Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
EPSOM DOWNS, JUNE 1822
D ev stood amid the throng of society pleasure-seekers and experienced the satisfaction that never lasted beyond the inhalation and exhalation of a single breath.
Of course, they would come , a small voice reminded him.
This was Prinny’s Stand, and today was the running of the Oaks, the fourth major horse race of the season.
Few would refuse that invitation.
It had been a good few years since King George IV was called Prinny—and it had been even longer since he’d graced the stand with his exalted presence. Centered in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped course, the raised pavilion was the best vantage point from which to observe Epsom Downs, as it offered unimpeded views. Mostly, the stand went unused, save for when the king occasionally allowed a friend to use it.
Which wasn’t how Dev had secured it for his viewing party of the Oaks horse race today.
The short of it was he’d offered an exorbitant sum of money to the king—which had been ignored.
Three days later, he’d offered twice the sum of the initial offering—which had also been ignored.
A day later, he’d offered twice that sum—which had been accepted.
Now, here he stood, hosting a viewing party in Prinny’s Stand.
He’d left no luminary uninvited, from powerful duke to impoverished baron—and all the marquesses, earls, and viscounts in between. Many invitees had accepted, even a duke. A down-on-his-luck duke, it had to be admitted, who was singularly intent on stuffing as many canapes and pouring as much champagne down his gullet as one man could possibly stomach within the period of an hour, but a duke, nonetheless.
In truth, none of the highest tier of the highest tier of society had accepted.
Dev had to make do with the dimmer stars of the aristocratic firmament.
Not that he gave a toss, for the one person who did matter had accepted.
The Countess of Bridgewater.
Strictly speaking, it had been her husband, the earl, who had sent their acceptance.
But Imogen would be here.
That was all that mattered.
And she would ignore Dev.
He wasn’t sure she’d once glanced his way these last two years.
Which told him all he needed to know.
She couldn’t look at him directly—not if she was to continue with her farce of a marriage.
His mouth tipped into the half smile that had sent many a lady’s heart into a flutter, Dev circulated through the room, exchanging greetings with lords and ladies who were still trying to understand this newcomer—some said interloper —into their vaunted ranks.
Lord Devil .
The name the ton had taken to calling him, both behind his back and to his face on the not-so-rare drunken occasion.
He didn’t mind.
“Landsdown,” said Dev on a greeting nod. “I hope you’re finding the day to your satisfaction.”
The Viscount Landsdown’s smile suggested he couldn’t believe his luck in having secured the attention of Lord Devil. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, indeed.”
Landsdown wasn’t an impoverished lord, precisely, but rather one living below the means he would prefer, most definitely. This might be a room filled to bursting with exalted lords and ladies, but its truer nature was a room full of sycophants. In their host— Lord Devil —they saw two entities. A man with the incorrect blood flowing through his veins…and a man who was a goldmine.
With this lot, for one to overlook the former, a man better be flush with the latter. Otherwise, he was of no use to them.
Dev was under no illusions about the realities.
“A quick little goer on the turf is your Little Wicked,” said Landsdown. “Reckon she’ll take it today?”
The charming smile Dev had inherited from his Irish mother went tight. Little Wicked . The Thoroughbred he’d won in a card game. The horse was supposed to have taken the Triple Crown. Yet here they were, three races into the season, with the fourth about to be run today, and she hadn’t a win to her name—only second-place finishes.
Today, he needed the filly to fulfill her promise and win .
“Today is her day,” said Dev, all abundant confidence.
Arrogance , the ton called it.
Lord Devil was a man who didn’t know his place.
But Dev knew in his heart what it truly was.
Ruthlessness .
He didn’t know his place.
But he did know this: He wasn’t here to court their acceptance and join their rarified ranks.
He was here to vanquish them.
For the lords and ladies surrounding him and enjoying his hospitality, life had started on a ladder near its top rung, but with a single condition—they would occupy that single rung all their lives. Dev, on the other hand, had started approximately in the middle. Yet though the wrong blood flowed in his veins, life had gifted him an option that few others in this room comprehended—he could climb.
And climb, he had.
And climb he would continue to do.
He didn’t crave the respect or love of this room.
He had a single desire.
And when she arrived, it would be on the arm of another man.
So, he would continue climbing, steadily, rung by rung—until she was on his arm.
Then, only when it was too late, they would know themselves for the conquered.
“Deverill,” came a gruff voice at his back.
His mouth curved into his first genuine smile of the day as he turned and shook the hand of the solidly built man who stood several inches shorter. “Shaw,” he said, undeniable relief pulsing through him.
