Devil Takes A Bride (32 page)

“No,” she said, but the mention of the sport instantly called to mind laughter-filled driving lessons in Hyde Park. She hid her fond smile at the memory. “What about it?”

“Strathmore's a member.”

“So?”

“This club is run by very bad men, Lizzie, and trust me, they associate only with their own kind.”

“What are you talking about?” She was confused and not terribly happy to hear anything bad about the man she loved, but the intensity in Alec's eyes removed all doubt that he was in earnest. She was not ignorant of the fact that he knew everything that went on in Society. If Dev had secrets, Alec was bound to know them, if anyone did.

“God, I don't even know if I can say this to you,” he muttered, looking away.

“Alec?” His expression was so dire that it was beginning to frighten her. “What is it?”

He breathed a curse again and shook his head. “Look, Dev's a capital chap for a spree, but to marry him, Lizzie? Even if you don't love me anymore, I don't want to see you hurt. You must pardon the extreme indelicacy of what I am about to tell you.”

Wide-eyed and growing increasingly alarmed, she nodded.

Alec lowered his voice and looked around briefly as if to make sure no one was listening. “The sport is only a cover for what is nothing more than a depraved society of wealthy, highborn men wholly dedicated to debauchery. To be accepted into the Horse and Chariot Club, a man must surmount three tests. The first lies in devoting one's existence to dissipation, which Dev already proved ten years ago before he went to sea.”

“But he was distraught over his family's deaths. He was little more than a boy!”

Alec shook his head, ignoring her protest. “The second test calls for the aspirant to make a hefty gift to the other members. For this, rumor has it, Dev spent thousands of pounds buying and refurbishing an old, abandoned pleasure garden south of the city, where he entertains the blackguards.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I've been invited to join—repeatedly—by a gentleman called Lord Carstairs.” Alec's lip curled in mild disgust at the name.

“Very well, what's the third test?”

“Oh, my sweet girl.” Alec sighed and held her in a saddened gaze. “I am sorry, Bits, but they don't call him Devil for nothing. Whatever happens, I'll always be here for you.”

“Tell me!” she forced out, not sure whether to believe him, though she knew Alec would not lie to her about something like this.

His face turned grim. “For the third and final test, a prospective member is made to force himself on an abducted virgin. While the others watch.”

 

With several hours to kill before his rendezvous with Lizzie and too much anticipation to sit still, Dev went to the pavilion where the club was gathering. One by one, the blackguards drifted in, having dutifully put in appearances at the more respectable entertainments of the Season; they walked into their refuge loosening their cravats and full of gusto to give their baser impulses free rein.

Dev took the opportunity to see if he could pare down his list by another name or two. He had drawn the Holy Rotter, James Oakes, into conversation. With the others in a particularly raucous mood—the lads were starting up a food fight in the tent-ceilinged salon—he spoke quietly with the man. Dev pressed him a bit harder than he had the others because Oakes's religious past led him to believe or at least to hope that buried beneath his drunkenness, the former reverend still maintained a glimmer of conscience. He had a suspicion, too, that if any of the men had served as the guilty party's confessor, it would have been the defrocked priest.

They were skirting the main substance of Dev's loss quite closely.

“It must have been terrible for you,” Oakes murmured. “Yet a man must not allow pain to make him reckless.”

“You're not reckless?” he countered in a pleasant tone.

“Fair enough, but I haven't much reason to fear. You should be careful,” he said after a long moment while the hearty laughter and inanity went on around them. “I hear you're asking questions.”

“Would you worry about being careful if you were me?”

Oakes brooded on this for what seemed a very long time, as if searching his lost conscience.

“What can you tell me, Oakes? You must know something.”

Oakes smiled at him with great weariness, but shook his head subtly and stared hard at Dev through bleary eyes. “Don't miss what's right in front of you,” he advised in a low tone, then walked away.

In front of me?
Dev wondered. What fact had he overlooked that was right in front of him…unless the Holy Rotter had meant it literally?

Dev lifted his perplexed gaze, then homed in on what—or rather who—was right in front of him.

