Chapter One
OCTOBER 1826…
Being a thoroughly disappointing son in every aspect of his life was a responsibility Giles Sinclair took seriously. So seriously that if a single week passed without his father’s irate censure of his inappropriate behavior, he considered himself a complete failure. After a worryingly quiet few weeks with only one minor skirmish over a reckless wager that had found the Duke of Harpenden’s increasingly deaf ears, he was determined to make tonight’s expensive party a resounding and scandalous success in time for his weekly audience with his disapproving sire on the morrow.
He sipped his apple juice, strategically disguised in a tall crystal flute so no one would realize he was stone-cold sober, while he watched the eclectic crowd and allowed himself a rare moment of satisfaction. The great and the good, the famous and the infamous, were all crammed into the fashionable Egyptian-themed ballroom of his Bloomsbury town house. Two hours in and it was all going swimmingly, with several of the more outrageous guests already three sheets to the wind. In another hour or so, the majority would be tipsy and that always made for good entertainment. By the time they all poured out onto the pavement in the small hours, it wasimperative that a goodly handful had thoroughly disgraced themselves to ensure his latest and most hastily arranged Annual Reprobates Ball was more shocking than the last. Another point of petty principle and, frankly, the only rebellion he had against all the lies his sire had told the world. Lies that had ruined Giles’s life the day it started but which his conscience would never allow him to refute.
“I want every champagne glass filled to the brim, Dalton, and not with that cheap stuff you procured from your shady contacts at the docks. Use the Veuve Clicquot with abandon and make no secret of it.” Nothing inflamed the duke hotter than reckless spending on frivolous hedonism. Especially if he thought he was funding it all.
Not that he was, of course.
As a point of principle, Giles hadn’t spent a single farthing of his allowance in a decade. Instead, like Robin Hood, he covertly put it to work repairing all his father’s many misdeeds, anonymously righting wrongs while he lived off his own wits and canny business acumen. And he had done a bloody good job of it, too, enough that he could afford to fill every bathtub in Bloomsbury with the finest French champagne if he wanted and still have change to spare on another shiny new pair of Hoby boots.
Not that the old man knew any of that, either.
Nobody did.
Such restraint, dogged determination, philanthropy, and hard work would only encourage people to reevaluate him, and that wouldn’t do at all when being underestimated came in so very handy. And it went without saying that his sordid little secret would thoroughly ruin his already atrocious reputation when his father despaired of that most of all. A two-faced irony that never failed to amuse him.
“The Veuve Clicquot?” His butler-cum-valet rolled his only eye. “Even though half the guests are already so drunk they wouldn’t know Veuve Clicquot from horse piss? It’s a dreadful waste of good champagne, if you ask me.”
“But I didn’t ask you, did I, Dalton? I never do, yet you bore me with your unwelcome opinions regardless.” Giles grabbed a passing canapé before he waved his wholly unsuitable servant away. “Bubbles for everyone and that is an order.”
“Yes, my lord.” With his customary insolence, Dalton tugged his forelock then strode off, his intricately carved peg leg clonking loudly on the solid marble floor Giles had had imported at vast expense from Italy.
Both things had sent the duke into a rage.
The marble tiles because they had cost an arm and a leg, and his butler because while Dalton wasn’t completely devoid of one arm, alongside the eye and the leg, he had lost a couple of fingers on his left hand.
Dalton had nobly mislaid all those unfortunate body parts as a young sailor at the Battle of Trafalgar but was paid handsomely to solemnly tell anyone who happened to inquire that he didn’t like to talk of his former life as a pirate, now that he was trying to be respectable.
As a bevy of liveried footmen distributed freshly filled glasses amongst his guests, Giles sensed her before she spoke, or rather sniffed her. The heady scent of fat summer roses tinged with peach and the merest smidgen of vanilla was as unique a perfume as the unconventional and vexing woman who wore it.
“You will be delighted to learn that Lady Sewell and that awful Russian count you insist on inviting to everything are in the midst of a tryst in your music room.”
She had a penchant for bold, fashionable gowns despite her desire to blend into the wall, and tonight’s was particularly lovely. The ivory silk skimmed her curves in all the right places while the saucy flashes of red at the hem and the big ribbon that highlighted her trim waist complemented her dark hair to perfection. As was her way, that hair was arranged in a sophisticated but asymmetrical style that went completely against the current fashion for symmetry but suited her regardless, for she wasn’t so much a woman who marched to the beat of her own drum but one who made it seem as if everyone else were out of step. She was, as always, stunning—not that he would ever tell her, of course. “I suppose that shocking incident is bound to feature in your newspaper tomorrow, harridan?”
“As usual, I have no earthly idea what you are talking about.” Miss Diana Merriwell sipped her champagne with artful nonchalance as she gazed at the sea of twirling silk on the dance floor rather than at him. “But that is hardly a surprise.” She always delivered her insults deadpan for maximum effect, and that never failed to make her feline green eyes sparkle. “You rarely make any sense at the best of times, my dear Lord Bellingham, and I confess, I have long given up any hope of you ever doing so. If you weren’t so inextricably linked to my brother-in-law, I would have washed my hands of the chore of you last winter—but alas…” She sighed as if merely knowing him was a huge inconvenience. “You continue to linger on the periphery of my life like a bad smell.”
Giles took no offense at her words. In the last twelve months she had said far worse and so had he, because sparring was what they did.
“Then you flatly deny all of your insightful contributions toThe London Tribune’s gossip column of late?”
“As if the establishment would ever trust a mere woman to write the news.”
“But you are Diana—Goddess of the Hunt and Hunter of the Truth.”
She stifled a yawn. “I simply edit some of the stories for spelling and grammar as a way to pass the time. How do you aristocrats stand the monotonous boredom of an inane life of leisure?” Another well-placed barb that made him smile. She loved to put him in his place. Nothing here impressed her.
“And there I was, quietly impressed with your journalistic aplomb, but alas…” He stared at the dance floor, too, as if he were bored stiff with it all. “Had I known you had no real press credentials whatsoever and are merely a nitpicking grammarian, I never would have invited you here tonight. And now I am peeved, for if you do not smear all of this evening’s shocking scandals over your tawdry paper tomorrow, then who will?”
“A mystery, to be sure—but I am certain you will not have to worry. When one courts scandal like you do, Giles, word inevitably gets around.” She slanted him a knowing glance. “And fast, too… so your father is bound to be spouting steam from his ears in time for your audience with him tomorrow, exactly as you intended.”
Her canny intelligence always grated. “As usual, I have no earthly idea what you are talking about, either, Diana.” The more he got to know her, the more he became convinced she read him like a book, and that really galled him. Because Giles liked to think he was always the canniest person in any room and several paces ahead of the crowd—but she was always hot on his heels. Or more often, he trailed on hers. “Hardly a surprise when you rarely makeany sense at the best of times, either. You do know I only tolerate you on sufferance because my best friend married your sister, don’t you? Although it is still a mystery to me why he aligned himself with such a bunch of lowly commoners.” He pulled a face as he sipped his drink, even though his lips were twitching because he loved to put her in her place, too. She wore her common roots like a badge of honor and sometimes wielded them like a shield to ward off unwelcome attention. “We blue bloods must ensure the purity of our species, or civilization as we know it will end and chaos will ensue.”
Like him, she wasn’t the least bit offended by the insult. “Then you flatly deny going out of your way to annoy your father purely for sport?”
It wasn’t for sport. It was necessity. The only avenue available to punish the duplicitous scoundrel for all his many unconscionable sins.
