The Writer and the Rogue (Debutantes of London #2)

Chapter One

“I believe I’ve found the perfect way to murder him,” Caroline Devereux said with a smile.

“How lovely.” Lady Sybil sipped her tea. “I assume it’ll be different than last time.”

“Oh, yes. One can’t poison a man to death twice in a row, after all. It shows a total lack of originality.” Caroline nibbled a biscuit and tried to avoid making a face; she wished their cook were a bit more adventurous. Shortbread was nice enough, but only in moderation.

“Drowning, then?”

“If you’ll recall, I already drowned Lord Tyrell last year. I can’t possibly repeat myself so soon.” Caroline added a lump of sugar to her tea.

“Hmm, you’ve created a considerable trail of bodies.” Lady Sybil mused for a moment. “I forget, is this someone we like?”

“Someone we don’t like. Roderick is a real monster,” she said, pouring the last of the tea into Lady Sybil’s cup. She’d have rung for more, but these days the Devereux household needed to conserve its supply of tea and everything else. They’d little money for luxuries. “I kill bad men in monstrous ways and good men in tragic ones.”

“If only nature were so fair.” Lady Sybil’s mouth dropped open in horror. “Oh! You’re not going to burn him alive, are you?”

“Precisely!”

“Caro, that’s horrid!”

“It’s poetic . Sir Roderick wanted to burn down Charity’s life in a metaphorical sense. Well, at the end he roasts alive in the house he won by forcing her to marry him. Then she and her brother are free of him forever after.”

“But aren’t they homeless now? Their house burned down!”

Caroline frowned. “I suppose you make a good point. I shall take note.”

...

Caroline scribbled on the paper, resolved to find a happy ending for her long-suffering sibling pair. The manuscript of her latest tale, The Dreadful Curse of Ashfield Terrace , needed to go to her publisher in the next few days.

Caroline wrote moderately successful Gothic pamphlets under the name of Mr. C.D Winthrop. She knew how fortunate she was. There weren’t many publishers in London who’d willingly do business with a young female author, particularly an unmarried one. Still, she wished she could publish under her real name. Barring that, she wished she could earn just a bit more for her family’s sake.

“How much are they paying you again?” Sybil asked.

“Tuppence a page,” Caroline grumbled. “That’s why I try to add as many ‘very’s as I can.”

“I don’t know why you do business with those horrid men,” Lady Sybil said with a frown.

“That’s what happens when one publishes so-called ‘cheap’ stories,” Caroline said, finishing her note and setting down her quill with a flourish.

“What about the novel?” Lady Sybil asked, sipping her tea. “Haven’t you heard from the publisher yet?”

Caroline brightened and slid a wisp of blond hair out of her face. Hopefully she hadn’t smudged herself with ink.

“I should have my decision sometime this week. The Masquerade at Seville is going to be quite different for me, Syb.” Indeed. Normally, Mr. Winthrop’s stories were printed in short, single booklets with the cheapest binding. A proper novel like Masquerade would be released in three separate volumes and bound handsomely with real leather. “It’s a serious tale. This time there are no grave robbers or mad monks or bloody curses.”

“What about screaming vampires?”

“I only added a screaming vampire one time, and no. Just the tragic story of an English family living in a crumbling castle in Spain, helpless as the dark secrets of their past come back to haunt them. And yes, the Devil does turn up, but!” Caroline raised one finger. “It’s mostly a metaphor.”

“And is there a love story?” Lady Sybil asked.

Caroline had the good taste not to scoff. “The Devil traps the family’s eldest daughter into marriage. I assure you, it’s quite sensational and scandalous.”

“Yes, but that’s not love.” Lady Sybil rolled her eyes in affectionate exasperation. Caroline was used to that. “Wouldn’t it be pleasing to write a story of true love, instead of treacherous pretend?” Sybil asked.

Lady Sybil Forsythe and Caroline were the most polar of opposites. Sybil was always appropriate in her dress and manner, as the daughter of a wealthy marquess and a member of one of England’s oldest and finest families. The shades of her dark hair and blue eyes were so lovely they seemed to have been selected by committee. Whereas Caroline?

