Lord Scoundrel Dies

Kate Harper

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CopyrightKateHarper@2012

http://www.kate-harper.com

Prelude

One night, in a private room at the
Pharaoh’s Club…

Maria, Lady Kirkiven was a beautiful woman
with a wide, sensuous mouth that seemed born to smile. It was not
smiling now. Instead the corners drooped as she tried to take in
what her paramour, Lord Sutton, was saying to her.

‘But… I don’t understand. Arthur darling, we
love each other!’

‘The thing is, my dear, I love myself far
more than I could ever love you.’ Lord Arthur Sutton eyed the woman
who, just moments before, had been lying languid and willing in his
arms. He could have waited until they had finished the business she
was so clearly eager to engage in but he enjoyed this moment just
as much as the other and making love to Maria had begun to pall. So
needy. So desperate to hear those sweet, tender words of
reassurance that her husband, Lord Kirkiven, the Earl of Montessor,
was clearly unwilling to say. Women were all the same, really and
he took pleasure in that moment when the look in their eyes
changed, moving from disbelief to anger to despair. Maria had even
fancied herself in love with him.

It was too amusing.

‘But Arthur…’ she was stunned, truly taken
aback by the sudden turn that her night had taken. She had been
anticipating wild passion but instead, he had given her an
unpleasant surprise. ‘You love me.’

‘No,’ Sutton corrected her gently. ‘I really
don’t.’

Maria rose unsteadily to her feet,
unnaturally awkward as the divan was rather low. She took several
steps back, almost swaying, her hand creeping up to her breast. She
really was a fine looking woman. True, she was no longer in the
first blush of youth but her lines had retained the softness of
earlier years and he preferred his lovers to be a little older most
of the time. They were ripe and willing and oh so desperate to give
– and receive – pleasure. The dénouement, when they realised he had
been using them, had, in fact, betrayed them, generated a mix of
emotions; fury, tears and often very vocal recriminations. This
private room at the Pharaoh’s Club was well insulated, however.
Arthur thought of everything. And, if they made too much noise he
was not averse to quieting them.

‘Arthur’ – her voice broke on the word.

Sutton remained unmoved. ‘I don’t want much,
my dear. Just a little annuity. Say… thirty pounds a month?’ It was
a tidy sum but then, she was a rich woman.

‘You want me to pay you
every
month
?’ She
still sounded dazed, as if she couldn’t quite take it
in.

‘Indeed. A man has his expenses. Those
flowers I have been buying you. And that bracelet last week. Life
is not cheap, my dear. A man has to be careful.’ He watched with
some amusement as the emotions shuffled across her face. She was
beginning to grasp that the man she had been having an affair with
for the past month was not what he seemed to be. It would still
take some time, but he was confident that she would get her head
around the unpalatable truth before too much time passed. It was
one of the reasons he did not soften the blow. The other reason, of
course, was that he enjoyed inflicting pain.

‘You’re
disgusting
,’ she whispered, her face
unnaturally white. ‘How could you do this, knowing how I feel about
you?’

‘I don’t care how you feel,’ he explained.
This wasn’t strictly true. Sutton had been a long time coming into
an inheritance that hadn’t, strictly speaking, been his to inherit.
A well-placed death, here and there, had seen him come into the
title and it had brought all the trappings of wealth and the innate
respectability that the wealthy enjoyed. Unfortunately, his first
thirty years had scarred him for they had been spent a little too
hand to mouth for comfort. His only advantage had been his
exceptional good looks and he had used them to his benefit, playing
up to the women who had helped to support tastes that were a little
too lavish for a man of such limited means. He had hated depending
on others. Now he had achieved financial independence he enjoyed
inflicting pain on those who had once looked down on him. The women
who were so desperate for amusement and starved for love. Pathetic
creatures, all of them. And the men with their supercilious
attitudes and the casual self-assurance that impeccable birth had
unthinkingly bestowed. His mother had not been as top drawer as she
might have been and there had always been the suggestion of the
shop clinging to Arthur Sutton.

It was interesting how none of that mattered
when he inherited a title and an income.

He didn’t need the money he blackmailed out
of his victims. He didn’t need to steal the jewelry that clung to
the white skin of males and females alike. And he probably didn’t
need the influence that holding another’s dirty little secrets gave
him; the gambling debts, the ardent love letters, the wicked
indiscretions that were as much a part of Society as was Almack’s
and those institutions that were gentlemen’s clubs.

But he enjoyed such things
too much to ever stop now. The fear, the knowledge that he could
destroy somebody with a few well placed words. Reputation was
everything among the
ton
and he could deprive somebody of theirs all too
easily.

