Her Notorious Viscount (4 page)

She sighed as she crossed to the broad window seat that overlooked the street. Sinking down onto the cushioned ledge, she looked with unseeing eyes at the bustling scene below.

As a child, she had sat here while her mother read her stories in the afternoon after tea. Later, she had laughed here when her brother told fantastical tales of his days in school. And more recently, she had cried here when her father passed of a sudden apoplexy and she was left utterly alone in the world.

“Good afternoon, Jane.”

She stiffened as she got to her feet and watched her cousin Patrick enter the room. He was a tall man, though not as tall as Nicholas Stoneworth. And certainly not as muscular, but no one could call him fat, either. Actually, he was a rather handsome man, with the strong features that were common to so many of the men in her family. His dark green eyes were just like her father’s. The lock of black hair that fell across his forehead put her to mind of her brother.

Which made the fact that he had betrayed that same family all the more distasteful.

“Good afternoon,” Jane said with barely concealed disdain. She would not call him “my lord.” Not ever.

“I am pleased that you came,” her cousin said as he motioned to the two chairs that were situated before the fire. “Especially since you have left my past three missives unanswered.”

Jane clenched her fists as she sank into the chair slowly. Her desire was to refuse his polite overtures, but she couldn’t do that.

“I had nothing to say to you after our last argument.”

Patrick pursed his lips. “If only we did not have to argue at all, Jane. I wish you were not so insistent on making me out to be a villain. I know you don’t understand—”

Drawing in a harsh breath, she snapped, “I understand perfectly. You
want
my brother to be dead so that you can have the life that was meant for him.”

Her cousin’s cheek twitched. “Jane,” he began, his tone a warning.

One that she ignored, although her rational mind screamed at her to be civil. It was impossible to heed that call. Patrick forever brought out the worst in her and made her say things she shouldn’t.

“Somehow you managed to convince the justice that my brother is dead. I don’t know how you did it, though I assume it involved a great deal of money. But I am not so easily swayed as some greedy barrister. I know Marcus is
not
dead. And I will use every breath in my body to prove it and take back what you stole.”

Patrick drew in a deep breath, but he did not get angry. He never got angry, even when they argued. That fact drove Jane mad. She wanted to rile him. To make him as frustrated and annoyed as she was every time she looked at him.

“How could you do this?” she asked, and hated how her voice broke.

He shook his head slowly. “I did what needed to be done to protect the family name, and continue the family line. You may not wish to believe that, but it is the truth. And I offered to help you, to marry you. I still would.”

Jane surged to her feet. “Please do not claim that your distasteful offer was made to help me. You did it only to legitimize your claim to the title and to soothe your own guilt over your betrayals. Nothing more. I told you then that I will never marry you, and I meant it. But I
will
find my brother, and then you will be revealed for the charlatan and liar you are.”

Patrick got to his feet slowly. He looked at her, and his expression was one of sadness. Pity. Which caused the anger that boiled out of control in Jane’s chest to burn even hotter.

“You may continue to try, Jane,” he said softly. “But you might do better to accept what has happened. And accept help. You do not have to continue on as a companion to Lady Ridgefield. At the very least, I could sponsor another Season for you, I could—”

Jane turned her back, and the action silenced him midsentence. “I did not come here for your false charity, Patrick. I came to review my father’s papers once more. In fact, I would like to take them with me, so that I will have access to them at all times.”

Patrick sighed. “I have told you before, those items belong to the estate. You may make as many copies of the information as you like and visit as often as you care to for examination. But I cannot allow my uncle’s papers to leave this house.”

Jane spun on him, fists shaking at her sides. All the emotion she normally tried to control was alive at that moment. Transformed into the powerful hatred she had developed for the man before her. He was a person she had once thought of as a friend. But now she could see only his detestable qualities.

“Fine,” she finally managed through clenched teeth. She wanted to say so much more, but feared Patrick would use his power to keep her from reading over her father’s papers at all if she continued to press the issue.

“Then I will have Jenkins show you to the archive. I assume when you are finished with your work, you will not want to see me, but if you do I shall be in my office. Good day.” Her cousin turned and quietly exited the room.

As Jane waited for the butler who used to serve
her
to come and collect her, she paced the small parlor restlessly. Her cousin’s words echoed in her head. Patrick had told her to accept help. He meant his own, of course, but that was not a scenario she would ever allow herself to become a part of.

However,
another
man had offered his help. With a price, of course, but if Nicholas could find her brother…perhaps he was right that the ends would justify the means.

And how hard could it be to “train” a man to be a gentleman?

She shut her eyes as she thought of Nicholas Stoneworth. An image of him came far too quickly, standing in the cool moonlight, his bright blue eyes glittering with sensual promise and debauchery.

It would likely be impossible to transform him into the kind of man who would be welcome in the ballrooms of the best of the
ton
. But
he
didn’t have to know that. She only had to help him until Marcus was found. Then she could renege on their bargain. That was not honorable, perhaps, but neither was asking a lady to pay for the help of a gentleman.

She didn’t have any choice. With Patrick keeping her from any kind of private investigation and without money for any other search, Jane needed Nicholas Stoneworth.

And as long as he needed her in return, then she would have a little bit of power. She could only hope it would be enough.