Well. The ink-splattered, scribbling daughter of a cash-strapped baron didn’t seem a fit companion for such a jewel as Lady Sybil, but the two young women had bonded in childhood over a love of books. Even if Caroline’s tastes were a bit more sensational than Sybil’s, they both knew the value of a woman’s independent mind.

“People like reading about love when they stand a hope of finding it.” Caroline shrugged, a gesture that her father despaired at for being not at all ladylike. “I’m four-and-twenty, Syb! No man has ever given me a second glance. Any match I make will not come from affection.”

Sybil sighed as the clocks chimed the hour throughout the house. “I should go. Mamma wants my help with the invitations for Cynthia’s wedding. She’s not terribly pleased that my younger sister is marrying before I do.”

“It’s not as though you’ve had no offers.” Caroline rang to let Sybil’s maid know it was time to leave with her mistress. “Last Season you had three, after all! As this Season’s just begun, I wouldn’t be shocked if you doubled that number before July.”

“I don’t want to marry without love. I’ve told her before.” Sybil shook her head as she slipped on her gloves and tied on her bonnet in the front hall. “It doesn’t matter how many offers I get if there’s no affection between us.”

“You’re lucky to have so many options.” Caroline grinned. “If I had even one offer of marriage, my father would organize a parade.”

“Surely he’d have mixed feelings,” Sybil said. “You’re the lady of the house, after all.”

“A fact Papa finds endlessly discouraging.”

They made plans to have a stroll about the square the next day, and then Sybil was gone. Caroline was left to her writing and to overseeing the household ledgers.

As lady of the house, she had to look over menus, balance accounts, and ensure the household was supplied with everything it needed. She’d always been horrid at math, and the endless rounds of bookkeeping made her want to scream.

Most daughters of impoverished gentry would strive to make an advantageous marriage to save their family, but Caroline had failed utterly in that department, too. She’d known at an early age no man could love her, since she was scattered and blunt and not especially pretty. As she’d suspected, no one had ever asked to marry her.

Finally, she’d given up trying and wrote and wrote, determined to make enough to allow her father and brothers to appear respectable again. Then Edmund, her elder brother, could marry well and that lady could run the household and Caroline could scribble away in peace.

When the menus were ordered and the bookkeeping finally done for the day, Caroline turned back to her manuscript and frowned. Caroline knew the story had a problem, but could not think how to solve it, and as Sybil had gone and Caroline’s monthly meeting of her writing club, the Ladies’ Society of Murder, was still weeks away, she’d no one to help. Huffing, she got up and walked to and fro, hands on her hips in a most unladylike position.

She caught flashes of her appearance in the mirror as she paced back and forth, and barely glanced at the reflection.

She was an absolute middle of a human being, neither tall nor short, neither heavy nor thin, with hair that had been described as a ‘dull blond’ and wide gray eyes. All that distinguished her was the unusually untidy mess she often made of her hair. She paused on her third journey when she noticed something different in her appearance.

“Oh, tit ,” she hissed, a word that would have sent most matrons to the floor, smelling salts in hand. Caroline must have touched her nose idly while writing; a splat of black ink adorned the tip. The blasted thing had dried, too. Caroline rubbed at it, gave up, and rang for some water.

Was any other young lady in London such an utter mess?

The door opened and Wilkins, their butler and one of the few remaining Devereux servants, looked in on her. “Beg pardon, Miss Devereux. There is a gentleman to see you.”

“Eh?” Caroline stopped scrubbing and glanced at the clock. “It’s an odd hour for visitors, isn’t it?”

“Indeed, Miss. But he was most insistent on speaking with you.” Wilkins offered a tray with a calling card upon it. Caroline froze when she read it.

The Earl of Rockford

Her heart pounded; her mouth felt quite dry; she wondered if she might swoon as one of her Gothic heroines would. At best, she’d sort of wobble about a bit and then sit down.

“I didn’t think he’d simply call like that,” she muttered to herself.

“I wasn’t aware you were acquainted with Lord Rockford, Miss Devereux.” Wilkins looked mystified.

“I’ve never met him before. But I’ll see him now.” She looked at the inky cloth in her hand. “Erm. Give me five minutes.”

