The Trouble With Being Wicked (48 page)

Murmurs of agreement rose from the gentlemen present. He and Finn didn’t run in the same crowds, Con being far younger, but even he knew that the captain liked to flaunt his wealth in the form of expensive whores. Mostly because, despite Con’s status as fourth son of a marquis, he couldn’t afford any of the costly women Finn used and discarded without a thought, and had long been appalled by both Finn’s excess and his callousness.

“By my math,” Con said again, feeling surer of himself the longer Finn remained silent, “the child you’ve been tricked into acknowledging is actually mine. I am sorry, old boy. But if you don’t mind, I’d like my son back. He was the cutest little imp when he was born, you see, and I will never forgive myself for quarreling with Elizabeth just a few days later.” He laughed quietly. “It’s too easy, is it not, to rile her passions. I ought to have minded my tongue when she was at her most vulnerable. I sent her running back to you instead.”

It was almost too easy to read Finn. That bit about Elizabeth’s passions had done it—just as she’d said it would. Finn’s face darkened, and the bronzed skin of his brow creased as his eyes narrowed further. Elizabeth had told Con that she and Finn had fought like man and wife, even up to the end of their acquaintance. Last year, Finn
had
briefly cast her aside to pursue a new conquest. And Con was a devil of a handsome man, if he did say so himself. An objective evaluation, based on his observation that his twin brother was an out-and-out rake.

Finn was realizing the crux of it now: Con was worthy competition. And beautiful, wealthy, self-made Elizabeth Spencer did not like to be crossed.

Con almost felt sorry for him. He didn’t have the baby yet, though. He couldn’t take too much time to pity his opponent. Only when Finn stormed out of the room, growling, “That duplicitous little slut. I’ll be damned if she sneaks your bastard under my nose,” did Con finally relax. And later the next morning, when a runner knocked at the door of Merritt House, rousing the staff with the announcement that a
baby
was to be delivered that very afternoon, did the dread in Con’s belly begin to uncurl.

But it was the ten thousand pounds quietly transferred into his account that fully unwound his insides and allowed him to take an unfettered breath. When the last IOU had been ripped asunder and even the smallest of his creditors walked away satisfied, Con exhaled a deep sigh of relief.

Until he returned to Merritt House, and his mother greeted him at the foot of the stairs. “Constantine, where on
earth
have you hidden my beautiful little grandchild? Tweed seems to think you’ve no intention of raising him here, but I told him that
cannot
be true. You wouldn’t keep your own son from his family, even if he was born on the wrong side of the blanket.” Her blue eyes dampened and her voice trembled. “Oh, Constantine,
you wouldn’t,
would you?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but he had no answer. He merely stared at his mother, powerless to reassure her that no, he wasn’t that kind of father. The uncaring kind. The absent kind. The kind his father had been.

It wasn’t his first indication that, perhaps, he hadn’t thought this scheme entirely through.

* * *

Elizabeth Spencer would have paid Lord Constantine twenty thousand pounds for the return of her son. Even more, had he asked. She’d not told him so, of course. She’d let him name his price then bargained him down until he’d threatened to walk. It wasn’t by accident that she had started out penniless and become a celebrated courtesan with an impressive collection of assets.

It was to her benefit, then, that he’d been as desperate for her money as she’d been for his services. After paying for his silence, she still retained more than enough in her accounts to sustain herself and Oliver for the rest of her life. She need not return to her old tricks. A relief, for she’d had a month to come to the realization that she wanted nothing more than to be a mother.

She would have done it, though. Selling her body was a pittance compared to what she would have done to get her son back. She would do anything,
anything,
to keep him. The unbearably long separation, the weeks of Finn keeping her child from her, the days and nights knowing another woman was caring for
her
son, that she was never to see
her son
again, had felt like death. Even after a full day of having him with her, she hadn’t grasped the reality of Oliver’s presence. He was hers again.
Here.
At last.

Gazing into his beautiful little face, she touched his soft cheek and sighed the first real sigh of contentment she’d felt since…it didn’t bear thinking about. The past was the past. Finn was gone now. Oliver was her joy, her life.

He squirmed in her arms, then eyes as light as her own opened. He cooed and she smiled. “Well, look at you, there,” she murmured, nuzzling his tiny nose with her own.

As she cuddled her son, her vision was blurred by welling tears. Never again. She would
never
allow Finn to take him again. Even if she must live in fear for the rest of her life, she would do whatever it took to keep her child. Steal, lie, cheat. Nothing was worth the heartbreak of being separated from Oliver.

A scratch at the nursery door preceded the entry of her upstairs maid, Nelly, a girl with curly red hair peeking from beneath a mob cap. “You have a caller, ma’am.”

“Who is he?” Elizabeth did not need to be told it was a he. There were no other kind of callers.

“Not one of the usual, ma’am. I didn’t recognize him.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Rand ought to have given you his name. You must ask next time.”

Nelly bobbed. “Yes, ma’am, and I would have done, but the man refused to give it. I know because I took a look over the banister when I heard all the going-on. He’s sinful good-looking, but then they always are. He didn’t come in a crested carriage or nothing that might give a clue as to who he is. I did try, ma’am.” Her pretty brown eyes shone with fear of reprisal and the thrill of a handsome stranger.

