Duke of Thunder (Regency Gods #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

“ W here have you gone off to, Patricia?” Miss Helen Fletcher, daughter of the last Viscount Northton and cousin to the present Viscount Northton, muttered to herself as she bobbed and weaved through the crush at the latest of these interminable London balls.

A middle-aged matron looked at her disapprovingly as if muttering, bobbing, and weaving was the height of indecorous behavior.

Or perhaps it was more objectionable that Helen was doing those things while having the sheer gall to be from the North. Hard to say. Londoners had ideas about such things.

Ultimately, however, Helen didn’t much care. Let the gossips and nags say what they would—Lord knew she had no power over that. What she could control was finding her sister.

When their cousin, George, had announced that Patricia and Helen were to have Seasons barely a year after their father’s passing, Helen had argued on her sister’s behalf.

“I shall do it, cousin,” she’d said placatingly. “But give Patricia more time. We’re not yet out of mourning.”

George had scoffed. He scoffed at a lot of things pertaining to his cousins, to his predecessor, and to their estate in the North of England.

“The man was your father, not your husband,” he countered. “You needn’t observe a full cycle of mourning. Nobody will comment on it.”

Helen had more been considering the fact that she and her sister were sad about their father’s death rather than whether or not anonymous members of the ton would find their appearance in Society unusual. She did not feel that mentioning this to George would have much effect.

“Perhaps not,” she’d allowed—because what did she know of London and city manners? Nothing, that was what. “But I think Patricia might be more comfortable if–”

George had scoffed again. Helen had fantasized about stuffing one of the dinner rolls directly down his throat. She’d like to see him make that sound when he was gagging on some of Cook’s best white flour baking.

George’s arrival in their household had not led, to put things mildly, to an atmosphere of domestic bliss.

“We all must do things that are uncomfortable , Helen. Your sister is nineteen, already older than she ought to be while debuting. You are positively ancient. If you ever hope to make a halfway decent match, we shall have to move quickly.”

Helen was not, as it happened, looking to make a halfway decent match—not, at least, according to whatever her cousin’s standards of such a thing were. If she found someone she liked and who liked her in return? Well, wonderful. They could wed. But if not?

That would hardly matter. She had Patricia, and she had Northton Estate, which offered her plenty to do, as she’d served as its de facto mistress since she was a child. A fever had taken her mother when Helen was only six years old, Patricia only two. As if the memory of his dead wife had been a ghost he’d needed desperately to escape, her father had thrown himself increasingly into business that took him farther and farther from home.

When he’d died of an infected snake bite in the middle portion of the vast American continent, Helen and Patricia hadn’t learned about it for months.

Indeed, they’d only learned the truth when George had shown up on their doorstep and made himself at home.

“Surely she would not suffer from just one more year,” Helen wheedled. Then, she played her best card. “I shall do my very best to marry advantageously, which will only improve Patricia’s marriage prospects.”

George flicked away her ace like it meant nothing.

“You will both do your best to marry advantageously, and you will do so this Season.”

And then he’d delivered his ultimatum, which had left Helen with no choice but to give in.

So they had gone to London. And then, as soon as conceivably possible, George had insisted that they start to attend all manner of parties. Crowded, hot parties with snobbish people and too little food.

George thrived at these wretched events.

Not, she thought sourly as she dodged through a rainbow of silk skirts, that I needed any more reason to dislike the weaselly little interloper .

Alas, this was all secondary to her present concern, however. For now, she needed to find Patricia immediately, if not sooner.

George might have been an irritating disruption to the perfectly pleasant life that Helen and Patricia had built together, but Helen allowed that she had no choice but to seek him out once the ballroom proved devoid of her sister. Helen might not have trusted George, but she trusted the wolves and jackals of London Society even less.

Who knew what could happen to a sweet, innocent girl like Patricia in this city where silken fans hid viper’s tongues?

The study where the gentlemen gathered was ripe with cheroot smoke; Helen waved a hand in front of her nose to waft away the smell as she lingered at the doorway, trying to catch George’s eye. When he saw her, he heaved himself to his feet with a sigh as if Helen truly was asking far too much of him by merely existing.

Helen could have blamed him for it, except she felt the same way about him.

Her cousin was a broad man, not quite portly but distinctly headed in that direction. Helen supposed one might have found him handsome if not for his terrible personality and the sneer he perpetually wore.

It was fixed in place now, but Helen couldn’t let that dissuade her. If she did, she’d never manage to exchange a single word with George.

“Where is Patricia?” she demanded hotly when her cousin was close enough that he could hear her without her raising her voice. Helen knew there were a thousand and one ways to lose one’s reputation in London; wandering about a ball unmarried and unchaperoned had to be one of them, didn’t it?

“How should I know?” George retorted, unbothered.

Helen gritted her teeth. Why should he be worried? He was only Patricia’s closest kinsman and her legal guardian, after all.

“You were with her before I went to dance,” she pointed out. She’d been unable to refuse the offer to dance from the Duke of Dowton, not in front of George. One simply didn’t refuse a gentleman, let alone a duke—even if, as rumor had it, the man was blissfully happy in his marriage.

