Chapter Two
Three weeks later
R ain slashed the plush Pender carriage with a harsh wind carrying a frosty chill that went bone deep.
With his arms folded across his chest, Lysander Oshea leaned against the velvet squab while he considered his older brother, the Earl of Pender. At the best of times, Damien Oshea’s actions could be rash and unpredictable. Other times, he was the jocund and loving brother Sander recalled from their youth. One just never knew from one moment to the next. “What the devil is wrong with you? I’ve never seen you like this. Perhaps you require a visit with your mistress and a thrashing beneath the sheets.”
The low lantern light reflected Damien’s straight, white teeth in a harsh grin. “Where the hell do you think I’ve been all night?” The smile of triumph transformed to a scowl. “Her scoundrel of a husband returned from sea less than an hour ago and I had to go out the window. Me! The Earl of Pender ducking out like a common housebreaker.”
“Ah.” That explained his restlessness. “So the man hadn’t brandished a firearm?”
“Bugger off, Sander.”
Sander narrowed his eyes, noting the tense brackets framing Damien’s mouth, his stiffened jaw, the white-knuckled fists squeezed atop his thighs.
He flexed his fingers. “I’ve heard enough. Feel free to join me or languish out here in this miserable weather. Makes no difference to me.”
The conveyance shook with the footman’s descent from the box, but Damien kicked the door with a booted foot before the man could open it and jumped down where a puddle of muddied water marred his shiny Hessians.
Sander glanced out the carriage window to a wooden sign over the doors. The Lyon’s Den . The breath left him in a rushed exhale. The place had a reputation unequaled to other hells. “What the devil?” he growled under his breath.
“I’m here to play the tables. My luck is changing. I can feel it,” Damien shouted over the horrid weather.
Sander swallowed a groan. His option was to follow his brother and attempt to mitigate any damage incurred, as there would be no getting through to Damien now. He hurried out of the carriage. “Wait for me, Damien. I’m coming.”
Inside a plush, dark lobby, they doffed their coats and hats to the arm of an efficient butler.
“Lord Pender, how lovely of you to join us this evening.” The low lighting presented a lovely woman of an indeterminate age greeting them. She leaned around Damien and pierced Sander with a sharp gaze and a practiced smile. “Won’t you introduce me to your guest, my lord?”
“Lysander Oshea, may I present the Black Widow of Whitehall, Mrs. Dove-Lyon. Madam, my brother, Mr. Oshea.”
She inclined her head. “How lovely to meet you, Mr. Oshea.” She turned back to Damien. “I have just the table for you tonight. They’ve been awaiting the perfect partner. If you’ll follow me, my lord.”
Sander trailed his brother and Mrs. Dove-Lyon through a path that opened up as they made their way through a horde of men and women dressed as if for an exclusive ball. Only this wasn’t a ballroom, nor was it the ton , though Sander recognized some of the more scandalous members. The Lyon’s Den was one of the most notorious gaming hells London had to offer.
Despite his objections to the place, curiosity ate at Sander. The ambience of the den portrayed a decadence that bordered the absurd. Cushioned chairs covered in rich velvet. Walls draped with silk paper, Aubusson and Persian rugs on the floors leaving not an inch of wood exposed. Woven tapestries on the walls kept out the chilling winter night.
The most shocking sight was the presence of those women.
The Lady of Whitehall led them to a set of double doors, where a man almost as large as Sander threw them wide and ushered them in.
*
An hour later, Sander was flexing his fingers then tightening them into fists at his back, having retreated from the table when the stakes had grown too uncomfortable. For him at least. Sander considered himself a sensible man. One who took few risks— for very good reason .
Not for Damien, however. His brother never worried over such mundane things like the fate of the Pender title and fortune.
The noise in the Den grew deafening, but Sander wasn’t sure if it came from the contiguous conversation bounding off the paneled walls or the blood pounding through his veins to his ears. Several witnesses hovered over Damien now signing a vowel like vultures circling a dead corpse.