From the cock of Shaw’s eyebrow and the slight frown turning down the corners of his mouth, however, Dev understood his business partner wasn’t best pleased to be mingling amongst fancy folk . A serious man to his core, Shaw didn’t hold with the frivolity on display. He accepted the champagne coupe offered by a server and held the glass with an air of delicate uncertainty, as if it might shatter in his working man’s hands at any moment.
Dev was unable to resist asking, “Enjoying the festivities?”
Shaw snorted. “The shipment of steam jackets arrived from Birmingham at dawn. Engine assembly can resume.”
It took little for Dev to shift focus when it came to business. “Starting tomorrow?”
“Aye.”
The steam jackets for their newly designed engines had arrived cracked a month ago, so they’d needed to be recast. In the lifetime of an engine’s operation, the steam jacket handled an enormous amount of pressure. The tiniest flaw could result in the loss of life. Such an issue couldn’t be tolerated or ignored.
Dev nodded with satisfaction. “Good.”
Ten years ago, it was Shaw who had given Dev his start.
Dev had grown up modestly, the only son of a baron’s estate manager and housekeeper. As a child, Dev’s mind had been as quick and nimble as his fingers, and it was known for miles around that he could repair any broken-down old thing, even fashion mechanical improvements and inventions, too. Lord Whitsby saw a future gem in the younger Deverill and paid to have him schooled. Not a first-rate institution like Eton, but a school where he could become educated enough to take over the running of the estate someday.
That was the plan, at least.
The school, it turned out, suited Dev’s interests perfectly, and he excelled. The mechanical arts came as naturally to him as breathing. Of particular interest was the steam engine. Greater and greater efficiency in its mechanics was required, which would lead to smaller, more portable engines and the use of less coal. Not a year later, Dev had fashioned a design he knew would accomplish those goals, but he’d lacked the funds and resources to put his designs into practice.
Until he met Mr. Seamus Shaw.
One evening, it had amused Lord Whitsby to invite Dev to a supper party. He’d inquired about Dev’s studies and explained to the gathered friends and family that he was having Dev educated to be his future estate manager. Whitsby met the praise of his guests with smug satisfaction. When Dev began explaining his mechanical interests, Whitsby’s demeanor turned into the condescending and dismissive with statements like, Young Dev’s little inventions litter the entire estate and There’s no mining on my lands .
After dinner, Mr. Shaw approached Dev and asked him to explain his steam engine invention in further detail, which Dev happily did. At the end of the conversation, Shaw offered to enter into a business partnership with Dev.
Dev had yet to reach his nineteenth year.
Within twelve months, he’d repaid Whitsby for his education, plus interest. The baron had groused about young men not knowing their place and friends poaching servants, but he’d accepted every last farthing.
Ten years on, Dev had never once regretted that turn in his life. With his experience running factories, Shaw had proven an excellent partner.
“Now, the ladies parading around this room. They think blunt grows on trees.” Shaw tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and rocked back on his heels, a habit of his. “They don’t understand a working man’s mind.”
Dev knew to the syllable what Shaw’s next words would be.
“Not like my daughters.”
Shaw’s daughters… The man had three of them—and he would be most obliged if Dev would take one to wife. He wasn’t fussy about which.
Which Dev had no intention of doing.
A flash of brown sun-streaked hair with a jaunty little bonnet perched atop caught the edge of his vision.
Imogen .
He knew it from the instinctive tightening of every muscle in his body.
Imogen had been at that fateful dinner party, of course. After all, Whitsby was her father. Though a few years younger than Dev, they’d grown up alongside each other.
Further, they’d had an understanding.
Or so he’d thought.
He felt the usual pull—to gravitate toward her and enter her orbit. That pull was as familiar as the sound of his own voice.
He resisted—which had also become familiar.
Imogen was another man’s wife.
Not his.
Not yet, anyway.
A sudden frisson of excitement shimmered through the crowd. The horses had begun assembling at the starting line.
Before this season, Dev had never attended a race meeting in all his life. Then one night, he’d won a Thoroughbred off a dissolute, young earl named Clifton in a card game. Dev’s first thought had been to sell the beast. Given the room’s reaction to his acquisition of the famous Little Wicked, he’d known he could get a pretty penny for the filly. But he’d picked up a particular scent in the air— opportunity .
The owner of a Thoroughbred would have access to society of a higher tier than Dev had yet achieved, for he hadn’t moved past associating with lords in gambling den card rooms. However, as the owner of Little Wicked, he would be mingling with the elite.
The ton would have to begin taking him seriously.
So, he’d hired the best trainers and grooms his money could buy—even succeeded in wooing the Duke of Richmond’s favorite jockey into his stables.
And the gambit had worked.
Dev was immediately christened Lord Devil , as much for his black hair and piercing blue eyes as for his mountainous pile of blunt—and was invited to all manner of society soirées, musicales, and balls.