Caroline’s stain was not entirely gone five minutes later, but she couldn’t leave the earl waiting any longer.

She tried neatening her hair as she went downstairs to the drawing room, passing patches of bare wall that had once boasted elegant works of art. Art they’d sold as discreetly as possible to keep the family afloat financially.

Caroline stepped over Topper, the Devereux hound, as he lay stretched and snoozing across the whole width of the hallway. Topper never noticed his mistress’s passage.

She had expected to hear from Lord Rockford, but she had not expected him to call upon her out of nowhere. He could not be pleased to make her acquaintance. Not after that letter she’d sent him.

It will be all right. You just need to keep your nerve, and all will be well.

Their footman, James, the only footman left, opened the door as she entered the room.

The drawing room was one of the few areas of the house they hadn’t stripped and scavenged for sellable parts. It had been her mother’s favorite room, a place of rose-colored walls and delicate, silk-backed furniture. The porcelain figurines on the tables might have fetched some money, but no one had the heart to part with anything here. It was a room of warmth, feminine sentiment, and coziness.

The man who currently occupied the space was the absolute opposite of all that.

Caroline stopped dead when she beheld him. She’d told Sybil earlier that the Devil was going to be a character in her latest novel. She’d written him as a man with all the exquisite handsomeness of sin. The Earl of Rockford might have volunteered as an exact physical model for the fallen angel himself.

He was tall, with a build that suggested a boxer rather than an aristocrat. Even though he was impeccably dressed in cream breeches, an elegant black coat, and an ivory cravat, the sheer muscled bulk of his physique strained against the prison of his fine clothing. His neck was thick and bullish, his jaw squared with a deep cleft in the chin. His skin was well tanned from heaven knew how many hours spent beneath the hot sun, and his pitch-black hair seemed to rebel against tidiness as much as hers; its luxuriant waves resisted the constraints of pomade, and a curl fell before his eyes, which were the brightest green she’d ever glimpsed.

He looked down at her along a nose that would have been Grecian, were it not a bit crooked. Clearly, he’d had it broken and clumsily set before, perhaps more than once.

His full lips hiked in what might have been a sneer for one second, then relaxed.

“Are you Miss Devereux?” he growled.

Caroline dug her nails into her palm. She must stay the course; she must be brave.

“Indeed. Lord Rockford?” She gave a small curtsy. “A pleasure.”

He bent his head in a shallow bow. Neither of them spoke. The magnificent earl continued to glare, and Caroline knew she must take control of the situation.

“Would you like to sit?” She gestured to a chair.

Rockford grunted and lowered himself into a seat. His whole body seemed tense, the air around him electric with energy. He did not want to be here; that was plain as day.

“Would you like some tea?” Caroline paused, recalculating what was in their stores. “Erm. Would you like some weak tea? We’re rather low, I’m afraid.”

“No tea. Thank you.” He continued to appraise her, his astonishing eyes narrowed. His gaze swept her from head to foot, and Caroline’s whole body felt hot and rather fluttery.

“I know why you’ve called upon me.” Caroline kept her voice low and quiet. “I rather thought you would write first. Since we haven’t been formally introduced.”

“I wanted to catch you unawares.” The earl’s squared jaw tensed. Caroline had thought the Earl of Rockford would be like the other men in London society, someone who played by every rule. She’d been wrong, it seemed.

“Now that you’re here,” Caroline said, “we may have a frank discussion.”

“All right.” Rockford smirked. “How old are you?”

Well, she hadn’t expected him to say that .

“I beg your pardon!” Flummoxed, she said, “Well, how old are you ?”

“Thirty-one.” He didn’t seem perturbed by her question or her agitation. “I just thought you couldn’t be more than five-and-twenty.”

“I’m not. And it’s rude to ask a woman her age.”

There was a glint in the man’s eyes, the tug of a grin at the corner of his voluptuous mouth. “You’re a strange one to lecture anybody on rudeness, Miss Devereux.”

Her cheeks burned. “I simply want to understand your thinking.”

“I came tonight because I was curious about you. I wanted to know your age, what you looked like. After all,” he sneered, “It’s a rare young lady of the ton who blackmails an earl.”