The pen swept over the paper in a theatrical flourish as if he had no other care in the world.
Sander didn’t have to see his brother’s expression to know he was seething with fury. It was there in the tension stretched across the back of his neck and shoulders.
Damien dropped the quill and shoved away from the table. “I need a drink,” he snapped, stalking by Sander.
His brother’s temper didn’t come close to Sander’s own. “You fool,” he hissed. “What is it you hope to leave your sons after that preposterous exhibition?”
Damien didn’t slow. “I can take care of my family.”
Sander drew in a harsh breath and lowered his voice. “You just signed a contract forcing your heir to marry so you wouldn’t lose the Cornwall property.”
“What of it?”
Red hazed Sander’s vision. “What of it? What of it ? He’s thirteen years old, for God’s sake. You’ve just stolen his future from him.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Rathbourne will be dead within a year. You mark my words.”
“Rath—by whose edict? Yours? Are you planning murder now?”
“It’s not a horrible idea.” An indifferent shrug and a sneer indicated the sheer depths into which his brother had sunk.
Sander, built considerably larger than Damien’s more slender elegance, folded his arms over his chest to keep from throttling him. “It is exactly a horrible idea,” he said, grabbing his elder by the arm before he could slip away. He dragged him to a secluded corner. “At the very least, you’ll be transported.”
“Then you can take over the title. I’m fucking tired of it.”
“You’re spouting dribble, Lord Pender . You. Have. An. Heir. Even if I wished it, which I don’t, Lucius is next in line, then Noah.” Sander breathed in deeply, attempting to remain rational. One of them had to. “What of Lucius?” He gentled his tone. “Have you really thought of him and Noah? These are your children.”
“Bah. We survived our own childhood, didn’t we? They will as well.” He leaned back and sneered, using the thick coat of cynicism he wielded so expertly, curling one lip in derision.
“Yes, but I seem to remember the two of us making a promise to one another not to treat our offspring as heartlessly as our sire treated us.” You , he corrected silently.
“Perhaps it couldn’t be helped,” Damien said, his voice low and barely discernable with the rising chatter about them.
Sander pinched the bridge of his nose. “You aren’t making the slightest bit of sense. How can I help if I don’t know the problem?”
“There is no problem,” he bit out. “Now sod off.”
“Damien…”
“I mean it, Sander. Leave me be.” Damien strode off, back in the direction of an elaborate bar, leaving Sander at a loss. He and his brother had been quite close until almost two decades ago. Sander had been sixteen, Damien seventeen. Events around the time the devil himself—their father—had gone missing on the moors and was found dead the next day frozen through. A fitting end, if anyone cared to ask.
“Truly, Your Grace, I’m quite well. I can manage.” The bold bark with its sultry undertone snapped Sander’s attention away from the threat of darkness that always hovered, just beyond, always ready to suck him into the vortex. “Um, would you mind stepping back? I feel as if I can’t breathe.”
Sander’s gaze swept past the crowd in the direction from which the words sounded, landing on a tall woman with hair as bright as a blood-red sun of a foreign horizon sinking into the ocean. It literally lighted the room. He might not have seen her cornered against the wall by that libertine the Duke of Rathbourne himself but for that mass of brilliance. His eyes drifted over her scarlet, lowcut gown edged in a delicate lace he’d bet his last farthing was Belgium. The gown’s rich hue, up close, appeared more muted by the low, subtle lighting of the sconces.
“So, I leave you breathless as well, love.” The duke’s laugh was as low as his gaze on her bosom—all seduction and vastly inattentive, if the lady’s expression was anything to go by.
Her eyes flashed fury? Panic? A chin that tilted just such. And a fist prepared to fly right into the duke’s patrician nose.
Without an ounce of hesitation, Sander found himself sauntering toward them. “There you are, darling. I’ve been searching everywhere. I thought we were to meet in the supper room.”
