Chapter 17

I finally agreed to join my love at the Hellfire Club. This time, I'll make myself see what it is he craves. If I understand, I can keep him satisfied.

~ The Duchess of A

T he irony of this night was not lost on Cadogan.

He'd been taken down now twice in his life: the first time by a ruthless foreign adversary and the second, by his uncontrollable lust—for a virgin .

Thirty-seven minutes after being discovered with Raina straddling his waist, Cadogan found himself back at Argyll's home and ushered into the duke's office.

The butler bowed and backed out of the room, leaving the two men alone.

Reclined in his enormous leather armchair, the Duke of Argyll, sat with his fingers steepled, and contemplated Cadogan for a long moment.

Cadogan stayed stock-still.

"Please, please," Argyll finally said. "Do take a seat." Raina's brother motioned to the chairs across from him like he greeted an old, dear, friend, and not some stranger who'd just fucked his virgin sister's mouth.

Wordlessly, Cadogan crossed the long length of the meticulously designed space. All the while he kept a razor-sharp gaze on the man.

Cadogan tugged a chair out, took a seat, and folded his arms at his chest.

Cadogan had been weak enough to lose all self-control for a goddamned debutante, but he wasn't stupid enough to believe Argyll's genial attitude, or that there'd be anything cordial about the impending exchange.

Raina's brother and Raina's seducer studied the other.

Several minutes ticked by with the duke having uttered nothing beyond that initial invitation for Cadogan to sit.

This silence, however, was a peculiar one. Unlike the strained, volatile stillness back in Lord and Lady Rutherford's parlor, this quiet proved strangely placid, and the Duke of Argyll remarkably calm.

Given the state in which the elder brother had discovered his cherished sister and the man hired to be her bodyguard—with his cock still out of his trousers, and Raina's skirts rucked about her waist and his mouth marks all over her—the other man should be brimming with rage.

Hell, given the debauched things Cadogan had done with and to Raina, her protective brother should have attempted to take Cadogan apart by now. He certainly shouldn't be relaxed and unwarlike.

By now, Raina's brother should've launched a loyal, brotherly response and, at least, attempted to kill Cadogan the moment he'd foot inside his ducal domain. That he should be so implacable and detached over Raina's ruin, unexpectedly stirred the inner beast inside him.

Cadogan sharpened his gaze on Raina's brother.

I am missing something. What am I missing?

The duke caved first. "Drinks?"

Cadogan just stared.

Drinks?

"Brandy?" the duke pressed. "Cognac? Sherry? Whiskey?"

Madness. Perhaps that's what accounted for Argyll's hell-backward nonexistent reaction?

"No," he said tersely.

Argyll gave another one of those infuriating ducal shrugs and stood.

Cadogan followed Argyll's lazy stroll to the sideboard crammed full of bottles and decanters. Humming to himself, Raina's brother, contemplated the vast collection of spirits to choose from.

The veins in the top of Cadogan's hands bulged.

My God. The duke put more thought into his drink choice than Raina's ruin.

The savage monster inside Cadogan reared its head again, and begged for freedom.

"Ah," Argyll settled on a decanter of brandy and as an afterthought, fetched a glass.

The duke tugged the Stoppard out and tossed it aside. "Some of the finest stock." He turned and displayed the bottle in question for Severin. "Are you certain I can't—"

"I'm certain."

Shrugging, Argyll devoted all his attention to his pour.

Over the course of his lifetime, Cadogan navigated any number of mystifying situations. Not a single one held a bloody candle to whatever the fuck this was.

There could be no doubting he found himself engaged in some game, with the duke.

"I confess, Your Grace," Cadogan remarked, trying to read his opponent. "Given the circumstances, I'd anticipated a violent reception."

Argyll arched a single blond eyebrow. "Were you thinking I'd demanded a meeting to call you out and have you name your seconds?"

Dead. I'm going to kill him.

