Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover (The Rules of Scoundrels 4)

He met her eyes, noting the openness there, the honesty. So rare. Something must have shown in his own gaze, because hers went wary. “Duncan?”

He didn’t want to say it, and yet, he could not stop himself. “You’re not a whore.”

Chapter 17

… It is a constant surprise to this publication that Lady G— was so easily dismissed for nearly a decade. What we would not offer for a peek into the lady’s past! Alas, we shall have to settle for watching her bright future…

… Several critical votes are before the Houses of Parliament this week. The owner of this very paper is a vocal proponent of setting clear limits for child labor, and watches carefully as this great Nation’s leaders decide the fate of her youngest citizens…

The News of London, May 9, 1833

She froze at the words.

Perhaps she could have brazened it through, if not for the way he’d made her feel, the way he’d slowly, effortlessly dismantled her guard, leaving it on the floor with her trousers and his cravat and all their inhibitions.

The way he’d somehow given her pleasure and peace and the promise of more, even as she’d known all of it was fleeting.

Perhaps she could have lied, but how could she? How could she pretend to know the tricks and trade of London’s finest lightskirt when he’d so thoroughly destroyed her with his kiss and touch and kindness?

She’d expected the kissing. The touching.

But the kindness had been too much. It had stripped her bare, leaving her with nothing to protect her from his careful observations and his probing questions.

For the first time in an age, she did not know what to say. She left his lap, standing, moving naked to the place where he’d divested her of her clothing and her lies. She lifted her shirt from where it had landed on the arm of a chair, and slid into it, pulling it closed around her as he spoke again. “You cannot hide from me. Not in this. You and Chase clearly have some kind of plan – something of which I am a part. Unwillingly.” The words sent fear straight through her, as this brilliant man discovered one of her best-kept secrets and came closer to uncovering all the rest.

The irony, of course, was that most men would be thrilled to know that they had not just slept with a prostitute.

But there was nothing about Duncan West that was like other men.

And there was nothing about him that appeared pleased with the discovery.

He did not seem to care that she was virtually naked, or that she was emotionally bare, or that she was unsettled by his statement, or that she did not wish to discuss it. “When was the last time you slept with someone?”

She tried to hedge her way out of the conversation, leaning down, retrieving her trousers. “I sleep with Caroline quite often.”

His gaze turned furious as he leaned forward and she tried her best to ignore the way his muscles shifted, rippling beneath his smooth skin. “Let me rephrase, I forget sometimes where you have chosen to make your life. When was the last time you fucked a man?”

The curse was a gift, reminding her that she was more than this moment, that she was queen of London’s underworld, more powerful than he could imagine. More powerful than anyone could imagine.

Even he.

She should have been angry with him. Should have squared her shoulders, nakedness be damned, and told him precisely what he could do with his foul language. Should have stalked, bare and bold, to the wall and rung the bell to call security to this place, where he should not be.

Where she should not have brought him.

Where she would never forget him.

She looked away. The whole afternoon had gone pear-shaped, and instead, his anger made her want to tell him the truth. To mend the moment. To answer his questions and return to his arms and restore his faith. Not an hour earlier, he’d vowed to protect her.

How long had it been since someone had wished to do that?

“Look at me.” It was not a request.

She looked at him, desperate to stay strong. “What we did… it wasn’t…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word. “That.”

He narrowed his gaze. “How would you know?”

He meant to hurt her, and he did, the question a blow. Not undeserved, but a blow nonetheless. She answered him, laying herself barer than she had ever imagined she could. “Because the last time I did this, it was.” His brown eyes searched hers, and she let him see the truth. Finished her thought, the words quieter than she’d expected. “This wasn’t the same. This was… more.”

“Christ.” He came to his feet.

She met his gaze. “It is something more.”

“Is it?” he asked, the question filled with something like doubt. He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. “You lied to me.”

She had, but now she did not wish to, even though she’d wrapped herself in lies. Wrapped them both in them. Even though her lies were layered in myriad ways, too many and too complex to tell him the truth. Too connected to too many others to find their way into the light of honesty.

“I want to tell you the truth,” she confessed.

“Why don’t you?” he asked. “Why don’t you trust me? I would have – had I known that you – that Anna – that none of it was true, I would have —” He stopped. Regrouped. “I would have taken more care.”

She’d never in her life felt more cared for than in the last hour, in his arms. And she wanted to give him something for it. Something that she’d never given another person. Her darkest secret, kept only in her deepest thoughts. “Caroline’s father,” she whispered. “He was the last.”

He was silent for a long moment, before he asked, “When?”

He still did not understand. “Ten years ago.”

He sucked in a breath, and she wondered at the sound, at the way he seemed pained by her truth. “The only time?”

He knew the answer to the question, but she replied nonetheless. “Until now.”

His hands came to her face, lifting her chin, forcing her to look at him. “He was a fool.”