Elizabeth had taken her fill of handsome strangers. The bundle in her arms was the only male in her universe now, and if the choice was between setting her baby down so that she might nip at the lure of a mysterious caller and staying right where she was, there was no question. “Inform him that I am unavailable.”

“Shall I tell him to return at a more opportune time?” A hopeful note in Nelly’s voice betrayed her new allegiance to the mystery man.

Elizabeth tucked Oliver’s swaddling more tightly around him. “I’m permanently unavailable to any man who expects me to dangle after him.” She ignored her maid’s titter of amusement. The girl was very young, not at all like the jaded maids Elizabeth was accustomed to. She was one of the girls Elizabeth had hired to attend her in Devon, where a more innocent staff had been required. She hadn’t had the heart to let her go after deciding to return to London and let a house. Nelly had no family and no prospects. Elizabeth knew all too well the fate that awaited a girl who had no family, no prospects and no employer.

Minutes after Nelly departed, the unmistakable cadence of heavy, masculine footfalls vibrated outside of the nursery door. Elizabeth frowned. There wasn’t time to set Oliver down before a solid rap against the frame caused her to startle. Even if there had been time, she wouldn’t have let her son out of her arms, not for a man. Especially not a rude one. How dare he barge in on her privacy after she’d already told him no?

Nelly’s pitiful protests were almost drowned out by Rand’s louder, insistent demands that the man leave. A
thunk
against the door followed by a male grunt and Nelly’s screech caused Elizabeth to turn her lips up in satisfaction. There was a reason her butler had the physique of a dockside worker. Let Rand see him out bodily, if that was what it took.

“Elizabeth,” a deep voice called through the wood paneling, “you have five seconds to make yourself presentable before I come through this door.”

She froze in her chair. It couldn’t be Lord Constantine. He’d already been paid.

“The devil you will,” Rand growled. “I have every intention of smashing your pretty face through this wall first.”

The door opened, followed by the gloved palm of a man’s hand reaching in. Then Lord Constantine himself ducked into the room, presumably avoiding Rand’s right hook, and slammed the door closed. “If this is what passes for hospitality around here…” he muttered, straightening his bottle-green coat before he turned to her.

She remained seated, though her instinct told her to run. He posed no threat to her. Except, perhaps, the threat of a handsome near-stranger. He
was
sinful good-looking, to quote her maid, if one liked impossibly tall men with straight noses and a permanent furrow between their brows, which she very much did.

The door burst open and Rand’s burly build filled the frame. “I’m going to—”

Lord Constantine turned in place to face his opponent. He shook his head as if talking to a child. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“What the h—”

“It’s quite all right,” Elizabeth broke in before her butler could recover his wits and do actual, bodily harm to her guest. “Lord Constantine is the father of my child. I suppose that means I must see him on occasion, if only because I cannot legally keep him from seeing his son.” She gave her intruder a narrow smirk, sure now she had nothing to fear from him. He’d won entry. Let him try for anything else.

If Rand’s wits had been addled by Lord Constantine’s tongue-in-cheek greeting, they positively scrambled at Elizabeth’s pronouncement. He stood upright, mouth agape, shoulders pulled back and hands fisted at his sides like the doorman he used to be. “
Lord Constantine,
madam—?”

She didn’t give his question time to hang in the air. The less said in front of Nelly, the better. “You know Lord Constantine,” she said with a husky laugh, as though they had indeed been lovers once and perhaps still were. “He’s always had a way of seeing me, even when he shouldn’t. You may leave now, Rand. Nelly, fetch another rag. Oliver is feeling damp again.”

Lord Constantine flinched, presumably at the thought of a wet babe. She smiled to herself, enjoying his discomfort. He had, after all, barged in on her.

Then the door closed behind him and suddenly the room felt cramped. Not because a cradle, rocking chair and two chests of drawers took up much of the space in the room. She was very much alone with a man whose broad shoulders and fashionably mussed hair could have once made her whisper an indecent proposal into his ear.

She laughed to herself. She
had
whispered an indecent proposal into his ear. It simply hadn’t been the kind that made a man hard. The opposite, in fact.
“Lord Constantine, how do you feel about becoming the father of my child?”

Looking at the tall, well-formed man in buff breeches and black boots, she still couldn’t quite believe he’d said yes. Though she’d approached him precisely because she knew enough about him to suspect he’d agree, he was still very much a stranger to her. She liked it that way. She didn’t need him here, in her nursery, invading her privacy. In fact, it violated the terms of their contract.

She arched a single brow at the handsome rogue who watched her with a wrinkled, slightly pained brow. “My lord, I pray you don’t mind my saying so, but there is nothing more I want in this world than for you to
see yourself out of my house.
”

His answering grin caused a little flip in her belly. She was a mother, not dead. And he
was
sinfully good-looking. “I’ll be delighted to do so, but first, I must insist Oliver accompany me when I do.” He had the gall to look sheepish as her world tumbled and teetered at a ledge. “Father’s rights, and all that. You do know what I mean, I think—Elizabeth?”

Also by Emma Locke

The Problem with Seduction

The Art of Ruining a Rake

Coming Soon

The Danger in Daring a Lady

The Importance of Being a Scoundrel

The Hazards of Loving a Rogue

Acknowledgments

When I drafted my first book I never thought writing romance novels would bring me so many generous, intelligent, and hysterically foul-mouthed friends. But here we are.