A Midsummer Night's Sin

He wore his most ingratiating smile with the ease of long practice and concealed the intelligence in his fascinating blue-green eyes. Everything depended on how he handled the events of the next few minutes, yet to the casual observer, he seemed affably stupid and as dangerous as a dandelion.

In truth he was on his guard, wary of these two gentlemen, whom he knew to be considerably more complex than just another pair of boring Englishmen, who might be able to trace their ancestry back to the Great Flood but couldn’t be trusted to otherwise know enough to come in out of the rain.

They’d been playing a game for the past quarter hour, speaking of this and that and the other thing, each pretending the other was anything but what they were. Who’d win this dance of wits and deception was anyone’s guess, but Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn invariably preferred to wager on himself.

“I do admire the English countryside,” Puck remarked, apropos of nothing that had been said thus far. “The area around Gateshead, for example, is quite laudatory. Why, I could wax on about the place for hours.”

Handed that sort of encouragement, Baron Henry Sutton at last cut through the aimless, polite banter, which Puck had known the man had been itching to do since his arrival.

“You’d blackmail us?” The baron looked to his friend, one Richard Carstairs, and said, “And there it is, Dickie. The bastard’s attempting to blackmail us.”

“Oh, hardly, my lord, although I must remonstrate just a little, as I see no reason to bring the circumstances surrounding my birth into the thing,” Puck protested, stepping away from the mantelpiece and further into the game. “I was merely reminiscing on my earlier brief acquaintance with Mr. Carstairs here, when we were both passing a lovely evening in Gateshead last year. Charming place, if a bit off the beaten track for a gentleman such as Mr. Carstairs. Jack, however, one might discover anywhere, mostly when one least expects to, and up to mischief, of course.”

Dickie Carstairs, a fair-skinned, round-cheeked fellow, whose rather soft body hinted that his main love in life would most probably be a toss-up between his cook and his next meal, turned to the baron, his eyes gone wide. “Hear that? He brought up Jack. Nobody’s supposed to know about Jack. His brother, for God’s sake. Bound to be as wily. Told you we shouldn’t have come here. Summoned. I don’t much care for that.”

The baron, clearly the sharper of the two, both in looks and in manner, turned to glare at Puck. “Your brother will hear of this.”

Puck’s smile only broadened. “Oh, yes, indeed, I’m convinced he will. Jack seems to hear about everything, one way or another. He’s uncanny that way, don’t you agree? We call him Black Jack, inside the family, that is. He’s the most romantic of us. Give him my best, would you? And how is— What was the fellow’s name? Ah, now I remember. Jonas. And how is Jonas? I would imagine the nasty man is toes-up in some unmarked grave somewhere far from London and a more civilized English justice, but then, I have a dramatic bent of mind sometimes.”

“If you’re hinting that we took him out and—”

“Dickie, that will be enough,” the baron said silkily. “All right, gloves off, Mr. Blackthorn. Clearly you’re aware that your brother and Mr. Carstairs and myself occasionally perform some small services for the Crown, as they become necessary.”

Puck held up his hands. “Rather a disposal service, I would think, and damned handy into the bargain. But, please, no more details. I would much prefer we remain friendly.”

“There’s nothing of friendship about it. You sent us notes revealing just enough information to bring us here, and now you want something in return for your silence. Correct?”

Puck picked up the crystal decanter and gracefully went about refilling his guests’ wineglasses. “Well spotted, sirs. Yes, that’s exactly what I would like. Something in return for forgetting certain events that transpired in Gateshead last spring and your presence there. Nothing earthshaking. A piddling thing, actually. I would like a small—not infinitesimal, yet nothing grand—entrée into London Society. A few introductions, taking time to be seen conversing amicably with me in the park, perhaps an invitation to accompany you two grand and socially acceptable personages to a sporting event. I feel confident I can take it from there.”

“Do you hear that? Do you hear that! I will not!” Dickie Carstairs exploded angrily. “A bastard, foisted on the ton? With our blessing? Unheard of!”

