Chapter Two
Ginny’s father had once received a rifle from his friend and rival, the Earl of Sydenham. It had a lustrous walnut stock,
a filigreed trigger guard, and a silver thumb plate engraved with her father’s initials. It was a work of art that could blow
a man’s head off at two hundred paces.
Mr. Marchand was like meeting that rifle in the flesh.
He was standing in the sunbeam slanting down from the high arched window.
She’d needed to tilt her head what felt like an inordinate distance to discover his eyes were gray. The jolt she felt upon
meeting them was, in fact, like touching the hot barrel of a gun.
Whereupon she was assailed by a host of inconvenient epiphanies.
The first was that this was not a man who could be mesmerized by a copper-colored dress. It afforded about as much strategic
defense as an eggshell.
She didn’t need to inspect him to be certain that his coat, trousers, and waistcoat were expensive, current, and exquisitely tailored, as tasteful as the surroundings, and also that all of this was sheep’s clothing.
No gentleman had need of shoulders that broad, for one thing.
They were unseemly, nefarious shoulders, no doubt acquired by doing things like wrestling people to the ground.
And no gentleman she’d ever met exuded the unsettlingly calm confidence of a predator in repose.
He was slapping her calling card lightly against his palm.
“Engraved,” he mused. The rich timbre of his voice rustled across her nerve endings in a disturbingly pleasant way. “Impressive,
Miss Woodville. I find I get so much more out of the experience if I can feel the words as well as read them.”
Detecting a whiff of irony, she narrowed her eyes slightly. “My thoughts exactly.”
He spoke with a gentleman’s cadences. No doubt learned through parroting.
Maddeningly, she could read no conclusions about her in his eyes. They were remote and vigilant and cynical. It was easy to
believe that the person looking out of them had seen things beyond the reach of her imagination. Despite her better judgment,
she wanted to know what those things were, for the same reason she’d asked fellow boardinghouse guest Mr. Delacorte, a salesman
of exotic remedies, if she could have a look in his medicine case last night, and why she had taken Mrs. Haddock up on her
offer to teach all the Woodvilles how to roll cheroots. One never knew what kinds of knowledge would come in useful.
Finally, Mr. Marchand extended her card to her.
Too late she realized she ought to have magnanimously said “Keep it.”
He arched a knowing brow when she took it from him.
She flushed. Clearly, he knew that engraving was expensive. This man knew the cost of everything, she would warrant.
A vast, glossy desk occupied the center of the room.
On the wall flanking it was a painting of an elderly man, nude apart from an artfully draped scarlet robe, hunched over a writing table strewn with open books and decorated with a human skull.
The man’s bald head and the skull both glowed gold in the light of a candle.
“Oh, my goodness . . .” She was dumbfounded. “That’s not . . . that can’t . . . is that . . . is that a Caravaggio?”
Mr. Marchand turned his head. “So I’m told,” he said shortly.
“It’s . . . unmistakable. The chiaroscuro . . . that red . . .”
“Indeed. Caravaggio was by many accounts an ill-tempered, murderous thug who made extraordinary art, which I think says something
amusing about the relationship between beauty and goodness. And there’s a skull right there on his desk. All of that is reason enough to like it, don’t you think, Miss Woodville?”
As an opening salvo this was brilliant. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to respond.
“It was given to me to settle a debt,” he added.
That “d” word seemed to pulse in the room.
She cleared her throat.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Mr. Marchand. I imagine you’re a tremendously busy man.”
“Oh? What do you imagine I do?”
She welcomed the bracing surge of irritation. Fleecing aristocrats was obviously the correct answer. Whatever rogues get up to, possibly with ropes was another. How very tempted she was. She was not incapable of coming out with that sort of thing.
Mr. Ogden’s entrance saved her from sinking her cause within the first few moments. He slipped into the room and delivered a sheaf of papers and a little bundle wrapped in brown paper and string into Mr. Marchand’s outstretched hand.
“If you’d like to sit down, Miss Woodville?”
Mr. Marchand drew out the chair opposite his desk. It was plump and upholstered in cognac-colored velvet, the first truly
decadent thing she’d seen here. She settled in.
He took a seat at his desk.
There passed a moment of mutual assessment, during which she could all but feel his eyes rifling through her soul.