Cadogan flexed his jaw. "Actually, given the state you found me with Lady Raina, that'd been the very least I expected. Had she been my sister, I—"

You would have done what? You haven't even seen your sisters in…years. Too many to even remember. The one key difference being: there were other brothers to see to them. Raina had this appallingly deficient libertine to rely on for her security.

"What was that, Cadogan?" The duke angled his head. "You would…what? Hmm ?"

How bloody flippant. It took every ounce of Cadogan's self-control to keep from snapping his neck.

In one fluid motion, Cadogan unsheathed the double-edged khanjali from inside his boot and launched it at Raina's bastard of a brother.

That deliberately aimed blade sailed past the duke.

Argyll dropped to the floor, a second before Cadogan's weapon struck the wall.

All the blood had leeched from the duke's cheeks.

Not so bloody smug now.

The slack-jawed nobleman, got onto his knees; his rounded eyes moved back and forth between the dagger buried into an ancestral portrait of one of the many dukes before him and Cadogan.

"Good God , Cadogan."

Horror and reverent awe bled from the nobleman's malediction.

He waited until the cad got to his feet before speaking. "If I did the things with Lady Raina you're accusing me of, why not face me at dawn, Your Grace?"

"Do I think I can kill you in a duel, Cadogan?" The duke's counter-question rang with humor. " Possibly ," he acknowledged with a side-tip of his head. "Most likely not. I've done my research. You could put a bullet in whatever part of me you chose before I even got a shot off."

A roiling heat formed in his belly.

"Your sister isn't at least worthy of your trying?" Cadogan somehow managed to keep his voice even.

Amusement glimmered in the rake's eyes. "What good would I do either of my sisters if I'm dead, hmm?"

As Argyll nattered on about the responsibilities that came with being a brother, Cadogan stared at the duke's mouth as it moved.

Raina deserved more— so much more.

Perhaps he'd cut out the depraved bastard's throat?

Or his heart?

Maybe both?

With absolutely no idea how close Cadogan was to ending him, the duke, returned—glass in hand.

After he'd seated himself, Argyll studied him with a bemused expression. "You appear surprisingly eager for me to call you out."

" You appear surprisingly relaxed after discovering your sister deflowered with her lover still in her arms, duke ."

A slight twitch at the corner of his mouth revealed the first crack in Argyll's composure.

Having knocked Raina's brother off-balance, Cadogan struck.

"What do you want, Argyll?" Everyone wanted something. "Come to the point."

"What do I want?" Raina's brother rested his forearms atop his enormous desk. "Given you took what you wanted, I trust I should be asking how you intend to remedy the situation."

"As I see it, there is no situation. No one is any wiser as to what may have happened—"

"What did happen ," the duke gritted out.

"There was no audience," Cadogan continued over that interruption.

The other man's surprisingly sturdy patience at last cracked.

"How conveniently you exclude the audience of one made by me, the lady's brother ," he sniped.

Here it was. The fight he'd been anticipating and preferring. Cadogan dealt best when all the cards were laid out.

Cadogan carefully chose his tone and words. "As I promised earlier, she is still a virgin, Your Grace."

He'd left her maidenhead perfectly intact for some other proper , marriage-minded gent to claim. No man would bring her the level of surrender that he could, but with Raina as passionate and eager as she was, she'd still mightily enjoy some other fellow's efforts.

A sharp, murderous rage ran through him. He tasted the metallic bite of it on his tongue. He felt the bitter, bone-deep twisting of it low in his gut.

With his next question, Argyll yanked Cadogan from the deep abyss of indecipherable emotion he'd found himself falling.

"Did you have your fingers in her, Cadogan?"

Did he…?

Still momentarily slack-witted, it took a moment for that blunt query to fully register.

For the first time in Cadogan's life, he felt a rush of heat climb his neck and splotch his cheeks.

He'd maim the bastard so bad, that Argyll would spend the rest of his days wishing Cadogan had done the mercy of killing him, instead.

A growl built in his chest. "Need I remind you the lady you are speaking about, is in fact, your sister?."

" You of all people are reminding me of that detail, Cadogan?" The other man's features froze, and then tossing his head back, he roared with laughter. "Now, that is rich," he said, with a single, hard, clap of his palms.

