Wayward One Read online

  “Your household is a disaster. I shall devote myself to its management as a sort of adjunct housekeeper. A tutor in the ways of propriety since you are imperceptibly better.”

  “You’ve become a cheeky wench, haven’t you?”

  He could hardly discern the shake of her head through the shadows. “No, in all honesty I’m not. There’s something about your high-handed manner that demands my response.” A faint thread of wonder wove through her voice.

  He wished he could take her by the hand and lead her out of their darkened corner. He would’ve loved to see her face as she’d said that. But doing so would expose her to censure he wasn’t willing to see inflicted. For she was right: he was barely better than a disaster.

  He’d employed tutors and advisors who were supposed to turn him into a gentleman, but their lessons had only gone so far. Part of the gutters too long, he couldn’t excise all of himself. The crass instinct to acquire, grasp and win would never go away.

  That his household had devolved into a disaster was undeniable as well. Waywroth Academy excelled at teaching English women home management too. He could only be served by her wish to straighten his place. Maybe then he could get a hot meal without having to go out to the local taproom.

  He’d have nothing to lose by allowing her little games. Maybe then she’d learn he wasn’t a house cat to be tamed. A good lesson for his future wife to learn.

  “Far be it from me to deny an English miss when she has improvement on the mind.”

  Light spilled through the tiny alcove when she curled a hand around the edge of the curtain. “I’m glad you’re so agreeable. It’s more than I expected. However, I must now return to my party. They’ll likely wonder where I’ve got off to.”

  He bent into a hint of a bow since the small space didn’t afford room to do any more. Even that brought her into too-near proximity. The low scoop of her gown displayed precisely the correct amount of décolletage for a woman of her age and status. But the exactness made it no less enticing. Flowery warmth emanated from the expanse, rousing his heady response.

  “Please don’t allow me to keep you any longer than necessary.” If he couldn’t keep a hint of sarcasm from his voice, so much the better.

  The chastising glance she dropped over her shoulder as she walked away said she’d noticed.

  He waited only half a moment before following her down the hallway to ensure she returned safely to her box. These sorts often forgot that unpleasantness could attack where it wished. The second act must have begun because not a single toff lingered in the hallway.

  No one seemed to notice when he entered through the back of Lord Linsley’s box, either. He was a ghost in these surroundings.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. Lady Linsley certainly noticed. She peeked over her fan at him, her eyes bright with curiosity.

  No matter that the earl looked about as bored as a lecher in Sunday services. Still vital enough to go riding every morning, he also fenced in the afternoon—at the club where Fletcher had arranged a meeting. The dark gray hair meticulously combed into place hadn’t been nearly as neat when he and Fletcher crossed swords. His fine suit carefully balanced sartorial elegance with staid propriety.

  Spend enough money at the tailors and the look wasn’t hard to achieve. After all, Fletcher had managed.

  Even that extravagance couldn’t scrape off the muck of the gutter.

  He slipped into his seat at the edge of the box.

  The lights of the house had been turned low, but enough of a yellow flicker remained to make out Seraphina. She’d returned to her place, cosseted between the two women who had chattered at her earlier. The one to her left was the Duke of Faircroft’s daughter and her entrée into such refined society. Fletcher had been told by a too-interested Lady Linsley that Sera’s box belonged to the duke himself. To her right was the Honorable Charlotte Vale, daughter of a baron.

  He was glad for Seraphina. But more than glad, he was proud of his accomplishment. Such success had been his goal all along, to ensure she fared better than her initial circumstances would have provided.

  While he hadn’t intended to introduce Seraphina into his sphere just yet, he would not falter. If anything, he could look upon present circumstances as a blessing. So, she no longer wanted charity. All well and good. He understood that reluctance more than he’d ever admit to Sera. Neither would he admit how useful her eye for elegance and propriety suited his aims toward advancement.

  But he didn’t intend to be a quick study. Months might be required to see him molded into a perfect gentleman. Perhaps as long as two years. He would use that time to cultivate her good graces. Then when the moment came to propose, he’d not need to batter past her defenses. Ripe and ready for plucking, she would be eager to take his arm and be his partner through life.

