Chapter Three
May 22, 1815
Sutcliffe House
Manchester Square
Mayfair, London
Damn, but my head aches. Must have drunk far more fine brandy last night than he’d anticipated. A man got more inebriated when the liquor was expensive.
Alexander rubbed his temples with his forefingers, sighed, then once more rested his gaze on the butler. “I don’t care how you bring about the plan, Anders, but it must be done. I want the woman kidnapped and brought to my estate in Essex immediately. But if you are squeamish about doing it yourself, there is a list of three men I would trust doing the job on my desk in the study.”
They were all members of Club Damnation, and even though they only carried an honorary “title” of duke, that didn’t mean they weren’t upstanding men… as far as men or questionable morals and reputations could be.
Just like us all.
“Of course, Your Grace. Thank you.”
“Oh, and Anders?”
The man of indeterminate years—but domestic gossip had it that he was the son of the original butler that had been in residence when Alexander had last been in this townhouse—paused at the door of the drawing room. “Yes, Your Grace?”
“Once you secure the kidnapper, organize the packing of the household as well as the servants. Everyone needs to relocate to Ravenhurst Hall before noon tomorrow. For the next week or so, we will need to be away from Town. After that, I care not what happens.”
For he planned to be off this mortal coil.
“As you wish, Your Grace.” But there was slight annoyance in the tone before the butler made his way out of the room.
With a huff, Alexander wandered to the open window that let in the night breeze which carried the fragrance of flowers and growing things—the only good thing about the area his father had chosen for the townhouse. The copious gardens, shrubberies, and trees in the common areas and square helped to cover the odors of horse excrement, rubbish, and the stench of human suffering.
“I rather believe the servants hate me.”
His guest snorted from his position in a gold brocade winged-back chair. “Can you blame them if that’s true? You are quite demanding and not very grateful. For anything.”
Finally, he turned to regard the other man, who was another member of Club Damnation. His name was Edwin Coatesville. Though he didn’t hold the title of duke—instead, he was a well-known businessman and a gentleman within the ton —he was a long-time friend and contemporary of many club members. Because of that, he’d been given the honorary title of duke. The Duke of Nottingham, specifically, for the honorary titles all came from fairy tales or works of literature. In that, the founder Eggleton, had shown his whimsical side.
“What do I have to be grateful for?”
“Well, for one, you are alive. That is nothing to sneeze at.” The other man’s black hair almost held a slight bluish tinge when the sunlight hit it just so, like a raven’s wing. “For another, you are still a duke. That means something.”
“It means absolutely nothing.” And it never would.
“God, you are impossible.” Nottingham shook his head. He leaned back in the chair and then rested an ankle on a knee. “Yes, you’ve had a bad time of it for the last twenty years. Yes, it was horrid what happened to your parents as well as you. Yes, you have every right to hate the man responsible for all of that. However, you could choose to just walk away and start your life over, since you were somehow granted grace and allowed to do exactly that.”
“A pox on you, for you always believe there is a positive reason for everything.” And it was damned annoying. As he peered out the window at the Mayfair street below, Alexander clasped his hands behind his back. “Why can you not accept that terrible things are enacted at the whim of terrible people for no other reason than wishing to impart terrible suffering?”
The other man shrugged. “Most likely for the same reason than you can’t accept that there might be a higher power or fate at play, and neither of them are finished with you yet, or perhaps there is still good in you that needs remembering.”
He snorted. “I doubt that on all fronts.” Over the years, he’d been turned into a man without emotions, a man whose only mission was to eradicate either the French or pirates, and the two didn’t need to be mutually exclusive.
“Then I will hold the faith for you.”
“Why are you so optimistic all the time?”
“Why shouldn’t I be? When I look at where I started life to where I am now, I have nothing except thankfulness.” Nottingham frowned then. “However, I am wise enough to know that I am not a saint, and that I still have plenty of black marks on my soul.”
Which was how he ended up in the club to begin with. How they all had.