The duke's forced and fake hilarity died quick; his eyes darkened. "With your expertise, I expect you don't require me to point out how easily that scrap of flesh can tear, and if she enters into a union with some chap believing she's a virgin only to find some other fellow…" he paused and skimmed a pompous glance down the length of his straight-bridged, Patrician nose at Cadogan, "relieved him of that endeavor, there will be hell to pay, and not only me, but more importantly, Raina would pay the price."

The vivid visual of Raina suffering for perceived sins by a brutal bastard she found herself bound to, briefly blinded Cadogan. Visions of Raina: with those goddamned tears that gutted him, streaming down her cheeks. Raina, stretching out a hand and bowing her head in supplication. Raina, explaining there'd been a man—Cadogan, being the one—who'd awakened her to pleasure and left…because leaving was what he did. Because he had to. Men like him didn't and couldn't put down roots.

His mind in vast, riotous tumult, he found Argyll shrewdly eying him.

Cadogan rolled his shoulders.

The hell if he'd allow this libertine to paint Cadogan as the lone villain in this farce.

"What does it say about you, Your Grace," he said quietly. "That you'd tie her to a man whom you can't be confident would treat her with due reverence and respect?"

Argyll pounded a fist so hard onto his neat workspace, the crystal and gilt-bronze inkwell set jumped.

"The bloody ballocks on you, speaking about my character," he thundered. "You come before me and speak about some fictitious dastard and his lack of respect for Raina. All the while knowing , this was hardly the first and only transgression on your part."

Caught off-guard, Cadogan drew back.

Argyll blazed ahead with his scathing castigation. "As if after barely a day in my household, you didn't have her against the kitchen wall?" Or further indulge of her charms at Craven's club."

Cadogan narrowed his eyes to razor slits.

The duke lowered his eyebrows and pinched them together. "And now this latest transgression."

His mind spun. How the hell did the other man know all that?

"Why don't you just tell me what you want, Your Grace? Or call me out. But do so quickly, because I'm running out of patience."

The duke lifted his head. "Very well. Given the circumstances, it is only fitting you do right by my—"

"No."

"Sister," the duke continued over his interruption. "She is a lady—"

"I'm far from a gentleman."

Argyll scoffed. "By the nature of my work, the same could and is said about me." Dropping his elbows on the neat surface of his desk, he leaned forward. "The fact remains, despite the unconventional nature of our career, we are still members of the ton , and will make matches with respectable la."

"You misunderstand," he said coolly. "I am not saying I'm unworthy of your sister." Which he was. But that was neither here nor there, where this matter and discussion was concerned.

Raina's brother thinned his eyes. "You're saying you will not do right by her."

"I'm saying I won't marry her." In that, he'd be doing right by Raina. He wouldn't marry any woman. He'd enough enemies that he'd not subject a wife to a fate where she and any children they bore were in constant threat.

The duke frowned. "This is unexpected."

Which meant, the other man had expected other things…

Cadogan went motionless.

"Given your title and birthright, Killburn," Argyll was saying. "I don't have to tell you what your obligations are to my sister following all of this."

Argyll, however, proceeded to do just that.

While Raina's brother went on enumerating each and every reason he'd an obligation to marry the lady in question, Cadogan went over his meeting with Argyll.

Cadogan recalled: Every. Single. Moment.

Raina, as she'd been, despite the late hour at their first meeting. Paraded before Cadogan in a diamond-studded crown and a satin gown with its plunging neckline that accentuated every lush curve.

Argyll willingly leaving Cadogan alone with the man's beloved sister, whom he sought to protect above all else.

Raina's cheery disposition and offer of friendship throughout that exchange.

Each and every seemingly piddling detail, came together to form one profound picture of how he'd been played by this crafty, cunning brother and sister.

Raina happening to come upon Cadogan alone, drinking ale in the kitchens, long after she should have slept.

Her sad, doe-eyes.

Her self-recriminations.

