A Scot in the Dark by Sarah MacLean
He sat then, folding himself into a matching chair, his enormous frame making it seem minuscule. “Alec.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You may call me Alec.”
“While that may be done in the wilds of Scotland, Your Grace, it is thoroughly inappropriate here.”
“Again with the invocation of propriety,” he said. “Fine. Call me Stuart then. Or any number of the other invectives you’ve no doubt been thinking,” he said. “I’ll take them all before duke.”
“But you are a duke.”
“Not by choice.” He drank then, finally, grimacing after he swallowed the amber liquid. “Christ. That’s swill.” He threw the rest of the liquid into the fire.
She raised a brow at the action. “You disdain the title and the scotch it buys.”
“First, that should not be called scotch. It is rot-gut at best.” He paused. “And second, I do not disdain the title. I dislike it.”
“Yes, you poor, put-upon man. Having one of the wealthiest and most venerable dukedoms in history simply land in your lap. How difficult it must be to live your horrid, entitled existence.” He had no idea the power he had. The privilege. What she would do to have the same.
He leaned back in the small chair. “I spend my own money, earned honestly in Scotland. I have ensured the tenants and staff who rely upon the dukedom continue to prosper, but as I did not ask for the title, I do not interact with its spoils.”
“Myself included.” She could not resist the words.
“I’m here, am I not? Summoned south by my ward. Surely that counts for something.”
“I didn’t summon you.”
“You might not have set pen to paper, lass, but you summoned me as simply as if you’d shouted my name across the border.”
“As I said, I’ve no need for you.”
“I’m told the world disagrees.”
“Hang the world,” she said, turning her attention to the fire as she added, “and hang you with it.”
“As I am here to save you, I would think you would be much more grateful.”
The man’s arrogance was quite remarkable. “However did I come to be so very lucky?”
He sighed, hearing the sarcasm in her words. “Despite your petulance, I am here to rectify your alleged . . .” He cast about for an appropriate word. “. . . situation.”
Her brows shot together. “My petulance.”
“Do you deny it?”
She most certainly did. “Petulance is what a child feels when she is denied sweets.”
“How would you describe yourself if not petulant?”
Furious. Foolish. Irritated. Desperate.
Ashamed.
Finally, she spoke. “It is no matter. It’s all too little, too late.” After a pause, she added, pointedly, “I’ve a plan, and you are not a part of it, Duke.”
He cut her a look. “I suppose I shouldn’t have told you I don’t like the title.”
“Never reveal your weakness to your enemy.”
“We are enemies, then?”
“We certainly aren’t friends.”
She could see his frustration. “I’ve had enough of this. Why don’t we begin here. Settlesworth tells me you have ruined yourself in front of all London.”
The words, no matter how often she thought them herself, still stung on another’s tongue. Shame flooded her, and she did everything she could not to reveal it.
She failed. “How is it that the ruination is mine and not—”
She stopped.
He heard the rest of the sentence nonetheless. “Then there was a man.”
She met his gaze. “You needn’t pretend you don’t know.”
“It is not pretending,” he said. “Settlesworth gave me very little information. But I am not an idiot, and looking at you, it’s clear that there was a man.”
“Looking at me.” He had no idea how the words stung.
He ignored her. “So. You did not ruin yourself. You were ruined.”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” she mumbled.
“No,” he said, firmly. “They are different.”
“Not to anyone who matters.”
A pause. “What happened?”
He did not know. It was remarkable. He did not know what she had done. How she had embarrassed herself. He had only the vagaries of a solicitor’s summons and the boundaries of his imagination. And in those vagaries she remained, somehow, free of the past.
And, though she knew it was simply a matter of time before he heard about the scandal of Lovely Lily, Lonesome Lily, Lovelorn Lily, or whatever nickname the scandal sheets thought clever today, she did not wish him to know now.
And so she did not tell him.
“Does it matter?”
He looked at her as though she was mad. “Of course it matters.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t, though. Not really. It only matters what they believe. That is how scandal works.”
“Facts matter, Lillian. Tell me what happened. If they make it worse than it is, I will paper London with truth.”
“How lucky I am to have a guardian and a champion all in one,” she said, injecting the words with sarcasm in the hopes she could irritate him into leaving his line of questioning.
He whispered something in Gaelic then, something that she did not understand but that she immediately identified as a curse. He tugged at the cravat, tied too tight around his neck, just as the coat he wore was too tight at the shoulders. The trousers too tight at the thighs. Everything about this man was larger than it should be. Perhaps that was why he knew, instantly, her truth. That he saw her flaws so clearly.
Flaws saw flaws.
He returned to English. “We cannot solve the situation if I do not know its particulars.”
“There is no we, Your Grace.” The words were firm and full of conviction. “Until today, you did not know me.”
“I will know soon enough, girl.”
But not from her, and somehow, ridiculously, that was important. Somehow, it meant that she could be something with him she was not with others. “You needn’t concern yourself with it,” she said. “In ten days, my situation will be resolved.”
