To Love a Wicked Lord Read online

  To Love a Wicked Lord

  Edith Layton

  To Martee Hensley, M.D., and Paula, and all

  the other good, patient, and kind souls at Sloan

  Kettering Hospital in New York City

  Contents

  Prologue

  The duke glittered. Sunlight streaming in the windows of his…

  Chapter 1

  So he’s gone? Just like that?” the thin young woman…

  Chapter 2

  Now,” Lord Montrose said, when their table had been cleared…

  Chapter 3

  The large swarthy gentleman sitting in a deep chair by…

  Chapter 4

  The flickering candles on the dining table’s top, the glow…

  Chapter 5

  I haven’t offended anyone, have I?” Lady Carstairs asked.

  Chapter 6

  Shall I congratulate you, or saddle up your horse and…

  Chapter 7

  Pippa went to bed in the dark and awoke at…

  Chapter 8

  After much thought and trying on and casting off, Pippa…

  Chapter 9

  What were you thinking?” Whitley asked.

  Chapter 10

  Isn’t London grand?” Lady Carstairs sighed, looking out her hotel…

  Chapter 11

  It’s impossible to be a wallflower in scarlet,” Pippa managed…

  Chapter 12

  She forgot one thing,” Maxwell said as he leaned against…

  Chapter 13

  The first thing Lady Carstairs did when she arrived at…

  Chapter 14

  I don’t know a thing about you,” Pippa said suddenly,…

  Chapter 15

  Now this is Paris, we’ve been to teas and receptions,…

  Chapter 16

  But I didn’t want to leave yet,” Lady Carstairs complained.

  Chapter 17

  I will admit that it might seem awkward to you,”…

  Chapter 18

  This,” Pippa said in wonder as Maxwell helped her down…

  Chapter 19

  Bad form,” Duncan said.

  Chapter 20

  Pippa sat in a chair in the blue salon and…

  Chapter 21

  The Chestertons lived in a huge old town house near…

  Chapter 22

  Your grandfather would like to see you in his study,…

  Chapter 23

  It was a perfect morning for a wedding, and so…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Edith Layton

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  England, 1783

  The duke glittered. Sunlight streaming in the windows of his front salon made his diamond stickpin sparkle enough to hurt the eyes and set the gold buttons on his waistcoat afire. The silver buckles on his shoes flashed every time he crossed his long legs. The sun lit his ice blue eyes until they looked blind and only capable of radiating light. That wasn’t why the boy didn’t meet his eye, or why he looked down at his own shoes. The dazzle didn’t bother him. He didn’t stare because he was very careful around his father.

  “Well, there he is,” the duke said in a careless drawl as he waved a languid hand flashing with jeweled rings at the boy. “My first born. You wanted to see him. Not much to look at. He has seven years to his name. Surprised everyone by attaining his great age. Sickliest infant the world had ever seen. Nonetheless, she doted on him.”

  The boy looked up at his father’s guest. The man was older than his father. He was mild-looking, soberly dressed, with an old-fashioned gray wig and not his own unpowdered hair pulled back in a queue the way his father wore it. But then his father was always in fashion, or so everyone said. Today he wore shining silk hose and gray breeches—and—but his son dared look no higher.

  “Good afternoon, Lord Montrose,” the older gentleman said to the boy in a kindly voice.

  The boy didn’t know the man’s title, and so didn’t know whether to bow or only nod his head. But since his father hadn’t bothered to introduce him, he reasoned that the old gentleman was lower in rank than he was. So he sketched a short bow and then stood still again.

  His father picked up a goblet of amber liquid. “Kind of you to call after all these years, Vicar. Kind of you to ask after my lads too. This one don’t say much. To tell the truth, he don’t do much either. Somber little fellow, always looking grieved. Always was little too. M’lady, m’ late duchess, doted on him. She was a fragile creature too. Made me promise not to send him off to school until he was ten. Ten! A new boy at ten? He’d be easy pickings for the older, stronger boys. But she was dying, so I promised. She quite ruined him, if there was anything to ruin,” he added as he drained the goblet again.