The claims she'd been bullied by society.

Cadogan's pulse throbbed in his ears. He saw the duke's mouth moving as he spoke, but he heard not a single word falling out of those Machiavellian lips.

And then, there'd been tonight.

Two leches had been conveniently passing where he and Raina had just been together; that pair speaking crass about her. Only for Raina to return and find him avenging her. The over-the-top adoration in her eyes as she'd kissed him.

…I'd ask what is going on…Alas, the moment I discovered you gone, and your bodyguard missing, I'd already determined what was at play…

Had he not been seated, Cadogan would've been knocked hard on his arse.

My God, what a bloody, fucking, fool he'd been.

She'd taken his cock into her mouth and swallowed down his seed. When they'd at last both been sated, she'd erupted into tears, perfectly timed for her brother's arrival.

Likely those tears had been disgust, after all, at the things she'd been forced to do with him, all to benefit whatever twisted plot she and her brother had cooked up.

And then, that last, telling, guilty admission from the lady's own lips before she'd dutifully followed her scheming brother…

"I am s-sorry," she whispered. "I am s-so sorr—"

Cadogan's rage briefly blinded him.

Maybe guilt had found her in that minute.

Cadogan hardened his jaw.

Whatever it'd been mattered not, only her deception did.

I'd already determined what was at play…

All along, the bloody bastard had done just that, the director and orchestrator of the unlikeliest deception, and he'd been joined by the most delicious, delectable leading actress.

The pieces of the earlier puzzle, at last, fell into place.

This is why the other man had exuded calm before—he'd trusted Cadogan would marry Raina. Only when it'd become apparent that'd be the last offer he'd make this night, had Argyll lost control.

There remained but one question now: why?

He fixed a dogged gaze on the Argyll.

Only Cadogan knew. He'd just realized it too late. There'd been, first, the duke's offer of employment as head guard of Forbidden Pleasures . Cadogan's declination. Then a new offer, this one, an unlikely one.

But Cadogan had been so blinded with his hungering for revenge against the enemy who'd marked him, he'd failed to see he'd been embroiled in another plot, with a different opponent.

Argyll finished his lecture and stared expectantly at Cadogan.

"You were aware of prior exchanges between your sister and myself," he said carefully, "and yet, you kept me in your employ." Cadogan's wasn't a question.

The duke tensed. Several lines creased his forehead, in that moment Argyll realized he'd truly slipped up.

A slow, but deathless rage spilled through Cadogan: with Argyll, Raina, and worse, himself. He'd dealt with manipulators before. He'd never, however, let himself be manipulated. This time, he'd his cock rule his head.

"You orchestrated it."

"Oh, come," the duke scoffed. "I brought you in with the hope that you'd form an attachment with my sister, but ultimately, you're the one who went falling for Raina."

He didn't even deny it.

"My God." He whistled through his teeth. "You not only knew, but hoped , I'd fuck your sister." Here he'd discovered a match, in his ruthlessness, after all.

"Hey, now." Argyll bristled. "There is no need to be crude."

Cadogan climbed to his feet. Pressing his palms on the duke's desk, he leaned in.

"You who used your sister like one of the molls at your club would speak to me about being crude?" he whispered.

The bumptious bastard shrank.

With a nervous laugh, Raina's brother yanked at his cravat. "This doesn't have to be all bad, Cadogan. In fact, what I'm proposing is something that will benefit you greatly."

"Benefit me ?" he asked bluntly.

Argyll had the good grace to flush. "Benefit the both of us."

The other man took Cadogan's silence as permission to continue with his proposition.

"You have something I want. And I have someone you want."

He narrowed his eyes. "Do you believe I'd give you anything of value in exchange for a woman ?"

Although for the tempting, clever, Lady Raina you could almost be tempted into making an exception , that lustful voice in his head taunted. Almost. But not even that fair Helen of Troy could make him trade his freedom and power.

The duke matched Cadogan's frosty gaze with one of his own. "My sister is not some woman. She is not a trollop."

"Funny with your reasons for putting me to work guarding her, you should make that claim."

