The Wickedest Lord Alive (2 page)

She hated being ignorant. She loathed her utter helplessness against her father’s violent temper. And yet how much more hatred must Lord Steyne, a proud nobleman of ancient lineage, have for their circumstances than she? There was an invisible shield around him that forbade her to question him. She wished she dared breach it.

She must dare. She needed to understand his attitude even if she could not honor him for it. But what came out of her mouth was, “I hope I am with child.”

He halted on his way to the door, but did not turn around.

In a subdued voice, he said, “God help you, then,” and left.

*   *   *

Xavier Westruther, Marquis of Steyne, got himself out of Horwich Hall without rousing servants or alerting the girl’s father to his departure. Perhaps Bute had expected him to stay the night in her bed. What a cozy party they would have made at the breakfast table next morning.

Xavier rode out of the stables, his breath a huff of steam in the cool night air. His mother, he knew, would be anxious to receive tidings of his dealings that day.

Even now, he scarcely believed she could have lost such a fantastic sum to the Earl of Bute. But Nerissa, Lady Steyne, didn’t do anything by halves.

He did not yet have full control of his fortune, or he would pay his mother’s debt to Lord Bute outright and be done with it. Gaming debts must be satisfied at once, so he couldn’t ask Bute to wait four years. There was no possibility of persuading his trustee, the Duke of Montford, to open his damnably clutched fist and fulfill Nerissa’s obligations with Xavier’s money. However, Xavier could marry without his trustee’s consent.

The girl was of noble birth and some little fortune in her own right, inherited from her mother. Montford couldn’t cavil at her eligibility. He’d be forced to cough up handsomely when it came to bride settlements, and Bute wouldn’t be slow to screw every penny out of Montford he could.

Xavier had warned his mother time and again against Bute. He’d heard of such tactics as the earl employed before. A man would win a sum from a lady; then, acting as if he were too gentlemanly to insist upon immediate payment, he would suggest another game by which the lady might recoup her losses. He would lure her ever deeper, until she was indebted to him for such an enormous sum that the only way to repay him was on her back.

Nerissa had laughed at Xavier’s warnings and gambled on. He almost believed the implicit danger of playing with Bute excited her more than the turn of the card. And now, here Xavier was, yet again riding to the rescue, saving his mother from her wildness and stupidity.

She would want to assure herself he’d retrieved her vowels. Well, after all she’d put him through to rescue her from Bute, she could wait. He had an urgent appointment with a brandy bottle.

Dear God, was there brandy enough in England to wash this night’s doings from his mind?

He couldn’t fathom it. The girl was no conventional beauty, with her pale hair and tilted green eyes and her gangling physique. She was leagues apart from his other lovers in style and poise and sexual experience. Yet something about her had compelled him, drawn him in.

Ordered to perform like some brainless stud bull to set the seal on that miserable union, he’d been in an ugly humor when he walked into that chamber.

She’d seen it and feared him, but seemed determined not to show it. Made some self-deprecating comment that immediately defused the implosive anger he’d felt about this farce of a marriage. The girl had met his eyes with her candid, open gaze and made him look at her—really look. And damn it if he hadn’t felt a powerful attraction to this new millstone around his neck. Strong enough that after the initial restraint, he’d forgotten everything but the feel of her body caressing his.

Yet when it was over and the trials of the day came flooding back, so came his rage.

He’d taken a blameless girl’s virginity and left her. What a prince. What a prize. What a damnable villain.

He seldom suffered from crises of conscience, mainly because he never dealt with innocents if he could help it. He could not remember ever having been innocent himself. His mother had first introduced him to a countess desirable of his “company” when he was thirteen. But even before that, he’d known things and seen things no boy of that age should know or see.

It almost surprised him that he could feel this degree of self-disgust. And despite his ardent desire to drown the events of this night in fine French cognac, he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that he ought to turn back.

Churlish, recalcitrant, he’d refused to take possession of his new chattel. After all the indignities his mother’s folly had inflicted upon him, that would have been too much. To take the girl would have been to admit his mother had succeeded, finally, in ruining his life.

