Passion's Song (A Georgian Historical Romance) (37 page)

“
Whatever you two think, I’m quite
aware I need a wife. A man of my station requires a wife, as my
desperate mother so often reminds me.”

“
God help the woman fool enough to
marry you,” Ben said.

“
Why not one of your
sisters-in-law, Ben? It seems an excellent idea.” Dozens of
suitable candidates were thrown his way every season, this one
being no different from any other since the war. But he’d not been
able to bring himself to the sticking point with any of
them.

“
No.”

“
I’ll reform.” He grinned. “I
promise.”

“
You’ll reform when hell freezes
over.”

A faint memory tickled at the back of his mind. He
tapped his temple. “You mean the spinster, don’t you, Devon? The
eldest. The one with the spectacles.”

“
Blond hair, gray-blue eyes. Yay
tall,” Benjamin repeated.

“
What was her name?”

Ben’s blue eyes chilled another degree. “Anne.”

“
Gad. I still don’t remember her.
Except for the spectacles.” He looked askance at Dev. “I have never
understood his taste in women.”

“
You truly want to marry Anne?”
Ben asked Devon. Curiosity and relief lingered at the edges of the
question, but hearing him, no one could doubt the seriousness of
the matter. No doting father could have sounded more
cautious.

“
Yes.”

“
I meant to introduce her to
Declan McHenry,” said Ben, looking thoughtfully at Devon. “Or
Phillip Lovejoy.”

“
I’d be obliged if you
didn’t.”

“
Good God, you are serious, aren’t
you?”

“
It’s been four years. I am done
waiting.” Amusement brightened Devon’s brooding eyes and made his
severe mouth curve in a surprisingly warm smile. It did interesting
things to his face, the way severity gave way to warmth. At times
like this, when he saw Devon smile, Cynssyr understood exactly why
women went so eagerly to his bed.

If Devon had really decided the Sinclair spinster
was the woman he wanted, then the matter was done. He would have
his way. The why of it mystified him. Even as plain Devon Carlisle,
he could do far better than some dried-up female who wasn’t even
pretty enough to bother taking off her spectacles. As matrimonial
material, the earl of Bracebridge was nearly as sought after as he
himself. Nearly. But, not quite.

“
Enough. No more blather about
love and marriage, you two,” Cynssyr said. With a flick of the
reins, he steered his horse past a fallen branch then cantered to
the edge of a meadow where he waited for Ben and Devon.

“
Jade,” Ben accused when he
reached the meadow.

Cynssyr flashed a brilliantly arrogant smile. “The
trouble with you, my lord Baron Aldreth, is you love your wife. And
you, Devon. For shame. You disappoint me. You disappoint all our
sex, falling for this Miss Sinclair.”

“
Love,” said Dev with one of his
wry grins. “A most heinous crime.”

“
Love.” Cynssyr lifted one brow in
the supercilious disdain he usually reserved for certain rebuttals
in the Lords. “You mean a man’s delusion he’s not been robbed of
his freedom and a woman’s that she’s gained hers?”

“
Exactly,” Devon said.

“
How can you trust your judgment
now?” He lifted his riding whip, but brought it down on his boot
leg, not his horse. “Fools the both of you.” So saying, he urged
his horse to a gallop. “Anne Sinclair,” he muttered. He heard Devon
and Ben thunder after him and gave his horse its head. They had no
chance of catching him now. Only the best horseflesh found its way
into his stables. He had the best of everything. Wine. Horses.
Women. Friends.

He wanted to roar with disgust and dismay. Devon
married. What was he to do with himself then? To the devil with
spinsters who set their caps on marriage, he thought as the chill
wind whipped past him. “To the very devil with her.” Thus did the
duke of Cynssyr, so deservedly referred to as Lord Ruin, dismiss
the woman with whom he would soon be desperately in love.

places to get Lord Ruin

Stolen Love

Stolen Love is one of my backlist titles and is set
in the early Victorian period. Elizabeth Willard comes to London
with her aunt, uncle and beautiful cousin Amelia. Will her cousin
end up marrying Elizabeth's childhood friend, Nicholas Villines?
And just who is the daring jewel thief who has the Ton wondering
when he'll strike next?