Argyll didn't take the bait. "She is the most sought-after Diamond in several Seasons. She comes with a fortune to her name."

"Do I strike you as a man in need of fortune?" he asked bluntly. "I'll spare you answering, I'm not."

"Yes, yes." The duke waved his hand. "Your business as a hired assassin is quite lucrative but it is not something you can or will do forever." He gave Cadogan a canny look. "And knowing what I know about you, when you are done, the last thing you'll want is to retire onto some country estate keeping books."

"I'll die doing this work." He'd rather chop off all his limbs and with his teeth gnaw off the last unsevered appendage.

"Ah," Argyll gave a waggle of his eyebrows, "but if you are as good as you claim to be, then, you won't be taken down by anyone. You'll carry on with the business of killing until you've got the gout and your eyes and ears fail. Something also tells me, you're too proud to let some younger, stronger, man take you down as a way of dying doing what you love."

That detailing of a very plausible future gave Cadogan pause.

He'd never thought into a future, because for men in his line of work, no tomorrow was promised, but eventually all men, aged. Time leant a frailty and humility that made them easy marks for the younger, stronger, men—as the duke described them.

The idea of being one of the former left him in suspended in a state, confronting a horrifying prospect he'd not considered until now.

He'd hand it to the crafty peer; the gentle man was quite adept at manipulation.

As if he'd sensed an unlikely opening, Argyll seized on it.

"Marry my sister," he said, putting forth his proposal. "In exchange, she'll be yours. I'll—"

"I'm afraid your efforts have been for naught," Cadogan cut him off.

The duke had whored out his sister for his ends and now sought to make a whore out of Cadogan, too.

Fighting the urge to pull another blade and this time, bury it right between the bastard's eyes, Cadogan made himself turn and took a quick, clipped, path to the doorway.

There came the scrape of wood scraping wood as the duke shoved his chair back. "Then you'll never have the name of the man who marked you," Raina's brother vowed.

Fury brought Cadogan spinning back around. In the face of the other man's cavalier attitude, Cadogan's anger spiraled to a murderous rage.

"You bloody bastard," he hissed. "With your intentions for me and your sister, you gave me an assignment that could never be completed."

Argyll revealed a slow, triumphant smile.

Checkmate.

Fuck.

Cadogan was across the room and on the duke in an instant.

He closed a hand about Argyll's neck and the pompous duke's gasp died in Cadogan's grip.

"Bastard," Cadogan whispered.

He propelled Raina's brother against the wall behind that big, lofty desk of his.

Argyll rasped and twisted in a futile bid to escape Cadogan's hold.

To the libertine's credit, however, not a speck of fear glittered in his eyes.

Cadogan held him pinned, controlling when the duke breathed—and didn't. He relished each and every second of Argyll's fight for life-saving air. Red, ruddy, color flushed the gentleman's cheeks and his eyes bulged, but at no point in his desperate search for breath did Raina's brother bleed fear or desperation.

The proud bastard would sooner die than beg him. He'd deny Cadogan even that small satisfaction.

He'd get nothing out of killing him. That was, nothing other than the satisfaction of wearing Argyll's blood on his person.

With a silent curse, Cadogan released his hold.

The duke collapsed onto the floor and taking support against the same wall he'd come very close to dying against, Argyll alternately choked and sucked in great, heaving, gasps.

"I'll c-confer a portion of Forbidden Pleasures —the Duke of Craven's previous fraction—to you," the duke rasped, between each struggled breath he could manage. "I'll make you an even richer man, with power the likes of which only kings know."

Cadogan would hand it to the man. He had a sizeable pair of ballocks on him—he did not easily concede defeat.

Cadogan shook his head, and again, turned to leave.

"I'll give you the name you seek," Argyll wheezed.

He didn't break stride. "I'll sooner slit my own throat than marry." Not even for the pleasure of possessing Raina in every way would he sell himself.

When Cadogan's fingers touched the door handle, Argyll called out, in a hoarse but somewhat steadier, voice. "I'll ruin your business," he spoke conversationally of his plans for Cadogan.