But to what did he condemn the girl if he left her behind?

He thought of the whispers he had heard about Bute’s cruelty, of the girl’s motherless state. And with a string of oaths, he wheeled his horse about.

Xavier returned by way of the door through which he’d left and mounted the stairs two at a time. He paused on the landing, hearing faint cries from down the corridor.

Heart pounding, he quickened his pace. God, he’d never forgive himself if she—

But when he wrenched open the door to the girl’s chamber, he saw at once that she was in the bed where he’d left her, sleeping peacefully—or at least, pretending to do so—the covers pulled up to her chin.

He hesitated on the threshold, watching her, but when he heard yet another scream, he had to respond. Silently, he turned on his heel and followed the cries, which were increasing in volume and terror, to another chamber farther down the corridor. The master suite?

“No, no,
nooo
!”

Xavier’s heart stopped. That voice. That sobbing, agonized voice was his mother’s.

Frantic now, he tried the handles, but the pocket doors to the chamber were locked. Bracing himself for the impact, he shouldered the doors open with a crack and splinter of wood and erupted into the room.

To see his mother, Nerissa, stripped to the waist, her lower back a mess of weals, and the Earl of Bute standing over her with a whip in his hand.

For one suspended moment, he couldn’t believe what he saw. After all he’d been through today on her behalf, Nerissa had come to Bute’s house? To his bedchamber? It didn’t make sense.…

Then the image of her, bloody and cowering, clicked into place. Murderous rage boiled inside him. “Get away from her, you bastard!”

Three strides had him across the room. Wrenching the whip from Bute’s hand, he wrapped its lash around the man’s throat before the earl could utter more than a truncated oath.

Bute was a big man, thickset and powerful with it, even if he did get his jollies beating women. But Xavier’s fury lent him exponential strength and he had the advantage of surprise.

The earl clawed at Xavier’s hands as Xavier winched the whip lash tighter around the man’s neck until Bute’s hands dropped helplessly to his side. The bloodstained leather constricted Bute’s throat until his face turned a mottled purple and his eyes bulged out of his head. The earl’s feet kicked out helplessly before ceasing the struggle, but Xavier felt not the slightest twinge of mercy stir in his soul.

Nerissa’s screams changed tone now. Somehow, they penetrated the red mist in Xavier’s brain. He let Bute drop to the floor with bruising abruptness.

Leaving the villain to choke for air and fumble at his throat, Xavier bent over his mother. She was a beautiful, incoherent mess huddled on the floor against the bed.

She raised her face, her blue eyes leaking tears. “You
killed
him. Oh, God, you’ve killed him.”

“You should be glad if I have.”

Seething with furious pity and bitter shame, he mastered himself enough to draw her gently to sit on the bed. Then he helped her pull up her gown and secure it somehow. She winced and whimpered as the silk touched her flayed back.

What the hell had possessed Nerissa to come here tonight? Xavier had gone through the entire damnable farce to save her from such a fate, hadn’t he? He’d made perhaps the greatest sacrifice of his life to allow her to sever her ties with Bute once and for all.

“How did you come to be here, Mama?” he demanded, perhaps not as gently as he ought.

She’d danced over the edge this time. He wanted to believe she deserved the consequences, but something inside him balked at such a notion, even after all the things she’d done.

Her hands fluttered and grasped at him and her eyes implored. “Don’t ask me. Please, I can’t tell you. I can’t speak of it. Just get me out of this place.”

He’d never seen her with a hair out of place, much less in such disarray as this. Her jet black hair, always coiffed to perfection, now straggled around her heart-shaped face. Her high cheekbones were streaked with tears and her perfect bow mouth trembled.

Bute had begun to stir. Probably best to get her out before the man recovered and called for help.

“You can’t go anywhere looking like that,” Xavier said. “Let me tend to you first.”

She took his outstretched hands. Despite the proud lift of her chin, she was shaking. Whether or not she’d been willfully reckless, she got more than she’d bargained for in Bute.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t thank me.” He should have found a way to annihilate Bute rather than fall in with his plans. Then none of this would have happened.

