Chapter Three

D amnation, damnation, damnation!

Lucien flipped up his collar against the morning drizzle and sauntered across the footpath to Brechenhurst, the refuge for children living on the streets of London started by Devlin Raines, Duke of Dartmoor, and did his best not to let his frustration and growing dread show. His morning was not going well, and he needed the comfort of shelter.

Failing that, he needed to fight off his frustration, and Devlin was always up for a good fight.

He rapped his knuckles against the door. The little inset window opened, and a face on the verge of wrinkling from age peered out at him.

“Ah, Mrs. Martin!” He gave the manageress his most charming smile. “You’re looking lovely as always.”

The woman scowled at that bit of nonsense. “And you’re as much a bounder as ever.”

He winked at her. “Some women like bounders.”

“No accountin’ for taste,” she muttered as she opened the door and let him pass into the old warehouse that had been converted into a dormitory and dining hall for children who had no place to shelter from the streets.

She closed the door and dismissed him with a jerk of her thumb toward the central stairs, but she couldn’t hide the gleam of amusement in her eyes at his arrival. Despite all her bluster, he knew Mrs. Martin liked him. She was one of the few women in the world who did.

“His Grace is downstairs,” she told him. “You know the way.”

With a tug at the brim of his beaver hat in gratitude, he walked toward the stairs leading down into the basement.

It had been two days since the debacle at the opera and Brooks’s. Since then, rumors of Lucien’s newfound generosity had only grown. The latest gossip circling through his usual haunts had him giving coins to widows and donations to military pensioners. Someone even had the nerve to claim he’d sent a note to Hannah More to thank the old busybody for her reform work. Good God. When he’d attempted to deny it that morning, he’d been laughed out of Boodle’s.

It was time to take action, and not only because he found being labeled as kind and generous to be damnably annoying. He’d crafted the persona of a blackguard, rakehell, and—yes, as Mrs. Martin had pegged him—a bounder because it allowed him to hide in plain sight. His black reputation kept people away. No one was brave enough to come close.

That was what worried him. If people were talking about him because they thought he was good, it would only be a matter of time before someone pried deeper and learned what his father had been up to all those years. And that , he could never allow.

Because it wasn’t only his late father who had been committing criminal acts. When it came to his brother Phillip, who had been cheated out of his inheritance, Lucien had been just as culpable. His father had profited from illegal smuggling, prostitution, and child labor.

Lucien had stolen a dukedom.

He stopped in the doorway of the basement that Devlin Raines had converted into a training room of sorts, complete with racks of swords and sawdust dummies. Brooks’s had its basement cockpit, Boodles’s had its hidden rooms where women could be smuggled into the club for an hour’s pleasure, and Brechenhurst had its own private fighting salon. Gentleman Jackson had nothing on the Duke of Dartmoor and his friends.

Lucien leaned against the doorframe far more casually than he felt and called out, “I’m surprised the duchess allows her husband to sneak away from Dartmoor House in the afternoons for such mischief.”

Devlin glanced up from unwrapping strips of cloth from his knuckles. The sheen of sweat on his torso proved he’d already been there long enough for a good workout. So did the dents and bumps in the sawdust dummy in front of him. “The duchess insists that her husband leaves Dartmoor House every afternoon. Practically shoves me out the door, in fact, and says not to come back until dinner.”

“So a good marriage, then,” Lucien commented dryly.

Devlin’s face broke into a wide grin. “I’ve never been happier in my life.”

Lucien did his best to ignore a stab of jealousy. That was the problem with the way he led his life. On one hand, his black reputation kept unwanted women away. On the other, he didn’t want the women who weren’t frightened off. Neither group lent itself to producing viable candidates for Duchess of Crewe. Not that it mattered. Whoever it was, she wouldn’t be the real Duchess of Crewe anyway.

“You don’t have a wife to shove you out the door,” Devlin mused. “So what brings you out on a rainy afternoon?”

Lucien pushed himself away from the doorframe and came forward into the room. He took the liberty of removing his hat and gloves and tossing them onto a leather chair. “You haven’t been to the clubs for the past few days, if you have to ask that.”

