A Tale of Two Lovers (3 page)

With her story on Roxbury and his secret male lover, the upstart at
The Weekly
had won this week. It was all anyone spoke about in the clubs, or drawing rooms, or ballrooms or gaming hells. One by one, they’d raise their brows and lower their voices:
Have you heard the latest about Lord Roxbury?

The Man About Town was immensely vexed that he’d stayed in the dressing rooms the other night instead of lurking around backstage. But what could he say? There were dozens of ladies in various states of undress.

He pulled on his cigar; his course was clear. He’d need to find Roxbury’s lover, and he’d need to figure out whom that damned Lady of Distinction was.

But in the meantime, on the other side of the room, The Man About Town bit back a laugh at Roxbury’s drunken declaration. Naturally, he’d seen and heard a lot in his time, and it took much to amuse him these days. With Roxbury, the latest “Fashionable Intelligence,” and the Lady of Distinction, The Man About Town sensed that a fantastic scandal had only just begun.

Chapter 4

The offices of
The London Weekly

53 Fleet Street, London

A
n infuriating carriage ride in an ill-sprung and stinking hired hack blackened Roxbury’s temper further. After many starts, stops, hollers at insolent pedestrians, and unregulated traffic, the hack turned on Fleet Street and passed by four taverns, a few booksellers, coffeehouses, banks, and other shops before eventually halting before number 53.

T
HE
L
ONDON
W
EEKLY
was emblazoned in gold lettering on a massive wooden sign above the door. Subtle it was not.

Roxbury threw some coins to the driver, stormed across the road and through the door. First, there was arguing, blustering, and a bruising encounter with a gargantuan creature claiming to be the publisher. Roxbury was not fooled. Thanks to hours spent at Gentleman Jack’s, one swift, deliberate blow to the man’s temple cleared Roxbury’s path, though leaving him with a bruised and swollen fist. Thanks to the copious amounts of brandy he had just consumed, he did not register the pain.

Undeterred, Roxbury charged toward the office door of one Mr. Derek Knightly: editor, publisher, and owner of that wretched rag
The London Weekly
.

Presumably Knightly was the man responsible for the nefarious lies of the Lady of Distinction and would be held accountable.

“Sir!”

“Stop!” People were shouting at him. He cared not.

“You can’t go in there!”

Roxbury did not stop for the likes of those lowlife Grub Street hack writers.

Before
he barged through the door to Knightly’s office, Roxbury thought of nothing but the scandal, the lies, and the destruction to his life. His choices. His name. His honor.

A hot flaming rage got his blood boiling accordingly. He craved vengeance and would not rest until he had obtained satisfaction.

And yet,
after
he opened the door . . .

Roxbury saw the unexpected: a woman perched upon the corner of the desk.

She was a beauty. Auburn hair piled high. Her green eyes turned up mysteriously at the outer corners. Her skin was of the milky, creamy, want-to-lick-it variety, and she exposed much of it, from her smooth brow to her slender neck to the wide expanse of her décolletage.

There, or at the generous swells just below, Roxbury’s gaze lingered, and though his blood still pumped furiously within him, his rage abated. Slightly.

“I was expecting you earlier,” she practically purred, while taking a leisurely look at him, and practically giving herself away.

In an instant he knew who she was: that damned Lady of Distinction. She seemed familiar to him, from balls and soirees and the like. He had certainly seen her out, though they had never been introduced. But what was her name?

“Mr. Knightly, this irate man is Lord Roxbury,” she said to the man reclining in his chair behind the desk. The proprietor of London’s most popular and profitable paper was a youngish man with black hair and piercing blue eyes. She continued with the introductions: “Lord Roxbury, this is Mr. Derek Knightly.”

This green-eyed she-devil who smoothly made the introductions like the best society hostess was the architect of his downfall. That she—whatever her name was—was so at ease in this impossible situation rekindled his anger. This was not a matter to be taken so lightly or discussed politely over tea.

She may have written his demise, but he would not allow her to enjoy it.