She’d given in and spent a lively country dance partnered with the charming, affable gentleman, though he had spent the whole thing winking outrageously at his wife, who was partnered with another fellow down the line.

When Helen returned to her previous place in the ballroom, George was gone. Patricia, gone.

“Yes, well.” George waved a hand, dismissive. Helen wanted to throttle him. Not enough to kill him, mind. Just enough to really get his attention. “She’s off making matches, isn’t she? Where you ought to be.”

He added this last bit as if it were some sort of particularly clever retort and not an absolutely inane thing to say. Lord, he was a trial.

There were approximately a million things that Helen could say to that, least of all that even she , countrified though she was, knew that young women weren’t meant to make matches alone . They were meant to be introduced by some well-meaning acquaintance, preferably a Society matron with nothing to do except invent and deploy matchmaking schemes.

But George had that look on his face, the one that said that any arguing would only make things worse for Helen. So, she forced herself to smile and tried to count her blessings.

At least his disinterest meant she didn’t have to spend more time with her slimy, social-climbing cousin.

“Right,” she said, forcing the word to sound as pleasant as she could manage. “I’ll go do that, then. So little time, so many gentlemen to meet!”

George’s smile looked equally forced.

“Finally, you girls prove good for something,” he muttered, already turning back to his toadying—er, networking .

Helen thought all the curses she’d ever heard (and, as she came from a sheepherding village, she’d heard a lot of inventive curses) at his back before resuming her search.

She hadn’t gone much farther when she heard her sister’s voice, unmistakable with its Northern accent, so like Helen’s own. Their father’s disinterest in their education had meant that Helen had been tasked with hiring her own governess. She’d chosen a local woman, not knowing that this meant that her tone would forever be tinged with her origins, leaving her words markedly unlike the crisp, plummy vowels of the other ladies.

For her own part, she didn’t mind the accent, though she loathed that anything would make these people look at Patricia as though she was something less than they were.

“You don’t say, then, m’lord,” Patricia was saying.

She sounded nervous—to Helen’s well-trained ears, at least. The sound sent a thrill of terror through Helen.

Patricia was many things. She was the sweetest girl alive, in her sister’s opinion, with the kindest heart imaginable. She was a dab hand with animals, too; she’d once even helped a local farmer deliver a foal, something that had set Patricia to beaming with pride even as Helen had struggled not to cast up her accounts over the mess of the whole process. She was, in the rare instances when she let her wit come out to play, bitingly funny.

What Patricia was not, however, was good at standing up for herself.

That was Helen’s job.

And she did it well.

“Excuse me,” Helen called, already speaking and charging forward before she registered her sister, standing and looking anxious while a gentleman loomed over her. “But what on earth do you think you’re doing?”

The gentleman turned his head, his rakish smile dropping as he blinked at Helen in surprise. She refused to accept this implication that she was somehow in the wrong.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, surprise fading into practiced smoothness in a flash. “We were just having a chat.”

Helen kept moving forward until she had wedged herself quite firmly between the man and her sister. Patricia shrank even more against the wall behind her, a hand clutching at Helen’s elbow. Helen stared defiantly up at this no-good excuse for a gentleman?—

And froze.

The man was handsome, to be certain. He was all height and broad shoulders. He looked not only like his clothes had been tailored for him—that much was given amongst members of the haut ton —but like the very concept of clothes had been invented merely so that this specific man could do them the honor of wearing them.

But that wasn’t what stopped Helen in her tracks. No, the thing that took her breath away was his eyes, a light crystalline blue that pierced her like a knife.

As she forced herself to suck in a breath, he arched a sardonic eyebrow in a way that said he knew precisely what effect he had on women—and on her in particular.

The smugness of that look helped Helen regain her voice. Right. Handsome men could be wicked, too—they were more often wicked, in fact. Best not to get distracted.

“You, sir,” she scolded, “are taking advantage. Surely you know perfectly well that you ought not accost unmarried young women alone in hallways.”

The gentleman pressed a hand to his chest as if wounded by her words.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, sounding highly unpracticed in the art of begging.

Helen bit back a scoffing sound.

“I have accosted no one, miss,” he insisted. “This young lady and I were just having a discussion about the traveling menagerie of rare creatures that is set to come to Town next month.”

Well, that…was very plausible, Helen had to admit. It was exactly the kind of conversation that Patricia would enjoy having. And the menagerie itself was real; she’d seen it advertised in the papers.

“We weren’t alone to start, Helen,” Patricia murmured behind her. “We started in a group, and then everyone else left, but I didn’t want to be rude…”

Helen stifled a sigh. Sometimes, she wished that Patricia would be just a little bit ruder if it was in pursuit of her own self-protection. Proper manners were all well and good until one got ruined for having a chat in a hallway.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Helen said over her shoulder, not breaking eye contact with the predator in front of her. “Go back to the ballroom. I’ll meet you there momentarily.”

Patricia hesitated before obeying, casting one last glance over her shoulder before she disappeared back into the noisy ballroom. She was unchaperoned again, but Helen would have to worry about getting out of this trouble before she fretted over any other possible scandals ahead.

