The Scoundrel's Lover
Read The Scoundrel's Lover Online
Authors: Jess Michaels
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #Regency, #General
The Notorious Flynns Book 2
Copyright © Jesse Petersen, 2015
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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For Michael, for every day and all the ways you make my life better.
April 1814
The rain slid down the windowpanes like tears down a woman’s face, and Annabelle Flynn turned away with a shudder. She didn’t want to think about weeping at present. She didn’t want to think about heartbreak or failure or humiliation either. Not on the eve of her first Season in the highest of Society. Instead, she smiled at her brother Rafe and his wife of less than a year, Serafina.
It was hard
not
to smile at them, standing across the room, heads close together. Her once-rakish brother’s hand rested protectively on the swell of his pregnant wife’s belly as they waited for their son or daughter to kick again. They were the picture of domestic bliss and true, passionate love.
Things Annabelle didn’t want, nor expect, as she prepared herself to wade into the deep waters of the
ton
.
“Serafina, do you have any advice for tomorrow’s ball?” she asked.
Her sister-in-law blushed as she looked up from her belly. But it was her brother who laughed.
“You do not ask me?” he teased as he managed to remove himself from his wife’s side. “The duke? Your chaperone?”
Annabelle rolled her eyes. “Your title is only good to gain
entre
, my dear brother. But you’ve not yet been a duke for a year, so what would you know?”
He staggered back, gripping his chest with both hands as if he had been shot. Annabelle saw Serafina flinch a little at his playful act. Her brother
had
been shot not long ago and his wife still thought of that day, as she had told Annabelle time and again.
“You wound me,” he teased. Then he shrugged and walked to the sideboard to fetch a glass of port. “But you are correct. My wife is certainly the better guide for you.”
Serafina moved toward Annabelle, taking her hands gently. Annabelle smiled. She had grown deeply fond of Rafe’s wife over the months. They had become friends and sisters of the heart as well as marriage. It was a lucky thing, no doubt, as Annabelle had friends who despised the mates of their siblings.
“You and I have gone over the rules and expectations so many times since you announced your interest in a Season—you know them like your own hand,” Serafina reassured her. “Be your lovely self beyond those rules and no one could dare do anything but adore you.”
Annabelle kept a smile plastered to her face, but inside her heart sank.
Be herself
. Oh no. That was the very last thing she would ever be. The last thing she would show anyone.
Herself was a very dangerous creature indeed. One best kept hidden.
“I do wish you could be there,” she sighed.
Serafina touched her belly again. “I show too much, or I would.” She smiled at Rafe. “But your brother has been reminded to be on his best behavior. And you have become friends with Miss Georgina Hickson. She won’t steer you wrong.”
Annabelle nodded. She had met Georgina at one of Serafina’s gatherings a few months ago. The daughter of a younger son of the Marquis of Willowbath, Georgina was well versed in everything Society. They had become friends of a sort.
So she would not be alone. Even though it sometimes felt very much that way.
Annabelle shook off her thoughts when she caught Serafina watching her closely. It would not do to worry her sister-in-law.
“Mother was very sorry she couldn’t make it with me tonight,” she said as a way to change the subject. “She has not been sleeping well and is overly tired.”
Rafe’s smile fell at that statement. “Yes, she didn’t look well rested the last time we called. What keeps her up?”
Annabelle arched a brow and met his questioning stare head-on. “Would you care to hazard a guess?”
Rafe let out a long breath. “Crispin?”
“Our brother’s troubles seem to mount each day. I have never seen him so wild.”
Serafina dipped her head, guilt clear on her face. “Since we married, he does seem to struggle.”
Rafe turned on his wife and shook his head. “Crispin’s decisions are his own. Do not take responsibility for them, my love.”
“It’s true,” Annabelle tried to reassure Serafina as she reached out to squeeze her sister-in-law’s hand. “Our brother has been adrift for some time. You and your marriage did not change that.”
“Only magnified it,” Serafina said softly.
Rafe shrugged. “He will overcome it, he always has.”
Annabelle tensed. That was what Rafe had been saying for months, and yet she didn’t feel that Crispin was
overcoming
anything.
“How can we help him? What should we do?” Annabelle asked.
“There is nothing we can do. If Crispin wants to wreck himself, all we can do is wait for him to come to his senses.”
He paced away, and Annabelle’s shoulders rolled forward. She’d had this conversation with Rafe, Serafina and her mother enough times that she knew her brother wouldn’t change his thoughts. He had always been so close to Crispin that Annabelle feared Rafe might be blind to the truth. At least the truth that
she
could see.
Their brother was spiraling out of control, to his detriment, but also potentially to her own. Their family’s tenuous inroad into societal acceptance was predicated on Rafe’s newfound title, inherited the year before from their rotten cousin.
But Annabelle’s chance at a good match and a calm and ordinary future hinged on behavior as well as rank. Both her brothers had endangered her standing before and Crispin might do so again if his antics grew too out of control.
She didn’t want to see either of them hurt by his current woes.
Serafina wrapped an arm around her and drew her back to the present. “Will you stay with us tonight?”
Annabelle smiled. It had become a common occurrence for her to sleep at Rafe and Serafina’s, chatting half the night and enjoying long mornings at Serafina’s side.
