Barbara Pierce (4 page)

“Do not be coy, Carlisle,” Hollensworth snarled, spittle flying in numerous directions. “Did you think that once I learned of your misdeeds that I would ignore the insult you dealt my family?”

Fayne was not surprised by the baron’s presence. In fact, he had expected the man sooner. That was one of the distinct disadvantages of living in the country. One was always behind on news. How fortunate for Hollensworth that Fayne was in the mood to oblige him in a public confrontation. “What was insulting, Hollensworth, was your brother’s wretched play at the tables. I did him a favor by taking his money.”

Like his older brother, Hart Mitchell had never quite fit in among his peers. Embittered that his tardy birth had cheated him out of the barony, Mitchell had rejected his brother’s offer to help him oversee the family’s lands and tried to make his fortune at the gaming tables. Unfortunately, Mitchell’s play was as reckless as the life he had chosen for himself. He had a tendency to lose heavily, and in desperation the man had tried his hand at cheating. Another sign of his abysmal luck was the fact that he had chosen Fayne’s table to employ his underhanded tricks.

“In the future, it might be prudent for you to cut Mitchell’s funds off, Hollensworth. It might keep him from tossing away the family fortune on games of chance,” Fayne said calmly, feeling no remorse for not only claiming
Mitchell’s purse and his town house, but also two of the man’s best horses. All in all, Fayne had been rather generous. Another gentleman would have called the sharper out.

The suggestion enraged the baron. He tried to lunge at Fayne, but Cadd, Everod, and Ramscar held him back. “It’s too late, you merciless blackguard! Hart is dead!” Hollensworth squirmed against the restraining hands holding him in place. “You killed him!”

Everyone in the room quieted as the accusation rang in Fayne’s ears.

“The only killings I have done recently were at the card table,” Fayne said, disregarding the unease settling in his gut. “The last time I saw your brother, he looked quite fit when he rose and left the game. I can procure witnesses testifying to that fact.” He recalled the night he had trounced Mitchell at cards vividly. It was the same night he had been summoned to the family’s town house and learned that his father was dead.

“He may not have died by your hand, Carlisle,” the baron said, his stark face etched with grief and rage too profound to be feigned. “Nonetheless, you are responsible for his death. You lured him into deep play and it cost him everything. After Hart left you, he returned home and drew the merciless edge of a straight razor across his throat.”

Mitchell was dead? Fayne had spent the past week in a blurry haze of grief and sleeplessness and if anyone had mentioned Mitchell’s death in passing, he doubted he would have paid attention. Fayne lived in a profligate sphere where fortunes were won or lost every day on the turn of a single card. The losers faded away, but Fayne had never known anyone desperate enough to take his own life over a reversal of fortune. “I did not know,” he said solemnly. “I regret your loss, Hollens—”

“Liar!” the man bellowed and lunged at Fayne. The baron’s revelation had shocked everyone present, including
the gentlemen restraining him. He broke free of the hands holding him back and charged at Fayne like an enraged bull.

Women shrieked and dashed to the opposite side of the room as Fayne sidestepped his attacker. “Your brother was a regular at the gaming hells.” He danced backward into the center of the room, avoiding Hollensworth’s frenzied swing. “And a cheat. It was a matter of time before someone spilled his blood.”

Fayne regretted his words before he finished uttering them.

An inhuman sound of anguish erupted from Hollensworth. His hazel eyes burned with hatred, promising retribution. Ramscar seized the baron by his upper arm in a futile attempt to stop him. The earl’s reward for helping his friend was a brutal uppercut to his jaw. Ramscar fell to the floor without making a sound. Hollensworth rushed at Fayne again, before the others tried to intercede.

Fayne grunted as the man’s head plowed into his stomach. The momentum of Hollensworth’s charge sent him staggering backward. Time seemed to slow down for him, which Fayne considered a very bad sign. As he fell, his eyes locked onto his sister’s pale, beautiful face. Fayre stood in the doorway as her husband and several others rushed forward to rescue him from his attacker.

His right elbow connected with something solid, sending sharp pain up his arm. Shock whitened his face at the sound of canvas ripping. With Hollensworth doing his damnedest to pound Fayne’s face into mush, the pair rended the duke’s portrait and staggered through the large wooden frame. Screams and the harsh cracks of the wood bracing shattering filled the air. Fayne and Hollensworth struck the floor in a tangled heap.

