Page 4 of A Wicked Business

Chapter 2

Dearest Cat,

Good heavens, love, don’t take a pet. I won’t eat him! From all I hear, Felix Knight is a big boy and well able to look after himself. My intentions, as you put them, are entirely honourable, well mostly anyway. I cannot tell you my plans yet, dear friend, but you will discover them in time.

The next time you see your brother, do apologise for me on my father’s behalf. I have told him again and again that Ashburton and I will not suit but he refuses to heed me. It was most embarrassing the way he threw the two of us at each other yet again last week.

―Excerpt of a letter from The Lady Belinda Madox-Brown to The Most Hon’ble Catherine ‘Cat’ St Just, Lady Kilbane.

4th July 1850, Keston House, Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London.

Felix Knight looked up at the immense building on Grosvenor Square and sighed. What the bloody hell was he doing here?

He knew the neighbourhood well; his parents’ property and the place he’d spent much of his youth was barely a five-minute walk on the other side of the square. The Earl of Keston’s home was not one he’d ever thought he’d set foot in, however, and he wondered if he’d lost his mind by doing so now. Assuming he was even let in the door. At least if he was kicked out, he could forget the whole thing.

He could only think the invitation from the earl’s daughter had taken into account her father’s movements and Keston would not be at home.

Though Lady Belinda and Felix moved in the same circles, and he had seen her at social events from time to time, they had never been formally introduced. The earl would have shot him before he made the attempt, and Felix had little time for balls and society nonsense any longer, having become more interested in growing an empire of his own, one that would rival his father’s. Not that he wished to pretend he was the greater man. In his view, his father was the greatest man who’d ever lived, and no one could outdo his rise from workhouse to wealth of such vastness it even made Felix feel a little giddy. Yet he was driven by the desire to make him proud, to repay him for being born into a life very different from the one he might have lived if his father had not risen in such a staggering fashion.

Yet, here he was, about to set foot in enemy territory, for reasons he did not quite understand. He wondered if it was her beauty that had called him here, for though he had not seen her up close, from a distance she had glorious figure, thick curling hair of a colour between old gold and the palest chestnut, and her profile was that of Greek goddess. Despite all this inducement, he did not believe her looks had brought him to her door. He was more curious, perhaps, to meet the woman known for her radical opinions, especially considering her father thought Felix should be a servant and not a dinner guest. Why on earth had she chosen to contact him, of all people, knowing how her father felt about him?

The letter he had received from Lady Belinda nigh on demanding he attend her had done little to clarify matters.

I need some advice concerning a business venture, which I believe may interest you. I would be grateful if you could find the time to call on me at home next week to discuss the matter in more detail.

Might I request you arrive in the guise of a morning caller, however, and not a man of business? Whilst I have means of my own and no requirement for my father’s permission, he would not approve of my scheme, and I prefer to keep the details from him. A mutual friend has vouched for your discretion and trustworthiness. I pray you do not let me down.

Not approve of her scheme, he thought with a snort of laughter. Well, wasn’t that the understatement of the century? If the earl had the slightest inkling his daughter had contacted Felix at all, he dreaded to think what might become of her. Perhaps it was this that had finally spurred him to come. He knew from gossip Lady Belinda was considered a mite too bold, too opinionated by many and that, while she had received plenty of offers, her constant refusals and inability to hold her tongue were damaging her marriage prospects despite her wealth and beauty. The men of the ton preferred their wives dim and biddable, the fools. Felix could not see the appeal of that at all.

When he had written back in answer to her letter, to ask about the nature of the business the lady wanted to pursue, she had become cagey, telling him she would only discuss it in person. Though he had not yet his father’s experience, Felix had inherited his sixth sense, that tickly sensation in his gut that told him whether there was money to be made. In his opinion, the kind of business that a person did not wish to discuss in writing was unlikely to be good for his health or his pocket. Moreover, dealing in any way, shape, or form with a young lady who was notorious for being proud, prickly, and overbearing—and whose father loathed him on principle—was a very bad idea, and yet here he was.

“You are out of your mind,” he muttered irritably before tugging at the bell pull.

He knew for a fact that Lady Belinda had turned down at least eight proposals of marriage in the last year alone, some of them none too gently by all accounts, and the way she had summoned him, even having the temerity to tell him to pretend to be on a social call rather than a business one, made him feel those rejected suitors were luckier than they could ever have imagined.

A surprisingly polite butler opened the door to him and took his card, managing to refrain from calling the dogs at the mere sight of his name, as Felix had half expected he might do.

“If you would follow me, Mr Knight, Lady Belinda is expecting you.”

Felix nodded, admitting he had done the lady a disservice by presuming she might leave him kicking his heels for half an hour before she’d deign to receive him. If she had, he had already resolved to leave before ten minutes had passed, yet it seemed no such posturing was to be attempted, which he tried to tell himself was a relief. Instead, he felt as if his last avenue for escape had been blocked. He shook the feeling off. If he didn’t like whatever business, it was the lady wished to involve herself in, he would simply bid her a polite farewell and leave.

So, following the butler, he found himself led through a home that was grand indeed, though to his eye verged on vulgarity. Every wall was crammed with priceless paintings, in every corner and upon every surface there was some feast for the eye, a masterpiece of artistry and show of wealth that became increasingly overwhelming and rather shocked Felix. Used to his mother’s exquisite taste and eye for style, his family home, opulent as it was, seemed far more understated and homely than this overstuffed museum and gallery. He wondered what it must have been like growing up in such a place and shuddered. He remembered that Belinda’s only brother, from her father’s first wife, was more than twenty years her senior and had been married before Belinda was even born.

Shaking off the disturbing feelings of empathy for a little girl living in such dismal surroundings, Felix reminded himself sternly she was a girl no longer and needed no such sympathy, and then he saw her.

The butler announced him at the same moment his gaze fell upon the figure seated on an ornate Egyptian style chaise longue covered in garish red silk. Her gown, in a vibrant shade of sapphire blue, was almost shocking against the scarlet and, for a moment, his stunned brain could do nothing but stare. He was given no time to recover, however, as the lady turned her head, facing him, and all the breath left his lungs in a rush.

Hell.

She was delectable. Every feminine curve called to him, to his covetous eyes appearing to have been made precisely to fit his hands, his body. Felix swallowed a groan. He should not have come. He ought to know by now that his instincts were not to be ignored. Somehow, he had known this day would bring him trouble and for once he did not enjoy being proven correct. This was the kind of entanglement he did not need and his earnest desire was to turn around and march straight out again, for he recognised in that moment something he had not particularly noticed before when viewing Lady Belinda from a safe distance.

She was trouble.

Lady Belinda Madox-Brown was the spectacular kind of trouble that would see a man either dead in a duel or leg shackled before he knew what had hit him. Neither option appealed.

Melting blue eyes, which she must know became a ridiculously beautiful shade when set against that splendid blue gown, gazed up at him. Her lashes were a thick sooty black, far darker than her hair, which in this light seemed to run the gamut from mahogany to honey gold.

“Mr Knight,” she said, her voice surprisingly deep and throaty for such a delicate young woman. “How good of you to call upon me.”