When Alexander remained silent, Nottingham huffed in frustration.
“Do you think having Miss Hardesty kidnapped is a wise choice?”
At least he could converse on this subject without needing to peer inward. “Hell, no, but I want revenge. This is the only way it will count against the Marquess of Inglehart. I want him to regret what he did to me and my family.”
He wouldn’t be able to rest until he saw that man in the ground.
“Did it ever occur to you that you might be the one who regrets this rash move?”
“Perhaps, but we shall see.” Finally, he turned to face his friend. “Count yourself fortunate that you cannot understand why this is something that burns at my soul.”
“What makes you think I don’t have a dark history?” One of the man’s black eyebrows arched. “I might have a bright outlook, but that doesn’t mean my personal demons have been tamed. It simply means I choose not to let them torture me all the time.”
Alexander nodded. “I admire that about you.”
“Thank you.” Nottingham flashed a grin. “And if Inglehart brings charges against you? For either kidnapping his fiancée or attempting to kill him?”
“Oh, it won’t be an attempt. I will succeed.” He huffed. “However, I know how to disappear. If I am sought for what happens, so be it, but I won’t make it easy, and once I am done running, once my soul feels free, I will, perhaps, end it myself.”
That had always been the farthest he’d ever been able to see of his future, after killing the marquess. If there was anything beyond that, he didn’t believe it at this moment. Not when the red veil of revenge kept him focused.
“I see.” The other man held his gaze. “Then I wish you luck in your endeavors, but I will also hope that you find a different way of looking at things.”
May 24, 1815
Ravenhurst Hall
Bradwell-on-the-Sea
Near Southminster
Essex, England
Damn, I really need to make repairs at this place.
Last night, he spent the night at his manor house. It had been too late to make the rounds and see for himself how badly it had fallen into disrepair. Of course, twenty years of English rain and cold winters didn’t do the structure any favors, neither did the salt in the air from being so close to the sea.
However, it could have been worse. At least there was still a roof over his head, which only leaked in a few places, and beyond the fact that mice had gotten into a corner of the kitchen and cellars, everything else was still more or less intact. With a bit of luck and some hard work, all of that could be fixed smartly… until he walked the property and found other things that had been neglected.
None of that mattered, for the man he’d hired had delivered Miss Hardesty to the estate not three hours past. Now that the cover of darkness had blanketed the area and the servants had retired to the servants’ hall, it was time to begin his nefarious plot of revenge.
After downing a fortifying few brandy gulps on his way through the corridors, when he reached the bedchamber where she’d been deposited, he set the brandy bottle on a narrow table beneath an oil painting of his mother who had three pug pups at her feet with another in her lap. It was as if her sapphire eyes—so like his own—bored into his soul.
“Don’t look at me like that, Mama,” he whispered at the painting where two wall sconces illuminated it as he rolled the sleeves of his fine lawn shirt up to the elbow. At some point during the evening, he’d shed his superfine jacket as well as his waistcoat. There was simply no need for them, especially since he didn’t attend dinner. “You don’t know what I endured while I was away because of that man .”
Of course, she didn’t answer, but he could almost hear her reply in his ears. What other people do to us is no reason to be nasty, Alex. We have more class than that.
“It wasn’t right, Mama. I need to do this, to settle the score, to take away something he wants more than anything, and then…” He forced a hard swallow into his throat. “And then I will kill him for what he did to you, to Papa. An eye for an eye.”
In the shadows, it seemed as if disappointment reflected in her eyes. I raised you better than that, and you know it.
What would happen if he gave up the idea of revenge? What would that mean for him, since he’d chased it for twenty years? “I’m sorry, Mama. I must do this, for us all.” Then he hardened his heart, shoved his mercurial emotions so far down into his soul it would be difficult for him to unpack them, and pressed the handle to the door where his prisoner was currently being kept.