The merciless light of day revealed to her that Mr. Marchand was not young. Nor was he precisely old. His wavy dark hair gleamed
mahogany where the sun touched it and picked out a few silver threads. His nose appeared to have been broken once, which somehow
only added intrigue, and a thin white scar bisected one end of an eyebrow. It seemed improbable to her that anyone had been
able to slice him; his face had clearly been chiseled out of granite, from the sharp edges of his jaw to the steep rise of
his cheekbones. Except his mouth, which was rather beautiful. Supple and sultry. It looked as though he might actually use
it to smile now and again.
She wasn’t certain whether she thought he was attractive. It seemed the wrong word. One wouldn’t say, “My, look at that attractive
man-eating tiger,” for instance.
Her breath had gone shallower. She’d tensed her stomach muscles. She didn’t know if she didn’t want to look away from him
or didn’t dare look away from him. They seemed one and the same.
He retrieved something from the little sheaf of papers Mr. Ogden had brought in.
“‘Dear Mr. Marchand,’” he read. “‘I would like to call upon you at my earliest convenience to discuss an urgent matter. This is regarding an incident that took place in your establishment a week ago. I believe the members of your club unfairly took advantage of my brother’s youth and naivete for personal gain, to devastating effect.
I should like to meet with you to discuss
ways to remedy the harm done. I am certain that together we may reach a mutually satisfying solution. Yours sincerely, the
Honorable Guinevere Woodville.’”
It sounded rather brazen and incendiary when she heard it read aloud. She’d written it in the heat of urgency when she’d arrived
at the Grand Palace on the Thames. If she had known ahead of time that Mr. Marchand possessed those shoulders, she might have
reconsidered her approach. He did not look as though anything ever twinged him. Certainly not guilt or sympathy.
Mr. Marchand’s expression still revealed nothing as he idly tapped his fingers on the desk. The sun picked glints from a gold
ring on his finger. Instead of a signet, it featured an exquisitely wrought ivory skull. Of course.
“I confess I’m a bit puzzled by the assertion in your letter, Miss Woodville,” he began politely. “I wonder if you would be
so kind as to explain it to me?”
She cleared her throat. “I assume you are aware, Mr. Marchand, that my brother has inherited another title as a result of
a distant relative’s demise. As of a fortnight ago, he is styled both the Earl of Highgrove and the Viscount Woodville.”
“I’m aware. He announced this at Lucifer’s Fall a week ago when he climbed up on the billiard table and shouted”—he ruffled
through the papers Mr. Ogden had brought in, which seemed to be notes—“‘Huzzah! I’m an earl! I’m an earl!’”
This he read the way an actuary might recite a table of figures.
He looked up at Ginny expectantly.
Ginny was speechless.
“There must be some mistake, Mr. Marchand. Hogarth . . . doesn’t typically climb up on things. He’s . . . he’s afraid of heights.”
“Hogarth,” he repeated carefully, after a long moment. As if he’d been given something unfamiliar to taste.
“We call him Garth at home,” she expounded helpfully. “It’s his second name. I know it’s a bit unusual, but my parents were
art afficionados like you.” She tipped her head toward the Caravaggio. “Hence he was named for one of their favorite artists.”
“I’m probably less of an art afficionado than an irony afficionado, Miss Woodville.”
“Oh, I see. The way it’s a bit ironic that your first name is Gabriel, the name of an angel usually referred to as heaven’s
messenger, while you run a gaming . . .”
Ye gods, his light eyes could, and did, get colder. They were downright arctic now.
“Hell?” he completed almost silkily.
Which is when she sensed it was wisest not to confirm or deny that that was what she had been about to say.
“Look around you, Miss Woodville.” He swept out a hand. “Does this establishment resemble hell?”
“I cannot truthfully say, since I haven’t personally visited the actual underworld. I’ve only ever read third-person accounts.”
Something at last flickered in his unblinking regard. She could not be certain, however, whether it was amusement, or surprise,
or incredulity. Or whether she ought to be worried.
“Your ferns are spectacular,” she soothed.
“My—” He stopped and drew in what sounded like a patience-siphoning breath.
“Miss Woodville, since you were raised the daughter of a viscount, I suspect you’ve been sheltered from such distinctions,
but Lucifer’s Fall is a gentleman’s gaming club. Like White’s, only I daresay even more exclusive. Hence its popularity. It
bears little resemblance to establishments often referred to as hells.” Lest she feel comforted by this claim, he added, “I
assure you, I would know.”
This didn’t surprise her in the least.
“I hope you’ll forgive me if I inadvertently trod upon a sensitivity, Mr. Marchand.”
“I have precisely zero sensitivities.”