  The other man gave him a sharp look. Of course all adults spoke freely in front of children. But this was the lad’s own father. And his grace was getting thoroughly soused.

  “I knew your lady well,” the old gentleman said. “She was a fine woman, God rest her soul.”

  The duke waved his hand again. “Aye. Pretty as she could stare. A French doll. But she had no stamina. Died after birthing the boy.”

  The boy looked up again. He was a slight lad, with dark hair, finely etched features, and astonishing eyes for such a youth.

  The vicar gasped. “But he has her eyes, your grace! The very mirror of them!”

  “Aye,” the duke said, signaling a footman to refill his glass. “Big, brown, and with his soul showing through. They looked better on a female,” he muttered as he raised the refilled goblet to his lips. “This fellow has soul, all right, but no stamina. Still,” the duke mused, “if this one succumbs to some infection as she did, or an act of fate, there’s his brother. I’ll send for him, you’ll see what I mean. Two years younger than this lad and a yard stronger…I mean a foot taller. Solid as a rock. A different dam, but he’s his mother’s image too. She was a wild creature,” he added with a half-smile. “Beautiful. Strong. She had health and courage but chose to ride a horse that didn’t have any. Her son looks like her and has all the spirit this one lacks.”

  Nothing in the boy’s expression showed he was listening. He wasn’t heard and it seemed he could not be seen; at least, not by his father.

  The older gentleman squirmed in his chair.

  “Ah well, accidents can happen even to the strongest,” the duke murmured into his glass. “Certainly they can happen easily enough to the weakest too. Or at least, so one hopes betimes.”

  “Your Grace!” The older gentleman cried, half rising, forgetting his host’s higher station, and remembering his own offices. “The boy, your son, is still here!”

  “Is he?” The duke waved his hand at the child. “Go away, Maxwell. Tell Nurse to bring your brother to me.”

  The boy ducked a bow, turned and walked stiffly from the room.

  “Your Grace,” the older man said sorrowfully, “surely it isn’t meet that your son should hear you looking forward to some accident that might kill him.”

  The duke looked up blearily. “What? I? Never said such a thing. Dreamin’, Vicar, that’s what you are.” He slumped back in his chair. “Ah, I’ve got the megrims. An’ who’d blame me?” He ran a hand over his ice-colored eyes, covering them. “I’ve eight and twenty years and too much sorrow on my plate. Two wives within four years, both fine ladies, both dead,” he murmured. “And now, this new one and I don’t get on. I’ve no luck, Vicar. None at all.”

  After Maxwell Andre Sutton, Lord Montrose, told the butler to relay his father’s message to Nurse, he left the manor house. He was free. Father was drunk, and Nurse would be busy, and his tutor wa
s in the icehouse, tickling Dolly the undermaid. Maxwell made it his business to know such things. So he took the Whitt path, out of sight of the front salon, and paced down to the big square reflecting pool at the side of the house. He stared back at himself through the blur of golden fish that came swarming up to the surface to be fed.

  His brother was not a foot taller than he was. Duncan was the same height, only sturdier; at least everyone said so. But he himself hadn’t been sick since wintertime. His father’s words stung. They weren’t new. Nothing he’d heard was new. Except for the last thing his father had said. That didn’t make him unhappy so much as it made him very frightened. He sat by the pool, deep in thought.

  At last, he rose and walked toward the stables. The man he sought stood at the door to the barn, currying his father’s favorite horse, a pale thoroughbred. The duke said he liked to ride him because then he was a pale rider upon a pale horse. Maxwell didn’t understand this. It didn’t matter. His father never looked for his reaction.

  The man with his father’s steed was a short fellow. Stolid and solid, the strongest man Maxwell had ever known. He was gruff, but kind and fair.