One way or another.
If she said it enough, it might be believed. She might believe it herself.
“What happens in ten days?”
The painting is revealed.
Not just that. “I turn twenty-four.”
“And?” Alec leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, fingers laced together.
And the painting is revealed. In front of all London.
She looked to him, ignoring the thought. It wouldn’t matter. She had a plan. “And according to the rules of my guardianship, I receive the funds necessary to leave London—and my scandal—behind.”
His brows rose. “That must be a great deal of blunt, lass, if it can erase you from memory.”
“Oh, it is,” she said. “I can leave London and never return. So, you see, Your Grace,” she said, allowing triumph into her voice. “I have a plan to save myself. No guardian required. I plan to run.”
She hated the plan. Hated the way it ended with Derek winning. With London winning. With the life she’d desired out of reach. But she had no choice. There was no other way to survive the scandal that would mark her forever.
Alec watched her for a long moment before nodding once and leaning back in his chair, dwarfing the furniture with his sheer size. “That’s one way of saving yourself.”
She did not like the phrasing. “One way.”
“Do you love him?”
She went pale at the words. “What?”
“The man. Do you love him?”
“I have not acknowledged that there is a man.”
“There’s always a man, lass.”
We were to be married. The tears again. Hot and angry and instant and unwelcome. She willed them away. “I don’t see how it is your concern.”
I wish I had
I wish—
I wish I weren’t so ashamed.
He nodded, as though she’d answered him. As though a decision had been made. “That is enough, then.”
And a decision, somehow, had been. She tilted her head. “Enough?”
He stood, enormous and somehow suddenly far more imposing—even more than he had been when he’d sent the door flying from its hinge. As though he were her king, and not simply a man she’d just met. And when he spoke, it was with a firm certainty that made her—for a heartbeat—believe his words.
“You shan’t run.”
Chapter 3
FALLEN ANGEL FISTICUFFS: SCOTTISH BRUTE SERVES BRUMMELLIAN BRAGGART SCATHING SETDOWN
Alec took to the one place in London that had furniture built to accommodate a grown man. That the place also came with scotch imported from his own distillery, a ring ready for a fight if he felt so inclined, card and carom tables, and a handful of men he did not loathe was an added bonus.
“Warnick returns.” The Marquess of Eversley—known to all the world as King—dropped into a large chair across from Alec. “Alert the news.”
“I am off the clock,” Duncan West, newspaper magnate, said dryly from his own seat next to Alec. “Though I admit curiosity, having been summoned by the Diluted Duke.”
Membership in The Fallen Angel—Britain’s most exclusive gaming hell—was by invitation only and had little to do with fortune or title. Indeed, the nobs who frequented White’s and Brook’s and Boodles’s were most often not invited to join the Angel.
King was a member, as was West—despite the newspaperman having had a series of public disputes with the owners. As he called the two men friends, Alec found himself welcome at the club without membership, a fact for which he was grateful. Even he had to admit that they didn’t make gaming hells quite the same way in Scotland. Or anywhere else for that matter.
Alec looked to King. “My thanks for the invitation.”
His friend raised a brow. “As you virtually demanded it, there’s no thanks necessary.”
“I required a good drink.”
“You could land yourself an invitation for membership, considering the Angel is the only place in London a man can get Stuart scotch.” King’s gaze settled on Alec’s coat. “Assuming you found a better tailor, for God’s sake. Where did you get that coat?”
Alec shrugged one tight shoulder. “Mossband.”
Eversley barked a laugh at the answer—a barely there town on the English side of the Scottish border. “It shows.”
Alec ignored the retort. “Neither London clothing nor London clubs are necessary in Scotland.”
“You enjoy London clubs in London, however,” West interjected.
“I’m not addled,” Alec said, drinking deep before he leaned back in a massive leather chair and leveled West with a serious look. The man was owner of five of the most profitable publications in Britain, three of which were widely believed to be the pinnacle of modern journalism.
But it was not the legitimate publications that interested Alec.
It was The Scandal Sheet.
“You’re not off the clock tonight,” he said to the newspaperman.
West sat back. “No, I assumed not.”
“It seems I have a ward.”
One of West’s blond brows rose. “Seems?”
“My solicitor failed to inform me of such.”
“That’s a rather terrible solicitor, if you ask me.”
“He took me at my word when I told him I was not interested in the London trappings of the dukedom.”
King chuckled. “He thought the girl a trapping? Christ. Don’t tell her that. In my experience, women don’t enjoy being thought of as such.”
No. Alec didn’t imagine Lily would enjoy that. “I know about her now, however.”
“Everyone knows about her now,” West said.
“Because of the scandal,” Alec replied.
“Because of her,” West clarified. “She’s widely believed to be the most beautiful woman in London—”
“She might well be,” Alec said. He’d never seen one so beautiful.
“She’s not,” King and West spoke in unison.
