Vail had long-prided himself on his rigid self-control, restraint, and practicality. Those strengths were what had allowed him to rise up, the bastard son of a whore, to make a way for himself, and then enabled him to survive and thrive on the battlefields of Waterloo. After he’d returned, fighting different demons, he’d managed mastery of his demons and converted earnings given him for battlefield heroics into a vast fortune.
Two nights earlier, with Bridget Hamlet, nearly every attribute that had gone into making him the success he was, he’d been close to tossing out the proverbial window.
That wicked hungering for the lady had kept him far away from his household and the young woman.
Seated at his back table at Brooke’s, Vail downed the remaining contents of his brandy in one long, smooth swallow. It stung his throat and, grimacing, he welcomed the fiery burn. It did little to ease his restlessness.
Setting the glass down with a thunk on the round mahogany tabletop, he swiftly grabbed the barely touched bottle and poured himself another. Thought better of it, and added several fingerfuls.
It was madness enough that he’d relieved his damned housekeeper of her housekeeperly duties but, bloody hell, he’d almost kissed her. And would have done so if his brother hadn’t the poor timing to interrupt.
Poor timing?
Vail had gone mad, indeed. He chased the staggering truth with another long swallow.
“Bad night.” The tall, familiar figure of his friend, Nick Tallings, the Duke of Huntly, hovered at the foot of his table.
A bad two nights. Vail spared him a brief glance. “You’re late,” he snapped as the other man slid into the empty chair across from him.
“Never tell me that is what has you wallowing in your spirits.”
“I’m not wallowing in my—” Vail caught his friend’s far-too-amused expression. “Oh, go to hell,” he muttered, eliciting a deep laugh from Huntly.
Best friends in the village Vail’s mother had finally retired in, they’d each come from difficult origins and risen to greatness for it. The bonds they shared went deep, but there were certain things a man never shared with another—lusting after a servant in one’s employ was decidedly one of those things.
Huntly reached for the empty, untouched glass Vail had ordered upon his arrival. “Problems with business?”
Quite the opposite. A rather enjoyable one, with the unconventional Bridget Hamlet. “My upcoming auction has led to a bloodlust among the ton’s leading book collectors,” he settled for. “Marlborough’s still determined to keep me from purchasing his damned collection and I’m to host another damned ball.” He despised those infernal affairs. Yet, they were all periodically planned and held to host the buyers and sellers amongst the peerage.
“Ah,” Huntly directed that at his snifter as he filled the glass. “A bloodlust for books,” he said with disgust in his voice. His friend had always been a lover of poetry and had once dreamed of a life as a writer, but he’d not the blackness in his soul like the men Vail dealt with daily. Even if the other man had once set out to destroy a young lady in a game of revenge, in the end, Huntly had proven himself different than those ruthless others.
“And how is Her Grace, Lady Huntly?” he asked, settling for a less contentious discussion.
A besotted glimmer sparked in his friend’s eyes. “Splendid,” he said with a crooked grin. “Very well.” Since he’d married, happiness had erased the other man’s once cynical edge.
Discomfited with that show of emotion, Vail briefly looked at his drink. Once, long ago, he’d also found love…except, where Huntly knew happiness with his new duchess, the young woman he’d given his heart to had chosen a titled lord. The irony of his changed circumstances that had come after her rejection remained with him still. At the very least he’d been spared an entire lifetime with a schemer. “What calls you away from Lady Justina?”
“That actually is why I requested a meeting.” Huntly set his glass down and leaned forward. “I’d enlist your help with a gift.”
The duke had been compelled, by his young duchess’ shared love of literature, to create a salon for her. Periodically, the lady held lectures and discussions where other enlightened individuals came to discuss a given topic or works. “What do you require?” Vail asked without hesitation. Given the length and depth of their friendship there wasn’t any favor he’d deny the man.
“I understand you have the original text for Basile’s Petrosinella,” Huntly explained.
Mrs. Hamlet’s animated visage as she’d been regaling him with the relevance of that very work, flashed to his mind. “It would be that one,” he muttered. What in blazes was it with women and that particular title, one already promised to Lord Cartwright for an outrageous sum?
