The Arrogant Lord (The Notorious Nightingales #7)

Chapter 1

Ambrose, Lord Talbot, had woken later than normal with an aching head, which was likely due to reading too late last night by lamplight. It was a dull throb behind his eyes and not what he needed to start the day.

After washing, then dressing, he left his room for the dining parlor.

Ambrose loved his family, but he didn’t enjoy living with them. He’d moved out some time ago and had not regretted it a single day since.

He had three sisters who felt it was their right to voice their opinions, even when he hadn’t asked for them, and a mother who liked to involve herself in every facet of her children’s business.

His father had learned that hiding in his office with the door locked worked for him. Ambrose had needed more distance.

His home was only ten minutes from his parents’ town house and close enough to everyone and everything he needed. The last inhabitants had decorated it with little fanfare, which suited his tastes.

Wood paneling ran along the lower half of the walls, and the upper was a subdued beige. Nothing was overstated and all blended seamlessly. His youngest sister, Violet, had called it dull. Ambrose called it calming.

“Good morning, my lord.”

“Good morning, Bertram,” he said to one of his only two staff members.

“Tea and plenty of it, plus something substantial to eat that will help me get through a call I must make on an incredibly self-important bore of a man, if you please. And have my carriage brought round.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Another headache, my lord?”

“Yes.” Another headache? How many had he had lately?

“I shall have Mrs. Rose make you a powder, my lord.”

“I’d be grateful. Thank you, Bertram.”

“I’ll see to it at once,” his valet said, bowing deeply before leaving the room with a very straight back, as was his usual posture. The man put him to shame. Ambrose liked to slouch when no one was looking.

The door closed silently.

Bertram wasn’t the staff member his mother had wanted him to have, but someone Ambrose had chosen after approaching an agency. The agency his mother didn’t use, so none of his staff, all of whom he’d selected from there, could report to her about what he got up to.

Lady Angeline Chippington was a gently bred woman with a backbone of steel.

She had strong views on everything, including how her children should conduct themselves—granted, Ambrose got a lot more leniency than his sisters, which was the way of the world, and there was little he could do about that. His sisters, however, had other ideas.

He unfolded his newspaper and began to read it from front to back, even if his head ached, as it did most days. Ambrose was a creature of habit. So much so that he tried each day to do something he normally wouldn’t, as he loathed being predictable.

After Bertram lowered a laden plate before him, Ambrose set about eating everything on it. Replete, and the headache now a mere niggle after the vile-tasting powder, he left the room and took the stairs down to his front entrance, where his valet was now waiting with his outer things.

After shrugging into his overcoat, he then tugged on his gloves, and, taking his hat, headed out the front door into a drizzly, chilly London day.

“I hope your future includes tea and cake, Bertram.”

“I believe Mrs. Rose has recently baked a plum cake, my lord.”

“Excellent. Enjoy and ensure to save me a wedge.”

Ambrose jogged to his carriage.

“Sorry to have you out here in this foul weather, Patrick,” he said to his driver.

“I have a warm coat, my lord.”

His front door opened, and out sprinted Bertram.

“A note has arrived, my lord.” His valet handed it to him.

“Thank you. Now get back inside, Bertram. I shall read it on the way to my appointment.” Ambrose waved him away as the rain continued to drizzle.

Opening the missive, he bit back a sigh as he noted his mother’s writing. It tended to be more flicky and pointy when she was agitated. The first glance told him she was exactly that.

Ambrose, I insist you find your sisters at once. They told me they were going shopping for new bonnets, when in fact Lady Sybil has just arrived to take tea and told me that horrid Miss Wilson is opening her shameful club today! I forbade them to attend, and yet cannot be sure they will obey.

“I know they won’t,” Ambrose muttered.

His sisters varied greatly. The married one, whose husband’s more progressive views meant he wouldn’t object, could attend the opening if she desired, but the other two, still unwed, faced potential reputational damage.

Although one was engaged so he hoped she would no longer be his concern in the not too distant future.

You must bring them home if they are there with minimal fuss, and for heaven’s sake, do not alert anyone to the fact they are there—if they are. Make haste, Ambrose.