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “I have heard from Rafe that you are now finished with the nursery.”
Serafina’s face lit up, and her beauty, which had always been at the highest level, was almost too much to look at. “We have.”
“I would love to see it,” Annabelle said as she took her sister-in-law’s arm and hugged her.
“Come then,” Serafina said as she led her from the room with Rafe at their heels. “I am interested in your opinion on the colors.”
But as Annabelle smiled and nodded at Serafina’s joyful descriptions of her future child’s chamber, she couldn’t help but have her thoughts wander again. And again they landed on deep and abiding fears that her Season’s debut would be nothing but a failure and her future would be destroyed in one broad brushstroke.
Marcus Rivers strode through the open main hallway of the Donville Masquerade with the same certainty to his step that he had always possessed. After all, this was his domain, his livelihood, his trade and his life around him. The fact that his sizeable fortune had been obtained through a very private, very discreet sex and gambling club was really beside the point.
In fact, he hardly saw the debauchery on all sides anymore. The masked attendees, the half-naked women, the men gambling away their lives and futures on how quickly a raindrop would slide down a windowpane…none of it made much difference to Marcus anymore.
It was a means to an end.
As he maneuvered around a table toward the stairway to his office which overlooked the main floor, a lady in a feathered mask and scandalously sheer red gown careened into him, laughing. He caught her elbows to keep her from toppling over and hurting herself, and from her smile, he instantly realized this was her intent. She practically purred as she rubbed her ample breasts against his chest.
“Oh, Mr. Rivers, so quick on your feet and such strong hands,” she murmured.
Her crisp accent made him believe that she was likely a woman of the upper crust who came here to alleviate her boredom through fucking or cards or both. And she was certainly soft and supple in his arms. But he set her away firmly.
“I’m glad to be of assistance,” he said. “Enjoy your evening.”
As he made to move past her, she caught his arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “Wouldn’t you like company up in that lonely office of yours, Mr. Rivers?” She batted her eyelashes and wetted her lips, and still his body did not respond.
“I’m afraid not, my lady,” he said, inclining his head slightly.
He heard her huff out a breath as he walked away, her anger and frustration made perfectly clear. He didn’t so much as spare her a glance over his shoulder as she screeched, “Don’t you know who I am?”
He laughed. “No, my lady. And I would suggest you don’t announce it here. There is a reason we keep our memberships private.”
That silenced her, and he was free to cross the remainder of the distance to the stairway. A guard stood at the bottom, as usual, to keep the revelers and those with complaints out of his personal quarters, including the small bedchamber he kept in the hell itself.
“Good evening,” Marcus said as he hesitated at the foot of the stairway. “Carlton, is it?”
The young man standing at his post nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Very good. Abbot will likely be stopping by to deliver the notes in a short while after he makes his rounds. Otherwise, keep all
interested
parties away, will you?”
He motioned his head toward the still-seething lady in red, who he could feel burning a hole in the back of his jacket with her glare.
Carlton nodded. “Of course, sir. As usual, sir.” Marcus was about to take a step up to his private quarters when the younger man shook his head. “I dunno how you do it, sir.”
Marcus hesitated and shot the man a questioning look. “Do it?”
“Refuse their advances,” the other man breathed. “They throw themselves at you nightly—you should hear the reasons they give to get up to your rooms. The things they offer the guards and servants in exchange for a moment of your time. I don’t know how you always say no.”
Marcus looked the younger man up and down. He had a decade on the boy, likely, but when it came to experience, he could have been in his dotage in comparison.
“Let me give you a piece of advice, young man, that may hold you in great stead when you begin to move up in the world.”
Carlton’s eyes widened and he nodded with great enthusiasm that almost made Marcus smile. Almost.
“Don’t shit where you eat, son,” he said, lifting his eyebrows as he made the point. Then he continued up the stairs to let the younger man digest the words. Crass, yes. But oh, so very true.
He pulled a key from the large ring on his belt and unlocked the office. As he stepped inside, he drew a long, deep breath, smelling leather and wood. Smelling success, or at least he had always associated those smells with success.
And success was of paramount importance to him.
He leaned against the door behind him for a moment, then stepped forward to look over the main floor of the club from the wide, clean windows he had installed when he inherited the place ten years before. He could see everything that happened in the main rooms from here. Every debauched sexual encounter, every game of cards, every conversation and assignation.
Here he felt in charge, in power. He liked that feeling.
Which was why he had lived by the words he said to Carlton downstairs. The boy was right. Women threw themselves at him here regularly. Some of them beautiful and soft and so different from the rough, coarse, hard creatures he had grown up with. They could be a temptation indeed, but he never indulged here. When he took his pleasure, it was elsewhere and always without any kind of entanglement being asked for or given.
It was so much better that way. Relationships with others, especially women, were just too complicated.
He was driven from his reverie by the hard rap of knuckles at his door. He turned in surprise as he called out, “Enter.”
His business manager, Paul Abbot, stepped into the office and nodded to Marcus. “Rivers.”
“Abbot,” he replied as he pulled a pocket watch from his vest and snapped it open. “I didn’t expect you for at least an hour. You could not have finished your rounds and it’s too early for a need to change bills. What is wrong?”
