Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

HYDE PARK, A FEW WEEKS LATER

B eatrix shifted on the hard, out-of-the-way park bench and swept a wary eye over the stack of letters in her lap.

She’d been ignoring them, though they were a large part of the reason she’d ventured to Hyde Park on a day that threatened imminent downpour. In truth, such an outcome wasn’t an unusual prospect. London weather had defeated many a merrymaker—and writer, in her case.

Except the idea of returning home just yet filled her with a sense of gloom grayer than the sky above. The house was cold and dank. Too still and too quiet. They’d lost their last housemaid yesterday. The only servant who remained was Cumberbatch, Lydon’s ancient valet, who Beatrix took care of more often than the other way around, as he was too lofty to care for any less noble personage than the marquess himself.

She moved her attention from the stack of letters that were too stubborn to disappear and returned it to the pencil in her hand and the journal below it. Her gaze roved across Hyde Park’s lush green turf toward Rotten Row. Perhaps a few aristocratic goings-on would be worth recording. If anyone noticed her— unlikely —they would think she sat here writing all manner of wretched poetry that tore at the soul.

A snort escaped her.

She could scarcely manage to put meat on the table twice a week.

She couldn’t afford a soul.

But society didn’t know that. They thought she held herself above them and considered herself an intellectual superior.

In fact, she wasn’t writing about herself at all. She was writing about them —who was talking to whom…who was ignoring whom…who was cutting whom…what lady was laughing too hard at which lord’s jokes…

In other words, the subject matter spilling from her pencil was such mundane folderol, it was about the farthest one could fall from the exalted heights of poetry. For what she was writing accomplished the most basic task of all. It provided food for her stomach—and sometimes there was even enough to spare to put wood in the hearth.

Writing for a newspaper—a turf rag, more specifically—earned her keep.

Under the guise of a pseudonym, of course.

Further, she’d discovered a few more shillings happened her way when she mixed in tidbits of society tattle. Really, the goings-on of Rotten Row could be considered turf gossip, if she remained focused on the lords and ladies who raced Thoroughbreds. After all, several of them were here today.

There was Gabriel Siren, the new Duke of Acaster, riding his mount with such obvious discomfiture Beatrix sympathetically shifted on her bench. While he didn’t own any Thoroughbreds, he was a financial backer of the upcoming Race of the Century in September, so gossip about him would be relevant. He was riding toward Celia Calthorp, the Dowager Duchess of Acaster and the widow of his predecessor. If proof was ever needed that the haut ton was a small world, here it was. Besides, gossip about the duchess was relevant, too, as her filly Light Skirt had won the One Thousand Guineas, the second major race of the season, putting her through to the Race of the Century. That could be what she and the duke had to discuss. Though, going by the intent expression on the duke’s face when he looked at the duchess, Beatrix sensed… more .

She traced a line between their names and scratched a question mark.

A thought for another time.

The Earl and Countess of Bridgewater trotted into view. As ever, Beatrix’s mouth filled with a bad taste at the very sight of the earl. He was a good enough looking man in the middle of his fifties, who many ladies found attractive. Yet, for those gifts of title and looks, the man faced the world with an ever-so-subtle curl to his mouth that couldn’t have been interpreted as anything other than a haughty sneer. Further, she didn’t like the whispers about how he treated his horseflesh. Drove them into the ground , was the common agreement. The earl was not best pleased that his favored Thoroughbred hadn’t placed in the top half of any race this season.

As for his countess, Beatrix had no opinion whatsoever on the woman. She was a beauty. Of course, she would be. Theirs would be a marriage made for dynastic purposes, which was nothing new under the sun. No young lady as lovely as the countess spent her youth dreaming of marrying a man twice her age. But if the slight curl to her ladyship’s mouth was any indicator, she would be matching her husband for haughtiness within the decade.

Beatrix’s eye that missed very little kept roaming. No sign of the Duke of Rakesley and his new duchess. Quite a little scandal that elopement had caused.

She gave her head a bemused shake. To think she’d shared a supper with them when she’d visited Somerton not two months ago without an inkling of what had certainly already been simmering beneath the surface. Not for the first time, the idea struck her that she might not be an entirely reliable society gossip.

Her gaze moved along and lit upon a newly familiar gentleman riding a gorgeous gray hunter.

Gentleman.

That was the word of interest to her.

For the man wasn’t a gentleman, however much he pretended.

Mr. Blake Deverill …steam engine entrepreneur and upstart man about Town.

Or as society had dubbed him— Lord Devil .

Strictly from an objective position, he was composed of all the elements that made a man handsome—and a few that set him apart. Beneath the charcoal-gray superfine, his shoulders were broad, likely muscular, too. His hair, the black of a raven’s wing, was thick and appealingly wavy. He had a strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, and a straight nose.

Those were the elements that rendered him handsome in the commonly held sense.

As for those that set him apart… The glacial aquamarine blue of his eyes beneath straight black eyebrows… Those eyes pierced and prodded. They held a demand for the world.

And his mouth… It was at complete odds with the rest of him with its full, pillowy lips.

A lovely mouth, Lord Devil had.

Though Beatrix had never been kissed in all her life, she imagined that mouth most kissable.

The truth was—an uncomfortable truth, to be sure—every one of her senses perked to life at the very sight of him.