Johnny.

 

God damn it, now he was talking to Oakes!

By the time that cocky bastard Strathmore strutted into the pavilion that night, Sir Torquil “Blood” Staines had reached a philosophic stage of drunkenness. Sitting slouched at his table in the corner, his eyes were bloodshot, but his hands were still steady as he flicked a hard, derisive glance over the black-haired pretty-boy viscount.

Don't trust that bastard. Not one jot.
He took another swallow of gin. He'd heard Big Tom bragging about his adventure with a Miss Felicia that Dev had brought to his door while taking a look at the club's books. Now, why would he want to go digging into the past, eh? Not that there was anything for him to find in the club's papers. They were much too careful for that.
Don't care what Carstairs says. Something's got to be done about him.

Thanks to the liquor, Staines was beginning to feel he was just the man for the job.

Blood Staines's tortured conscience had not rested easy in twelve years. No matter how much he drank to ward off the demons, these days he felt ready to crack under the pressure of Strathmore's constant presence, a ceaseless reminder of what he'd done, what he'd helped to do, to all those innocent people. Forty-seven. Horrible deaths. No one deserved to die that way.

Worse, it seemed as though he, Torquil, was the only one who saw through Strathmore. He knew in his gut that the man wasn't near as drunk or dull-witted as he played. Aye, that smiling bastard was up to something.

Torq took another swig and watched Dev conversing with a few of the members. An idea was taking shape in his mind. Quint and Carstairs had said Strathmore was not to be touched, that it was too risky, but they were both getting soft. To be sure, he thought in contempt, they both had their motives for wanting to spare the man. Quint was trying to recapture his misspent youth through the bold young hero, while Carstairs had designs on him of another sort entirely. But bloody hell, sunk as they were in their dissipation, neither of them seemed to grasp the seriousness of the peril they were in. Quint was convinced that Strathmore knew nothing of their involvement in his family's deaths; Torquil was not willing to take that chance.

No, he thought, if Quint and Carstairs weren't going to do anything about Strathmore, maybe someone should. Before it was too late. He had the skills to take care of the problem quickly, easily, and efficiently. Aye, with one bullet.

And why not?
he thought bitterly. What was one more body to toss in the charnel house he'd already filled? 'Twas of no consequence to him.

Carstairs wasn't there to stop him at the moment. Johnny-boy slipped out of the room even now to go meet his longtime keeper to do things that Torq didn't care to imagine. Quint was absent, also, having chased his latest underage redhead into the dark recesses of the Egypt Room.

The moment was ripe. All he had to do was lure Strathmore into a duel on the field of honor and then—no more worries.

A food fight was in progress among the drunken lads in the great tent-topped hall, and he noticed as he got up from his chair that one of the lads hurled a dinner roll that hit Strathmore squarely in the back.

“Watch it!” the viscount growled, the drink sloshing in his hand as he turned. “I'm not in the mood.”

Hearing this, Torq glanced down with an evil smile at the bowl of caviar.

He picked it up, hefted it in his hand, then expertly took aim, and with the force, speed, and accuracy for which he was well known, threw it, bowl and all, straight at Strathmore's head.

He did not know what preternatural instinct made that canny bastard step aside, but the bowl hit Dudley, behind his target, full in the face.

Poor Dudley took it splat in the face, and the deadly intent in Staines's arm was apparent, for it knocked the poor, drunken fop flat on his back with a bloody nose.

“Ow! Ow, ow! What the devil?” Dudley moaned.

Strathmore looked over at Staines in astonishment, then quickly crouched down to see if the lad was all right. He helped him sit up and ordered his blackamoor servant to bring napkins, water to wash the mess off with, and something cold for the swelling that started at once.

When Strathmore looked at Torquil again, a bristling scowl had now darkened his face as he grasped that the blow had been meant for him.

Rising to his full height, Strathmore slowly stalked toward him. “Is there a problem, Staines?”

Torquil was ready for him. He braced himself, poised to break his bottle of gin against the table if need be and use it as a weapon. “You're my problem, Strathmore.”

