Page 8 of The Duke of Deceit

To make her point, she gestured a knitting needle at the large painting over the fireplace. It rendered the English countryside in a mix of watercolors and oils, complete with red poppies peeking out from tufts of green grass, sweeping hills, and honeycomb-yellow cottages scattered across the dale. Jess had painted it that past spring. It was one of her best, even if no one wanted to purchase it, which was why it now hung over their own fireplace instead of someone else’s.

“No matter how much of a scoundrel he is, Crewe is still a duke, and eventually he will still marry the daughter of another duke or an earl—perhaps even a foreign princess. At the very least, the only child of a wealthy industrialist.” She pointed her knitting needle at Jess. “Not someone like your sister, who is none of those things. In your heart, you know it, too.”

For the first time in their conversation, words failed her, and Jess could only return Auntie’s brutally honest gaze.

“In my experience, men like Crewe have no scruples whatsoever when it comes to women. They’re perfectly willing to dally with misses like your sister, even compromise them, just for their own amusements. But dallying is a very long way from marriage, even if that dalliance results in a child. A man like Crewe would never make your sister his duchess.”

Jess blinked hard, otherwise remaining perfectly still.

“Please understand.” Auntie’s voice softened to a motherly purr. “I’m certain he found her attractive, her company very pleasing. I’m certain he liked her a great deal. How could henot? But women like us simply do not marry peers. And that, my dearest, is the way of the world. It’s cruel and utterly unfair, and there’s not one thing we can do to change it.”

Not if Jess had her way.

She pushed herself off the settee and returned to her desk so Matilda wouldn’t see the quick swipe of her hand across her eyes.

“Hewillmarry her, dukedom or not.” Jess wouldn’t fail her sister again. She and her temper might have been the reason that Leopold St Claire abandoned them, but since then, she had served as mother, father, sister, and best friend to Amanda. She’d been her protector and her champion in all things. She wouldnotfail, not in this. “You’ll see. By month’s end, Crewe will be making vows to Amanda in St George’s.”

With newfound determination, Jess picked up her quill and struck out the third item on her list.

“You’re playing with fire,” Auntie warned, her words emerging in time to the click-clacking of her needles.

“Perhaps,” Jess grudgingly agreed.

But she had no intention of getting burned.

Chapter Three

Damnation, 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 gleamof 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. Andthat, 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.