“He was not. He was a boy who wanted a girl. But not forever.” She smiled. “Not even a second time.”

“Who was he?”

She blushed at the question, hating the answer. “He worked in the stables at my brother’s country estate. He saddled my horse a few times, rode out with me on one occasion.” She looked away, wrapping her arms tight around herself. “I was… bewitched by his smile. His flirt.”

He nodded. “So you took a risk.”

“Except it wasn’t a risk. I thought I loved him. I’d spent my young, entitled life without a care in the world. I wanted for nothing. And, in the great error made by every entitled child since the beginning of time, I searched for the thing that I did not have instead of celebrating the things that I did.”

“What was that?”

“Love,” she said simply. “I did not have love. My mother was cold. My brother was distant. My father was dead. Caroline’s father was warm, and near, and alive. And I thought he loved me. I thought he would marry me.” She shrugged the memory away with a smile. “Foolish girl.”

He was quiet for a long moment, his handsome brow furrowed. “What is his name?”

“Jonathan.”

“That’s not the part I want.”

She shook her head. “It’s the part I will give you. It does not matter who he is. He left, and Caroline was born, and that is that.”

“He should pay for what he has done.”

“How? By marrying me? By becoming Caroline’s father in name as well as deed?”

“Hell, no.”

Her brow furrowed. Everyone with whom she’d ever discussed Caroline’s birth had agreed that if only she would name the man, all would be well. Her brother had threatened her with marriage, as had half a dozen women who lived with her in Yorkshire, after she’d birthed Caroline and raised her into childhood. “You don’t think he should be forced to marry me?”

“I think he should be

forced to hang by his thumbs from the nearest tree.” Her eyes widened, and he continued. “I think he should be stripped bare and made to walk down Piccadilly. I think he should meet me in the ring in the heart of this place, so I can tear him apart for what he did to you.”

She would be lying if she did not say she enjoyed the threats. “You would do that for me?”

“And more,” he said, the words not boastful, but quick and honest. “I hate that you protect him.”

“It is not protection,” she said, trying to explain. “It is that I don’t wish him relevance. I don’t wish him the power men hold over women. I don’t wish him to be a part of me. Of who I am. Of who Caroline is. Of who she might become.”

“He is none of those things.”

She watched him for a long moment, wanting to believe him. Knowing the truth. “Maybe not to me… but to them… to you… of course he is. And he will be, until there is another.”

“A husband. With a title.”

She did not reply. Did not have to.

“Tell me the rest.”

She lifted one shoulder. Let it fall. “There is not much to say.”

“You loved him.”

“I thought I loved him,” she corrected. And she’d believed it. But now…

Love. She turned the word over and over in her mind, considering its meaning, her experience with it. She had thought she had loved Jonathan. She’d been so sure of it. But now… here… with this man, she realized that what she had felt for Jonathan was minuscule. A thimbleful.

What she felt for Duncan West was the wide sea.

But she would not put a name to it. That way lay danger.

Because, for all her secrets, for all the lies – he had them, too.

She shook her head and looked down at her lap, where his long, bronzed arm crossed her pale legs. She placed her hand on that arm, playing with the golden hairs there. Repeated herself. “I thought I loved him.”

“And?”

She smiled. “I told you, a tale as old as the hills.”

“And after?”

“You know that, newspaperman.”

“I know what they say. I wish to hear what you say.”

“I went to Yorkshire. I ran away to Yorkshire.”

“They say you ran with him.”

She laughed, the sound humorless even to her ears. “He was long disappeared from my life by then. Gone before daybreak the morning after we —”

He inhaled his anger, and she stopped. “Go on,” he urged.

“I took a mail coach. My maid’s sister’s aunt knew of a place in Yorkshire. Somewhere girls could go. To be safe.”

He raised a brow. “A duke’s sister, riding by mail.”

“There was no other way. I would have been caught.”

“Would that have been bad?”

“You did not know my brother then. When he discovered what had happened, he was furious. And not a little bit terrifying. My mother was filled with hate and disdain. We never spoke again.”

He narrowed his gaze. “You were a child.”

She shook her head. “Not once I had a child of my own.”

“So, this place… it took you in.”

She nodded. “Me, and Caroline.” She thought back to Minerva House, to its welcome inhabitants and its lush lands. “It was beautiful. Peaceful and warm. Filled with acceptance. It was… home.” She paused. “The last home I really had.”

“You are lucky you had one at all.”

She watched him carefully, sensing that there was more to the statement than it seemed, but before she could press him, he asked, “How long were you there?”

“Four years.”

“And then?”

“And then my mother died.” He tilted his head in question, and she explained, lost in the tale. “I came home, feeling that I should be in London to mourn her. I brought Caroline – ripped her from the safety of her home, where no one had ever judged her – I brought her to this horrible place. London in season. And one day, we took a walk down Bond Street, and I counted the stares.”

