The Wild Baron (Baron 1)

1

The Mountvale Townhouse, Cavendish Square

London, April 1811

ROHAN CARRINGTON, FIFTH BARON MOUNTVALE, BELLOWED at his brother’s portrait, “If you did this, George, and if you weren’t already dead, I’d thrash you within an inch of your bloody life. You little bounder. Were you even capable of such a thing?”

Even as he yelled, Rohan felt a knot swell in his throat. George had been dead nearly a year. No, George couldn’t have done this. George was studious, a scholar with no interest in matters of the flesh. Rohan remembered once, a long time ago, their father had taken him and George to Madame Trillah’s on Cliver Street. At the sight of a very voluptuous redhead with magnificent breasts, George had blanched and then run half the way back to Mountvale Townhouse.

After that, their father had left George alone. George had stuck to his maps and his studies. At least so Rohan had always believed.

“No,” Rohan said, his voice low and deep now, his eyes still on his brother’s portrait, painted when George was eighteen. “I don’t believe this damned letter. It was another young blood using your name, wasn’t it? Did you really manage to bring yourself to the sticking point and ravish a young lady? Hell, did you even know what ‘ravish’ meant?

“What does this man who calls himself her father want from me? Stupid question. Money, of course. Damn you, George—or rather damn the man who did this in your name.”

George didn’t answer.

The last Carrington to ruin a young lady and find himself shackled as a result had been Rohan’s great-grandfather, the fabulous Luther Morran Carrington. Old Luther would shake his head, according to Rohan’s grandfather, and mutter that he’d only tossed up Cora’s skirts one miserable time and he’d nailed her but good. He’d continued to nail Cora fourteen more times, eight of his children surviving into adulthood.

Rohan pulled the bell cord behind the immaculate mahogany desk. His secretary, Pulver, must have been standing just outside the door, his face pressed against the wood, for he was in the library in but a moment, not a bit out of breath. He looked pale, gaunt, and put-upon, all three of which he deserved, because, as his friend David Plummy had told him, “It serves you right, slaving like you do for the Wild Baron. Just look at all those uncivilized hours he keeps, and he works you harder than a dog in all the hours in-between. What’s more, he beds more women than you and I will ever even speak to in our lives and everybody loves him for it, just like they love his mother and his father. He’s a philanderer. It isn’t fair, damn him. As for you, Pulver, you deserve to look like you’re on your last legs.”

Pulver would shake his head mournfully, but the truth of it was that Pulver enjoyed himself immensely. Working for Baron Mountvale gave him a certain cachet. He’d even been set upon by several ladies trying to bribe him to get them into the baron’s bedchamber.

Pulver came to a halt in front of the baron, who looked bilious and whose fair hair was standing on end. He was curious to know what news had sent his master over the edge. It wasn’t every day that the baron talked to himself.

“Pulver, get my solicitor Simington over here. No, wait.” The baron broke off, staring at the portrait of his mother that hung beside George’s above the mantel. It had been painted when she was twenty-five—nearly his age now. She’d been glorious when she was young, and she was still incredibly beautiful at forty-five. In her younger years she had been wilder than a storm-tossed night, and he’d been told from his earliest memories that he was just like her, and like his proud papa, of course. They’d told him that he’d been blessed with their wild blood and tempestuous natures.

“No,” he said, bringing himself back to the problem at hand, “I will see to this myself. It’s strange and I don’t believe a word of it. Besides, if there’s no bastard, how can one prove ruination? And there’s no mention at all of a bastard. Surely there would be mention in the bloody letter if there was a bastard, don’t you think?

“No, I must do it myself. I don’t want to, but I must, dammit. I will be gone for three days, no more.”

“But, my lord,” Pulver said, near desperation in his voice, “you must need me to do something. You are agitated. There is even a wrinkle in your sleeve. Your cravat is crooked. Your fair locks need a brushing. Your valet would not approve. Perhaps you are not thinking too clearly.”

Rohan waved the letter in Pulver’s face. “I am thinking clearly enough to know that I will probably put a bullet through this bleater’s brain. The man’s a damned liar—that, or someone else is.”

/> “Ah,” Pulver said. A woman has managed to get hold of him. Was she a former mistress he didn’t want to see anymore? She wanted money?

“I am a very good negotiator,” Pulver said with a modesty he did not possess, not budging from in front of the baron. “I can deal with almost any bleater in London. Give me a bleater from outside London and I’ll mash him.”

Rohan became aware that his secretary was bearing down on him. “Negotiator?” he repeated, distracted. “Oh, you must be thinking about Melinda Corruthers. She was a tough little bit of leather, wasn’t she? That was well done of you, Pulver. You convinced her that she was swimming up the wrong creek since I had truly never heard of her before. Well, this isn’t the same. I will handle it myself, I owe it to my brother. Turn down all invitations for the next week.” He paused, frowning, looking into his secretary’s gaunt face. “Eat something, man. You look skinnier than you did just yesterday. People already believe I pay you so little that you can’t even afford a turnip for your dinner. Even my mother thinks I torture you.”

Pulver was left standing where he was, watching the baron leave the library, that piece of foolscap wadded in his hand. It had to do with a woman. A woman and his brother? Surely that was beyond strange. Which brother? Neither of the baron’s brothers was the least like him. It was a start. Pulver mentally arranged the few facts already in his possession. Not much, but he was patient. He could begin to imagine the look of envy on David Plummy’s face when he heard about this new exploit.

