Year of the Fox (Ladies’ Revenge Club #2)

Prologue

Blackcove, Cornwall

December

It had been, without question, the most agonizing week of Thaddeus Beck’s life.

That was saying something, because his life had hardly been a charmed one. He was a guttersnipe. An orphan. An upstart. And yet, somehow, this week in the lap of absolute luxury, nestled in a castle in the Cornish coast, had been the most unbearable cluster of days he’d ever lived through.

He could never tell anyone that, of course. No one would understand.

At least that part wasn’t new.

He deserved his misery. That was what made it all so much worse. He had called poor fortune and comeuppance down on his own head when he set out to seek vengeance and allowed himself the indulgent fantasy of righteousness in the endeavor.

He’d had his hubris rightfully handed back to him, disassembled and bloody on a platter.

It hadn’t been quick, and there had been a cruelty in the mercy with which it had been delivered.

He’d been in agony for days now, and worst of all, he knew he deserved it.

He knew that despite the misery, he’d gotten lucky.

And then, of course, there had been the girl.

He groaned, dragging a hand over his face, and glanced in the large, gilded mirror that sat in the corner of his borrowed room.

He still looked composed, for the most part. He was still clean and well-garbed and upright. This was the man he had become: manicured, articulate, and respectable. At a glance, no one would even notice the split skin on his knuckles or the bruising that had blossomed around the scabs.

In passing, he still looked like the man he was supposed to be. The one who had come here glowing with the certainty that his behavior was just, that his plan was impermeable, and that at long last he’d emerged from his humble origins as something better.

Why had he thought that? He met his own eyes in the glass and saw himself exactly the way everyone else likely did. He was a hulking, grotesque, common thug. No amount of tailoring would hide that. No cache of wealth could buy it away.

He sighed, disgusted with the look of himself, and turned back to his open valise, half filled with the fine fabrics of his hard-fought station. He forced himself to keep packing. He made himself feel it every time he bent his fingers and his knuckles sang in agony.

Still, he could not stop thinking about the girl.

Hannah Lazarus had no business in a place like this.

Young, angelic, pure. That perfect little thing had been brought into this den of vice by her own father under the justification of wielding a notary seal.

The father was the banker and the daughter his asset, simply gracing the halls of an infamous gambling retreat to facilitate the larger and more reckless wagers.

What in God’s name had that man been thinking?

It was bad enough bringing her here, exposing her to the absolute worst of wealth and masculinity, but to make her a necessary barrier to the most foolish impulses of men who thrived on risk? That had been actual madness.

Degenerates gathered at Blackcove to trade in the most covetous of things. What else could Hannah Lazarus be but desired?

He hadn’t quite believed his eyes when he’d seen her the first time, standing in a corner, gripping the beveled handle of the notary stamp like the hilt of a sword.

She’d glowed like an ivory torch in a sea of muck, her blue dress shining against all that pale skin and a shocking crown of bright red hair.

He had probably stared. He had certainly stared.

He grimaced remembering it. He had been struck completely dumb by it, like perhaps his eyes were up to their old tricks and summoning visions that were not actually there.

“Pretty little Jewess, isn’t she?” Lord Penrose, the owner of this particular den of poor compulsions, had said, appearing at Beck’s elbow and twirling his silver beard. “I think my banker is hoping to find her a husband during this year’s festivities. Are you interested, Mr. Beck?”

Beck had cut his eyes to the other man, making him falter and backpedal and bluster. He hadn’t had to say a word. He knew that Penrose was making fun of him by even asking that, by even suggesting that someone like Beck could ever aspire to the hand of someone like her.

She hadn’t, to Beck’s knowledge, found a husband yet. And absurdly, he found the fact comforting, despite it benefitting him not at all.

In fact, all she had found at Blackcove was a host of lecherous, greedy eyes following her around the ballroom night after night as she wove between tables for dice and cards.

No one should have been surprised when one of them made a formal proposition.

Of course one of them had. Beck wasn’t the only one with a pulse and eyes enough to see how beautiful she was.

And yet, even remembering the edges of what had been suggested was enough to make his muscles clench and his blood simmer.

The girl had been a distraction.

