Page 3 of The Duke of Deceit

All would be put to rights regarding his black reputation when they realized that the rumor of his generosity was a mistake. Some other duke had surely set up the donation scheme, and less careful people had simply confused the two of them.

Although, truly, how daft would someone have to be to think the Duke of Crewe was that charitable? Helping unwanted children…ludicrous.

When he returned to his seat at the front of the box, a small burst of applause at his appearance broke out at the edge of the house, only to die away into loud murmurs and whispers, all certainly about him.

He grimaced. The sooner this mistake was made known, the better.

Lucien let out a sigh of relief when the curtain rose to start the opera. In the shadows of his box, with the soprano onstage drowning out whatever unfounded whispers about him continued to rise from the audience, Lucien could finally relax.

After all, this was where he belonged—in the darkness.

Society thought him nothing but a worthless scapegrace and irredeemable blackguard, a libertine’s libertine who cared for no one and nothing but the pursuit of his own pleasures. The worst gentlemen in London society called him a friend, and he’d been permanently banned from Almack’s on reputation alone. Unmarried misses were shooed away from him by overprotective mamas—the same mamas who couldn’t wait to corner him alone in a dark room, lift their skirts, and beg him tosatisfy them, only to think him an even greater blackguard when he rejected them, which he always did.

He had worked damn hard to cultivate that reputation, too, and all because of his father, a man he loathed with every ounce of his being.

If a man could be pure evil, Richard Grenier had been exactly that.

The late Duke of Crewe had been a tyrant to his family—a monster. At the best of times, he ignored them; at the worst, he berated and cursed them. What he’d done to Lucien’s brother Phillip, though, by denying him his rightful inheritance and expelling him from the family, had been nothing short of absolute evil. At least his father had never raised his fists against his family. But then, he didn’t have to. He had all kinds of other ways of making their lives hell.

The old duke had also used his position as a peer to finance a criminal world whose activities were so heinous as to be responsible for the forced labor of children and prostitutes, smuggling, fencing goods—a web of illegal and immoral businesses that rivaled any which could have been cast up from the fires of hell. He’d even provided weapons to the French at the height of the Peninsular Wars, even as his own son was fighting against them on the Continent. An act of treason in every way. As with the rest of his illegal activities, though, he got away with it.

Lucien had vowed to be the exact opposite of his father in every way and cause as much trouble for the old bastard as possible…gambling, whoring, racing, fighting, even getting expelled from university—no small feat given that his family had donated enough money to the college to have a chapel named in their honor. In retaliation, his father had cut off his allowance, and Lucien had to make do with the only talent he possessed—fighting. So he headed off to the Continent to become amercenary. There, in mission after mission, he thrived. After all, no man was a fiercer fighter than the one who had nothing to live for, and the fires of battle compared little to the fires eating away inside him.

Even then, though, his father couldn’t disown Lucien completely. The old bastard still needed an heir to inherit the dukedom, and Lucien was all he had.

Ironically.

Lucien had returned to England only after his father died, where he quickly discovered the benefits of cultivating a black reputation. It kept at arm’s length people he didn’t want nosing around in his business, while others avoided him completely, as if immorality were as easy to catch as a fever. He was feared and loathed, and part of him knew he truly deserved it.

After all, he’d done terrible things in the war, justifying all of it with the belief that Napoleon had been the greater evil. Yet hundreds of men died because of his reconnaissance work with the Prussians. He never let himself admit it aloud, but the Prussians allowed him to do far more damage to the enemy than the British ever would have. At that point in his life, he’d wanted nothing more than to rain down death and destruction on whoever was within range, and he’d done exactly that.

What he hadn’t been prepared for was how those years of being a mercenary still lingered, returning unbidden in nightmares and at quiet moments, especially when he was alone. Memories of what he’d seen and done still haunted him and probably always would. But perhaps, if he could turn his heart just icy and black enough—hell, if the damned thing finally died completely—perhaps he would no longer care about what he or his father had done and could finally find peace.

Intermission jolted him from his thoughts. The opera house came alive as the audience rose from their seats and a smallarmy of attendants scurried through the building to provide refreshments and drinks.

Lucien pushed himself out of his seat. He wasn’t eager to leave his box, but he had no choice. After all, whenever the opera reached intermission, then his turn came to put on a play of his own. He had to act the part of a rakehell.

So he made his way out of his box and into the crowd where, as always, he would cast enough heated glances at willing women to let everyone think he’d chosen one of them to entertain himself with in his box for the next act. Occasionally, he actually did. And sometimes, he’d smile at one of the unmarried misses, as if he knew exactly what she hid beneath her gown, just to stir up trouble.

But tonight, as he made his way down the wide hall behind the boxes, no one moved away. Instead, the blasted bluebloods pressed in upon him, with proper ladies smiling at him and respectable gentlemen nodding in approval. A few even called out, “Bravo!” and “Admirable!”

Good Lord.He had to find out who the real peer was who’d pledged the donation and—

He pulled up short as the Duke of Wembley stepped in front of him and blocked his way.

“Well done!” The old man slapped him on the shoulder and grinned at Lucien as if the two were bosom chums. “I always knew the Duke of Crewe had a good heart buried somewhere deep beneath all that black ice.”

Lucien was struck speechless.A good heart?Oh, this was more than simply confusing him for someone else—

This was downright slander.

“You’re mistaken, Duke,” Lucien corrected as loudly as possible. “My heart is as black as ever and still frozen solid.”

Lucien slid past him and headed straight for the stairs leading down to the lobby and the main door. Best to leave.Now.The last thing he needed was for more people to think him a selfless patron. After all, selflessness led to goodness, and goodness led to likeability, and God forbid anyone shouldlikehim. Then they would want to converse with him about all kinds of topics, to have him attend their soirees and demand he host his own… They would infiltrate his life like an occupying force and discover all kinds of things he didn’t want anyone to know.

Yet despite his obvious hurry to leave, people shouted out to him, more women smiled and flitted their fans in his direction, and a trickle of applause followed in his wake.

He increased his pace.