  “Hello, Osgood,” Maxwell said.

  Osgood whipped off his cap and touched his forehead. Boy or not, this lad was the heir to the title. “My Lord?” he said.

  “I need a favor. A great favor,” Maxwell said. He raised his dark, serious eyes. “And it’s to be a secret, between you and me.”

  Osgood’s eyebrows went up. “Can’t promise that until I hear the favor you’ll be needing. Could be treason, y’know. Could be murder you’re planning.”

  Maxwell giggled. It was a strange sound coming from a boy who rarely smiled. It pleased Osgood.

  “It’s actually to prevent a murder,” Maxwell said, suddenly serious.

  “Whose?”

  “Mine.”

  Osgood squatted down beside the boy. “I’ll be your protector, if you want.”

  Maxwell shook his head. “A man has to be able to protect himself. You always say that. I’m being taught to fence and shoot like a gentleman. I want you to teach me more; all the other things you know. You always talk about how it was in the war against the Americans. I need to know how to hear people behind me who don’t want to be heard. I want to learn what you did from the red Indians. I’m not weak. I was, I suppose, but I’m not anymore. I’m not big, but I can learn. Will you?”

  Osgood nodded. He thought a moment. “You think someone wants you dead?”

  Maxwell shook his head. “No. I know it,” he said.

  “Who?”

  Maxwell remained silent, biting his lips. Then he blurted, “Can’t say. But I know.”

  “You sure?”

  Maxwell looked up at him. “Sure enough. And if I’m wrong, well, I’ll be going to school when I’m ten years old. I’ll need to know then, won’t I?”

  Osgood sat in thought. “It will be steady, hard work.”

  “I want nothing more,” Maxwell said.

  Osgood rose to his feet. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “Sunrise. Before your maths tutor arrives. Meet me here. Mind, I won’t be easy on you.”

  Maxwell’s face was illuminated. He smiled broadly, for the first time in a long while.

  Chapter 1

  Bath, 1803

  So he’s gone? Just like that?” the thin young woman asked incredulously.

  The young woman she was sitting with shrugged. “Like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Or that,” she added, opening her hands to show she had nothing in them. “He’s gone. No one knows where.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Quite possible. And true.”

  “Oh! Pippa, you poor thing,” her friend said. “But don’t grieve. He may return. It’s not as if he ran away from you. That is to say, who would? Why, even here,” she said, sweeping a hand to indicate the whole scene before them, “every male has eyes only for you.”

  Pippa looked around the room they were sitting in.

  It was a vast public room with high ceilings, tall windows that let the sunshine stream in, and chairs, tables, and settees placed everywhere. Most of the people in the room, at least those not already in wheeled bath chairs, needed a place to sit. The Pump Room and the Assembly rooms—actually, the entire town of Bath, had once been the place to gamble and gambol, as one wit put it. That had been in the last century, and even centuries before that, when the Romans were said to have built shrines and holy wells here. But time had gone on, and Bath itself had not. Now invalids from all over Britain, not just from the aristocracy, came to take the waters, rather than to play and amuse themselves.

  The hot, sulfurous-stinking waters at Bath were said to bring health. All that Pippa could see now was that they brought the ancient and the unwell looking for health. Her smile was sad. “Yes. Those males that can see; see me. Most can’t see anything farther than their noses though. Or if they can, they’re so old they can’t do anything about it. And those gentlemen who are under the age of fifty have eyes only for each other, or their wealthy protectors.”

  Her friend hid a giggle under one gloved hand.

  “It’s all very well for you, Adele,” Pippa said morosely. “You’re married, and enceinte. But me?” She sighed. “Oh well, at least I’m out of the house at last.”

  “Shocking,” Adele said, shaking her head. “That this could happen to you!”