  His angel in the flesh.

  Chapter Five

  The next day Fletcher wasn’t feeling so sanguine, though it had little to nothing to do with Seraphina. He slammed through the front door of his house, not even waiting for his useless excuse of a butler.

  Standing in the middle of the entryway, he bellowed for his second-in-command. “Rick! Get your arse down here this instant.”

  Rick Raverst leaned out over the balcony of the first-floor landing. “I ain’t your child to be whinging at.” His head disappeared but his answering yell continued. “I’m twice your damn age.”

  “Then how about you act like it? You know where I’ve been?”

  Rick made his way leisurely down the stairs, doing up the buttons on his waistcoat as he went. Though he really was twice Fletcher’s age, no one would have guessed by looking. He had two inches on Fletcher, and his dark brown hair was untouched by even a hint of white. A few crinkled laugh lines spread out from his dark, wide eyes. For having spent half his life working as second-in-command for Fletcher’s father and then continuing with Fletcher, he showed few signs of dissipation. The only hint was a slight reddening around his straight nose. The man certainly did like his brandy.

  Rick hooked an arm around the newel post and somehow managed to lean while standing upright. “Obviously you haven’t been out having at some cunny or you’d be in a much better mood.”

  “I’ve been at Mrs. Kordan’s.” His teeth felt like they were about to wear to nubs from grinding them so damn hard.

  Rick’s eyebrows went up. “That’s just not right, then. Mrs. Kordan’s been running some prime quim lately. Did you break your dick having at it?”

  As he’d explained to Rick many times, Fletcher didn’t believe in trying out the merchandise. Too many tastes of free quim led to hazy boundaries between an owner and the proprietress. Not to mention Mrs. Kordan had seen him when he wore britches and wiped slobber off his chin. “So you’ve been there lately?”

  Rick walked over to the gilt-edged mirror on the wall and ran his fingers through his hair. He had always been a little vain because he said it was what drew women. He’d first come to the attention of Fletcher’s father on the heels of a shooting in Dover, caught screwing someone’s wife. The husband had shot the woman then tried to turn his gun on Rick. Though the authorities absolved him of any guilt in shooting the man to protect his life, Rick had elected to leave the county. Fletcher’s pa had hired Rick within two weeks of him landing in London, and he’d proved his worth ever since.

  “A week or two ago, yes.” Rick watched him through the mirror as he spoke.

  “Did you meet Melissa?”

  “Nope. Should I?” He leaned his hips against the table that had cost Fletcher too much money. The gilt-edged, spindly-legged console had sat in a king’s dressing room, but that didn’t matter as much as the fact that it was supposed to carry a certain level of cachet.

  As if respectability could be bought. Not if you started too late, he was finding.

  “She’s twelve if she’s a day,” Fletcher spat.

  Rick’s expression turned wary, the laugh lines turning white. “Is that right?”

>   “I told you I’d have none of that. You bloody assured me you’d see to it.” Fletcher stalked down the hallway toward his office, confident Rick would follow. “If we’ve got to keep the prostitution running, I draw the line at children.”

  He’d almost tossed up his accounts when he walked through the back door of Mrs. Kordan’s and found the girl sitting in the parlor. She’d been dressed—or not dressed, as was the case—in a dressing gown and too much rouge.

  Mrs. Kordan had hemmed and hawed, trying to claim the girl as seventeen years of age. But her hips had been entirely too narrow and her bosom nonexistent.

  Fletcher felt like he needed a bath simply for being forced to make that observation.

  He dropped into his desk chair and curled his grip around the back of his neck. His nails scraped up his scalp with a sharp tingle that did little to distract from his fury.

  Rick entered the study much more carefully. He seated himself across the desk in the chair meant for visitors. He must be feeling particularly wary of Fletcher if he didn’t immediately make his way to the sideboard and its crystal decanters. “I made your position perfectly clear to her. If she didn’t follow, there’s not much I can do.”