To be sure, he was a novelty for the ton , but he was being allowed into the room and that was the point.
More specifically, he was now allowed into rooms with Imogen.
Shaw in tow, he found a place at the central balcony from which to watch the race. He searched the line for Little Wicked’s racing colors of purple and black and immediately found her. He didn’t know the names of the competitors lining up beside her and, frankly, he didn’t care. He only kept a tally of the salient facts. Little Wicked had placed second in the Derby yesterday—and every other race of the season. So, she was running the filly’s race today in the hope that she would win and qualify for the Race of the Century in September, where she would run against the four other winning three-year-old Thoroughbreds of the season.
The other owners didn’t agree with him running Little Wicked in every race, but the fact was the filly enjoyed it. Truly, she was a delightful horse—a thought that had never once occurred to him regarding any horse in all his life. But delightful applied to Little Wicked. Though she stood at sixteen hands and possessed all the power and muscle of every other Thoroughbred out there on the turf, she also held an intangible lightness of body and spirit.
The air went electric in the specific way it always did in the instant before the firing of the starting gun. Just when it felt as if the tension would surely break with the passage of a single more second, the pistol fired and the horses lurched into motion.
Two seconds later, the pistol fired again, signaling a false start.
The crowd groaned in unison, everyone understanding it was to be that sort of race. Dev could tolerate one false start, and even two, but by the fifth or sixth, his nerves were ready to jump out of his skin. He couldn’t comprehend why the sport tolerated it. But then horse racing was a notoriously corrupt business, and false starts were part and parcel of the whole. A blackleg or a tout would pay off the starter to fire off a certain number of false starts. The idea was to rattle the jumpier of the horses, and since Thoroughbreds were a breed notorious for becoming unnerved easily, the ploy usually worked.
Except with Little Wicked.
A filly of even temperament, she serenely returned to her place at the starting line and did it all over again.
And again, it turned out after the next firing of the starting gun.
The third firing, however, was the charm, and the race was on as Little Wicked jumped to an early lead—and held it…through the first straight and turn…through the tricky turn at the infamous Tattenham Corner where she’d very nearly got tangled up with the Marquess of Ormonde’s Filthy Habit in yesterday’s Derby. But that wasn’t a problem today, for no other horse was within ten yards of her.
Usually, these races were the longest three minutes of Dev’s life. Today, those minutes flew past, for by the time Little Wicked crossed the finish line, she was half a furlong ahead of her nearest competitor.
“That a girl,” cheered Shaw beside him.
Dev’s fist clenched at his side, the only outward indicator of the depth of his satisfaction.
But a moment’s satisfaction was all he felt—never more than a moment.
The next instant, the craving for more hit him.
Now, Little Wicked was through to the Race of the Century, where no one would be able to deny him his place amongst the elite.
Shaw slipped away with a farewell nod as congratulations poured in from all around. These lords and ladies might’ve been second- and even third-best aristocrats, but they understood who was keeping their coupes of champagne full to overflowing. Dev was the man of the moment.
From the periphery of his vision, a pair of figures drew close. The same pair he’d kept track of from the moment they’d entered the stand.
Intentionally, he didn’t turn their direction until they’d stepped within a few feet of him. Even then, he somehow kept his attention trained on Viscount Landsdown, who had reappeared at his side, though he didn’t actually see the man or hear the words issuing from his mouth. At last, a masculine throat cleared.
Then Dev turned.
Before him stood the Earl and Countess of Bridgewater. Where Imogen exuded dewy spring vibrancy with her clear willow-green eyes and hair streaked with sunlight, the earl lent the atmosphere an air of decay. He’d reached the age where the life a man had lived the previous fifty or so years caught up with him. From the broken blood vessels blossoming across his nose and the dry pallor of skin that spoke silently of decades of dissolution, the earl exuded a rot that emanated from the core of him.
Bridgewater was in no way worthy of the model of perfection at his side.
Dev could hardly stand it.
“Well done, old chap,” said the earl in his aloof Etonian accent that spoke of ancient privilege extending back centuries to William the Conqueror.
The rejoinder perched on Dev’s lips, however, went unspoken. The earl had hardly broken stride as he moved through the crowd that was already dispersing now that the race was finished.
As for Imogen, she hadn’t spared him a glance—as she hadn’t since the decision was made that she would become Bridgewater’s wife.
Hot fury streaked through Dev.
But it wasn’t the sort of fury that lashed out.
It knew how to bide its time.
In fact, that was one of his particular strengths—to take his fury and channel it into a single-minded goal.
The feeling…the craving …for more …it ever hit him in moments like this.
Nothing would ever be enough until Imogen was his.
That was what he knew in the deepest part of his soul.
And he wouldn’t stop until he’d made it so.