The whole room went silent. The food fight stopped.

“Ever since you came around,” Torq continued, slurring a bit, “you think you can take over everything. Giving out orders, acting like this is your club. But it ain't. I'm watchin' you.”

“You'd better step back, friend. You're drunk.”

“What are you going to do about it, hey, you Irish whoreson?” Torquil jeered, shoving him.

Without warning, Strathmore hauled back and punched him in the jaw with a blow that sent him hurling back into the arms of his nearby mates, which was lucky—for it was only they who then held Torquil back. “You're goin' to regret that, boy,” he panted. “You'll hear from my seconds anon!”

“Are
you
challenging
me
to a duel?”

“Why, no, Lord Strathmore—” Torquil shook off his friends' well-meaning holds with a murderous sneer. “—I'm invitin' you to your funeral.”

As the room erupted into exclamations of shock, Staines marched out to see to the arrangements.

In the wee hours of the morning, Dev banged on Alec Knight's door, scowling at the irony of it all.

Alec finally answered in baggy Cossacks and a dressing gown. The moment he saw Dev, his eyes narrowed. “What the hell do you want?”

Dev barely knew how to begin.

With an insolent toss of his chin, Alec leaned in the doorway, folding his arms across his chest. “Shouldn't you be with Miss Carlisle right about now? It's late.”

“I have not yet been to see her and now there is no hope left of doing so tonight. Damn it, Alec, I've been challenged to duel.” Dev swallowed his pride. “I've come to ask you if you'll second for me.”

“Me?”

“I've got nowhere else to turn.” Dev lowered his head.

“What about your great friends from the Horse and Chariot Club?” Alec inquired coolly.

“Oh, come, don't you know me better than that?”

Alec cocked his brow skeptically.

Dev sighed and decided it was time to come clean. Though rivalry stood between them, he trusted Alec as a man, trusted in his honor. In truth, he had spent considerable time in his old friend's company over the past few weeks as they had both competed for Lizzie's favor. Sometimes it had been rather droll. In spite of everything, they still got along, and whatever his faults, he knew Alec was too gallant to behave like a sore loser.

“My sole motive for associating with those bastards, Alec, is because I have good reason to believe they had something to do with my family's deaths. In fact,” Dev told him, “I'm fairly sure of at least three who were involved.”

Alec stared at him. “You're jesting.”

“Would that I were. Instead,” he sighed, “I've been called out by Torquil Staines.”

Alec's eyes widened. “Blood Staines? Bloody hell, Dev, why did you go and do a thing like that?”

“It couldn't be helped.”

“Oh, very well,” Alec grumbled. “Come in, you blackguard. What's it to be then, swords or pistols?”

 

At half past five that morning, Dev sat in his carriage, none to happy to contemplate that instead of deflowering the love of his life, he was sitting here waiting to defend his honor against one of the most feared duelists in London. His hands rested on his thighs; his forward gaze was even and only a little tense. He listened to the birdsong that filled the predawn twilight and breathed the springtime scent of dew-drenched turf.

He was ready.

Meanwhile, his trusty seconds paced back and forth outside his carriage, pausing only long enough to offer Dev a swig from his flask. “Bumper for your courage?”

Dev shook his head. “Don't need it.”

“Well, I do,” Alec muttered, downing a draft before he corked the vessel again with a low curse. “Where the hell are they? I don't bloody believe this! Ten minutes late! Is it a forfeit, do you think?”

“I doubt it,” Dev murmured, glancing across the green at Torquil's seconds, Nigel Waite. “Waite insists Staines will be here.”

“Maybe so, but you don't keep a man waiting for a duel. Really, it's the height of bad form!” Alec continued venting, but Dev's gaze wandered over the assortment of men who had already gathered around the grove to watch the fight.

Faced with the possibility of his own demise, he saw with startling clarity how much he wanted a life with Lizzie. For the first time in twelve years, he felt ready to leave the past behind, release the fears that had kept him from letting love into his heart. If he survived this, he would love her, he vowed, always.