  Fletcher jerked his head up. “Like hell there isn’t. You can fire her.”

  “Oh come on, my man. I can’t do that.” Rick leaned back in his chair, hands spread out. “Mrs. Kordan’s been working for this organization since before you had your first cockstand. Your father thought she did a fine enough job.”

  “I’m not my goddamned father.” He’d tried explaining that plenty of times as well, but it had sunk in about as well as his decree about employing no child whores.

  Rick had known Fletcher since he was barely off his mother’s teat. He was convinced he knew how to run the business better, and to him better always involved dirty. He watched Fletcher’s attempts at joining the up-and-up with amusement, as if fully confident of failure.

  The hell of it was he seemed to be right.

  Before Fletcher could make another attempt at convincing Rick, the study door swung open. Hareton stood in the open doorway. Fletcher dropped his head back into his hands, unwilling to think of how many times he’d tried to tell the butler that if he consistently failed to announce himself properly, the rest of the staff would fail as well.

  “There’s someone here for you,” Hareton said.

  Fletcher lifted his head and looked at him expectantly. No further information was forthcoming. “Yes?”

  Hareton shifted from side to side. Tugged on his waistcoat. “Should I send ’em in?”

  “It depends,” Fletcher drawled. “Who is the visitor?”

  He consulted a small white card that was dwarfed in his ham-hock hand. “Miss Seraphina Miller.”

  Fletcher started shaking his head before the words were even out of the butler’s mouth. “No. Not now. Tell her she’ll have to visit another time.” With the day he’d had, he simply didn’t have the patience to begin any sort of lessons.

  If anything, Hareton looked more uncomfortable. He pulled at his collar with a finger. “She doesn’t quite seem to be visiting.”

  A cold trickle of dread dribbled down Fletcher’s spine, chilling his skin. “Excuse me?”

  “She’s got trunks and boxes. A bag or two.”

  Rick got up from his chair and wound his way over to the brandy. He chuckled as he poured a hefty measure. Fletcher pinned him with a look that did nothing to alleviate the pure annoyance flooding him. “Got a joke?”

  Rick tossed back a swallow. “No. None at all.”

  Fletcher pushed to his feet. To his unending annoyance, he dislodged a pile of receipts and sent them fluttering to the floor in a flurry of white. He left it to deal with later as he stalked from the room.

  Seraphina stood in the entryway, directing a stream of footmen and a scullery maid in the carrying of her baggage. She wore a pale gray cloak, the bottom of which split open over blue skirts with several layers of flounces. Her dark hair had been divided down the center and drawn back into a complicated braid wound at the back of her head.

  He had the sudden, distracting urge to take that braid apart piece by piece. He’d bury his face in the dark curtain of her hair and nibble the soft skin behind her ear.

  “Careful with that.” Though she never lost her clear, sweet cadence, her voice easily carried to the landing where a footman bobbled a heavy leather trunk. “I should be very disappointed if you were to drop it.”

  The footman spared her a calf-eyed expression before clutching the chest more closely.

  “God forbid you be disappointed in a footman,” Fletcher gritted out.

  She didn’t seem to notice his sarcasm. She turned to him with a pleasant demeanor that looked like a mask. He much preferred the slightly annoyed expression he’d seen when they were tucked in their curtained alcove, when her flowered scent had wrapped around him. “Taking the Lord’s name in vain in mixed company betrays low origins.”

  “Good, because my origins are about as low as they come.”

  Her smile verged on beatific. The years of protection and planning he’d given her had created his own personal angel, now come back to torment him. “That’s why I’m here, to help you improve.”

  Fletcher wrapped a hand about her arm and hauled her into the nearest parlor. No matter his displeasure, it served no purpose to air their dirty laundry before all and sundry. The room was cool and shadowy since the curtains and shutters were still pulled closed. His time seldom provided for doing nothing in parlors, nor did he have the slightest clue how to play the piano that took up one corner.