Beck had allowed himself to become distracted.

He’d let himself become convinced that she was watching him too. He had fully deluded himself into believing she was gazing at him while she nibbled her porridge at breakfast or trying to meet his eye across the crowded rooms of the games.

Him! The tradesman in a sea of nobles, the interloper, too large to be refined, too well dressed to be naturally fashionable, here as a formality of his industry, not a true guest.

Could anyone blame him for feeling violently protective of the little beauty? Could anyone else have resisted looking at her a little too long?

God.

The man who had attempted to buy her was likely far more pleasing to a young lady’s eye than Beck himself.

Refined, pretty, disgustingly wealthy, and the culmination of every poor quality that erupted from being so from the day one was born.

Worse, the bastard had laughed about the liberties he’d taken over vingt-et-un, had gloated over what he felt entitled to ask for.

“Ah, well, Lazarus didn’t exactly say no,” Mr. Woodville had chortled as he fanned his cards, clearly expecting nothing but admiration and slaps on the back for his cheek.

“Of course, his like wouldn’t dare. He thanked me for the interest and assured me he would read my proposition with great care.

Maybe he’ll realize the chit will never do any better than a Woodville’s mistress if he takes the time to actually think about it.

I’ve offered her an elevation, not an insult. ”

Beck had already felt the unbearable swell of his own ire at these words, but it was what he said next. It was the vile, aspirational, lewd thing Woodville suggested they all imagine that had snapped his carefully contained inner beast.

And now Woodville was missing a tooth and Beck’s knuckles were nursing a new pair of scars.

He was an absolute fool. A blithering, dumbstruck idiot.

It was unforgivable.

It was only the first in a rapid line of terrible decisions.

It had let his veneer crack. It had compromised the mask he had so carefully constructed and tied to his own visage.

Once it was damaged, the whole thing had crumbled away until nothing at all of the man he’d thought he had become was left.

In the aftermath, he had made several terrible mistakes that might haunt him for many years yet. He had known he needed to flee back to London before he could make it any worse.

And then, after he’d already announced his intent to depart, he awoke this morning to a letter. A letter that requested a meeting in the conservatory, and it had made him stay. It had delayed his sensible and self-preserving flight.

For one unforgivably deluded moment, he thought perhaps his obsession had not been one-sided. He had hastened to the meeting point with his insides fluttering like a damned debutante’s. He had let himself hope.

It had not been her awaiting him there, of course. It was never going to be her. It had just been more ruin.

He flung open the bedroom door and rang the bell that hung outside of it. His trunk was already in the hall. The valise was the last bit of it.

He’d be shot of here in under an hour. He could lick his wounds back at his den and set about the impossible business of rebuilding what he’d broken.

The footmen made quick work of his luggage, leaving him to retreat back into the room one last time to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He paced around the bed three times. He avoided his reflection in that stupid, ostentatious mirror. He sighed in annoyance at his own very existence.

He stepped back into the empty hall and squared his shoulders, ready to leave this place, likely forever.

“Mr. Beck?”

He froze.

He knew, somehow, that it was her voice. He had never heard her speak a single word, and yet he knew. He knew all the way to his marrow. And he turned slowly because he did not trust himself to do otherwise.

Seeing her there might very well have killed him. It might very well have stopped his corrupted heart in a single, heavy thump, framed in the low afternoon sun that shone in from the window at the end of the hall.

“Mr. Beck,” she said again, taking a graceful little step toward him. Her hair was down, he realized with a lurch in his chest. It was tumbling over her arms in loose, wild curls, like she’d just pulled it free of a braid. “Are you leaving us?”

He opened his mouth to answer but managed only to nod. He forced his eyes to the aging wallpaper beside her, unable to keep considering the bounty of all that red-gold hair. The hem of her dress was damp and flecked with dark patches of sand, as though she’d been walking by the sea.

“Ah,” she said softly, a little frown tinting her voice. “That is a pity. I am afraid I will be quite alone come tomorrow. Miss Donnelly and her party are also leaving.”

He hated himself for it, but he couldn’t resist looking at her again. He couldn’t help staring. He was still too stunned by her presence to do much more.