‘Poor Maria,’ he said
mournfully as she continued to stare at him like a wounded fawn.
‘This is all quite painful, I’m sure, but let me assure you that
thirty pounds a month is so much
less
painful than that dry stick of a
husband discovering that you’ve been playing him false. This is a
salutary lesson for you, my dear. Next time you choose a lover, be
sure that he is a nice man. For I am not. Quite the opposite, in
fact. Something a great many other people have discovered to their
cost.’

‘I hate you!’ Maria, Lady Kirkiven said,
voice low and vibrant with revulsion. ‘My God, you… you are a
viper. One day you will pay for such cruelty. I swear to God, I
wish I could make you pay myself.’

They often said that, Lord Sutton reflected
sardonically. Threats and imprecations, pleading and endless
histrionics.

Pathetic creatures, all of them.

They deserved every misfortune that came
their way.

Chapter One

At an elegant town house in St James
Square…

‘All you need do is find my necklace and
come home again. I’m sure it will hardly take any time at all. I
would do it myself, but…’

But you would be paralyzed with terror long
before you set foot over Lord Sutton’s threshold.

Harry eyed her cousin with gloomy
satisfaction. If ever a girl was destined to land herself in a
muddle, it was Sarah Astley who was charming, feckless and entirely
self-absorbed. She was also rather sweet when she remembered to be
and had been particularly good to her green cousin since Harry had
arrived in London.

She should have known that
Sarah’s insistence in having a post breakfast
tête-à-tête
could not bode well. The
girl had been skittish since sitting down at the table and had
hardly eaten a thing, sliding quick, agonized looks at Harry that
suggested something untoward had happened. Which was extraordinary,
as her cousin had only been gone for one night, staying with her
great good friend, Iris Lyndon. As Harry had felt a headache coming
on, she had gone to bed early the previous evening and so had
missed her cousin’s return. Breakfast was their first encounter and
one glance had been enough to tell Harry that something was amiss.
She did not have to wait long to discover what it was. As soon as
the meal was over, Sarah commandeered her, practically dragging her
up to her bedchamber. The moment the door was shut behind them, the
disaster had tumbled out in a welter of half-teary words that had
taken Harry aback.

It had taken some time to untangle the story
but after some minutes, she thought she had the measure of it.

‘Just one more time if you
please,’ Harry said, just to be sure. ‘
How
did Lord Sutton come to be in
possession of the Astley necklace?’

Sarah flinched again as mortification
colored her cheeks. This part was singularly embarrassing and she
did not want to elaborate on it, which was why she had glossed over
the details. Unfortunately, if she wanted Harry’s help she had no
choice but to elaborate. She had been every kind of fool and she
just had to fess up to it.

‘We were dancing together –’

‘You and Lord Sutton?’

‘Yes. He is frightfully good looking, really
the handsomest man in London and I was rather thrilled when he
asked me to dance. Twice in one night. Can you imagine?’

‘I don’t want to imagine and I’m surprised
Mrs. Lyndon allowed it. I know that Aunt Margaret would have forbid
it, had she been there. The man is singularly shady.’

‘Mrs. Lyndon does not fuss
like Mama does. And if Mama
had
been there I wouldn’t have been wearing the Astley
necklace and there wouldn’t be a problem. It’s all so
vexing
. Honestly, I only
borrowed it for the night. I intended to put it back again this
morning and nobody would have been the wiser. And I don’t know how
you can possibly know that Lord Sutton is… is shady. You’ve only
been in London for two weeks.’

‘One meeting was more than enough. Anybody
could tell he was completely smoky.’

‘Mama said you were not to say things like
that,’ Sarah scolded.

‘Shall we dwell on what she has said to you
about flirting with unsuitable men?’ her loving cousin retorted
sweetly.

‘Anyway
, we were dancing and somehow we ended up in a less populated
corner of the room when the music stopped –.’

‘And how
that
didn’t set off
warning bells is beyond me.’

‘You are not making this easy,’ Sarah
snapped, exasperated.

‘I didn’t know I was supposed to.’

‘Yes, well… somehow, his cuff became tangled
in my hair –’

‘Was this after he dived in
for a kiss? That he shouldn’t have been getting, in the first
place. And my relatives consider
me
unsatisfactory!’

Sarah flushed. Her cousin had divined the
circumstances very accurately. Breathless from the dance and warmed
through from the heat in Lord Sutton’s wicked dark eyes, Sarah had
been so carried away that she had actually allowed him to dance her
away from the crowd. Just for a moment, she had promised herself
dazedly. Just so she could experience the thrill of having such a
man make a little lighthearted love to her. Rumor had it that he
was very good at that kind of thing and she knew very well that her
rival, Caroline French, thought Lord Sutton delicious. It had been
difficult to resist both the man and the opportunity to aggravate
her old enemy.