His servants were nothing if not efficient and good at what they did, especially being discreet. A single candle burned in a brass holder. The housekeeper had told him a bag of her possessions had also arrived with her, but Alexander had ordered that held elsewhere until he could organize a plan regarding the woman.
Since Miss Hardesty had been snatched in the middle of the night with the aid of a rather large dose of laudanum, no doubt forced down her throat, she was still dead to the world. She’d been deposited onto the bed without the coverlet or sheets drawn down. And from the looks of it, she hadn’t moved since she’d arrived at Ravenhurst Hall. The white lawn nightdress she wore wasn’t as fine as it could have been, and neither was it in the latest style. Her bounder of a brother probably didn’t feel the need to spend funds on her. The bottom hem with a flirty flounce was drawn up to her knees, showing off her shapely calves and well-turned ankles as well as bare feet with surprisingly high arches.
Not bad, but she had more curves than his usual preference in women, and she wasn’t blonde but possessed hair the color of caramel with lashes a shade darker, fanned out over her pale, rounded cheeks. A typical roses-and-cream English complexion was marred by the horrid pink, jagged scar that swooped beneath the apple of her cheek and followed just under the cheekbone and ended in her hair line.
Damn but whoever had given her that was cruel. They deserved to be punished. Get off it, man. You’re not here to avenge her demons. And he certainly wasn’t here to wax poetic about a woman’s looks. She was a means to an end.
After closing the door behind him, he crept forward. In the golden pool of light made by the candle, he discerned that she still breathed, but she hadn’t come back to consciousness. Hopefully, she would wake soon, for he wanted her fully cognizant when he explained his plans.
Not that it mattered. She could agree or not; he’d take what he wanted regardless.
“Let’s see what I’m working with, then.” Keeping his feelings and his morals stuffed deep down inside him, Alexander withdrew a Barlow knife from his boot then wrenched it open. It was perhaps a bit old-fashioned, but his father had given it to him, and it still got the job done. With one knee on the bed to the side of Miss Hardesty, he grabbed a handful of the nightdress in his free hand and then sliced down the front of the garment. Full breasts, rounded hips, gentle swell of a belly met his interested gaze. Light brown curls shrouded her sex at the apex of her thighs. “Well, you’re certainly not in the popular style, are you?” But her body was lush, and a man could lose himself in those curves. “I’ll enjoy bedding you regardless. A fuck is a fuck.”
The woman didn’t stir.
For one second, he hesitated, for he wasn’t in the habit of taking women against their will; however, if he wished to enact revenge on Inglehart, he had to bed her, take her innocence before the marquess had that chance, perhaps put a baby in her belly to make Inglehart raise his child, to take exactly what the man wanted more than anything, he couldn’t think about the consequences or what was morally acceptable.
Wrenching the useless sides of the nightdress aside so he could look his fill at her body. He fairly salivated at the sight of her breasts. When he touched the flat of the blade to a dusky pink nipple, it hardened and pebbled almost immediately. The same color as her lips. He flicked his gaze to her mouth. The bottom one was slightly fuller than the top with a decently pronounced Cupid’s bow.
Interest shivered through his shaft, tightening it as lust shot into his veins.
Bloody hell.
Once he’d carefully laid his knife on the bedside table, curiosity got the best of him. Hoping to God that she would wake with a bit of stimulation, Alexander moved off the bed. When he stood to the side, he slid her body around so that her legs dangled over the edge at the knee, and as he manipulated her, one of her arms went up above her head on the comforter. A few locks of her hair had escaped its pins and lay like spilled caramel on the bed. The torn nightdress was hopelessly twisted beneath her.
As his prick pulsed in time to his heartbeat, he lightly caressed his fingertips along the edges of her soft breasts, went between them, gently circling the nipples. Would she feel the arousal start to build even in her unconscious state? For that matter, could innocents become aroused without being plied with numerous floral offerings as well as pretty words and gifts?
He honestly had no idea.