Roxbury focused his attentions solely on Knightly.

“Fetching secretary,” he said with a nod in her direction, and he enjoyed the flash in her eyes and the hot flush in her cheeks. Irritation warring with vanity was such a pleasing expression on a woman.

“If you’ll excuse us, we have important matters of business to discuss,” Roxbury said patronizingly to her.

The ladybird alighted from her perch and stood toe-to-toe with him. She was tall, and almost able to look him evenly in the eye.

“I am not a secretary,” she said hotly.

“I beg your pardon?” He feigned shock. “What possible reason could you have for being here? Are you making the confession that I suspect you are?”

“Oh, how you wish I would,” she retorted, stepping back. She resolutely folded her arms over her chest, which did marvelous things to her breasts. Because of the devastation she had inflicted upon his life, he felt no compunction to look away and instead he treated himself to a long, lascivious gaze until she unfolded her arms and gave him a look sharper than a thousand daggers.

“Women do have the gift of gab and excel at inane, idle chatter,” Roxbury continued, speaking to Knightly and deliberately ignoring her. He was a quick study of women, and he knew that ignoring her would vex her tremendously. Plus, he could not afford to be distracted. “I’m sure that’s what you were thinking when you hired a female to author the column.”

“It was a brilliant decision on my part,” Knightly agreed from where he sat behind the desk, his gaze alternating between them. There was an amused gleam in his eye.

Roxbury was surprised at the quick confession, but the evidence was damning: high society darling in a newspaperman’s office, telling the most talked about man in London she was expecting him, and the flash of eyes when he accused her of such a lowly position as secretary.

“It was my idea,” she said. Roxbury continued to ignore her. He knew this type: meddlesome, tyrannical, and always right. Probably prude, too. For all of his love of women, this kind was never a favorite of his.

“Sales have been tremendous. Her column is a smashing success,” Knightly added firmly, and Roxbury understood him. Money was of more importance to him than the wounded feelings of lords and ladies.

“Yes, my
idle chatter
makes this paper the success that it is,” she added.

“Your idle chatter destroys lives and reputations,” Roxbury spoke sharply to her. For a second she seemed taken aback, as if she hadn’t considered that, which was ridiculous because she was clearly not a fool.

What was her name?

“It’s just gossip. You needn’t have such a fit,” she said with a delicate shrug, which infuriated him all the more. She could not possibly be ignorant of the consequences of her writing, and yet she couldn’t possibly be so hard-hearted to the suffering her pen wrought.

“A fit?”

She could not possibly think a man, such as himself, would suffer from something so trivial, so missish, as a fit.

“Storming in here, slamming doors,” she carried on. “I warn you not to cry, for that is surely newsworthy. What will the ton think of you then?”

A sissy, weepy, Nancy dandy.

Vaguely, he was aware of his hands balling into fists, and shooting pains in his right hand reminded him that he’d already used it for enough damage today.

“What will the ton think of you,
Lady Somerset
,” he questioned, relieved to have recollected her name, “when they learn of your secret life?”

The lady paused. Then she blinked rapidly in succession, suggesting a slight panic. And then, with another one of those insouciant shrugs she replied.

“It’s an open secret.”

“That cloud of suspicion and mystery does wonders for you, I’m certain. But what happens when Lady Carrington has confirmation that you are the one that exposed her daughter’s elopement? Or that you told the ton of Lord Wilcox’s penchant for wearing women’s undergarments? What of your reputation then?” He punctuated all this with a suggestive raise of his brow.

“You have no definitive proof that I am the Lady of Distinction.” She smiled prettily at him, and he was angered to discover that her mouth was stunning, the way it curved suggestively yet sweetly at the same time. He was horrified that thoughts of kissing crossed his mind—here, and now, and with her.

She moved away from him. He blocked her, standing up straighter and squaring his shoulders to impress his size upon her.

Lady Somerset barely had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye—and she did, fiercely, daringly. His own eyes narrowed.

“I have been publicly humiliated. The repercussions are massive and irreparable,” he said firmly. She blinked.

