Chapter One
“Your lordship appears to have miscounted.”
The words sliced through the hushed atmosphere of Madame Thorne’s private gaming establishment with all the delicacy of a pistol shot.
Edward Beckett—Baron Broker—felt his fingers tremble as he set down his cards, the ace of hearts mocking him from the green baize table.
Around him, London’s most disreputable gentlemen leaned forward with the eager anticipation of vultures circling a dying horse.
“I assure you, Rothwest, my arithmetic remains sound.” The Baron’s voice cracked on the final word, betraying both the brandy he’d swallowed and the fear he could not. “The hand is yours, naturally, but—”
“But you haven’t the funds to cover it.”
The Earl of Rothwest did not stir from his position at the opposite end of the table. He merely regarded his winning hand with the detached amusement one might devote to a moderately diverting play. “Again.”
The word ‘again’ rippled through the assembled company like wind through wheat. Lord Broker had been losing steadily for three months now, each Tuesday evening bringing fresh humiliation and deeper debt. Tonight’s loss—eight thousand pounds—would surely finish him.
“I am good for it,” Broker insisted, though his collar had gone damp with perspiration. “My estates—”
“Are mortgaged twice over,” Rothwest cut in, his tone conversational, almost pleasant.
He finally looked up, and those who knew him well enough to fear him properly edged back without realising it.
His eyes were the colour of winter seas—grey, cold, and wholly without mercy.
“Your London house is let to merchants. Your stable went to Tattersall’s last month—I know, because I bought your best hunter myself.
Lovely animal. Responds well to a firm hand. ”
Someone snickered. Broker’s face flushed the colour of aged port.
“Then what would you have me do?” The Baron's hands spread in helpless supplication, the gesture of a drowning man reaching for a rope. “Debtor’s prison? Would that satisfy your honour, my lord?”
Elias West, fifth Earl of Rothwest—known in less polite circles as the Beast of Berkeley Square—set down his cards with deliberate precision. Every movement was measured, as though he had rehearsed this moment a dozen times. Perhaps he had.
“Debtor’s prison would satisfy no one,” he said, rising from his chair.
Standing, he commanded the room even more thoroughly than seated.
He was neither the tallest man present nor the broadest, yet something in his bearing suggested violence carefully leashed, power held in perfect check.
“Dead men pay no debts, and imprisoned ones pay them even less efficiently.”
“Then I throw myself upon your mercy—”
The laugh that escaped Rothwest was soft, barely more than an exhale, but it silenced the room more effectively than a shout. “My mercy.” He tasted the words as though savouring a rare vintage. “How novel. Tell me, Broker, do you know what they call me in the clubs?”
The Baron swallowed hard. Everyone knew what they called the Earl of Rothwest; few dared speak it to his face.
“The Beast,” Broker whispered.
“The Beast,” Rothwest echoed amiably. “And do beasts typically exhibit mercy?”
He moved then, circling the table with the lazy grace of a predator who knows its prey cannot flee. His fingers drifted along the table’s edge, and more than one man noticed the Baron's flinch as the Earl drew near.
“However,” Rothwest continued, pausing behind Broker’s chair, “I find myself in an unusually generous humour this evening. Perhaps it is the excellent brandy. Perhaps it is the entertainment of watching you lose your last guinea on a pair of threes. Or perhaps”—he leaned down, close enough that Broker caught the scent of something dark and costly, like smoke and winter woods— “perhaps I simply relish the notion of owning something more valuable than your money.”
“I do not understand,” Broker stammered, though the horror dawning in his eyes said otherwise.
“You have a daughter.” It was not a question. Rothwest straightened, addressing the room at large. “Miss Celine Beckett. Twenty-three, if memory serves. Unmarried, despite three Seasons. They say she has her mother’s beauty and her father’s… regrettable inclination toward stubbornness.”
The room went utterly still. Even the muffled revelry of nighttime London seemed to hold its breath.
“You cannot mean—” Broker shoved back his chair, but Rothwest’s hand descended upon his shoulder, pressing him down with effortless strength.
