Scandal (2 page)

Stash funds? What the
blazes
was the solicitor talking about?

“ ‘If, and only if,’ ” the solicitor read on, “ ‘the new duke of Wroxly succeeds in this endeavor, will he be allowed to inherit the properties mentioned above.’ ”

“What the blazes
is
this?” Rein could contain himself no more.

The solicitor looked up, lowering the paper he’d been reading from to a position right above his well-polished cherry desk, the reflection of his nearly bald head a mirror image on the desk’s surface.

“This,” the solicitor explained, the glass in his spectacles turning almost white with a glare, “is what the duke came up with to test you.”

“Test me?”

The solicitor nodded. “You, Your Grace, shall live on your own for one month’s time without aid from friends or family or servants, and without using a penny of your own wealth, nor telling anyone who you are. You must live by your wits and your wits alone, and if you do not”—the little man tapped the edges of the will on his desk—“you won’t get a farthing of the money generated by ducal investments. In short, Your Grace, if you fail in this challenge, you will be destroyed both financially and personally.”

And all Rein did was stare, his hands clenching tighter and tighter until the fabric caught under his nails.

“Bastard,” he hissed.

Part One

Once upon a time a fair maiden met a prince, though at the time, she had no notion he was a prince….

Chapter One

In March of 1819, at exactly eleven-thirty in the morning, during an overcast spring day that blew blustery and cold, Anna Rose Brooks rendered the duke of Wroxly senseless.

Of course, at the time, she had no idea he was a duke. Indeed, seconds before the accident, she’d been atop the roof of her tenement—the two- and three-story buildings in St. Giles so packed together they formed a sort of field—cursing at her kite because the daft thing was about to sink onto the busy street below.

“No,” she told the triangular shape that hung in the air above her head, darting and ducking this way and that with a crackle of the canvas material. “You shall not do this,” she added, tugging on the string.

Blast it, she’d spent hours crafting this particular design, but the bloody thing kept insisting on zigging and zagging against the gray backdrop like a ball between two buildings, lowering, and then lowering some more, and then not lowering—diving.

“Ballocks,” she cursed, letting go of the string. She ran to the edge of the roof, her heart beating a disastrous thump as she watched her precious invention fall toward the carriage-jingling, pedestrian-clogged street below. A man had just stepped out of a carriage, his hat and walking stick firmly in hand. He must have caught a glimpse of her kite as he stepped out, for Anna saw him glance up.

What happened next Anna would swear wasn’t possible. Indeed, she would later tell her best friend Molly that it appeared as if the hand of God himself pressed down on her kite. Suddenly it took on the speed of a battering ram, and even from her perch way up on high, she could see what was about to happen. So, too, could the man, at least judging by the way his eyes widened.

And widened.

And then widened even more.

The kite whacked him on the forehead like a tree branch bent back by a mischievous child.

Thwack.

Anna covered her mouth. The man fell to the street, arms splayed like Jesus on the cross—without the cross. She stared, waiting for him to move. He didn’t. A passerby paused for a second, looked down, then stepped over him as if a prone man were nothing unusual in St. Giles, which, she realized, it wasn’t. The pedestrian walked on.

Others had begun to notice, too. Someone from across the street dodged traffic to kneel by the man’s side. Another person ran forward. When the first man looked up and crossed himself, Anna darted back from the edge.

And then the magnitude of what had just happened hit her. She straightened in horror.

What if he’s gone to kingdom come?

She lurched up, the cloak she wore getting tangled up in her feet, which made her step back, which then pulled her neckline taut, causing her to strangulate for a full three seconds before she sorted her feet, the garment and her wits out (though the last was questionable).

What if I’ve dicked him in the knob?

For a few breathless—no, panicked—moments she contemplated dashing off in the other direction. Hiding on the next roof over, perhaps, or maybe even pretending she hadn’t noticed her kite—a kite that was really an experimental sail—was responsible for the man lying in the street. But what with the myriad of carriages thumping and clanging about as they passed, pickpockets and goodness knew what else on the loose, she couldn’t just leave him there.

“Never seen anything like it,” old Ben the coconut trader was saying when she reached the street below—out of breath, marginally less panicked, but cringing when she saw where her victim lay: atop a stream of rotted vegetables, gnawed bones and bilge water otherwise known as the gutter.

“Knocked him clean off his feet,” he added. “Like a rider what got smacked in the head by a wood beam. Back went his head, up went his feet,
splat,
down he went.”

“Is ’e dead?” asked one of the market maids, the wilted purple flower in her bedraggled black hat bobbing as she glanced down.

Aye, is he?
Anna silently asked, approaching more slowly now.