When Geoffrey Villines died in 1836, he left behind
him a twenty-two-year-old son ill prepared for anything but a life
as a gentleman of leisure. There were so many things for Nicholas
to attend to, he hardly knew how he found time to see the family
solicitor. What he learned was no less shocking than his father’s
sudden death.

Very little remained of a once sizable fortune.
Money that should have been spent paying off mortgages had instead
been invested in creating the appearance of abundant wealth. To
make matters worse, in the year or two before his death, Mr.
Villines had made several attempts to regain his declining fortunes
by dipping into the capital of what remained and speculating with
the sums. The afternoon Nicholas spent with the solicitor gave
ample evidence that his father’s talent for business had been close
to nonexistent.

For a young man brought up to believe he would never
have to work for a living, Nicholas Villines was in a trying
situation, to say the least.

It did not occur to him to ask for help from his
family, though any one of them would have been more than happy to
do so. Indeed, he was shocked when his solicitor advised him to
borrow from his relatives or to leave the country for a prudent
period of time. Either course was inconceivable to him. Nicholas
intended to restore his ruined inheritance, no matter the personal
cost. He set himself to the task with all the optimism of his
twenty-two years; he resigned his memberships in clubs that cost
him money, sold his horses and his carriage, gave all his servants
notice (with the single exception of his valet), and moved from his
spacious quarters in the Albany to two small rooms on Pycham
Street. His resolve hardly wavered at all when he calculated that
notwithstanding his severe reductions in expenses, he would be
approaching seventy years of age before any significant amount of
the interest paid on the remaining capital might be applied to his
pocket rather than to mortgages and the like.

It was several weeks after his removal to Pycham
Street that Nicholas sat in his room, trying to reconcile himself
to the necessity of letting Chester go. His valet, who was
repairing a shirtsleeve at the time, seemed oblivious of their
cramped surroundings, but Nicholas was unable to believe Chester
did not feel the reduction in circumstances just as keenly as he
did himself. He cleared his throat, meaning to tell Chester that he
was sorry, but if he wanted his wages, he had better find an
employer who did not need to have his shirtsleeves mended. What
came out was, “It is a pity, Chester, that I cannot discover some
way to make a few pounds without any risk.”

“
You might apply for a position in
a bank, Mr. Villines,” said Chester, never taking his eyes off the
shirtsleeve.

“
In a bank!” It was testimony to
his present difficulties that Nicholas’s first thought was that
engaging in commerce on such an intimate level was not entirely out
of the question. But he knew his family would not stand for it, and
more important, he did not wish to be forced to explain that his
father had left him in straits. If the truth were known, he felt
lucky to have so far succeeded in preventing them from learning
where he now lived.

“
There is a great deal of money in
banks,” Chester added.

This was just the sort of observation Chester was
prone to make and that had once been a source of great amusement to
Nicholas. Chester’s pronouncements were invariably accurate and, as
a practical matter, generally useless.

“
There certainly is,” Nicholas
agreed with a sigh.

“
It seems to me, sir, that people
are inexplicably anxious to give their money to thieves.” Chester
shook his head sadly.

“
What has that to do with banks?”
asked Nicholas.

“
It is my opinion that bankers are
thieves.”

Nicholas began to laugh but stopped when he saw
Chester’s offended expression.

“
I fail to see the humor in the
subject,” the valet said huffily.

“
You are perfectly right. It is a
very serious subject indeed. One should never laugh at another’s
livelihood.”

“
The difference between a thief
and a banker,” Chester continued, warming to his subject, “is that
one may call in the aid of the police when robbed by the former.
With the latter one hasn’t any recourse.”

Nicholas felt compelled to respond. “At least one
consents to be robbed by a banker, Chester.”