Jane stood at the back door of Nicholas’s town home, rapping on the hard surface. She shivered, though the spring night’s breeze was far from brisk. Nervousness caused the motion.

The door came open and a disapproving female servant stared at her. From the apron she wore, she appeared to be a cook.

“Another one?” she snapped with a cluck of her tongue.

Brow wrinkling with confusion, Jane said, “I am here to see your master. Will you tell him that Jane Fenton has returned?”

The cook turned her back with another harrumph. “Not my job to show his hussies around.”

Jane took a step inside, though she hadn’t yet been invited. “Madam, I am not a hussy, I am—”

“You again.”

She looked up as the butler who had shown her in the night before came down the three steps into the kitchen.

“G-good evening,” she stammered, thrown off by the tall, thin man’s utter disdain. “I have come to see your master.”

“Clearly, but I’m afraid I cannot allow that. Lord Stoneworth has asked not to be disturbed tonight. I shall be sure to tell him that you called.”

He started to depart the room, but Jane rushed toward him before he could utterly dismiss her.

“But he is expecting me.”

The man turned and speared her with a look full of disbelief. “I somehow doubt that.”

“Please, won’t you ask him? It couldn’t hurt, could it?” she pleaded, hoping her mournful expression could manipulate the situation a little.

She
had
to make Nicholas agree to her scheme as soon as possible, before he changed his mind or found another tutor and she was back where she started.

“It will hurt far more than you imagine, miss,” the butler said. “Do you have any intention of leaving?”

Jane shook her head quickly.

He shut his eyes with a long-suffering sigh. “Then follow me.”

He led her through the halls a second time, but tonight he took her to a small parlor rather than the terrace where she had met with Nicholas before. She tapped her toe restlessly as she awaited the man’s return.

Looking around her, she took in the room, which was in some state of disarray. Not dirty, of course, but as if someone had moved the furniture and it never quite found itself back in the right place. She made a mental note to include lessons on the maintenance of one’s home as part of the gentlemanly instruction she would conduct if Nicholas agreed.

He
would
agree. He had to.

She heard masculine voices in the hallway and rushed to the door. She staggered back at what she saw. Nicholas was with his servant, but he was not dressed. He wore a black silken robe, tied negligently around his hips. Tanned skin, rippled with ropes of muscle, seem to be everywhere she looked.

Was he doing that on purpose to stymie her?

She forced her hands to stop shaking and tried to appear bored as he entered the room.

“Miss Jane Fenton,” he drawled, not even looking the slightest bit embarrassed at his lack of attire. “I did not expect to see you this evening. Or ever again. Last night you made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me unless it was on your own, rather narrow terms.”

Jane forced herself not to stare at his bare, muscular legs, or the expanse of chest that was revealed in the deep vee of his dressing gown, or his broad shoulders. Instead, she stared straight into his pale eyes, but found them almost as distracting as his shamefully uncovered body.

“I-I—” she stammered.

“Stone?” came a female voice from the door.

Jane froze, then slowly peeked around Nicholas to see a disheveled blonde smiling at the viscount. His face briefly tightened with what looked like annoyance before he turned.

“Lydia, I thought we had already said our goodbyes,” he said as he made his way to the door. The pair of them spoke for a moment quietly before the other woman pulled a childishly pouting face and then left.

Jane opened and shut her mouth in shock. So he had been…been
bedding
that woman when she arrived. That was why he was wearing naught but a robe. Strange emotions troubled her at the realization. Embarrassment, of course, but she was also intrigued. The cook had said “another one” when Jane entered the house, so she must have believed Jane was there to join in the viscount’s fun.

Did women actually
share
men in bed?

And another emotion made itself known. Faint, but still there in a troubling degree.

Jealousy. She didn’t like the idea that Nicholas Stoneworth had been upstairs pleasuring some lightskirt while she was downstairs awaiting him.

Which was ridiculous! She was being foolish to even consider it, just overly emotional after her troubling encounter with Patrick and her terrifying decision to accept Stoneworth’s bargain.

She was not, she could
not
be jealous of this man’s conquests.

Nicholas gently shut the door, the sound ricocheting off the walls like a gunshot. She stared at the barrier with a frown.

“My apologies,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry for anything. “I did not intend for us to be interrupted.”

She pursed her lips. “Indeed.”

“Now what were you saying?” he asked as he continued to move toward her step by long step. “Something about why you came?”

Suddenly Jane was having a hard time recalling her reason herself. All she could think about was how tall Nicholas Stoneworth was.

“How did you blacken your eye?” she found herself asking. She shook her head the moment the question left her lips.

He stopped stalking toward her and stared at her. Then a little smile quirked his lips. “Is that why you came here? To inquire about my eye?”

She frowned. He was toying with her. “Of course not,” she said, though her tone was not as harsh as she had wanted it to be.

“I was punched,” he explained without any indication of how he felt about that fact. “In this very room, in fact.”

Jane swallowed. That might explain the disarray of the chamber. So this man could not even control himself enough not to brawl in his own home. She had a large job in front of her to make him into a gentleman, but there was nothing to be done about it.

“If I am to train you, you must realize that fighting in the front parlor is not done,” she said.

He folded his arms, and in the process his silk robe rose a few more inches, revealing a tanned expanse of very muscular thigh. With a gasp, Jane looked away.