Lady Ruthless (Notorious Ladies of London Book 1) Page 9

  “Do not fret over your aunt,” Jo said, lowering her voice. “I do believe my sister has her cornered for an intense meteorological discussion. When I made my way here, she was going on about rainbands and spectroscopes in the picture gallery.”

  Although their gathering today had a larger purpose—a meeting of the Lady’s Suffrage Society—Callie had managed to pull Jo aside for a private chat in the grand library at Westmorland House since Jo and her sister had both arrived early. Their premature arrival had been down to Jo’s sister, Lady Alexandra, whose science-loving mind refused to even contemplate such a disgraceful notion as tardiness.

  “Thank heavens for Lady Alexandra,” Callie said. “I find myself in a dreadful muddle, Jo. I am to marry him in one week’s time.”

  “How can he force you into such a thing?” Jo demanded, sounding outraged on her behalf. “Callie, you believe he murdered your brother. He is known as Sin. His reputation is more scandalous than my brother’s once was, and that is rather saying something. Julian was a wretched scoundrel before he married Clara.”

  Jo’s brother, the Earl of Ravenscroft, had been a notorious rogue prior to his love match. But she was correct. The Earl of Sinclair’s reputation was decidedly worse than Ravenscroft’s had once been. No small feat, that.

  Thanks, in part, to Callie’s efforts.

  She sighed heavily. “He discovered I am the author of the memoirs.”

  “What?” Jo frowned. “That is impossible. You went to such great lengths with the publisher to make certain you retained your anonymity.”

  Yes, she had. But it had all proven to be for naught.

  “Mr. White’s son divulged my identity to Sinclair,” Callie admitted, stalking to the opposite end of the grand library where a wall of books was interrupted by a massive fireplace.

  She was in such dudgeon, she had been pacing the Axminster. It was a miracle she had not already worn a hole in it.

  Jo followed her, her shocked gasp echoing in the cavernous chamber. “How dare he?”

  She spun about to face her friend. “Apparently, Sinclair threatened to persuade him with his fists or otherwise frightened him.”

  “He is a dangerous man,” Jo said grimly. “You cannot bind yourself to such a scoundrel. I refuse to allow you to do it, Callie.”

  “I am afraid I have little choice.” Quickly, she relayed her tale of what had happened to her from the moment Sinclair had spirited her from London to their abrupt return. “So you see? If he reveals I am the author of Confessions, I am afraid my scandal will taint Benny and Isabella. I love them both too much to be the cause of any suffering. To say nothing of the Lady’s Suffrage Society. I had not even thought of that. Oh, Jo. Everything we have been working toward shall be irreparably damaged unless I do as he has demanded and marry him.”

  Jo placed a staying hand on her forearm when Callie would have once more stalked to the opposite end of the library. “Have you not thought of contacting your brother? Surely Westmorland would want to return from his honeymoon to help you. He would not stand for this bullying from the earl.”

  Callie shook her head. “I cannot bear to reel him into this, Jo. He will be stubborn, I know he will. After everything he and Isabella have endured, they deserve their happiness more than anyone. He nearly died saving her. No, I cannot do that to either of them. I have created this monstrous mess, and I alone can remove myself from it.”

  “What does your aunt make of all this?” Jo asked next.

  “Aunt Fanchette believes it is all wildly romantic.” She heaved another sigh. “I cannot afford for her to think anything is amiss, for fear she will contact Benny herself. I am afraid I have no choice but to marry the brigand, unless I can come up with a means of my own rescue.”

  “Perhaps my brother could be of assistance,” Jo suggested. “Julian can be quite formidable when he chooses to be.”

  “I will not have my problems become someone else’s, Jo,” she denied. “I must face my own reckoning.”

  “But what of Sinclair’s wife? Your brother?” Jo asked, her countenance troubled. “If he is a murderer as you suspect, he could plot your death next.”

  Of course she had thought about that.