Rohan strode into his bedchamber and paced, muttering about a straight-as-a-stick younger brother who must have had wicked friends who had used his name. His valet, Tinker, who didn’t hear the baron’s muttering, even though he tried, packed a valise for him. Tinker wondered why his lordship wasn’t in a better humor. Surely this trip must involve a female. Nearly all the baron’s trips did. Everyone knew that. The baron was famous for his trips to his little hideaways. But more than lust and passion seemed involved here. What could it be? Tinker was patient. He would find out soon enough. He wondered if Pulver knew more than he did.

Rohan didn’t think of Lily until he was tooling down the Reading road at a fine clip, some fifteen miles out of London. He sighed. He’d forgotten to send a message to her to tell her he wouldn’t see her this evening. Ah, there was so much to be done. Well, he wouldn’t be gone more than three days.

Who the hell was this Joseph Hawlworth of Mulberry House, Moreton-in-Marsh, a town that wasn’t far at all from Oxford, where George had lived and pursued his solitary education?

Susannah raised her face to the sun. It felt wonderful. It had rained continuously for two days, making everyone testy, but today the sun was shining as if God himself had sent it blazing down just for her. She gently patted the rich, black dirt around the base of the rosebush. She moved on to a patch of candytuft, her pride, sent to her by her cousin who had spoken to one of the gardeners in Chelsea Gardens and learned that the flowers had come from Persia to England just a few years before. John had managed to spirit a cutting out of Chelsea Gardens to her the previous fall. Now as she lovingly traced her fingertips over the dark evergreen leaves to the shower of white flowers atop the stem, she remembered his note, telling her that the name “candy” had come from Candia, the ancient name of Crete. She wondered if she could ever work that bit into a conversation with her father. Probably not. She wondered if she would ever be able to work that bit into any conversation, with anyone in the environs. Probably not.

She jerked out a particularly nasty weed, made certain that the soil was well drained and moist, and prayed the sun would continue shining, for the candytuft thrived with sun.

She turned on her heel at the sound of a curricle drawing up in front of the cottage. Her father was supposedly in Scotland, so he’d told her, but she knew he was very likely gambling away his shirt with his cronies down in Blaystock. She sighed and rose. A tradesman? No, it couldn’t be. She had made very certain that all the tradesmen had been paid before she allowed her father to leave Mulberry House, complaining bitterly under his breath about what a shrew she had become.

Who would come in a curricle? She rounded the side of the house to see a magnificent gray snorting and prancing to a stop. The man driving the curricle was speaking to the horse, a spirited conversation that drew an occasional snort from the massive animal, who stood at least seventeen hands high. When the horse quieted, the man looked about, probably for a stable lad.

Susannah called out, “Just a moment and I’ll fetch Jamie. He’ll take care of your horse.”

“Thank you,” the man called back.

When she returned with Jamie, who had been napping in a mound of fresh hay at the back of the small barn behind the house, the man was patting the horse’s nose, still speaking to him.

“Oh, aye,” Jamie said, sprinting forward now. “Yicks, jest ley yer peepers on that purty boy. I’ll feed him good, Guv, don’t ye worry. Wot’s the name of this beauty?”

“Gulliver.”

“Odd name fer sech a manly beast and that’s what ye be—manly—despite they cut off yer conkers. Gulliver, aye, the name niver come to me ears afore, but who cares? I’ll take ’im now, Guv. All gray ye be, and that lovely white star in the middle of yer forehead. Come with me, ye purty boy.”

Rohan had never heard such an odd rendering of the English language. It was both illiterate and intriguing and very nearly sung in a deep baritone. He watched the stable lad lead Gulliver and his curricle toward the back of the house. Gulliver was prancing beside him, shaking his mighty head at the lad’s words, just as he did with Rohan, only it seemed to Rohan that his horse was showing more enthusiasm with the stable lad, a damned stranger, than he normally did with his true master, the one who paid for his oats.

And Susannah watched him watch his horse. When Jamie and Gulliver were gone around the side of the house, she was left standing in the drive looking at the man in a very elegant greatcoat with at least six capes. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his pale blondish-brown hair. He was young, not above twenty-five or twenty-six, and very handsome. Too handsome, and probably very well aware of it. She frowned. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him, not at first.

It took her ten more seconds. She sucked in her breath and took a step back. She said, “You’re George’s brother. You’re the Wild Baron. Goodness, I didn’t realize how alike you looked.”

She was so pale he thought she would fall over in a dead faint.

“Oh? You’re entirely wrong. George had black hair and dark brown eyes. We looked nothing alike.”

“I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “Why are you saying that? George had eyes nearly as green as yours—he said his were the same color as his father’s—and his hair was just a bit darker blond than yours.”

Well, damn. His ruse hadn’t paid off.

“Very well,” Rohan said. “It was George, then. You did know him.” Perhaps it also meant that she wasn’t part of this plan to skinny down his coffers. At least he now knew one thing for certain. It had been George, as fantastic as it seemed to Rohan.

“So,” Rohan said, not bowing, not offering to take her hand, not doing anything except standing there, looking at the run-down house, bricks missing from one of the chimneys, and the beautiful gardens that surrounded it. “Since you guessed who I am, since you described George nearly to his eyebrows, then you must be the girl my brother supposedly ruined?”