Strangling was too good for the man. After this night’s work, Xavier was going to ruin the Earl of Bute if it was the last thing he did.

He helped his mother to rise and climb onto the bed and lie facedown upon it. He went to the washstand and wet a cloth, wrung it out, and brought it to her.

On closer inspection, the wounds were not so bad as he’d first thought. Only one of them broke her pale flesh, but it had bled profusely. With as light a touch as he could manage, he cleaned away the blood. His mother tried to stifle her cries of pain, but he saw how hard her fingers dug into the coverlet, and he clenched his teeth in sympathy.

There might well be scarring from tonight’s work, and his rage against Bute flared once more. He’d done many sinful things in his time, but beating women was not one of them. Only the most contemptible cowards stooped to that kind of behavior.

Nerissa’s gown was ruined, and in any case, it would be too painful for her to be laced into her stays again.

“Do you have a cloak?” he asked her when he’d finished.

“Over there.” Her voice was stronger now. She nodded toward a chair by the door. He snatched it up and put it around her, careful of her wounds.

“Can you walk, ma’am?” said Xavier, noticing her wince.

“Yes. Yes, of course,” she murmured, subdued but not broken.

That was a relief. His mother might be many things, but weak was not one of them. He didn’t know what he would have done if Bute’s actions had destroyed her spirit.

A groan sounded from the floor. Bute was conscious and dragging himself to a sitting position. His face was an ugly shade of red, his lips white. He wheezed and coughed in a futile effort to speak.

After an internal struggle, Xavier tamped down the urge to flay the fellow with his own whip. Just as well the earl lived, he supposed, or there’d be no escaping the consequences. He’d be damned if he’d fly the country on account of this cur.

Once Xavier was sure his mother was safe, he would send someone to tend to the earl. Primarily because it would be very inconvenient for him if Bute died tonight.

No servants had come running at the commotion. Were they accustomed to ignoring women’s screams, or had their master dismissed them for the evening?

When he’d managed to help his mother downstairs and settle her in her carriage, Xavier glanced back at the house. “Can you wait, Mama? I must return for the girl.”

He would not leave her to Bute’s tender mercies.

“Don’t trouble yourself.” His mother caught his wrist, her eyes blazing to life. “You owe her nothing.”

He’d thought the same a bare hour before. Yet now the notion seemed callous in the extreme. “Of course I do. I must fetch her. I’ll be back directly.”

She looked beyond him, her lips parted a fraction, as if in surprise.

He turned his head but saw nothing in the blackness surrounding the quiet house.

“Can you wait, Mama, while I fetch her?” he repeated.

Nerissa shrugged, uncaring about the girl who had sacrificed herself on her behalf. As uncaring as he had been when he’d left this place the first time.

Taking that for assent, he shut the carriage door with a smack, nodded to the coachman, and strode back toward the house.

But when at last he reached the girl’s chamber, the bed was empty. He searched the house and the grounds, but to no avail.

The new Marchioness of Steyne—
his wife
—had vanished.

Chapter One

Eight years later …

The villagers of Little Thurston did not know what they had ever done without Miss Elizabeth Allbright. If the squire was the backbone of the community, the vicar its spirit, and old Lady Chard its spleen, Miss Allbright was undoubtedly its heart.

Known as Lizzie to her friends, Miss Allbright lived at the vicarage with the parson of the parish, who had taken her in eight years before.

It seemed to the Little Thurstonians that an angel had come amongst them. A tall, flaxen-haired angel with fey green eyes and an enchantingly wistful smile.

No one, least of all Miss Allbright herself, knew anything about her origins. She’d arrived by the grace of a good farmer who had taken her up with him at the crossroads. He’d known precisely where to take a gently bred girl who had clearly been terrorized by some horrific experience into losing her past.

Miss Allbright had only the clothes she’d stood up in and a few coins in her purse, and no memory at all of her previous life, or even of her name.

The young lady had never recalled the location of her home or who her people were. She did not appear to regret those lost years, nor did she show the slightest sign she yearned for her family or her former home. She became a daughter of the heart to the childless vicar and his wife, and called herself by their name.