  Pippa didn’t answer. To disagree would be foolish; to agree would be vain. She was neither. Phillipa Carstairs was absolutely lovely; so everyone had said since the hour she entered the world. She was now four and twenty, and even lovelier than ever, with silver-gold hair, tilted amber eyes, a small shapely nose, a mouth that was a jot too plump, and a slender figure that was astonishingly feminine. Any male that saw her saw that and often nothing more. She knew that, and regretted it. As for her own opinion of her looks: she felt it was silly to be proud of something she hadn’t actually done, and equally silly to be unaware of it.

  “It’s been seven months?” her friend asked.

  Phillipa nodded. “Going on eight.”

  “Well,” Adele said, eyeing her friend’s slender form, “at least no one can say you’re in the dismals because he left you with bread in the oven!”

  Pippa laughed as her friend blushed at her own outburst. “Not nearly. But he left me in a worse situation; I’m not a disgraced woman or yet really a jilted one. I’m nothing—just deserted almost at the altar. My case is an even a worse fate than being a widow. If he’d died and we’d already married, at least I’d be free in a year and pitied, instead of being wondered about and judged by everyone. I can’t end the engagement yet. I don’t know enough. I can’t see other gentlemen without seeming to be heartless either. There hasn’t been a word of him, or from him. Not a letter, not a message. He’s simply vanished.

  “The world’s in turmoil,” she went on, sighing. “In spite of this new peace pact with France, there are still spies and secret missions everywhere, or so Grandfather says.” She looked at her friend with a hopeless expression. “It would be one thing if he’d simply jilted me, another if he was met by highwaymen and killed on his way to London to get things in order for our wedding, as he said he was going to do.

  “But what if Noel is, or was, a patriot?” she asked. “I’d look fine, wouldn’t I, trotting about, partying with new admirers while he molders away somewhere. He may be in prison on the Continent. He may be dead, for all we know. He may have wed someone else. Whatever he is, or was, I can’t go on with my life until I know.”

  “You loved him so much?” Adele asked.

  Pippa shook her head. “I thought so. Now, I don’t know. To tell the truth I was dazzled by him, swept off my feet by his charm. He was nothing like the gentlemen I meet at home, and you know I never found anyone I wanted when I had my time in London. It had been years since London anyway,” she added sadly. “My life was slow and pleasant. I didn’t note the passage of time until Noel came to visit Grandfa
ther; and when he did, he brought energy and excitement to my humdrum existence. In fact, I didn’t even know it was humdrum until he arrived. Nor did I realize how many years had passed since I had come to live with Grandfather and Grandmamma.

  “But you see, he’d been everywhere, and he seemed to know everything. He woke me to the world again. He made me laugh, and not only that, he made me remember I was a woman.” She stopped and raised a warning forefinger. “But he never, ever trespassed or presumed. He was always a perfect gentleman. He was handsome, well groomed, and well educated. He made me feel as if he’d been waiting to meet me as long as I’d been waiting for him. Which was ridiculous, of course. But I was thrilled that he actually wanted me. I was eager to be married to him and be off to see his glittering world for myself.”

  She shrugged. “Grandfather approved. Noel’s credentials were good, and though he was an orphan like me, he came from old stock. We put the notice in the papers, set the day, posted the banns. We had a great party to celebrate and invited everyone in the district and beyond. In fact, I invited you.”

  Adele blushed again. “I was newlywed, Pippa, and going on my wedding trip. The Lake District was lovely.”

  “I imagine,” Pippa said. “But we had a fine party for our engagement. The last party I attended, actually. Because after it, Noel said he had some business to take care of before the wedding, and he rode off. He never came back. Too much time has passed with no word of him or from him.”

  Pippa’s hands closed to small fists. “I can’t even grieve for him. I don’t know whether to hate him or weep for him. Did he desert me willingly? Or was he compelled? How shall I ever know? It’s unbearable. Seven months, Adele! I’ve been living in waiting. I must move on. That’s why we’re here. Grandmamma said that the cream of Society comes here, and if anyone knows anything about his travels or his disappearance, this would be the place to find out about it.”