  She had lain awake in her bed last night, scarcely sleeping at all, watching the shadows in the corners of her chamber and worrying over what was to become of her. Worrying over whether or not she had been wrong in going after the Earl of Sinclair. Whether or not he was guilty. Whether or not marrying him was safe.

  “He claims innocence,” she told her friend. “He suggested he was with his mistress, but that he chose not to involve her.”

  “If that is true, then you must speak with the mistress,” Jo urged. “You cannot marry Sinclair if he is plotting to murder you. I refuse to allow it, Callie. Say whatever you like to the contrary. Friends do not allow friends to marry murderers. You need answers, and you cannot take Sinclair at his word. We both know he is not a man of honor.”

  No, he decidedly was not.

  But then, unbidden, she thought about the manner in which he had worried over her eating. She thought about the way he had pulled her to safety from the window. The manner in which he had carried her to the bed in her sleep and tucked the bedclothes around her so she did not spend the night on the floor.

  Of course, he had also abducted her, threatened her with a blade, and forced her to agree to marry him. None of those actions were the hallmarks of a gentleman. They did, however, suggest his desperation. A desperation which she had driven him to…

  What a hopeless, horrid muddle.

  “If I knew the identity of the mistress in question, I would ask her myself,” Callie said then. “But he did not volunteer it.”

  “You must force him to tell you,” Jo said, her eyes flashing. “Tell him you need proof or you cannot marry him. Tell him you need more time than one week. And please, please consider contacting Westmorland. This situation is untenable. I cannot bear for anything ill to befall you.”

  Callie caught her friend in an impulsive embrace. “Thank you for worrying over me. I promise you that I shall be fine, whatever happens. This is my battle to fight, and I will do everything in my power to win.”

  Jo hugged her back. “You had better win, Calliope Manning. You cannot allow that scoundrel to best you.”

  Sin stared in bemused silence at the woman who was to become his wife.

  Surely he had misheard her.

  Surely he had consumed so much whisky that he was imagining her presence in his threadbare study at half past ten in the evening. No sensible woman would dare to make demands of him. Or to arrive wearing a veil as if she were here for an assignation and to suggest to his elderly and long-suffering butler—one of the last remaining staff members he possessed—that she was expected.

  It was a miracle Langdon had even heard her at the door, truly. To say nothing of hearing her clearly and shepherding her through the house without incident. Yet, somehow, he had.

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Calliope,” Sin said slowly now, “but did you just tell me you will not marry me unless you are granted an audience with my mistress?”

  She nodded primly, as if this were an ordinary social call. “Yes.”

  The foolish wench had taken a great risk in coming here this evening. He wondered if she had even been accompanied by a servant. If she had stolen away without her eccentric aunt’s knowledge. If she had taken a hired cab.

  He pinned her with his most condemning glare and took a sip of his whisky. Oh, the bloody irony of it. He was fretting over propriety. For most of his life, all disapproving glances had been cast in his direction rather than the other way around.

  “I do not have a mistress,” he said at last.

  Also ironic. His appetite for the pleasures of the flesh had been considerably dimmed in the last year. He had scarcely even visited his club, the Black Souls. Perhaps it was one more way in which Celeste had ruined him forever.

  Lady Calliope’s dark brows sn
apped together into a disbelieving frown. “Of course you do. You likely have more than one of them.”

  She thought she knew so much about him, the virago.

  And she knew nothing.

  Had not even the slightest inkling. The manuscript he had collected from her publisher more than proved that. He had made it one quarter of the way through reading her wild imaginings and had been too enraged to read one sentence more.

  “Ah, yes,” he said grimly, making a steeple of his fingers and watching her over it. “According to you, I have deflowered countless debutantes during the times when I am not hosting wild bacchanalian orgies and drinking the blood of virgins.”

  Her lips pinched. “I never wrote that you drink the blood of virgins.”

  “I beg your pardon. Perhaps it was that I eat their hearts,” he suggested, inexplicably moved by the urge to nettle her.

  “Nor that.”