“I mean precisely what you think I mean.”
The Earl’s voice was smooth, immovable as polished stone. “Your debt vanishes with a signature on a marriage contract. Within a fortnight. Otherwise, I call in every marker, every note, every penny owed to every man in this room—and to a dozen others besides.”
“She would never agree to it,” Broker whispered hoarsely. “Celine is… she has opinions about—”
“About men like me?” Rothwest’s smile was a blade wrapped in silk.
“How prudent of her. Nevertheless, I imagine she holds stronger opinions about seeing her family name dragged through Marshalsea Prison. About watching her mother’s jewels sold at auction.
About her younger sisters’ prospects destroyed by their father’s spectacular failure. ”
He withdrew then, collecting his gloves from a nearby table with unhurried ease. “You have forty-eight hours to secure her agreement. After that, we proceed with the less pleasant alternative.”
“This is barbarous,” someone muttered—young Lord Ashworth, still unwise enough to utter such sentiments in Madame Thorne’s establishment.
Rothwest’s gaze found him unerringly. “Barbarous? No, my dear Ashworth. Barbarous would be taking what I want without the courtesy of marriage contracts and church blessings. This is merely business. Broker gambled what he could not afford to lose. That it happens to be his daughter’s freedom rather than his own is simply… poetic justice.”
He pulled on his gloves, smoothing each finger into place like a knight donning gauntlets. “Forty-eight hours, Broker. I trust you can find your way home unassisted? Or has pride abandoned you along with fortune?”
The Baron said nothing, staring at the cards as if they might rearrange themselves into salvation.
At the door, Rothwest glanced back.
“Oh—and Broker? Do not attempt to run. I have associates in Dover, Portsmouth, and Liverpool. Should a gentleman of your description seek passage, they have instructions. It would be… unfortunate if they were required to act.”
With that, he was gone, leaving behind only the lingering scent of his cologne and a room full of men trying to decide if they’d witnessed a business transaction or the opening move in something far more dangerous.
Ashworth was first to speak, his voice tight with outrage. “Good grief, Broker, you cannot possibly—”
“What choice have I?” The Baron’s voice had aged a decade in as many minutes. He looked around, seeking sympathy, and found only calculating gazes weighing the profit in his ruin. “What earthly choice remains to me?”
***
The journey from Madame Thorne’s establishment to the respectable streets of Mayfair took Baron Broker through a London transformed by desperation.
Each gaslight seemed to illuminate his shame; each passing carriage might hold creditors ready to descend like wolves.
His hired hack—he’d sold his own carriage a month earlier—smelled of tobacco and despair.
How does one tell one’s daughter she has been wagered like a mare at auction?
The thought circled ceaselessly as familiar streets gave way to the modest townhouse he had managed to retain only through his wife’s increasingly creative economies. Warm light glowed from the windows, mocking his cold dread.
Marsh, his butler of thirty years, opened the door before he could raise a hand. A man did not keep a servant that long without him learning to sense disaster.
“My lord,” Marsh intoned, removing the Baron's coat with the dignity he might have shown had Broker returned from triumph rather than catastrophe. “Her ladyship has retired, but Miss Celine remains in the blue drawing room.”
Of course she does, Broker thought bitterly. Reading, no doubt. Or writing in that infernal journal of hers. Recording all the ways her father has failed her.
He found his eldest daughter exactly as expected: curled in a wingback chair near the dwindling fire, a book balanced on her knee.
Her hair, loosed from its evening arrangement, fell in dark waves over her shoulder, catching the firelight like spilled ink touched with gold.
She looked up as he entered, and he saw his late mother in the arch of her brow, the resolute set of her chin.
“Papa,” she said, setting aside her book—some Gothic novel, by the look of it. “You’re home earlier than expected. Did luck favour you tonight?”
The irony of the question nearly choked him. “Celine, my dear—”
She was on her feet at once, alarm sharpening her expression. “What’s happened? Is it Mama? The girls?”