A frown turned Huntly’s lips at the corner. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. Nothing,” Vail said with a wave.
“Would you be willing to loan Justina that copy for her upcoming salon?” His friend cleared his throat. “I understand it is a tremendous favor and, had I learned of her interest in that title, I’d have purchased it before it was promised to Cartwright.”
Had anyone else put such a request to him, he’d have called them mad and pointed them in the direction of Bedlam. That particular volume would earn him more than ten thousand pounds. To renege on the agreement Vail had reached with the marquess would ruin his name in the book-purchasing community. He finished his drink. “The transaction is to be finalized in a fortnight. I can’t loan it beyond that date.”
“A week from Friday, then.”
Vail set his glass down. “I’ll bring the copy for you to present her.” He’d trust Huntly with his life. As such, he’d no hesitation turning the coveted volume over to the other man’s care. A bachelor who invariably spent his nights at his clubs conducting business tonight, however, there was a peculiar restlessness since Bridget Hamlet had entered his household. “If you’ll excuse me?”
Huntly looked up and then shot his eyebrows to his hairline. “You’re leaving, now?”
“I’ve business to attend,” he offered evasively, hoping that this was one of the nights Huntly didn’t probe.
The other man jumped to his feet. “I’ll accompany you out.” Of course, it would only have been a secret gift for Huntly’s wife that called him away. Since their recent marriage, the young duke was scarcely away from his wife, except for the once weekly rides in Hyde Park he still took with Vail.
They fell into step, walking at a brisk clip through Brooke’s. Gentlemen seated at their reserved tables and games of whist and faro called out jovial hellos. Smoothing his features to conceal his antipathy, Vail returned those useless greetings.
“Rotters, the lot of them,” Huntly muttered from the side of his mouth.
“A title and a fortune will tend to see doors opened, though, won’t it?” he rejoined, as they exited the distinguished establishment. They could all go hang, those self-centered lords who littered London with their bastards and carried on their respectable days and nights with people of their own station. “Send my best to Justina,” he said, as he collected the reins for his mount.
“What affairs call you at this hour?”
At Huntly’s question, teeming with curiosity, Vail froze, his leg suspended. He forced himself to complete the motion until he was seated astride the magnificent creature. “Beg pardon?”
Huntly stared up at him curiously. “You’d indicated you were off to a meeting.”
Bloody hell. Vail’s mind raced. In his damned eagerness to return home, he’d not given thought to a proper explanation or lie. A lie is what it was. “I’ve a new member of my staff overseeing my collection,” he managed belatedly, coming as close to the truth as he was comfortable.
“And you’re forcing the poor bastard to work at this late hour?” Huntly called up as he swung himself atop his own mount. A carriage rumbled too close and the tall stallion danced around skittishly. “You are as ruthless in business matters, then, as Society purports you to be, if that is the case.” With a chuckle, Huntly expertly handled the reins, righting his horse.
Vail stiffened, braced for further blasted probing.
Instead, his friend touched his fingers to the brim of his black Oxonian hat and rode on toward his Grosvenor Square residence. Continuing on at a slower pace, Vail guided Atlas through the fashionable and busy streets of London, toward his townhouse…and Mrs. Bridget Hamlet.
Again, the crimson hue of her full-lips surged forward in his memory and, with it, that same hungering to know the taste of them. No, the lady, with her crescent-shaped mark upon her cheek and auburn tresses didn’t fit with any woman he’d taken to his bed before, but he’d been enthralled with her for that very reason. That was not, however, the only reason. The lady hadn’t shown so much as a hint of fear, reverence, or regard for his title. She’d not expressed any of the same horror displayed by lords and ladies about the Bastard Baron’s vast number of siblings. Instead, she’d looked up at him with a doe-eyed innocence and wonder that he’d not even witnessed in Adrina, the one woman he’d thought faithful to him. His housekeeper of one damned day had asked more questions than anyone, including Huntly, had ever put to him and the raw honesty of her response had fueled this dangerous hunger. “There is nothing for it, you are a reprobate bastard,” he mumbled, directing Atlas down the end of St. James Street.
His horse whinnied his equine agreement.