With a sneer, he turned and faced Raina's bastard of a brother. "You might try ."

"I'm not a man who ‘tries' at anything."

Infuriatingly blasé, Argyll tugged off his wrinkled cravat and gave the rumpled silk fabric several sharp snaps. "I simply deliver on my promises, Killburn… and my threats." He paused and cast a pointed look Cadogan's way.

Cadogan stiffened.

"Think about it," the duke continued matter-of-factly, and came out from behind his desk. "You insist we're different, and yet, in our determination and ruthlessness, we are very much of a like personality. But that is not the only way in which we're similar."

"Oh, and in which world—"

"We share the same clients," Argyll interrupted. "Yes, the services we offer may differ—in my case, I provide those blackguards and villains with their libidinous pleasures while you act as either their hired hand or deliverer. Either way, we both deal with the soulless, the depraved."

Cadogan met that perceptive commentary with only silence.

"Furthermore," the duke continued, "let us say, if I regaled my clients with details about the failed work you'd done for me, who do you believe they would trust, hmm? You, a man, who for the right price is their worst nightmare waiting in the shadows?"

Argyll inclined his head. "Or me , the generous, affable, proprietor who plies them with drinks and extends their credit so they might keep their homes and…continue feeding their love of gaming?" The calculating peer wasn't done. "Me, the man who provides the finest, most skilled, seductive, Cyprians throughout the kingdom, for their pleasures?"

The corner of Cadogan's right eye twitched.

He'd been wrong before. This moment, with the vow made by Argyll and the supercilious grin on his bloody smug lips, was the true checkmate.

Bloody fucking hell .

"We'll marry at dawn," Cadogan said quietly, reclaiming what little power he found himself in possession of. "No witnesses."

Raina's brother put up a protest. "There has to be—"

"That is none of your witnesses. I'll secure the body and the man of cloth." Men whose silence he did, could, and would control. "There'll be no formal announcement. By all intents and purposes no one will know we are married."

The duke frowned. "Surely you aren't so na?ve as to believe the news will not be made public by someone —servants, dressmakers, any—"

"I'm not. But the longer our marriage remains secret, the safer she is from the danger she'll face as my wife."

Several creases marred, Argyll's impeccable brow.

Cadogan relished the first signs of apprehension from the cocksure proprietor. "You hadn't thought of that?" he taunted the duke over his belated fears. "My enemies are now your sister's."

A healthy amount of color slipped from the duke's cheeks.

"You were so obsessed with having me on your staff that you didn't give a shite about what fate awaited the wife of a former agent of the Crown and assassin," Cadogan said in grave tones.

The slight Adam's apple in the other man's throat moved. And while Argyll remained locked in the terrifying, but very real, picture Cadogan painted for the big brother's benefit, Cadogan found himself…also caught.

He'd never planned to take a wife for the simple fact he didn't want one or need one. As such, he'd not dwelt on the thought of the uncertain fate facing any woman he took to wife.

The faint stirring of unease took the place of the fury and hate that'd plagued him since he'd fallen for Argyll's trap.

The bloody worries kept coming.

In addition to his wife , there'd, of course, be children too whose safety and lives he'd be responsible for. Given all the times he intended to bed Raina, the risk he'd sire children on her was great. No matter the precautions he took…

Sweat slicked his palms.

The duke's murmur cut across Cadogan's racing thoughts. "I can only hope, for my sister's sake, that you are as good at your work as I believe you are, and that you've been credited with."

"And if not?" Cadogan said in sober tones. "What then?"

Argyll's features tensed. "I'm not going to think about it."

The bastard wouldn't think about it? Another curtain of rage fell over Cadogan's vision.

"Why should you?" Cadogan jeered. "It's only your sister's life."

The duke flinched.

Without another word, Cadogan turned on his heel, and quit the duke's offices.

When he returned four hours from now and left for a final time, it'd be the last time he'd ever set foot inside this household, and the last time his bride saw her brother.