“’E’s had ’is bell rung,” a chimney sweep answered as he knelt to check for a pulse, his ash-covered finger leaving a mark on the man’s neck. “But he’s not ready for a bone box yet,” he announced with a look up, his eyes two slashes of white in a sooty face, tall black hat matching his bedraggled jacket. “Pity. Like to get me hands on those clothes o’ his. Bang up to the mark. Must be a gent. Look at them shiny boots.”

Anna almost collapsed in relief. He would live. She hoped.

Old Ben looked up just then, his wrinkled face frowning, and Anna knew he’d spotted her. Worse, she knew
he
knew who’d been flying the kite, well, sail. And why wouldn’t he know? On the back of her invention, marked as plain as eyeballs, were the words, “If found, return to Anna Brooks, No. 7, St. Giles High Street.” But even without that, everyone in the rookery knew of her fierce determination to win the contest sponsored by the Navy. And that she’d been flying her sails whenever she took a break from selling her wares at Covent Garden. They had all encouraged her. But now that she’d bashed someone in the knowledge box, they might not be so supportive.

“You’ve done it now, Anna, lass,” Ben said, confirming her fears.

A glance down at the gentleman who lay there with his arms splayed out like that statue of Jesus at St. Paul’s Cathedral made Anna realize she had, indeed, “done it.”

“Look at the size of the knot on his knob,” the chimney sweep said, coming to his feet, which—as sad as it may seem—didn’t make him much taller than when he’d been squatting down. Anna followed his gaze, wincing at the red circle imprinted on the gentleman’s head and that very oddly resembled a sundial. An inch and a half in diameter, blazing hot in color, it was exactly the same circumference as the wooden dowels she used as a frame for her sails. Hell’s fires.

“Will he live?” she asked, coming to Ben’s side.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

All of them jumped back, Anna almost into the path of an approaching carriage before old Ben pulled her forward, the jarvis yelling at her as he rolled on by with a spray of mud and stinky water.

Green eyes opened, blinked, then closed again. “Tell me I am not lying atop what feels and smells like a rubbish heap,” he said, his aristocratic face flinching, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s. Or maybe it was the tiny flecks of mud that made him look like he had whiskers.

No one said a word.

“I take it from that stunned silence that I am, indeed, lying upon said rubbish heap.”

More silence.

“I was afraid of that.”

Anna inched forward, watching as her victim opened his eyes again, glanced around, his gaze alighting upon each of them like a dragonfly darting from lily to lily. She held her breath for a second when it alighted on her, but like that winged creature it didn’t linger, instead coming to a stop on Ben.

“What the blazes hit me?”

Ben, the traitor, looked at Anna.

The chimney sweep looked at Anna.

The market maid looked at her, too. Hell’s fires, had everyone put it together that she had done it?

Apparently so.

“My kite,” she said rather reluctantly.

“A kite,” the man groaned, his hand clutching at his head, his words barely audible over the disorderly noise of the street. “Rendered low by a child’s toy. Bloody hell.”

And then he laughed, though to be certain Anna didn’t realize at first it was laughter she heard. There was so much noise and confusion in the road—street hawkers crying out their rhymes, a dog barking as it darted between moving carriages, more than one driver yelling at the cur as it passed, their voices echoing off the tall gray buildings that surround them—that when the low rumbling penetrated her eardrums it didn’t register at first. But then the rumble became an audible guffaw, one that was abruptly choked off with a wince of pain.

“Well,” Ben said, “seems as if he’s recovered.”

“That ’e ’as,” the sweep said, melting into the crowd on the street.

And then the market maid turned and left, which meant Anna had nothing but noise to keep her company, that and wry green eyes that stared up at her, not to mention a knot of guilt as big as her ball of twine heavy in her stomach.

“Would you be wanting some help getting up?” she asked, because it seemed as if she should offer to do
something.

“A lovely idea,” he said, after which he moved onto an elbow, the muck beneath him emitting a horrible sucking sound that brought to mind body functions and leaky bellows.

“Good lord,” he said, pausing for a second. “Tell me that didn’t come from me.”

“’Twas the mud,” said Anna, squatting down near him.

Their eyes met, and suddenly Anna felt like… well, off balance. As if she stood upon a shore as a wave drew into the sea… as if the whole world moved at a blistering pace around her, but she stood still, alone, yet not alone. And then his eyes moved away and Anna came back to earth, or rather St. Giles, though she found herself blinking a bit and wondering what the blazes had just happened.

“’Tis me who smells, isn’t it?” he said with a glance at his surroundings, his hand lifting to his head, eyes widening a bit as they felt the bump.

She nodded. “Aye.”

