Ruined By The Reckless Viscount

God, was the sister cuckolding her husband right under his nose? And where the hell did the reclusive Lady Florentia Hale-Burton fit into any of this picture?

* * *

The blow came from behind as he was walking to the corner to hail a hackney cab, a sharp blinding pain that had him on his knees and clambering for consciousness, and all James could think of was that the danger Roy had spoken of had suddenly come to pass.

A boot came next to his face, the edge of the tread connecting with his lip, but the shock was kicking in now and with it came the strength.

Grabbing his assailant by the leg, James brought him down and within a moment he was on top of him, a punch to the side of the head having the effect of keeping the other still.

‘Who the hell are you and what do you want of me?’

‘Perkins sent me, from the Red Fox Inn at the docks. You have been prying around and he don’t like it. It’s him who sends us on to see who is asking too many questions.’

James realised this man was only a messenger boy, all brawn and muscle and no idea at all as to what this was all about. Letting him go, he stood back, watching the fellow collect his hat and move away.

‘Can I speak with Mr Perkins? I’d pay well for a few moments of his time.’

The other nodded. ‘If he wants to talk, you will hear from us.’

With that the stranger turned and disappeared into the night, leaving James to wipe the blood from his lip and find his own hat spilled into the gutter by the unexpected retribution.

His father’s death had rocked him and he had been trying to track down some of William’s gambling partners to get some answers. Suicide was a shameful thing and he could not believe that his father had killed himself. Two parents lost to suicide painted a worrying family weakness, though in his mother the failing was almost to be expected.

He swore again and looked up into the sky. A small rising moon tonight. It had been much the same sort of moon when he had kidnapped Florentia Hale-Burton. Clenching his fists, he lent back against a stone wall and felt in his pocket for both light and a cigar in order to steady himself. He wanted to see her again, to tell her that it had all been a mistake and that he was sorry for it. He wanted to take her hand in his own and let her know that he had not thought her abduction a small thing and that it had changed his life as much as it had ruined her own.

Like a pack of cards, one fell and then the next and the next until finally in the remains of what was left was the realisation that there was nothing at all of value or of honour.

His neck ached and he drew on the cigar, liking the way the red end of it flared in the night and his heartbeat slowed.

Florentia Hale-Burton had had asthma. He wondered if she still had it. She’d had a suitor, too, and a bag full of books. He’d heard her name mentioned in the card room at some ball. It was said that she had always been odd, but that if the Earl of Albany’s girls had made a bit of effort with their appearances they would probably have outshone every other woman in the room.

Perhaps it might be true, though the girl in the carriage had been either unconscious, furious or sick so he had no honest picture by which to measure this.

He did remember her face after her father’s gun had gone off, though, for she had reached out for him, her hands around his neck, trying to contain the damage, his blood between her fingers and her blue eyes sharp with pain.

They had both fallen then, out of the door on to the road, her body wound about his own, like a blanket or a cushion. He had felt the softness of her and the honesty, her hair falling around them in shelter until she had been torn away.

‘God.’ He spoke that out loud. ‘God, help me,’ he added as if in that second and under the darkness of a spring London night he had understood exactly what he should have always known.

Florentia Hale-Burton had tried to help him even after everything he had done to her. After all the hurt and the dogs and the chill and the fear. She had reached out and tried to stem the damage of the shot, placing her own body between him and his assailants and the promise of another assault.

The realisation was staggering.

Roy Warrenden had said she was timid and seldom left Kent so how could he meet her? To thank her. To make certain that she was...recovered?

His life seemed to be going into a vortex swirling around truth. The artist. Roy’s wariness. His wife’s fear. The sister banished to Kent after he had ruined her by his own stupidity.

But first he had to deal with Perkins from the inn at St Katharine Dock, for the ghost of his dead father demanded at least some attention.

Spitting out the pooling blood in his mouth, he stood, waiting for a moment as the dizziness lessened. He was on the right track at least if he was being threatened.

It was a start.

Chapter Four (#u45dc3348-40f5-5f51-93b9-1e30f835329e)

Winterton had agreed to everything Florentia had stipulated save the place to meet.

His note was in her hand, the letter stamped in wax and delivered that very afternoon.

His writing looked as beautiful as he himself was purported to be—a long slanted hand with an air of arrogance in the words alongside a tinge of question.

Dear Mr Rutherford,

I was pleased to receive your letter and would be most interested in your offer. I hope that my visage will indeed do your style a justice.

I would, however, prefer to have the painting completed here at the town house I am renting for the Season in St James’s Square. The light is good and I should enjoy it more than sitting for hours in the gallery of a stranger.

If you could give me by return post the time and day you would like to commence I shall have my carriage sent for you. Warrenden intimated you have been staying with his family on and off. Is this the location you would want to be met?

I look forward to our association on this matter.

Yours sincerely,

James Waverley

He had used neither his title nor his crest. The wax was of a plain sort one could buy for a smaller coin than the scented kind in any of the market places of London.

Not a man inclined to waste, then? Not a man who might lay his cards on the table either, for all to admire.

You should be careful of Winterton, Florentia. Her sister’s words came back. He is not a milksop lord who would be easily duped.

She swallowed. Well, she was not a milksop lady either. The shrieking sharpness inside her had been honed in anger for years and years and her kidnapper was a great part of that. To be thrown off into a netherworld and away from society made one more independent, more resourceful.

The commission of a portrait was a medium to understand Winterton, to weigh up her options, to evaluate which way her dice would roll and what pathway her vengeance might take.

Vengeance?

She had never imagined herself as a vengeful person, even the word made her slightly horrified, but if Lord Winterton was indeed her kidnapper then he had to understand the ramifications of what he had done to her, to her family, to her father in particular who had withdrawn to Albany Manor much changed after his flight north to save her.

Ruination came in a series of degrees, it came in sickness and sleeplessness and in fright. It came in the nights when she would wake in a sweat and wonder what else she could have done to make it different. It came in the mornings when she looked in the mirror to see the fear there lurking in her eyes and the dark sleep-deprived circles beneath them.

Maria had married and was talking of having children, but she herself had faltered, trapped in the horror of her history and hiding from all that it had exposed. She needed to see Winterton privately in order to understand what she might do from now on, what pathway to a better life she would follow.

Forgiveness might bring around absolution. She only hoped she could find such mercy within herself.

* * *

She’d dressed this morning carefully, in Frederick Rutherford’s clothes. She had jammed cloth down into the edges of her cheeks and practised breathing through her mouth so that her voice was more hollow and stuffed up. When she looked at her reflection she could barely remember the frightened woman she had been when she had first donned her disguise before coming to London. She seemed to have grown into the role in every way that mattered and was heartened by such a fact.