Once Helen was confident her sister was out of reach of this rake, she turned back to glare at him anew and was hit once more with the full effect of those alarmingly blue eyes.

“You do realize,” he said, his voice a sly, teasing caress, “that now you and I are alone? If that was all you wanted, you need only have asked.”

He let his eyes drift lazily over her form. She felt it like a touch. Helen gasped in shock—and affront, she told herself. Definitely affront.

“That is not what I wanted,” she insisted, fearing she sounded like the lady was protesting too much—even if it was, in fact, true.

“What I wanted ,” she went on, hoping to recover at least some of her dignity. From the faintly amused way that the gentleman was looking at her, she was not succeeding. “What I wanted,” she repeated more firmly, “was to tell you that you are positively disgraceful for cornering a young and innocent girl. You frightened my sister!”

Frightened was perhaps a bit of an overstatement. Patricia had been a touch nervous, as far as Helen could tell, but Patricia sometimes got a touch nervous speaking to members of their staff, George, local shopkeepers—anyone who wasn’t an animal, really.

And cornering wasn’t precisely correct, either. He hadn’t been looming or bullying or corralling. He’d just been…standing. Standing too close, though! Definitely too close. And that was bad, and therefore Helen was offended, yes. Positively irate. Not anything else.

There was a flicker of something that wasn’t quite an apology on the gentleman’s face before it was replaced by that easy, rakish smile.

“We were just talking,” he said. His tone, intense and commanding, belied the looseness of his posture. “Your sister is a tad bit reserved, yes, but quite a delightful conversationalist. She grew particularly animated when we discussed the welfare of the animals in the menagerie. She spoke quite passionately on the subject and with a great deal of intelligence. You should give her more credit.” He paused, then spared her another of those assessing looks. “Or perhaps you were not concerned for her at all; perhaps you were just a bit jealous?”

“I beg your—” The audacity of him!

“But you truly needn’t worry on that account, miss,” he said, spreading his arms wide in an expansive gesture that made a mockery of magnanimity. “There is more than enough of me to go around.”

His words were not precisely suggestive, but something about his overall mien made them decisively so. Something about that spreading of his arms that drew her attention to his…person. Helen’s blush burned at her cheeks. She tried to cover it with a scoff.

“Your clever little comments are not welcome here, sir,” she said, summoning all the stern energy she’d ever needed to make a young Patricia step away from a basket of kittens or a baby lamb and attend to her lessons. “I am not seeking scandal and you—I dare say you know it—are practically a walking scandal. Speaking alone with my sister was scandalous. This, here—” She waved at the space between them, which was too small by half. “—is scandalous.”

He shrugged. Shrugged!

If not for the whole bit about avoiding scandal, Helen would have walloped him. See how casual he looked after she’d landed a punch right in his too-beautiful face! She settled for placing her hands on her hips. It was decidedly less satisfying.

“Stay away from me and my sister. I do not want to hear so much as a whisper of our names together, do you hear me?”

This time, when a flicker passed over his face, she could identify it. It was the surety of a gentleman who knew his place in the world, who knew that nobody would dare gainsay his authority.

“There won’t be,” he said seriously.

“How can you know?”

It wasn’t even her newfound and quickly expanding knowledge of London that led her to know that gossip was its own creature, a beast that fed and fed. That was true even in small villages—perhaps even more so in small villages, where everyone knew everyone else’s business.

It was as uncontrollable as the weather.

But this gentleman seemed unconcerned.

“Trust me, miss,” he said lowly. “There will be no gossip.”

Helen did not trust him, not an inch—except in this. He seemed so certain that she found she could not disbelieve him. She’d likely be sorry for doing so, but she did believe him.

“Fine,” she said. “If you really think you ken for certain?—”

The wolfish grin that lit up his face made her regret her colloquial slip instantly.

“You know,” he said slowly, “I thought I detected an accent in that bossy little lecture of yours.” His voice hummed with the tone of a predator circling in on prey it knew to be trapped; there was time, that tone said, to play before going in for the kill. “From the North, are you? Tell me, is it true what I’ve always heard about Northern girls? Are you really as easy…to please as they say?”

His pointed pause made the suggestiveness of his true meaning clear enough—not that his amendment was all that better, in any case. He might as well have called her loose right to her face.

Stiffening with outrage, Helen whipped out a hand and slapped him across the cheek. The wretch didn’t even turn his head. Instead, he smiled and pressed a hand to the reddening spot on his cheek.

“Now, now, miss,” he said, far too pleased with himself for a man who had just been struck. “If you really mean what you say, if you really wish for no…scandal between us, you had best watch yourself; you’re proving to be just my kind of challenge.”

He leaned toward her, and Helen, awestruck at her own boldness—not to mention his boldness—did not shrink away. When he whispered in her ear, she felt the ghost of his breath run down the slope of her neck. If she didn’t shiver, it was only out of sheer will.

“Come find me if you ever need anything, eh, lass ?” His emphasis on the last word said he was mocking her accent, but she was too dumbfounded to make any kind of snappish retort. “Anything at all.”

The gentleman pulled back, then gave her a roguish wink.

And then he was gone, leaving Helen behind him, wondering what on earth she had just gotten herself into.