The baron waved his companion to silence. “Your brother Beau tried that, years ago. Tried it twice, as I remember.”

“Yes, I know, and with varied results.” Puck took up his place at the mantelpiece once more.

He had them, he knew he had them. When they looked at him, they had to see enough of Beau to know he wasn’t the sort to bow and scrape, and enough of Jack to think twice about doing anything to … upset him.

“I am not my brother Beau, gentlemen. Nor am I my brother Jack. We are all sons of the Marquess of Blackthorn, all born on that same, sadly illegitimate side of the blanket, but we are not all the same person. Beau, bless him, once assumed he needed acceptance. Jack rejects all of Society. Privately, I believe he thinks you’re all fools.”

“And you?” the baron asked, his eyes narrowed.

“And I?” Puck shrugged, elegantly, in the French manner. “I ask little of life, actually. I simply wish to enjoy myself and my fellow man. I am a rather entertaining sort, you know. Why, you might even find yourselves liking me. Now, would either of you care for more wine—Dickie, I see your glass is empty again—while we discuss our initial foray into the social whirl? I might suggest Lady Fortesque’s masked ball, set for this Friday evening. A trifle risqué, I understand, both the ball and Lady Fortesque, and most of the Haut Ton will avoid both, but certainly not above my touch, don’t you think?”

The baron, clearly a man who had weighed Puck and found him impossible to ignore, put down his wineglass and stood, signaling for Dickie Carstairs to do the same. “Isobel will most probably be delighted with the notion of such a scandal. I’ll see that an invitation is delivered later this afternoon.”

“Perfect,” Puck agreed, clapping an arm over Dickie Carstairs’s shoulders as he escorted his visitors to the door. “I will see you both at the ball then, won’t I?”

“But … but it’s a masked ball. How will you recognize us?”

“I won’t have to,” Puck told Dickie, thinking the man was a most strange choice for an assassin, as no one ever would have suspected him of having an adventuresome soul. “You will recognize me, approach me. I am, you see, pour mes péchés, rather singular.”

“For your sins? I don’t know if I like that,” the unlikely adventurer said, frowning as he looked Puck up and down. “I’ve been wondering if you commissioned that waistcoat here or over in Paris. Damned fine. I probably don’t have the belly for something like that. Or too much belly for it, at any rate, but if you could give me the direction of your tailor, I’d—”

“Oh, for the love of— Come along, Dickie,” the baron said on a sigh and grabbed the man’s elbow as Wadsworth personally handed over their hats and gloves and held open the front door for them. Neither man slipped him a copper for his troubles, but that was the quality for you, cheeseparing, when recognizing a servant’s assistance in a monetary way had saved many a man from having his hat and gloves mysteriously and permanently misplaced.

Once the door closed behind his departing guests, Puck looked to the butler. “That went rather well,” he said, displaying his pleased and pleasing smile. “Do you have anything interesting for me, Wadsworth?”

“Yes, sir,” the former soldier said, reaching into his pocket. “Found some scribbled note in the fat one’s hatband and copied it out here for you. Doesn’t seem to mean much of anything.”

Puck took the folded scrap when it was offered. He would never understand why so many men thought hatbands such a safe hiding place, but wasn’t it nice to know that Mr. Dickie Carstairs was so predictable. “Really? That would be too bad, wouldn’t it? In any event, you’re a jewel beyond price, Wadsworth. I’ll take it from here. Thank you.”

He unfolded the scrap and read its brief contents as he returned to the drawing room.

My apologies. Impudent rascal! Humor him, please. He’s harmless. Saturday, usual place and time. New assignment. J.B.

Puck smiled as he crumpled the scrap and tossed it into the fireplace. “Ah, Jack, and won’t it be lovely to see you again….”

CHAPTER ONE

THE LARGE TOWN HOUSE in prestigious Berkeley Square had come to Lady Leticia Hackett via her maternal grandmother in lieu of a dowry, and tied up in so many clever legal strings that her ladyship’s high-living, deep-gambling father could not sell it to settle his debts.