Your mother.

The pounding behind his eyes intensified. She would never ask her husband to retrieve his daughters. It was always Ambrose. He opened the hatch above his head and gave Patrick new directions.

He watched the scenery pass as they headed toward Miss Wilson’s new ladies-only club.

The opening was planned for three months ago, but it did not happen.

Ambrose had not asked why, and no one had volunteered the information.

All he knew was that when Lord Haskell, the previous owner of the building, had passed, his wife had no wish to keep it and continue paying the lease and so had been happy to offer it to Miss Matilda Wilson, the bane of his existence.

The roads were a chaotic press of vehicles, even on such a miserable day.

A hansom cab overtook his carriage and then weaved aggressively between a coal wagon and a gentleman on horseback.

There would be horse dung and mud forming rivers on the roads and a fine brown spray covering anyone who got close enough to the wheels of carriages.

London, Ambrose thought. He both loved and loathed this place, but he, unlike many, lived a privileged life.

Outside his windows were flower girls huddled in doorways and costermongers pushing barrows about.

They didn’t have the luxury of a carriage, or indeed the ability, like Ambrose had, to decide to stay inside should he wish it—or more importantly, should his mother allow it.

The roar of a man had him wiping the glass to see who was yelling. He saw the driver of a carriage raise a fist as a young boy darted in front of his horses.

“London,” Ambrose muttered aloud this time. It was always a cacophony of noise and sights. If a person wanted solitude or silence, walking about its streets was not the place to achieve either.

When the carriage finally stopped, he opened the door and stepped down.

“Head home now, Patrick. I will make my way there when I am done.”

His driver frowned down at him. “If you’re sure, my lord?”

“I am, thank you.”

Ambrose raised his collars and slapped his hat on top of his head. He then headed up the street that his own club sat on. After he found his sisters, he would throw them all into a hansom cab and send them home before heading to his meeting.

Making his way past the elegant facade of his club, he nodded to the doorman, who had been standing there for as long as Ambrose had been entering the male domain, and made for the building next door.

Of his sisters, there was no sign, which was a good and bad thing.

Good because it meant they were likely shopping as they’d told their mother, and bad that they could possibly already be inside the women’s only club, which meant it would be harder to get them out.

He’d known about it, of course, and had debated the matter furiously with the woman behind it, who happened to be his youngest sister’s best friend.

Ambrose wasn’t entirely sure he objected to his sisters gathering there.

If they were inside and hidden from scrutiny, perhaps it was harmless enough.

What troubled him was the ridicule, the cruelty that might follow simply because they had chosen to establish a place of their own.

They lived in a man’s world—right or wrong, that was the way of things—and there were those who loathed change above all else.

A women’s sanctuary sitting directly beside a gentlemen’s establishment was exactly the kind of affront that drew out the worst in people.

“It’s preposterous, I tell you!”

Those words pulled his gaze toward two men and a woman standing only a few feet from The Iris, as the new club had been christened. One of the men was Lord Hardacre, someone who frequented the building next door.

“You should be at home, or—or doing the things a lady ought to do!” Sir Peter Crabtree, the other man, yelled at the woman standing on the step above him.

“Stitching, painting watercolors, and pursuing musical entertainments,” he continued.

“How dare you open a women’s only club next to our men’s one! ”

Ambrose winced. He knew this woman well enough to understand how she would receive those words. It would not be pretty.

Miss Matilda Wilson was the best friend of his sister, Violet. Opinionated, determined, and, in his eyes, a bad influence on Violet, and since the first day they’d met, she had been annoying him far more than she should.

He’d tried to persuade his sister to find another friend. She’d of course ignored him.

Considering he was a rule follower, two of his sisters—and possibly the third, but she was sneakier about it—definitely were not. His mother did not know half of what they got up to.

Matilda, or Tilly, as she was known to her friends, of which he was most definitely not one, had always disturbed Ambrose, and he loathed his reaction to her.

Her beauty reached out and hit him hard every time he was within a few feet of her, and he knew his annoyance stemmed from that awareness more than the fact that she led his sister astray.