The frame toppled over in the opposite direction.

Fayne was positive his back was broken. The baron, on the other hand, was barely stunned by their fall. He slammed
his fist into Fayne’s jaw once before his brother-in-law and Cadd dragged the baron off. Gingerly, Fayne touched the side of his face. Hollensworth had a fist like a sledgehammer.

He tasted blood as he sat up. A dozen faces were hovering over him, but he could not make sense of what anyone was saying. He waved everyone away. Christ, his jaw ached. It was damned humiliating to be laid flat by a single punch. As he staggered to his feet, several things became apparent. First, Hollensworth was not going to rest until he attained the justice he craved. Secondly, the duchess was going to have an apoplectic fit when she learned of what had transpired in the drawing room. Outside the drawing room, he heard his mother screech his full name. Fayne winced. Death by Hollensworth’s hand was trivial in comparison to facing the duchess’s ensuing wrath.

Two weeks later . . .

“I underestimated you, Lady Kilby,” Teague Pethum, Viscount Darknell, said as he extended his hand to his two female companions, Lady Kilby Fitchwolf and Lady Lyssa Nunnick, silently inviting them to descend from their carriage. “After your compromising encounter with the Duke of Solitea, I thought your chaperone, Lady Quennell, would have had the sense to bundle you off to the safety of Ealkin, or at the very least, placed locks on the outer door to your bedchamber and bars on the windows to keep the gentlemen of the
ton
safe from your deadly wiles.”

Lady Kilby slipped her hand into his, and stepped down from the carriage with his assistance. “Very charming, my lord,” Lady Kilby said dryly, glancing about to see if anyone had overheard the viscount’s taunting comments. “So forceful. So overtly vocal.” She removed her hand from his arm and stepped out of reach. “I vow, a gentleman’s oath is as stalwart as dry rot. Lyssa, remind me to have my tongue cut out if I ever contemplate revealing something in confidence to our dear friend Lord Darknell again.”

Still seated in the carriage, Lady Lyssa Nunnick lifted her brows in consternation. “Really, Darknell, I expect better conduct from you. Can you not see how upsetting this subject is for our friend?”

“I was merely teasing, Fitchwolf,” Lord Darknell said, coming toward Kilby only to be halted by her raised hand. He muttered an oath when she turned her head away in dismissal. “Be reasonable. No one heard me. There is no reason to fuss in this manner.”

In her heart, Kilby knew the viscount meant no malice and was merely jesting. However, she could not imagine a time when she would view the fact that the Duke of Solitea had collapsed and died on the floor of her boudoir of an apparent heart attack as something humorous. She could hardly blame the man for dying, but his unexpected death was placing all her carefully thought-out plans in jeopardy. Plans she had begun outlining since the night Archer had used their sister, Gypsy, to draw her out from her hiding place. He had not beaten her as she had feared. Instead, he had revealed family secrets that almost nine months later she still could not believe.

“You are not my equal, Kilby,” Archer told her, furious that she refused to recognize his authority. “Hell, you are not even my sister.”

“Half,” Kilby spat at him, angry with her parents for dying and leaving her and Gypsy in Archer’s merciless custody. “We share a father, though I will admit when you are like this, I cannot see the connection.”

Archer startled her by grabbing her and hauling her indecently close. She tilted her head back, as his lips curved into an ominous smile. “That is because, my darling Kilby, there is no connection. My father, Lord Nipping, was not your sire.”

Kilby placed both of her palms on his chest and shoved
Archer away. He stumbled back, laughing at the shock and denial her pallid features revealed. “I knew you could be cruel, brother. The depths to which you have plummeted almost have me wishing it were true.”

“There are letters, Kilby. I came across them while I was going through my father’s papers.”

“What letters?” she scoffed, not believing a word of it.

“Letters written in my stepmother’s handwriting. I will credit her with being subtle in her revelations, but the truth is there for anyone who looks for it. Your mother was a lying whore. I do not know who sired you, but it wasn’t my father.”

