concerns and given her carte blanche to correct the deficiencies in domestics and the running of the household. He had given her leave to replace the faded, thin carpets. To have new wall coverings installed. To acquire art to adorn the walls.

  Already, she had a painting of Monsieur Moreau’s in mind, along with some of her favorite artists.

  And then, Sin had disappeared once more.

  Oh, he had claimed he had pressing matters requiring his attention. But Callie had not trusted him. Wisely, as it turned out. She had not forgotten that when she had been given her tour of her new home, one room had not been included. Callie had been so overwhelmed by the newness of her situation and surroundings, the mysterious apartments had slipped from her mind. Until she had witnessed her husband disappearing into them earlier that afternoon.

  And yet, when she had inquired, at dinner, as to what he had been about all afternoon, he had smiled a bland, false charmer’s grin and told her he had spent the day in his study.

  He was a liar after all
.

  She had known that—suspected it. But the confirmation gave her no joy. Especially not after the closeness she had felt with him just that very morning.

  The dessert course was removed. Unlike the rest of the dinner, the raspberry fool had been appealing. And yet, Callie had not been tempted to eat it. The bland fare prepared by her husband’s cook had grown increasingly unpalatable with each course.

  She attempted a gracious smile she scarcely felt. This was her first night at dinner as a wife, and she was furious with her husband. She scarcely knew the proper etiquette for such a moment.

  “If you will excuse me, my lord?” Callie asked, averting her gaze.

  She could not bear to look at him just now. Not when she had given him every opportunity to tell her the truth. She had asked several leading questions.

  And he had failed to volunteer the pertinent information.

  “Where are you going?” he shot back. “You need not run off so quickly. And you scarcely touched your dinner this evening. What is amiss, princess?”

  Princess again.

  Not Callie as she had been that morning in his bed. Nor sweet.

  She hated herself for taking note of the distinction.

  “I am tired,” she said, and that was not entirely a falsehood. “I will leave you to your evening entertainments.”

  He stood when she did. “If you are retiring early, perhaps I will join you. I find myself rather exhausted also.”

  Callie hesitated, reluctant to say too much before the lone footman who was attending them. Her husband took note of the direction of her gaze and promptly dismissed the servant, leaving them alone in the dining room, standing at opposite ends of the table. Their positioning was rather symbolic, she thought.

  “What is it you wished to say to me?” he demanded the moment the footman had gone. “Your face is very expressive, wife. It gives you away.”

  She hated that he read her so well.

  “I saw you,” she blurted.

  He raised a dark brow, looking regal and sinful all at once. “You saw me when? Where? During dinner? I expect so as we were seated across from each other.”