There had been hundreds of them. Enough for hatred to begin to settle, hot and unyielding, in her breast.

He seemed to understand. “They did not accept you.”

“Of course they didn’t. I was ruined. Unwed. A mother of a daughter, who is nothing. If she’d been a boy…” she trailed off.

“If she’d been a boy, she could have made her way.”

But she hadn’t been. And that had turned the hatred into rage.

And then into a plan to hold dominion over them all.

“And then Chase found you.”

Like that, they were returned to the present. To this place. To its secrets. To the lies she told.

She looked away. “On the contrary, I found Chase.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why masquerade as a whore? Anything could happen to you. Hell, Pottle nearly —” He did not finish the sentence, closing his eyes briefly. “What if I hadn’t been there?”

She smiled. “Women in my position, we hold tremendous amounts of power. I chose to be here, in this place. I chose this path. I choose this world.” She paused. “How many other women have the choice?”

“But you could have chosen anything. You could have been a governess.”

“Who would have hired me for that?”

“A dressmaker.”

“I cannot sew a straight line.”

“You know what it is I am saying.”

Of course she did. She’d heard it a dozen times from her brother. A hundred. And she’d told him just what she told Duncan. “None of those positions held the power of this one.”

“Consort to a king.”

King herself.

“I wanted power over all of them – every last one who stared down their nose at me. Every last one who judged me. Every last one who cast their stones. I wanted proof that they lived in glass houses.”

“And Chase gave it to you. Chase and the others, all wanting to do the same. You became the fifth in their merry band.”

Tell him.

There was no fifth. She was fourth.

She was first.

She could tell him. She could say the words. I am Chase.

Except she couldn’t. She’d just told the story of her deepest betrayal, the one that had ruined her, threatened Caroline, and would ever be the reason for her secrets. If she told him the rest, if she laid herself at his feet, what then?

Would he protect her, even once he knew she was the man who used him? Who manipulated him?

Would he protect her club?

This life she had worked so hard to build?

Perhaps.

She might have done it, if he hadn’t gone on. “And still, you protect him,” he said, and she heard the bitterness in his voice. “Who is he to you? What is he to you? If not your master, your consort, your benefactor? Who the hell is he?”

There was something in the last, something that was not for her.

Something that was not curiosity.

Something like desire. Like desperation.

He wanted Chase’s secret. Hers.

But if he had it, would he entrust her with his own?

She resisted the question, hating that even now, even here, after they had shared the powerful moment, they still dealt in information. Traded it.

He’d been with Tremley earlier in the day – taken the information she’d given him and done something unexpected with it. Something indefinable.

“Tell me who he is, Georgiana,” he said, and she heard the plea in the words. What did he want with her? With Chase?

She met his gaze, on alert. “Why is it so important?”

He did not hesitate. “Because I have been nothing but his good soldier for years. And it is time.”

“For what?” she asked. “To ruin him?”

“To protect myself from him.”

She shook her head. “Chase will never hurt you.”

r />   “You don’t know that,” he said. “You are blind to his power. To the things he does to keep it.” He waved a hand at the door. “Have you not witnessed it? The way he plays with lives? The way he bolsters the men belowstairs? The way he tempts them to wager until they’ve nothing left? Until all they have belongs to him?”

“It’s not like that.” It was never so cavalier. Never so unplanned.

“Of course it is. He deals in information. Secrets. Truths. Lies.” He paused. “I deal in those things as well – which is why we make such a pair.”

“Why not leave it at that?” She didn’t want it to change. Everything else was shifting beneath her, around her. “You are well compensated. You have access to information throughout London. You ask, you receive. News. Gossip. Tremley’s file.”

He stilled. “What do you know?”

She narrowed her gaze on him. “What are you not telling me?”

He laughed at that. “The sheer sum of what you will not tell me, and you have the gall to ask for my secrets?”

She buttoned her shirt, protecting herself in more ways than one. “What is your relationship with Tremley?”

He met her gaze without hesitation. “What is your relationship with Chase?”

She was quiet for a long moment, considering the next. Considering the implications of her truth. Finally, she said, “I cannot tell you.”

He nodded. “And so it is.”

She stilled, watching him. He, too, had secrets. She’d known it, but she’d had no proof. But now, she did. And while the discovery should have made her immensely happy – as she was not the only one who spread lies between them – instead, it made her devastatingly sad.

Perhaps because his secrets would keep hers locked away.

Neither of them was honest.

There was no point in defining the way she felt for him.

And certainly no reason to define it as love.

Duncan West had saved her a great deal of heartache, she supposed, ignoring the tightness in her chest. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “That is that, then?”

He stood, pulling on his own shirt and buttoning his trousers, which she realized he’d never fully removed. She supposed he had left them on in case Chase entered. In case he had been required to give pursuit. He wrapped his cravat carefully, watching her as he completed the economical movements from memory, without the aid of a mirror.