  “I am, however, an evil fiend who murders brothers and faithless wives, am I not?” Sin could not resist prodding.

  Her chin went up in a show of the stubborn nature that had almost sent her tumbling from the window two days prior. “You claim you are not, but I find myself loath to accept your word. After all, you have proven you are decidedly not a gentleman and that you possess no honor.”

  “Honor is a luxury for the men with enough coin to afford it,” he snapped.

  “Yet you have enough coin for whisky and ladies of ill repute,” she countered.

  His patience for her was fast waning. “What was the purpose of your call at this time of night, Lady Calliope?”

  “Because I needed to speak with you. Alone.” Her lashes fluttered as she lowered her gaze to the hands she had kept folded in her lap.

  “I thought you said you needed to speak with my mistress,” he taunted.

  That dark gaze of hers was back upon him in an instant, flashing fire once more. “I thought you did not have a mistress.”

  She was brazen and bold. And beautiful. Foolish and reckless and heartless, as well. But then, Sin’s last wife had been beautiful and heartless and conniving and faithless. He may as well marry what he was accustomed to.

  “I do not,” he agreed.

  Her eyes narrowed. “This discussion is going nowhere.”

  “Which is precisely where you should have gone, princess,” he countered. “Nowhere. How did you find yourself here at this time of the evening? Did you steal away from Auntie Feather-wit?”

  “Her name is Aunt Fanchette,” Lady Calliope gritted.

  “Did you come here unaccompanied?” he demanded, ignoring her correction.

  Only a woman with the brains of a chicken would be pleased by the sight of her niece returning from a night alone with a man to whom she was not wed, her dress in tatters. Only a fool would have believed his story of footpads and his own heroics.

  But aside from that, he disliked the notion of Lady Calliope flitting about London alone at this time of the evening. Anything could have happened to her.

  The sole reason for his concern was his need of her dowry, naturally. He was not truly concerned, he reassured himself. He despised her for what she had done.

  His betrothed pursed her lips. “Why should you care how I arrived here?”

  He raised a brow. “If something ill befalls you, how can I marry you?”

  Lifting his whisky to her in a mock salute, he drained the remnants of his glass.

  “You are despicable.” Her voice was cold.

  He had certainly been called worse.

  Sin shrugged. “I am honest.”

  “I brought my own carriage here,” she said. “A footman accompanied me.”

  He wondered if it was a handsome and brawny one. That had been one of Celeste’s old tricks, fucking the servants. Once, it had been a groom. On another occasion, two of the footmen at once. She had always made certain he would catch her.

  That had been half of the fun for Celeste.

  He clenched his jaw. “Do not go sneaking about in the night again.”

  Her spine stiffened. “You have no right to issue orders to me.”

  “Yet.” He gave her a grim smile. Matrimony held no allure for him, aside from necessity.

  Raw, bare, ugly necessity.

  “Ever,” she bit out.

  Holding her gaze, he poured himself another whisky, this one fuller than the last. “Go home, Lady Calliope.”

  “Not until you give me an answer.”

  Fucking hell, why did she have to be so determined? He took a lengthy sip of his whisky, relishing the burn. “I already gave you the only answer you are going to get from me. Go home. Return to your Aunt Featherbrain and plan our nuptials like a good little betrothed.”

  Her lip curled, her reaction to his dismissal exactly as he had supposed it would be. Feral. “No.”

  He strummed his fingers on the surface of his desk. It had not been dusted since what seemed like the reign of Richard III. Give or take a century. “You have not the right to deny me. How many times must I explain this to you, Lady Calliope? I have all the power in this farce of ours. You persecuted me for no good reason, and you were not careful enough about hiding your tracks. You trusted the wrong people. I hold all the trump cards.”

  “You cannot expect me to marry you in this fashion,” she protested.

  Devil take it, one day into their arrangement, and she was already attempting to weasel her way out. He should not be surprised, he knew. But he was irritated, just the same. He had gotten what he wanted from her: her concession. He did not bloody well want to have to win it again.