“
If you will forgive my
impertinence, Mr. Villines, I should rather be robbed by a thief
than a banker! I’ve insurance on everything of value and wouldn’t
be out so much as a shilling if I were to be robbed by a
thief.”

“
Indeed?” There ensued a silence
during which Nicholas gazed thoughtfully at his servant.

“
Give me an honest thief, I say,
sir. There’s no pretense with him. One knows where one stands with
a thief.”

“
Chester, you’ve given me an
idea,” said Nicholas.

“
You’re very welcome,
sir.”

***

Nicholas’s reentry into Society was gradual. He
began by attending dinner parties. Then he had tea at Lady
Lewesfield’s, was occasionally present in his grandfather’s box at
the opera, and now and then took a walk in Regent’s Park. The
following year he was seen riding in the Park, and only a few
months later he had acquired a rather dashing cabriolet. The very
next year he’d hired a groom and by Christmas had purchased a large
house overlooking the Park. Though he sometimes disappeared for
lengthy periods (to look after some property in Derbyshire, it was
said), he was much in demand at social events requiring the
presence of handsome young gentlemen. Nor was it long before he had
obtained a reputation for gallantry. Several broken hearts were
directly attributed to the fact that Nicholas Villines preferred
brunettes over blondes.

Society welcomed him back; he had absolutely
sterling connections, after all. His paternal grandfather was
Viscount Eversleigh, and though Nicholas’s father had been the
youngest of the viscount’s three sons, by the start of 1840
Nicholas was third in line to the title. Lord Eversleigh’s eldest
son had died in 1838, leaving behind him only a son. This scion of
the family honor soon found himself twenty-one years old and in
control of a considerable income. Having been turned loose upon
London at last, he appeared to be making the most of his freedom.
It was said Henry took after his father, and there was speculation
in some circles that it would be a miracle something on the level
of the Second Coming if the health of Nicholas’s cousin did not go
into a serious and fatal decline as the result of his profligate
ways. The current odds were three to one the Honorable Henry
Villines would not live to see thirty and five to one his demise
would occur before he had got a legitimate son.

The viscount’s middle son,
Russell, was second in line. Russell had no children, and he was
now expected to leave his own fortune to his nephew Nicholas.
Nicholas was, perhaps, the only person in all of England who paid
no attention to distasteful speculations regarding whose death
would make him rich, and he did not scruple to let it be known in
what light he saw the matter.
His
hopes for the future, said he, were based solely
on the balance shown in his bank book.

Nicholas’s past hardships had taught him that in
adversity one might learn a great deal about human nature.
Consequently he had few friends, but the few acquaintances he did
cultivate were deep ones. He was a generous man since he could now
afford the luxury and a thoughtful one; he was quick to return
kindness for kindness. Though it was not entirely intentional, he
kept quite a bit to himself. He had little patience for fools, and
it seemed to him London had more than its share of them.

There was something about Nicholas that set him
apart from other wealthy young men of society. First, he was
intelligent. Second, he had a great deal of presence; one always
noticed when he came into a room. And third, though not precisely
handsome, his features were strong, regular, and
interesting—commanding, even. If not for a certain gentleness about
the set of his mouth, he would surely have seemed forbidding. His
eyes were a piercing and unfathomable black. He was tall,
broad-shouldered, and long-legged. If he had chosen to have his
clothing made by someone other than Mr. Henry Poole (which he did
not), he would still have looked good in them. His black hair had a
hint of curl in it, and it was worn just long enough to make him
seem daring, though he did not know that was the effect it had.
There was a small scar on his cheek near his right ear he had once
jokingly said was the result of a duel over a woman in Paris. To
his chagrin, the tale was quickly repeated all over London and
generally credited as true. The more he denied it, the more
credence it seemed to gather, so he took to snorting derisively
whenever the subject came up. He was almost completely unaware of
the influence he had with women on the strength of his smile alone.
Doubtless he would have smiled more if he had known it.