Whose wouldn’t? she thought a bit defensively.

The man possessed the sort of charismatic energy that made it next to impossible to remove one’s eyes from him.

Yet another quality that set him apart.

Now, Lord Devil could sell a few gossip rags.

Her pencil stopped.

She might give the idea of writing about Blake Deverill further consideration. He was a man who had made his way in the world through his own intelligence and determination.

And ambition and ruthlessness.

It wouldn’t do to make an enemy of him.

She had enough problems as it was.

With a mind toward solving a few of them, she tucked her writing journal into her satchel—which left the stack of letters patiently waiting on her lap.

Some opened…others decidedly unopened…

All dreaded.

She started with the opened ones. Better the devil you know—or something like that.

Bills.

To a one.

None earned by her, but that hardly mattered.

They affected her.

She plucked a different journal from her satchel and began moving her finger along the column of figures, hoping she’d transcribed a few incorrectly. That the five guineas here was, in fact, five shillings… Or perhaps this bill for seven quid was actually a credit…

She’d written every single figure correctly.

Down to the penny.

She eyed the unopened letters.

They weren’t necessarily bills.

Except…they most definitely were—for they were addressed to the Marquess of Lydon. He didn’t receive any other sort of mail, and she received no mail at all, except for her weekly letter from Artemis, who had run off to the wilds of Yorkshire, improbably, only to establish a horse sanctuary.

Actually, not improbably.

Artemis had lost her beloved Thoroughbred, Dido, during the season-opening race and had been utterly devastated. But in true Artemis fashion, she’d found a way to channel the loss into something useful—she’d established a horse sanctuary on the estate she’d inherited from her grandmother. Though it might be better described an any-animal-that-happened-down-the-lane sanctuary. There was even a one-eyed sheepdog named Bathsheba, who Beatrix sensed was in the running for Artemis’s best bosom friend.

With each letter, Beatrix could see her friend’s customary brightness of spirit returning, and if that was what it took for Artemis to return to herself, then Beatrix had no choice but to be glad for her.

In the stack presently occupying her lap, however, there was no such letter to cut through the gloom.

She lifted the top missive and felt no qualm about breaking the seal. Someone had to—and heaven knew it wouldn’t be Lydon. No, that onerous task was hers alone in their household of three, when one included Cumberbatch—which one must. Not only was he another mouth to feed, but the fact was she interacted with the old valet more often than she did with Lydon, who popped into the house once or twice a week and only then at odd times and intervals.

The opened letter confirmed what she’d already known—a bill. Twenty quid for a new pair of boots? She’d paid five shillings for the boots presently on her feet—seven years ago.

A sudden, wet plop landed on the bridge of her nose, startling her into the present.

A raindrop.

The rain the sky had been promising all morning had announced its arrival.

Further, it was keeping its other promise by fully opening at once and pouring sheets of water onto all heads with the bad luck and poor judgment to have been out of doors in the first place. Threats of rain tended to keep their promise in London.

The park transformed into a flurry of wet chaos as horses bolted this way and that, ladies exclaiming in both delight and distress, lords fumbling about with the leather hoods of their curricles, all scurrying about in desperate search of shelter and scattering to the four winds.

Beatrix shoved journal, pencils, and bills into her satchel—though she’d been sorely tempted to let wind and rain carry the latter away. Bag in one hand, the other clamped onto her bonnet, she braced herself against the heavy sheets of rain blasting into her face, pointed herself in the general direction of home, and willed her feet into motion. She knew where she was going— approximately —so she didn’t particularly need her eyes.

Then she heard and felt it—the thundering of hooves…approaching… fast . Of a sudden, a frenzied blur of motion appeared and was nearly upon her before she could blink. A shocked cry flew from her mouth as she instinctively hunched into a protective huddle and pivoted—twisting her ankle in the process and producing another cry, this one strident with swift, sharp pain. She collapsed to the ground, losing her grip on the satchel as reflex had her attempting to cushion her fall with an extended hand. The sudden pain in her wrist elicited yet another cry.

The rider jumped from his mount and lowered into a crouch above her, incensed blue eyes six inches from hers. “What are you thinking, woman?” he shouted into her face. “Running blind on a horse path during a rainstorm?”

For an instant, Beatrix felt no pain—only sheer incredulity at both question and questioner.

The audacity!

As for the man who asked it…

She blinked away the rain collected in her eyelashes, for surely they were casting illusions. But, no, those accusatory eyes… They weren’t merely blue. They were the most glacially aquamarine-blue eyes one was ever likely to behold.

Lord Devil.

“What was I thinking?” she blasted. “That I wanted to get out of the rain?”

The words had hardly left her mouth before her ankle and wrist were barking their displeasure, and the ensuing gasp of pain resolved in a groan.

Without hesitation, his hands were upon her, one closing around an elbow and the other clamped around her shoulder. Indignation shot through her. “What, pray tell, do you think you’re about? Isn’t it enough that you’ve run me down with your horse? Now you’re accosting me?”

Incredulous black eyebrows winged together. “Oh, blast it, woman, would you rather be carried away with Noah’s flood? Or accept my help?”

Beatrix’s heart beat out three heavy thuds as she considered her options.

Even as she knew she had only the one.

She exhaled a lengthy, resigned sigh.

And relented.