Alec rolled his eyes. “Your wives excepted, of course.”
His friends smiled broadly and West continued. “Miss Hargrove is also a curiosity. A beautiful woman attached to a dukedom, not officially out in Society, but regularly seen on the arm of one of Society’s most venerated peacocks.”
Alec resisted the distaste that came at the idea. “The source of the scandal, I assume?”
“You don’t wish to ask her for the particulars?” West said.
A memory of Lily’s obvious shame flashed. “I don’t think she is interested in telling me.”
“Mmm.”
Alec frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Only that they are never interested in telling us.” The newspaperman was married to a woman who had been something of a scandal herself—sister to a duke, unwed mother to a daughter who was now as much a source of paternal pride to West as his own children.
“Luckily, this one isn’t to be my problem,” Alec said.
“They’re always our problem,” King interjected.
“Not Lillian Hargrove. Unlike the rest of London, I did not know of her two weeks ago, and I have no intention of knowing of her two weeks hence. She’s to be the problem of the man who disgraced her.” He looked to West. “I simply need to know who that is.”
West’s gaze flickered to a faro table nearby, and he watched the game for a long moment. Alec followed suit. A man dressed all in white joined a threesome there, flashing a broad smile at the dealer and setting a massive amount of money on the table.
Alec looked back to his friends. “Who is that?”
King raised a brow at West, who sat back in his chair. “Shall I tell you what I know of your ward’s circumstance?”
Alec nodded, the faro table gone from his mind.
“There is a painting.”
Alec’s brow furrowed. “What kind of painting?”
A pause. Then King said, “Allegedly? A nude.”
Alec froze, the words summoning a great roar in his ears. Not words. Word. Nude. Long limbs. Full lips. High breasts. Round hips. Skin as soft as silk. And eyes like a silver storm.
No.
“A nude of whom?”
West’s hands went wide, as if to say, Isn’t it obvious?
Of course, it was.
Alec shot forward in his chair. “Allegedly. King said allegedly.”
West replied. “It’s not alleged.”
He turned on the newspaperman. “You have seen it?”
“I have not, but my wife has.” He paused. “Georgiana is on the Selection Committee of the Royal Academy.”
Alec’s heart pounded. “And it is Lillian.” West remained still and Alec grasped for another solution. “How do we know she honestly sat for it? You and I both know that scandal is rarely truth.”
“It’s true in this case,” West said.
“How do you know that?”
West cut him a look. “Because I’m exceedingly good at my job, and I know the difference between gossip and fact.”
Alec considered the woman he’d met hours earlier. Yes, she was beautiful, but she was not an idiot. He shook his head. “Not in this case,” he said. “I’ve met the girl. There’s no way she posed for a nude.”
“Love makes us do strange things.” King’s words were simple and direct, and Alec hated the ring of truth in them.
He did not want to acknowledge the truth. He did not want to imagine her nude for a man. He had enough trouble not imagining her nude, full stop.
Nevertheless. “So the girl is in love.”
It was the question he’d asked earlier—the one she’d answered without words. She hadn’t needed words. He’d seen the sadness in her eyes. The wistfulness. As though she wished the man in question t
He knew about wishing. And he knew, better than most, how false emotion could lead to some mediocre artist manipulating and mistreating her. He met West’s eyes. “Where is the painting?”
“No one knows. It is set to be the final piece exhibited as part of the Royal Exhibition in ten days’ time,” West said. “They select the best, Warnick. And this one—Georgiana says it is unmatched.”
“The most beautiful portrait ever painted,” King interjected.
“We don’t know it is her.”
“She admitted it, Warnick.”
Alec stilled again. “She did what?”
“She stormed the stage. Caused a scene. Professed her love. Was rebuffed. In front of all London,” West said. “That alone was enough to destroy her in their eyes, but there are those who believe she is a part of it. That she and her artist worked together to ensure that the painting’s reputation will precede it when it travels the country. The world.”
Alec cursed and shook his head. “Why would she do that? Why ruin herself? The girl is locked away in my house, waiting for the funds to run.”
Not that she would get them from him.
He’d seen women run. He’d run himself. And he knew what happened when the running stopped.
Lillian Hargrove would not run.
“She wants the funds from you?” It was King who spoke this time.
Alec shook his head. “In ten days’ time, she inherits pin money.”
West swirled the scotch in his glass. “Fine timing, as the painting is revealed in ten days’ time.”
Alec met his gaze. “What are you saying?”
One lean shoulder lifted and fell. “Only, imagine the Mona Lisa.”
Alec huffed his irritation at the exercise. “Who cares a fig about the damn Mona Lisa?”
“A great many people, I imagine.”
Alec cut him a look. “I grow weary of your obvious self-made brilliance, West.”
The newspaperman smirked. “You’re self-made, are you not? You only lack the brilliance.”
“A pity, considering the size of you,” King needled. “I suppose it is true what they say. We can’t have everything.”