  “Exactly what do you mean by here? You can’t possibly mean to stay here.”

  “Certainly I can.” She tugged at her white gloves, pulling them off finger by finger. The exposure of her pale skin was an undressing that affected him as strongly as if he’d stripped her entire wardrobe, one tasteful slip of lace at a time. He could barely concentrate on his words over the rushing response of his body.

  He gave himself a mental shake, for all the good it did. “No, you can’t.”

  She raised a single eyebrow. “You’re beginning to sound a bit like a parrot.”

  “What would it do to your reputation to live here? Destroy it, that’s what.” He stalked away from the tempting scent of her skin. Flowers and silk and good health. “I haven’t sunk a small fortune into you only for you to throw it away.”

  Her laugh was husky, nothing like the clear giggle he remembered from when she was a little girl. “Exactly what do you imagine settling a fortune on me will do for my reputation?”

  “Increase it, naturally.” He rested a hand on the end of the piano. “Money always increases reputation.”

  “Of course you don’t understand.”

  He growled. A growl, like he was some sort of animal. There was no holding back his frustration. His bones felt locked into place. “Then do please explain my foolishness.”

  She swept off her cloak. The dress underneath was nowhere near as silly as he’d expected from the rows of flounces about the hem. All sleek lines to her hips, it delineated every gentle curve and hugged a bosom of which any of Mrs. Kordan’s women would be proud. “I’m a known foundling. An orphan who has lucked into a proper education and who is tolerated due to influential friends.”

  “Lady Victoria Wickerby,” he supplied.

  She accepted his knowledge with an unsurprised nod. “Yes. And Miss Charlotte Vale. Though she has less rank, and she verges on scandalous, her father owns vast stretches of land in Derbyshire.”

  “All well and good, but that does nothing to explain why gaining money would destroy your reputation.”

  “If I am a foundling with no resources who suddenly comes to money without good explanation for the source, precisely how do you suppose people will say I obtained it?”

  He’d never meant for her to precisely appear in society before she’d become his wife. Various setbacks over the years had meant adju
stments to his timetables. Though he’d hoped that their swift marriage would ameliorate any talk, he couldn’t say as much yet. He was well aware of the possible implications. “On your back.”

  She flinched at the bald-faced statement but nodded in agreement. “Precisely. I’ll require you to suddenly acquire a decrepit elderly member of your family to whom I can become companion.”

  He smiled. “I’m so pleased to see your feisty nature wasn’t simply a figment of my imagination the other day.”

  “So long as we keep the gossips at bay, staying here will draw less notice than constant comings and goings.” She ignored him and draped her cloak over the end of the sofa. “For a woman of my social standing and prospects, becoming a lady’s companion is quite acceptable. Even encouraged.”

  “I must say I hadn’t expected you to move in. Nor to somehow attain an aunt who will no doubt be crotchety.” He’d conjectured a few meetings where she “taught” him how to take tea, perhaps. If she could actually get him entrée with Lord Linsley, he’d kiss a monkey. But he couldn’t deny there was a certain…temptation to the idea of having her so near. “Am I to walk on eggshells in fear of constant reprimand?”

  She seated herself on one of the small couches. In her pale blue dress and sitting on the darker blue cushions, she looked a bit like a sapphire in a jewel box. No, that wasn’t quite right. A perfect pearl, cool and smooth and untouched by the world around her. Every inch the ladies’ jewel. “Certainly not. This is your home. I wish to improve your conditions through a sort of management position. I’d never wish you to feel unwelcome in it.”

  He bit back a laugh, the source of which she could never guess. He hadn’t felt comfortable in this house since it had been built. The embers had barely cooled on the wreck he shared with his father before construction began anew. Rick had insisted on the grand edifice, and the architect had created a masterpiece to declare that the Thomas’s enterprise had not finished with Mac’s passing.

  Only after the fact did Fletcher realize pushing a second son into doing the decorating was perhaps not his best decision. Through years of living with the risqué décor, he’d learned to take a perverted pleasure from having such a scandalously attired house.