Her hair was the color of honey—not quite blond but not brown either—and it was thick.

A rogue curl usually hung down her back, and he’d itched to touch it many times.

Then there was her face, which was always moving.

Whether frowning, smiling, or glaring, those lush lips drew his eyes and had given him far too many erotic dreams, to say nothing of her pale, soft skin and startling green eyes that tended to judge him when they were together.

And that was another thing: Her continual dismissal of him stung. He was a lord, goddamn it, and she treated him like he was a chimney sweep.

“No man will have a woman who behaves as you do,” Sir Peter added, forcing his foot further into his mouth. “I certainly would not take one for a wife who behaves with such impropriety.”

“Oh, well then, of course I shall close the club forthwith because it is my fondest wish to be your wife, after all.”

Her words were thick with mockery, and Ambrose had to swallow his smile. Tilly never took a backward step from anyone or anything. She was often disrespectful to her betters. His father always said people earned respect.

Do I show Tilly respect?

He dismissed that thought. Ambrose was a good man, mostly. He did right by others and was neither cruel nor rude. Perhaps he might have spoken harshly to her upon occasion, but it was no less than she deserved after the way she spoke to him.

“I say, are you mocking me?” Sir Peter looked shocked at the prospect.

Tilly simply folded her arms and smiled as if they were not standing in the drizzling rain and cold but chatting over tea.

She wore a long forest-green coat that was buttoned to her neck. It was fitted and showed off the lovely outline of her body, which Ambrose had also spent far too long admiring over the past few years. A matching bonnet with a large brim was keeping her face partially dry.

“Yes,” she simply said.

“You are playing a dangerous game, Miss Wilson, and one you will not win. Men are far superior to women, and we will have this silly little club of yours shut down in no time, because I for one have no wish to see it when visiting mine, as many of our members don’t,” Hardacre said.

“I’ve a mind to teach you a lesson on just how superior we are in both intellect and strength.

” The man then took a threatening step toward Tilly.

The rage that anyone would threaten Tilly that way hit Ambrose hard. He rarely reacted without thinking through his actions, but right then he was battling the urge to punch Hardacre.

“Back away now,” he said in a voice that had Tilly’s eyes shooting at him for the first time even as he was sure she’d known he was there.

Both men then turned to face him.

“I say, Talbot, are you speaking to us or her?” Sir Peter said.

“You,” he said, his voice a low growl. “Never threaten her, or any of the women who enter this club, again.”

Their mouths fell open. It was Hardacre who recovered first.

“A women’s club should not be opening next door to our club, Talbot. It’s not right—”

“Whether or not it’s right, you have no reason to threaten Miss Wilson, and I will not stand by and allow you to do so,” Ambrose snapped.

Hardacre’s eyes narrowed. “His behavior is due to his sisters. They’re friends with this woman.” He jabbed a finger at Tilly. “Likely they, too, will enter this ridiculous place because he can’t control them.”

Rather than feeling intimidated, Tilly’s eyes narrowed in anger. The woman had absolutely no sense of self-preservation.

“I cannot believe you’d allow your sisters to attend this place, Talbot,” Sir Peter snarled.

While he’d tried to rein in his sisters’ actions many times, he’d never succeeded. In fact, stopping a charging bull would prove easier.

“I do not control my sisters, Sir Peter.”

Both men scoffed, which, considering the pounding in his head and short supply of patience, wasn’t a wise move.

“Of course you do,” the idiot said. “Why, without our direction, they’d be completely helpless.”

“Ah, suddenly your unwed state is not so surprising, sir,” Tilly said before Ambrose could speak.

Sir Peter glared at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your misogynist patriarchal views are perhaps hindering your ability to secure a woman’s interest. A woman may look more kindly upon you as a prospective husband if you allowed her to actually think for herself.

” She followed these words with what could loosely be interpreted as a smile but was, in fact, just a slight baring of her front teeth.

Ambrose had no reason to laugh and therefore swallowed down the need when he saw the shocked expressions on the two men’s faces at Tilly’s words. Instead, he gave her a hard look, which he hoped she interpreted to mean shut up. It was a faint hope at best.