Adjusting the reins, Vail leaned forward. “So much for loyalty.” He followed that teasing jibe for the horse with a pat on his neck. A short while later, he dismounted and handed his mount over to the waiting servant who rushed to claim the reins. With a word of thanks, he bounded up the steps and skidded to a stop.
Drumming his gloved fingertips together, he proceeded to wait. The same way Gavin took pride in his position and form of address, so, too, did he value being the one to oversee that front doorway.
Erasmus’ small face flashed behind his mind’s eye and a wave of sorrow struck as fresh as the day his brother had drawn his last breath in Vail’s arms. Simple, but in possession of only goodness, Erasmus had been turned out and sent to die in a hospital. And with his passing, Vail had resolved to find every last kin Ravenscourt had failed and spare them from the cruelty that was life. Gavin Lodge, slightly touched in the head after too many punches, had been the first he’d managed to locate.
The door opened. “Vail.” His brother beamed. “My lord, that is.” Gavin helped him from his cloak.
He glanced about. “How does Mrs. Hamlet fare in her new post?” It was a casual query. One any gentleman had a right to ask of the woman responsible for one’s female staff.
“I quite like her,” Gavin said excitedly.
“Do you?” The household maids, though not outright unkind, were unsure of Gavin. Vail still had overheard the whispers as he’d passed servants at work in rooms throughout his household. Questions about Gavin’s mental faculties.
“Oh, yes. We spent the evening talking about coffee. Then Mrs. Hamlet insisted she make a cup for me to try and we talked about preserves. Her favorite is strawberry but she makes an exceptionally wonderfully raspberry one, and—” They reached Vail’s offices. “It really is such a shame that you’ve removed her from preserve making. For now, we’ll never know.” Gavin’s eyes lit. “I don’t suppose you might reconsider?”
Repressing a smile, he patted Gavin on the shoulder. “Perhaps after the next auction, I might see about reallocating some of Mrs. Hamlet’s time.”
With a widening grin, Gavin nodded excitedly. “Splendid.” Then, whipping about on his heel, his brother rushed off.
Letting himself inside his office, Vail closed the door behind him. Gavin’s high praise for Bridget and his ramblings about her ability stirred further curiosity. Who was this woman with the cultured tones of a peer who was familiar with valuable texts and also made her own preserves and coffee?
And more, why did he have a need to know more about her?
“Enough,” he gritted out. He stalked across the room to the well-stocked sideboard and grabbed the nearest glass and bottle. The clink of crystal striking crystal filled the midnight quiet. Carrying his drink and glass over to a leather-button sofa beside the hearth, he claimed a spot there and poured himself his third drink of the night. With the works he collected and sold, and his desk being a cornerstone of where many of those titles were assessed and a place where transactions occurred, by a rule, Vail didn’t consume brandy or any spirits there.
He stared over the rim of his snifter into the cold grate. As a child, he’d borne witness to the heartache and uncertainty that was his mother’s life. A pretty maid in the Duke of Ravenscourt’s employ, she’d caught her master’s eye, and fallen helplessly and hopelessly in love.
Vail grimaced.
Or that was how she’d romanticized it in her telling over the years. The part she’d omitted about that pathetic tale was how the powerful duke had ultimately tired of her—only after she’d given him a son. How had that rich and powerful lord cared for his illegitimate child and the lover who bore him? By passing her on to her next partner, another peer. And so, her existence continued from one protectorship to the next…until she’d the funds to retire in the countryside.
Through it, Vail had been forever marked by his mother’s fall. When he’d returned from Waterloo and been titled for his actions, he’d vowed to never become his father. He would treat all his staff—men, women, and children—with deserved respect. And he’d certainly never lust after a woman in his employ.
That first evening, a breath away from kissing the unconventional Bridget Hamlet, and he’d proven that his father’s rotted blood coursed in his veins.
Vail took a sip of his brandy.
I’m making more of it than it is.
Just because he’d asked after her and thought of her, and wanted to explore the contours of her crimson, bow-shaped lips, didn’t make him evil. It made him human.
But humans were flawed. The ruthlessness he’d witnessed from the men he did business with was proof of that.
And this unwitting fascination with his young housekeeper was proof that Vail himself was as weak and flawed as the Devil who’d sired him.