“No, no, nothing of the sort.” He moved to the sideboard and poured himself a generous brandy with hands that would not steady. “Your mother and sisters are well. Sleeping peacefully, I’m certain.”
“Then what?” She approached him with the careful steps of someone navigating a room full of broken glass. “Papa, you’re frightening me.”
You should be frightened, he thought viciously. We all should be, for what I have done.
“I’ve had a reversal,” he said at last, avoiding her eyes. “A significant one.”
“Another?” The word escaped before she could stop it, and she bit her lip in instant remorse. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did, and you were right to.” He drained half the brandy in a single swallow. “Another reversal. The last one, as it happens.”
She sank onto the settee, her morning dress pooling around her like water. “How bad?”
“Eight thousand pounds.”
The colour drained from her face so completely that he feared she might faint. But Celine had never been the fainting sort. Instead, she straightened her spine and lifted her chin—that damnable Broker pride that had led him to the gaming tables in the first place.
“Eight thousand,” she repeated carefully, as though testing the weight of the words. “And we have…?”
“Nothing. Less than nothing, if such a thing can be.”
“I see.” She rose and paced to the window, her reflection wavering in the darkened glass.
“So it’s debtor’s prison. We’ll send Mama and the girls to Aunt Prudence.
She’ll object, naturally, but family is family.
And I suppose I could seek a position as a governess, though without references it will be—”
“There is another option.”
Something in his tone made her turn. He saw the moment she understood—women always did grasp such things quicker than men gave them credit for. Her hand flew to the simple gold chain at her throat—her grandmother’s—one of the few family jewels he had not sold.
“No.”
“Celine—”
“No.” This time, the word rang with the quiet fury that had driven off three perfectly eligible suitors. “Whatever wretched bargain you’ve struck, whatever you’ve promised, the answer is no.”
“You haven’t heard the terms.”
“I don’t need to.” She gave a brittle, humourless laugh. “Let me guess: some ambitious merchant wants a lady-wife to improve his standing? Or one of your creditors hopes to add me to his collection of unpaid debts? Who is it, Papa? Who purchased your marker this time?”
“The Earl of Rothwest.”
The name fell between them like a blade. Celine’s already pale face blanched to parchment.
“The Beast,” she whispered.
“Don’t call him that,” Broker said automatically, though the protest was hollow even to his own ears.
“Everyone calls him that. They say he killed a man in a duel over a trifling slight. They say he’s not smiled once since inheriting. They say—” She pressed trembling fingers to her lips. “Good grief, Papa, what have you done?”
“I’ve saved us all from ruin,” he insisted, attempting authority and achieving only desperation. “Marriage to an earl, Celine. Think of it—you’d be a countess. Your sisters would have prospects again. Your mother could hold her head up in society.”
“And I would be married to a monster.”
“You don’t know that he’s—”
“Don’t I?” She turned on him, and for a moment, he saw not his daughter but his mother—magnificent in her righteous fury.
“Have you ever seen him dance? No, because he does not. Have you ever heard him offer a compliment? Engage in polite conversation? Show even the faintest evidence of possessing human feeling?”
“He is wealthy—”
“So was Midas, and all his touch produced was gold—not warmth.”
“Celine, please—”
“How long?” Her question cut straight through his plea. “How long before this marriage must take place?”
“A fortnight.”
She laughed again—high, breathless, perilously close to hysteria. “A fortnight. How generous. How very sporting of him.”
She moved toward the door, pausing with her hand on the frame. “I need time to think.”
“We don’t have time. He was very specific—”
“Then he will have to wait until morning for his answer.” She turned, and the look in her eyes made him retreat a step. “I assume even beasts observe conventional calling hours?”
Before he could respond, she was gone, leaving only the whisper of silk on carpet and the faint scent of lavender. Broker sank into the chair she’d abandoned and reached blindly for her discarded book. The Mysteries of Udolpho—a Gothic tale of a young woman trapped in a castle with a tyrant.
How frighteningly appropriate.