“Oh, I’ve been,” Devlin corrected. He dropped the used cloths to the floor, and his smile faded. “I’ve heard what the rumors are saying about you. Whatever the reason, it can’t be good.”

Lucien blew out a hard breath as he shrugged out of his coat and tossed it onto the chair. Only six people in the world knew the truth about his life and why he behaved the way he did, and Devlin was one.

“No, it’s not good.” Lucien stripped off his jacket and let it fall onto his coat. “But damned if I know why the rumors are circulating.” He yanked free the cravat knot at his throat. “Don’t they know me at all? For God’s sake, who could possibly believe that I’d give money to orphans and pensioners?”

“Also to nuns and the infirmed.”

He froze, the cravat halfway off his neck, and croaked out in disbelief, “Nuns?”

“As well as anonymously sitting on several charity boards, including those which sponsor fallen women and champion prison reform.”

Lucien blinked, his stunned mind still a step behind. “ Nuns? ”

Devlin grinned and crossed to the wall to take down a pair of rapiers. Without having to ask if Lucien was up for a fight, Devlin tossed one to him.

But then, the two men knew each other better than anyone else in the world, to the point that they could often read each other’s minds.

That was what came of living together when they were at Eton, when Lucien, Devlin, Shay Douglass, and Chase Maddox had trained nightly under Anthony Titus, ma?tre d’armes . They’d learned to protect themselves at every turn and to kill when they couldn’t turn away. Together, they’d become deadly fighters and then mercenaries in the wars against Napoleon, before life made all four of them dukes and sent them on their separate ways.

But no matter how far apart they wandered, the bonds they’d forged would never be broken. They were brothers in every way except blood, and that distinction meant nothing to any of them. They would do whatever the others asked without question, and they would lay down their lives for each other without hesitation.

“There’s more,” Devlin warned as he took his position in the center of the long basement and dropped into his en garde stance. “Another rumor.”

Lucien stopped opposite him, steeling himself for the bad news. “What’s that?”

Devlin saluted Lucien with his rapier in lieu of calling prêts . “That you’ve loaned your townhouse to a society matron for hosting parties.”

“Who?” He lowered into position and returned the salute.

“Mrs. Peterson.” Devlin charged. “ Allez !”

Lucien automatically dodged Devlin’s unexpected thrust only from muscle memory crafted from years of practice and belatedly remembered to raise his foil to counter the attack, stunned by the news.

Through the clash of metal upon metal as he countered Devlin’s thrusts, his foggy brain slowly found traction. “Mrs. Harold Peterson? The aunt of Iphigenia Dunwoody?”

Every unmarried gentleman in England knew well both the spinster gel and her aunt. Rather, they knew how to avoid them. They feared to their cores being cornered by either woman at any soiree.

When Devlin nodded, Lucien groaned. “Please tell me the rumors say she’s hosting orgies.”

Devlin parried Lucien’s thrust and laughed. “Garden parties in your conservatory!”

“I don’t even have a conservatory,” Lucien ground out through clenched teeth.

The two men nearly ran at each other back and forth across the basement, long ago leaving behind the rug that served as the piste. After all, no real fight ever stayed within artificial boundaries.

“When has the truth ever stopped a good rumor?” Devlin challenged between pants for breath.

The truth. That was the very last thing Lucien needed to come out. “Next thing you know,” he grumbled, “she’ll want to introduce me to Miss Dunwoody.”

“Doesn’t have to.” Devlin feinted to his right. “Rumors say you’re already courting her.”

Lucien froze, stunned.

Devlin stepped casually forward and easily tapped his chest with the dulled point of the training rapier. “Touché.”

With a curse, Lucien tossed his blade away. It clattered against the stone floor.

He should have known he would end up just as frustrated after the match as before. Fencing had never helped burn off any of the anger or angst he’d been plagued with over the years. Only bare-knuckled fighting did, and he wouldn’t dare ask Devlin to spar with him like that. Given his current mood, Lucien would pulp his best friend into oblivion.