He closed his eyes, tilting his head back, Anna watching and trying to glean just who he was, this colorful dragonfly that had landed in the mud and muck of one of London’s seediest sides of town.

“Good lord, this day just couldn’t get worse, could it?” He opened his eyes, looked heavenward. “You’re up there laughing Yourself into hysterics, are You not? Or perhaps You’re down there.” At which he glanced down, saying, “Bastard.” But when his gaze caught her own, his expression grew wry again. “I smell like a sewer.”

Who had he been talking to?

Oh, lord. She really
had
damaged his brain box. The ball of twine grew bigger.

“There’s an inn not far. Mayhap the bluffer will let you change there?”

“Bluffer?” he asked, brows lifting. He had extraordinary eyes. Green as the patina that colored an old piece of brass. Green like glass bottles when stacked six deep. Green like—

Lord love you, Anna, you’ve gone as crackers as your grandfather.

“Innkeeper,” she said, realizing that he was still staring at her in confusion.
Well, of course he’s struck all amort, Anna, love. He doesn’t speak like you.
For despite the mud on his clothes, it was as plain as pikestaffs that he was a gentleman. She’d never seen fabric so fine as his dark blue jacket, the collar covered in fancy velvet that looked so soft Anna longed to drag her finger across it to see if the nap would reverse. And though she hadn’t heard a person speak with the distinctive flat syllables and well-enunciated vowels of the hoity-toity in ages, she recognized it now, marveling that her own words had once sounded so pure and untainted. A long time ago.

“A lodging house. Capital idea,” he said.

“Here.” She stood, offering a hand, though she felt the usual pang of embarrassment she always felt at her work-worn fingers. She shoved the embarrassment aside, the smell of the busy street somewhat less cloying when inhaled from a distance of five feet three inches. He accepted her assistance, his fingers slipping into her own as naturally as a glove, his hand warm and soft and so large it completely enveloped her own from fingertip to palm. And as he stood she found herself wondering just who the blazes he was. He was so tall, and—she swallowed crookedly—handsome.

That was the reason why she’d reacted so strangely earlier. And it wasn’t merely a handsomeness of his dial plate, what with his arrogant cheekbones and aristocratic nose. Rather, it was something in the way he surveyed the world, in the way he looked around him as if he knew whatever he wanted was his for the taking. Power. That was what he exuded, like a bird of prey in the lofty way it hung suspended in the air over the world. And like that bird of prey, there was also a rapine air that made Anna shiver in… what? Fear? No, not fear. Something else.

“Who
are
you?” she found herself asking.

“I—” He looked down at her, green eyes narrowing for a second. His mouth opened again, then closed. “I’m afraid I can’t say,” he said at last.

Panic hit her square in the heart then, the organ slapping her chest with enough force to make it hard to breathe for a moment.

“Where am I?” he asked, looking around them.

Oh, lord. Oh, saints above. She really
had
damaged his idea pot.

“St. Giles High Street,” she managed to say, though it felt rather like her mums had gone numb.

“St. Giles?” he exclaimed, the well modulated words as foreign a sound as a Turkish accent, and then he winced. “Good lord.”

“Steady, now,” she said as he swayed on his feet, and she counterbalanced him with her own weight. It was then that she realized his walking stick and hat had been pilfered. Blast it—though she supposed she should be grateful that he hadn’t been picked clean like a piece of carrion.

“It seems as if I’ve been hit harder than I thought.”

Ach,
she thought,
it would seem so.
“Here,” she said. “Lean on me a bit.”

“My walking stick.”

“Gone,” she said.

He looked around. “So it is.”

“And your hat,” she added, in case he looked for that, too.

“Good lord. Who would take a hat?”

“You might be surprised,” she muttered, then gently pushed on his back. “C’mon, gov, I’m going to take you to me ken.”

“Your ken?”

She translated for him, “The tenement I share with my grandfather.”

“Would it be closer than the lodging house, by chance?” he said, looking suddenly pale.

“Aye.”

“Then I would be most obliged.”

“You don’t, by chance, live on the moon?” Rein asked a few moments later when they headed up yet another flight of spectacularly dirty stairs, the third set, to be exact.

He glanced down at the woman who’d added a crowning glory to his splendiferous day. Young, and obviously of the lower orders if they were in St. Giles. Lord, he still couldn’t believe he’d been dropped in such a place, and that his hat and walking stick had been stolen. But the woman before him seemed to be confirmation of the low place he had landed. She wore the uniform of the poor: gray cloak and battered half boots. Fifteen, perhaps sixteen years old. Too young to suit his taste, though in another lifetime when he’d been fond of lithe young things, perhaps not.