Reginald Hackett, Leticia’s loud, crass, uncouth, shipping-merchant husband, had come to her courtesy of that to-let-in-the-pocket father, the Earl of Mentmore, bartering her good name and impeccable lineage to the highest bidder, a climbing cit who suffered from the delusion that his deep pockets could buy him entry to Society.

Her daughter and only child, Regina, was a gift from the gods and the only reason Leticia didn’t imbibe more wine than the considerable amount she did.

The two women were closeted in Regina’s boudoir, the single room in the place, other than his wife’s bedchamber, Reg Hackett dared not enter. The last time he’d had an itch he wanted scratched without the bother of leaving hearth and home for the mistress he kept in Piccadilly, Lady Leticia had unearthed a small silver pistol from beneath her pillow and taken off his left earlobe with a remarkably precise shot. If she’d been sober, she probably would have missed him entirely.

He didn’t enter his daughter’s bedchamber because, although other than using his brain to lie, cheat and steal his way to a fortune, he wasn’t what anyone would term a particularly intelligent man, he did know enough to realize that Regina despised him.

And that was all right with Reg. His daughter was a commodity, rather like a full hold of India silks safely pulled up at the London Docks that he would sell at inflated prices to idiots who would otherwise be forced to do without. That’s what business was all about. Buy at one price, sell at another, higher price. He’d bought his well-born, titled lady, and now he would sell her whelp to a title.

The girl was pretty enough, if she kept her mouth shut, and Reg had a strong desire to be related by marriage to one of the premier families in England. Thank God she hadn’t been born a boy. He wouldn’t have known how to shop a boy any higher than he’d shopped himself. Regina should snag him an earl, at the worst, even if a duke was out of the question. When you’d been born in a gutter, being able to point to an earl and say “mine” was as good as ten thousand prime shares in the Exchange.

Reg was right about his daughter’s looks. She seemed to have been hatched entirely without his help, for she bore no physical resemblance to the man save a small mole just above the left, outer corner of her upper lip, which looked just fine on her, he supposed. For the rest of her, she had her mother’s dark brown hair with hints of red to it, eyes so blue they were startling and made dramatic by long, curling black lashes and winged brows above a straight nose so aristocratic it made Queen Charlotte’s look like a plum pudding in comparison.

Oh, yes, Regina was a beauty, all right. Cold as her mother, but what else was to be expected? As long as she kept her legs crossed until he got her bracketed to a title, that’s all Reg would ask of her.

“Turn around for me, darling,” Lady Leticia said, waving her wineglass in her daughter’s general direction. “It’s your first Season. We can’t have too daring a neckline.”

Regina looked at her reflection in the pier glass and put both hands to her neckline, tugging it higher. Her mama, bless her, had always been a little bit embarrassed about her daughter’s fairly ample bosom. She’d gone so far as to say it wasn’t ladylike and was a sure sign of the inferior blood passed along to Regina by her paternal grandmother.

Regina had never met the woman, who had died before Regina was born, but if there were anything wrong, lacking or overdone in Regina, blame could always be laid on her father, her grandmother or “inferior blood.” When she was five and accidentally broke one of her mama’s favorite figurines, she had been quite astonished when her mama had not accepted her declaration that, “I didn’t do it, Grandmother Hackett did.”

“The neckline is fine, Mama,” Regina said as she turned around, doing her best to “back” her breasts into herself, which she did by rounding her shoulders forward. “I’m very nearly acceptable.”

“You are completely acceptable,” Leticia declared hotly and then took another large swallow from her wineglass. “They have to accept you, they’ve no choice. I can trace our family bloodline back to—”

“Back to the fifteenth century, and the family fortune all the way to last Tuesday, when Papa once more had to pay off more of Grandfather Geoffrey’s and Uncle Seth’s gaming debts before they both could be tossed into debtors’ prison. Yes, I know.”