Instead, he sank into a nearby club chair, screwed his eyes shut, and flopped his head over the chair back.

“What did I do to deserve a rumor like that?” he contemplated in a mutter. “I’m a blackguard, not Lucifer. Who have I ever hurt who would want revenge like this?”

Devlin paused as he poured two glasses of brandy at a side table. “There was that flamenco dancer you encountered in Seville.” He set down the bottle and capped it. “I don’t think her castanets ever worked again.”

“That was a simple misunderstanding,” he argued. “I thought she was in league with the French.”

“She was.”

Lucien lifted his head and leveled a curious gaze on Devlin. “How do you know that?”

Devlin crooked a grin. “Castanets weren’t the only things she played between her fingers.”

Lucien twisted his lips in irritation. “My life is being turned upside-down, and you’re bragging about beating me under the skirts of a Spanish dancer ten years ago?”

“Yes.” Devlin’s grin grew wider as he lifted one of the glasses to his lips. “Yes, I am.”

Lucien bit back a frustrated curse, not having the patience for Devlin’s antics today. “In England , then,” Lucien emphasized for clarification. “Who in England would want to do something like this to me?”

“You think it’s intentional then?” Devlin frowned as he handed over the second glass to Lucien.

“Has to be.” He gratefully swallowed a healthy dose of the brandy. “There are too many rumors of my newly acquired charitable spirit happening all at once to be anything else. Similar rumors all growing at this speed can’t be coincidental.”

Either that, or someone truly had discovered what he’d been doing. He had given funds to charities and foundations. Lots of them, in fact, but always anonymously. After all, if the devil didn’t want his too-black soul when he died, then best to hedge his bets on the side of good.

“Then who’s doing it,” Devlin asked, “and why?”

Lucien shrugged, tossed back the rest of the brandy in a single gasping swallow, and held out the glass for a refill.

Devlin obliged. “Anyone you’ve trounced at cards lately? Or won a large bet against? Perhaps at one of those hells you’ve been haunting.”

“No.” He frowned into his glass as he swirled the brandy. He was always careful at those places, going more to stir up talk about himself than to actually win anything. He always made certain to leave the tables with the same amount of blunt he’d arrived with.

“A woman you’ve bedded who felt spurned, perhaps?”

He gave a short laugh and raked his fingers through his hair. Being a decent man cloaked in wickedness was beginning to wear. “I haven’t done any of that lately, either.”

“No one?” Devlin’s voice was thick with disbelief. “Not even some unmarried miss who—”

“I do not dally with unmarried misses.”

“—who misunderstood your glances across the room for something more serious?” Devlin finished pointedly as he reached for the discarded rapier on the floor. “Or who is willing to overlook your terrible reputation if it means becoming a duchess?”

“I’m careful.” He never let any unmarried woman get close enough for that.

But as he lifted the glass for another drink, a terrible thought struck him. He froze just as the brandy touched his lips, and the taste turned to acid on his tongue.

A few months ago, he hadn’t been completely careful.

There had been a young woman at Lady Hawthorne’s ball who had snagged his attention. He certainly hadn’t been hoping for any kind of encounter that night. Hell, he’d only been at the ball in the first place because Lord Hawthorne knew how boring his wife’s party would be and so insisted Lucien attend to keep him entertained. If he didn’t attend, Hawthorne threatened to whisper into the Regent’s ear that Lucien had been tupping Prinny’s current mistress. So Lucien had dragged his carcass off to the ball. But the gel he’d encountered there was hardly boring. She was striking, flirtatious despite being dressed in pastel pinks, and seemingly a cure for his evening’s boredom when she suggested they take a stroll together in the garden.

Amanda St Claire… He wasn’t certain why he should so easily remember her name when it was the sister’s face he saw whenever he thought about that night. Her sister’s eyes had thrown lightning when she found them together in the bower. Lucien would have sworn he’d seen actual sparks of fury blaze from her, which oddly enough only made her more attractive. Even her voice had been alluringly husky when she ordered her sister back inside the house. Lucien had said nothing and let the two women go. After all, he and Miss St Claire were certainly done by then, with nothing more shared than a few heated kisses. No matter that the gel had taken the lead in their encounter and temptingly lifted her skirts for seduction, he would never have accepted that invitation. Not from an unmarried miss. Yet he still profited by the encounter, because getting caught by her sister at that moment only added to his rakehell’s reputation without ruining the gel’s.