He met her startled gaze. Green. Brilliant emerald, green eyes. Their depths that matched the Pender jewels his mother used to wear that had long sense disappeared. The lady made a concerted effort to loosen her fingers and Sander slipped around Rathbourne and deftly retrieved this damsel gently by the arm.
She bristled beneath his touch but withheld comment.
Rathbourne grabbed her other arm, halting Sander’s efforts to whisk her away. “What the hell are you about, Oshea? This is a private conversation. Find your own piece.”
The lady’s posture stiffened. “Piece?” she squeezed out through clenched teeth. “Did you just refer to me as a ‘piece,’ Your Grace?”
It looked as if her jaw were about to crack.
“Your father led me to believe you were available to… marry?” The duke seemed to choke on the last word.
“He was mistaken.” She shot Sander a quick, unreadable glance.
Rathbourne’s eyes narrowed over her willowy frame. “He said you would make an admirable replacement for my late wife. An adequate mother to my daughter, Meredith, for a small price.”
Her finely shaped brows disappeared under a cask of curls lining her forehead. “Adequate? Small price?” Her eyes closed then opened, cast down over gloved hands, smoothing the silk of red skirts that should have clashed with her flaming hair but somehow didn’t. “As I said, that is untrue”—she lifted her gaze, facing the duke squarely, defiantly—“as I am already wed.”
Sander’s entire insides went cold then hot. It was impossible to verify her statement with her fingers hidden within her gloves—red gloves—while she turned to him with a smile that could only be described as… cunning. The emerald eyes framed by thick, dark lashes blinked at him.
The chatter in the Den descended to a deafening and dramatic silence worthy of a Mozart opus.
Surely, she hadn’t meant… but damn if he couldn’t get the image of that flaming hair spread across his pillows.
Sander cleared his throat. “She is quite correct, Your Grace.” Each uttered word gained him more confidence, though every muscle in his body was strung as taut as his favorite hunting bow. “If you ever refer to Mrs. Oshea—Mrs. Lysander Oshea”—God knew he had to get his name in there somehow—“as a ‘piece’ or anything close to such, there will be a dawn meeting. Remove your hand, Rathbourne.” He would never know how he’d kept his voice so remarkably steady when the urge to wrap them about the duke’s scrawny neck all but begged for action.
The duke’s fingers opened as if burned by the heat of her body. He was not a large man. In fact, the duke was slight in build with deep-set eyes placed too close together between a long, pointed nose. The only thing going for the man were his deep pockets.
Deep pockets . Sander cast his “wife” another glance. Her expression remained inscrutable, but that was to be expected, he supposed. He knew her as well as she knew him. Which meant not at all.
Sander turned his back on Rathbourne and led her away, only to plow into another, more problematic obstacle. One not so easy to threaten.
“Married, Lysander?” Damien took her hand, which Rathbourne had abandoned. “’Tis news to me, brother,” he murmured, brushing his lips over her gloved knuckles. He straightened and raked a practiced gaze over the lady in question that set Sander’s blood afire even as the weight and stare of the crowd about them pierced him with thousands of tiny sharp pricks.
Sander couldn’t imagine how the lady next to him felt. He went to shift her out of Damien’s reach, but to Sander’s surprise, she leaned into his arm, and damn if he couldn’t feel the lush heat of her breasts through his coat.
“Can’t you?” Her voice was sweet, demure, showing nothing of the boldness with which she’d hit Rathbourne. She turned such a guileless, innocent look on Sander, he thought his insides might ooze through the pores of his skin. “You didn’t tell your brother?” She lightly tapped his arm with her fan and gave him a quick smile. “How perfectly horrid of you.”
“Well played, madam,” Damien said with a smile that set Sander’s teeth on edge. He shot Sander a narrowed look that hinted at the mischievousness of their youth. He turned and ambled his way to a well-renowned courtesan who lifted a practiced brow and smile in his direction. “Until later.”