Since the night of Archer’s cruel revelation, Kilby had been counting the days until she could escape her brother’s tyrannical guardianship. That night he had gleefully outlined his plans for her, and her fate was a grim one. Archer had confessed that he had developed an unnatural affection for Kilby. The thought of her brother lusting for a carnal union between them was utterly revolting. Nevertheless, she now understood why Archer had eagerly accepted the dissolution of any blood tie between them. While polite society might view his actions as inappropriate, bedding his stepmother’s natural daughter was not a sin. There was no doubt in Kilby’s mind that Archer would have dragged her into his bed that night. His disturbing, hungry gaze had revealed that much.

Fortunately, for her sake, his greed for power and money tempered his lust for her. Archer was cunning. He knew that by marrying Kilby off to a gentleman of his choosing, he would broaden his influence in society and fill his diminishing wherewithal. This handpicked gentleman would be someone Archer could use and control, a man who would readily yield his lawful place in his wife’s bed to Archer. Kilby could not believe there was a man in England who would willingly allow himself to be cuckolded. Archer
assured her that such men existed. He just had to be patient until the proper pawn for his ambitious plans could be found.

It was the impromptu visit of Pridwyn Hasp, Viscountess Quennell, to Ealkin that gave Kilby the first glimmer of hope that Archer’s plans could be thwarted. A dear friend of her parents, Lady Quennell, or Priddy to her closest friends, had deduced in a matter of hours of observing the siblings together that Archer’s keen interest in his sister was unsettling. Even if there had been an opportunity to speak openly to the viscountess, Kilby doubted she would have revealed to the lady the full extent of Archer’s cruelty and guile. Just as her brother had anticipated, pride and shame stilled her tongue. If Archer had spoken the truth, and Lord Nipping was not her father, Kilby was not about to betray her mother by publicly revealing the deception.

Wholly confident in his control over Kilby, Archer arrogantly revealed to Priddy a polite version of his future marriage ambitions for his sister. Carefully watching the viscountess’s expression, Kilby realized before her brother that he had made a slight miscalculation by boasting of his plans to Priddy. As a dear friend of both Lord and Lady Nipping, the viscountess naturally insisted on helping him launch Kilby into polite society. Archer tried to refuse her generous offer; however, the older woman turned a deaf ear to his excuses. If Archer wanted his sister to marry, Lady Quennell thought it was imperative that Kilby spend the season in London. She even offered to act as Kilby’s chaperone and guide. Childless herself, the forty-five-year-old widow felt it was her duty to do so, since Lord and Lady Nipping could not.

It was apparent to Kilby that her brother was furious at Lady Quennell’s well-meaning interference. Even so, he could not think of a polite way to refuse the offer. Reluctantly, Archer agreed that a season in town would benefit his sheltered sister.

Kilby was by no means the victor in the affair. Although Lady Quennell had masterfully outmaneuvered Archer, he was confident that he still had control over his defiant sister. Gypsy was his guarantee that Kilby would return to Ealkin once she had gained the cultured polish the viscountess maintained a lady required.

Months later, while they traveled to London, the viscountess had confessed her lack of confidence in Archer’s ability to find a suitable husband for his sister. What suspicions Priddy had, she kept to herself. Still, Kilby saw her own private fears about Archer grimly reflected in the older woman’s light blue eyes. Lady Quennell cheerfully promised to dedicate herself to the task of marrying Kilby off without Archer’s meddling assistance. The viscountess had predicted that by the end of the season, Kilby would not be returning to Ealkin.

Everything had been going so well in London. That was, until the Duke of Solitea had literally dropped dead at her feet. Kilby was grateful that Priddy had not sent her back to Archer. Regardless, the poor woman had been despondent since she had been apprised of the duke’s death. If the
ton
learned the details of the duke’s death, any hopes of finding Kilby a husband this season were ruined. In a bold move to thwart the ensuing scandal, Lady Quennell had called on the Carlisle family the night the duke had died. She had managed to convince the grieving family that it was in everyone’s best interest that the specifics of the Duke of Solitea’s death remain secret. Whether or not it was intentional, a rumor began circulating through London’s drawing rooms and ballrooms that the duke had died after visiting his mistress. Kilby had learned such speculation was not unfounded because the Duke of Solitea was renowned for having a string of mistresses. How was she supposed to know the man had been an incorrigible rake? Several names were being bandied about the
ton
as being
that of the mysterious lady. Mercifully, her name was not mentioned at all.