When he’d received a letter from Miss St Claire a few weeks later, demanding he wed her to save her from scandal over the encounter, he’d laughed. To make such a demand over what had been nothing more than a few kisses, witnessed by no one but her sister, was simply ludicrous. She would have to try a lot harder than that to trap him into marriage. So he wrote back a single word—

No .

All concern over the incident had ended right there.

Or so he’d thought. Perhaps she was just desperate enough to keep pursuing him, just mad enough to attack his reputation. After all, if her friends ever found out that she’d gone off alone into a dark garden with a rake, she’d be ostracized from whatever bit of society she occupied…unless she could convince the world he was kind-hearted, decent, and genuinely good enough not to take advantage of a pretty woman in the moonlight.

In other words, everything the ton believed he wasn’t.

“If you’re not careful,” Devlin warned as he placed the two rapiers back onto their wall hooks, “the truth about you is going to come out. Then everyone will know what you’ve really been up to.” He shot Lucien a glance over his shoulder. “And I don’t mean what you did on the Continent.”

Lucien knew exactly what his old friend referred to, and he would never let that happen. The world could never know that his brother Phillip existed. Even if that meant terrifying a young miss to death when he hunted her down this afternoon and confronted her.

One way or another, he would make Amanda St Claire put an end to rumors of his goodness.

“Shay’s back in London.”

That unexpected comment pierced his reverie, and Lucien looked up in surprise. “Truly?”

Seamus Douglass was one of their brothers-in-arms who had trained alongside them under Anthony Titus at Eton, and then joined them on the Peninsula during those years of hell and madness when they had fought as mercenaries. But when Lucien and Devlin eventually came to their senses and returned to England and when Chase went home to his wife, Shay remained in the wars. He’d joined the British army and made his way as a proper soldier, until the accident that killed his brother and left him scarred in more ways than just appearance. Every aspect of his life irreparably changed after that.

Devlin nodded. “He sent word two nights ago that he’d arrived.”

“Why is he here?” Shay never traveled anymore. Instead, he’d become a hermit on his northern estate, seldom venturing as far as the local village and never coming all the way to London. Never. “Did something happen?”

“Not that he said in his message.” Devlin sat on the arm of the chair opposite Lucien’s and pondered the brandy in his own glass as he slowly swirled it. “All he offered was that he was here to put old problems to rest and might need our help.”

Lucien frowned. “What does he mean by that?”

“Don’t know.” Devlin shrugged and took a swallow of cognac before answering. “But Shay went through more hell than you and I ever did.”

Lucien knew that, but not because Shay had ever confided in him. Although they were still in close contact even now, fifteen years after their first meeting and their first fighting lessons together, the four friends never discussed their own demons unless they had to. Or their fathers.

“Same thing,” Lucien muttered to himself against the rim of his glass as he gratefully swallowed a healthy amount and welcomed the heat sliding down his throat.

“Pardon?”

Lucien shook his head. “Nothing.”

Devlin fell silent for a long while, then asked casually, although there was nothing at all casual about his question, “Do you ever regret that time we spent fighting on the Continent for the Prussians?”

“Always.” Lucien blew out a hard breath. “We were young and stupid, and we should have listened to Titus when he told us we weren’t made to be mercenaries.”

“But we were at our physical peaks, our skills perfectly trained for it.”

“Bollocks. We failed, and at the most important lesson of all, too.” That being a good fighter takes more than physical prowess. It took mental conditioning and a spiritual reckoning the four friends simply had not been prepared for. “We were nothing but a bunch of lads running away from home.”

“Well, we might be grown men now,” Devlin said quietly, “but I think some of us are still trying to run away from home.”

Not daring to answer that, Lucien lifted the glass to his lips and finished off his drink.