Soon, that tiny bit of play wasn’t enough. The veriest hint of lemon and vanilla wafted to his nose, which had him wondering about her choice of fragrances. Miss Hardesty stirred but she didn’t wake, and emboldened by that, Alexander continued his exploration by dancing his fingers over her hips, belly, and mons. Every glide of those digits along her skin made him more randy than he had a right to be, but it would prove bad form to rut with her while she was unconscious.
So he returned his attention to her breasts, leaning over her and taking them in his hands, palming those soft mounds, weighing them, and impressed with how they filled his grip, he rubbed the pads of his thumbs over the nipples. Again, those tips came alive at his touch, and he spent more than a few moments playing there, rolling them from root to tip, lightly pinching them, plucking those buds in an effort to rouse the woman from her laudanum-laced slumber.
When she stirred but didn’t open her eyes, he was encouraged enough to lick one of the puckered buds. Damn, that skin felt heavenly, and he repeated the gesture to the other one. Lust got the better of him, which led to him sucking that tip into his mouth merely to discover what she would do. Was she dreaming that someone was ravishing her? Would she writhe on the bed in her imaginings?
Determined to find out, Alexander continued to play with her nipples and breasts, and when he grew bored without having responses from her, he licked and nibbled a path down her body. Did he dare? Did that go beyond what was morally acceptable? In the end, he didn’t much care, for need shuddered through his shaft. It had been an age since he’d slaked his desire with a woman’s body instead of his hand.
Once he stood with his boots on the floor, he put his hands on her pillowy thighs and parted them. As he spread her flesh open like the opening of a rose, he peered at that most private part of her with a smirk. Inglehart would not be the first man to know this woman intimately. Oh, no. He would leave his stamp, his mark all over her until she was thoroughly ruined and he’d been imprinted upon her mind. And if he happened to cuckold the marquess in the process, all the better.
With a grim chuckle, he slipped his hands beneath her arse, lifted her a bit, and then dipped his head between her thighs. At the first sweep of his tongue along her heated folds, urgency careened along his engorged member. Sweet and fresh, those tastes lingered on his palate as he licked his fill as well as probed her opening with his tongue. Nearly drunk on the knowledge that he’d started his path to revenge, he thrust that organ into her passage, exploring, tasting, planning.
He couldn’t be certain, but he thought a soft utterance came from her, but when he glanced into Miss Hardesty’s face, she remained asleep. Too far gone in the plan to claim her body, Alexander returned to his work. This time, he parted her lower lips with the fingers of one hand, and as that swelling button at her center revealed itself, he quickly taunted it with the tip of his tongue. When her body jerked, whether in sleep or as she came to, he grinned against her wet flesh and continued to torment the slippery nubbin.
Ah, but he adored making women come in this manner. It was a different sort of mastery than outright claiming them, but in this way, he had more control since his own body wasn’t necessarily engaged. Over and over, he suckled that button with varying degrees, and this time, he distinctly heard a soft moan escape her throat.
Yes, she was indeed fighting her way through the cloud of laudanum.
Then, because he was a bastard at heart, he continued to work her over with his tongue and lips, intent on seeing her come. Seconds later, Miss Hardesty woke, disoriented and blinking, and when she gained more alertness and realized what he was doing, her eyes rounded as confusion warred with pleasure in her moss green gaze.
“What are you…?” Before she could finish the inquiry, she clutched handfuls of the bedclothes, her hips bucked no doubt of their own volition, and a partially wild scream left her throat while the woman fell into a soft release.
Only then did he ease off her body while wiping his mouth and cheeks on his sleeve. “Good evening, Miss Hardesty. I trust you’ve enjoyed your slumber?” If there was more mocking in his tone than he’d intended, he couldn’t help it.
“What have you done?” In some hysteria, she scrambled into a sitting position at the edge of the bed, and before he could answer, she darted out a hand and slapped his cheek. That sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed in the sudden silence. “You have ruined everything, you great lummox!”
What the hell did that mean?