  “I can, and I do.” Doing his damnedest to keep his stare from lingering upon the pink fullness of her mouth, he took another draught of spirits. “I have been quite clear. You marry me in return for my silence. That is all.”

  “I require proof that you did not murder my brother,” she said.

  Her words seemed to echo in the silence of the chamber.

  Rage surged within him in the seconds afterward.

  Again with this nonsense.

  “You require proof,” he repeated with a calm he did not feel.

  “Yes, that is what I just told you.” Her gaze did not waver this time, searing his. “You want me to marry you and to provide you with an heir. I cannot give myself to a man I believe responsible for the death of my brother Alfred.”

  No, no, no. This was not what he wanted to hear. Mayhap if she was desperate enough to avoid marrying him, she would shoulder the burden of her actions and face all the scandal that would rain down upon her. She could not vacillate on him. He did not have the ability to wait much longer.

  A muscle began to twitch in his jaw. “Yesterday morning, you said you could.”

  “Yesterday morning, I was at your mercy,” she dared to counter.

  That was bloody well it.

  Sin rose and prowled around his desk, not stopping until he was between Lady Calliope, still seated opposite him, and the burled walnut. He braced his hands on the arms of her chair and leaned forward, until they were nearly nose to nose.

  “This evening, you are still at my mercy,” he warned her. “Right here, right now, you are very much at my mercy, princess. I could do anything I wanted to you here. I could scoop you up in my arms, haul you over my shoulder, and carry you off to my chamber. I could lay claim to you tonight, planting my seed in your womb. There is no one here to save you.”

  She swallowed. “The butler—”

  “Is hard of hearing,” he interrupted. “And nearly blind as well.”

  The only reason Langdon was still in Sin’s employ was that the previous earl had not looked after the stalwart and loyal retainer in his will, and Sin had been left without the coin to offer him a comfortable life in the country to spend with his beloved Skye terrier, Eloise, as he deserved. It was an egregious transgression Sin hoped to rectify upon his marriage to Lady Calliope.

  “Is that why he bumped into one of the marble busts laid out on the floor?” Lady Calliope a
sked, her brow furrowed.

  Her query gave him pause. “There were marble busts on the floor?”

  Whilst most objects of value had been sold off, a few collections remained. The marble busts of former Earls of Sinclair and the previous earl’s collection of Chinoiserie among them. But there was only one reason why the busts would have been on the floor, and he had a feeling it meant his mother’s nursemaid had been tippling her laudanum once again.

  Fuck.

  “Yes,” Lady Calliope said. “I presumed your staff was in the midst of rearranging them, though why they should do so at this time of night is rather perplexing, as was the fact that none of your chambermaids were in sight. Your butler stubbed his toe quite soundly, I fear.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, which was as long as it took him to remind himself that he needed to force the woman before him to recall she had no choice. Because he had no choice. And because she had made it that way for the both of them.

  “As I was saying,” he began.

  “I am firm on this, Lord Sinclair,” she broke in. “I cannot marry you unless I first speak to your mistress.”

  Tilly was not his mistress any longer. But he was not about to allow her to be interrogated by his future wife. To do so would be an insult to both women.

  “You cannot speak to a mistress I do not have,” he countered. “And even if she were my mistress, I still would not allow you to conduct a tête-à-tête with her. Not only would that be the height of impropriety, but it would be terribly disrespectful to the both of you.”

  “Then I cannot marry you.”

  He gripped the arms of her chair with so much force, his knuckles ached. “Yes, you can. And yes, you will. You have already promised to do so. I have compromised you quite thoroughly, as your aunt knows. You require my silence. I require your dowry. That is the end of this particular tragedy, my dear. Acquaint yourself with your fate.”

  “Not without speaking to her,” Lady Calliope insisted, as if she had a choice in the matter.

  One thing was for certain. This woman was going to be the death of him. She was going to drive him mad with her nonsense before he could save everyone he cared about.