He took a step forward. She took a step backward. A few more steps back and they’d be up against the windows overlooking Fleet Street. For some strange reason, his heart was pounding.

“I sent you a letter prior to publication offering to withhold the information in exchange for a sum. You ignored it,” she said.

Newspapers earned a fortune in suppression fees. He would have paid ten fortunes for this item to never see the light of day. But he never had the chance.

She must have sent it to his home, a place he rarely frequented. It was probably still there, unopened, with all the invitations and summons from his father and bills. For a meager sum, this could have never happened.

If the phrase “to see red” indicated anger, then at this moment he was seeing a violent explosion of crimson, vermillion, and burnt sienna.

“You’ve been out in society for quite some time now, Roxbury. You know these things just blow over in time,” Lady Somerset said breezily, stepping away from him. Without a second thought he moved closer to her.

“I don’t have time,” he said through gritted teeth. Scarlet. Ruby. Wine. Blood.

“Oh? Why is that?” She tilted her head and peered up at him curiously. There was a touch of innocence to her, too, but he assumed it was feigned, given that she was a widow and a gossip and in a man’s office.

“You mistake me for a fool, among other things,” he told her.

“As much as I am enjoying this display of—God only knows what—I do have work to attend to,” Knightly said, bored, from the other side of the room where he remained behind his desk.

Roxbury turned his back on the she-devil and addressed Knightly.

“I came here for satisfaction. My honor has been grossly insulted. I will not duel with a woman. That leaves you.”

“A duel! You cannot fight a duel over this!” Lady Somerset exclaimed.

Knightly sat forward in his chair, his expression now intensely serious.

“I accept,” he said gravely.

“I would almost respect you, Knightly, if we met under different circumstances. As for you,” Roxbury continued, turning back to the buxom villainess, “you will print a retraction, and an apology.”

“Oh will I?” she challenged, with a lift of her brow and arms akimbo.

Oh, yes, he definitely knew her type: The female know-it-all. Most often found amongst the married, mothers, and widows, though some females seemed to be born bossy. This variety of female was mostly just irritating, but when combined with wit and beauty—admittedly Lady Somerset possessed both, in spades—she could be incredibly dangerous.

From his limited experience with this type—he tended to the pleasure-seeking, carefree, fun-loving sorts—he knew that to tame this sort of female was a tremendous trial, though it could be well worth it.

In the case of Lady Somerset, he would not bother. That did not mean, however, that he would let her run roughshod over him—any more than she already had, that is.

“You will,” Roxbury told her.

“Or what will happen?” she taunted. She stood with her hands on her hips now, drawing his eyes to her hourglass figure. His mouth went dry. Her head was tilted slightly to the side, tempting him to feather kisses along her neck and shoulders, down to the full, generous swells of her breasts.

Tempting. So damned tempting.

But this was war, and he would be victorious.

“You will print an apology and a retraction, or your secret will be out, and I shall wish you the best of luck filling a column about the happenings of high society when you are no longer received.”

Then he was treated to the rare experience of Lady Somerset speechless.

E
ven after Lord Roxbury slammed the door behind him on the way out, Julianna Somerset was still openmouthed and silent, and that was a rare thing indeed. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned to look out the window, as if pondering the view of Fleet Street it afforded. But she couldn’t focus because her nerves were humming, her heart racing, and her thoughts were a tangled mess.

Roxbury’s behavior to her was appalling, insulting, and deliberately provoking. She had never met him before, but she knew his sort, intimately, and did not care for it. He was a known rake, with a preference for other men’s wives, merry widows, and the occasional actress and opera singer to liven things up.

There was, too, the possibility that he enjoyed other more unusual inclinations when women bored him.

She had expected Roxbury to come storming into the offices after he saw the item. Irate readers and embarrassed subjects of “Fashionable Intelligence” frequently came huffing and puffing to plead their cases and make demands of Knightly. But Roxbury had been one of the few to get past Mehitable Loud and the first to demand a duel.