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

Tears came at the words, unbidden and unwelcome. How did he know that was her worry? In the dark of night? How did he know that she was terrified that Caroline would one day look at her and hate her for the choices she’d made?

She looked away, trying to hide from him.

“Don’t,” he said, forcing her to return her gaze to his. “Don’t hide from me. You pushed me away at every turn. You used Chase as a shield.”

“No —” she began, but he cut her off, anger and sorrow in his eyes.

“Yes. You were afraid of me. But why? Were you afraid of what I might do? Of what I might tell the world? Did you actually think I might betray you?”

Her brow furrowed. “I did not know… the only other man I had ever given myself to…”

He went on. “You weren’t afraid of me. And you weren’t afraid of repercussions from Chase… we know that now,” he offered the words, with dry humor. “You were afraid of what I make you feel.”

Truth.

She met his gaze. “Of course I was.” Her honesty took them both by surprise, but it was time to be honest, was it not? “I was on my own. I had to fight for myself. For Caroline.” She paused. “Am on my own. Must fight for her. I must use every weapon in my arsenal to secure her future. That meant Chase… which was easy. And you…” She hesitated. “But that is the bit that became more difficult.”

“You disinvited me to the club,” he said.

“I apologize. You are welcome to be a member again.” For as long as the club exists.

“I don’t care about the damn club. I care about you sending me away.”

“I couldn’t have you close,” she said, setting the truth free. “I couldn’t have you near without wishing you near forever.”

That word again, insidious and tempting.

He swore, and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her like steel, making her wish that this was all there was. That there was no Chase, no Anna, no Tremley beating down the door with his deadlines and his secrets. No Fallen Angel.

Because she did not wish to use him. Not anymore. She did not wish for him to be anywhere near the falseness that was her future. Did not wish for him to have any more reasons to think ill of her.

He misunderstood. “Christ… Georgiana,” he spoke to the top of her head, his arms around her like steel, strong and welcome. “The paper. The reward.”

She turned her face into his chest, reveling in the scent of him. “Chase is done for.”

He had been since the moment Tremley had made his offer – her secrets for Duncan’s. It was an offer she would never refuse. A trade she would gladly make. Chase and Anna would disappear from the world, and they would be replaced by Duncan’s safety.

If only it would be enough.

He swore softly. “I did it. I ruined him.” He paused. “You. I ruined all you worked for.”

She would have ruined it herself – still planned to – but that was the final secret she could not reveal to him. Instead, she smiled. “He had to be done, eventually. I could not continue here and preach propriety for Caroline. I thought I could… but now, I see the ridiculousness in that plan.”

“I will find a way to keep you safe. To keep Chase safe. I’ll rescind the reward.”

She put her hands to his lips, silencing him, running her fingers over his cheekbones, down the long line of his jaw. “All this time… from the beginning, you have told me to trust you.”

“I have,” he said. “And now, you must believe that I will find a way —”

She stopped him. “It’s your turn, Duncan. It’s time for you to trust me.”

His gaze narrowed. “What does that mean?”

She leaned up to kiss him. “Exactly what I say.”

“I do trust you.” He took the kiss, returned it. “What are you planning?”

“That’s not trusting me.”

He started to reply. Stopped. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to talk.” He lifted her in his arms, her legs wrapping about his waist. “I just want to love you. All of you. Once, before it’s over.”

Before it’s over.

The words crashed around her as she took his face in her hands, and returned the kiss he settled on her lips, deep and longing. She didn’t like the finality in them. The sense that everything important was ending tonight.

Not sense. Truth.

Tonight would end the myth of Chase. It would end the fabrication of Anna.

And it would leave Georgiana alone once more, to face Society and its wolves.

To create a new future.

But she did not want the future. She wanted the present. This moment.

This man.

“I wish…” his words were low and dark in her ear, and she met his gaze.

“What?” She moved against him, rocked into him sending pleasure through her and, she hoped, through him.

It worked. He smiled, his eyes closing. “It sounds mad, but I wish we’d done this in a bed. Like ordinary people.”

“There is a bed.”

He tilted his head, looking pleased as punch. “There is?”

She nodded. “There is.”

He set her on her feet and she guided him into her apartments through several doors and into the room where she slept most evenings. He paused in the doorway, looking at the bed, upholstered and curtained in white. He shook his head. “All this time, London has wagered and sinned and bathed themselves in vice… and you have reigned from this white bed – fit for a pristine princess.”

She smiled. “Pristine no more.”

He turned his hot gaze on her. “No more.”

And then she was in his arms, and he was lifting her, carrying her, setting loose an ache deep in her. She – who’d spent the last six years giving the men and women of London everything they desired, who considered herself an expert in want – she’d never wanted anything more than this man.

Than this moment.

He stood her next to the bed and slowly undressed them both, boots and breeches and shirts, shucking his own and then hers, kissing the bare skin he revealed in long, lingering licks until she thought she might die from the pleasure of him.

Until she thought she might from her desire for him.

He laid her down, naked, back against the cool sheets, and climbed over her, pressing his face to the soft skin of her belly, breathing deep, pressing his open mouth to the swell there, to the faded marks that told the tale that he alone knew.

“I love you,” he whispered, soft and privately, to the skin there, so easy that she thought perhaps he hadn’t said the words at all.

She gasped as his mouth moved, finding the tip of one breast, and then the other, his hands cupping her, lifting, caressing, ensuring that she would never forget this moment, the way he touched her. The way he loved her. She held him, fingers in his soft golden hair as he whispered to the skin between her breasts, “I love you.”

He repeated the words like a benediction as he licked and sucked and worshipped until her breath was coming in short, nearly unbearable pants, and he lifted himself over her, covering her with his body, hard and warm and perfect in every way.

He looked into her eyes. Spoke. “I love you.”

And she loved him back, desperately, reaching up, pulling him down for another kiss, into which she poured everything she had ever felt for this brilliant, magnificent man.

He slid into her slow and true, as though they had done this a thousand times, as though they belonged to each other, as though he owned her and she owned him. And he did own her, she realized. He always would.

His movements were deep and thorough, long, lush strokes that had her craning for him. For more of his touch. For more of his love. He seemed to know it, leaning down, repeating his vow again and again at her ear. She did not know if it was the words or the movement, but soon she was begging for release that only he could provide. He stilled, rising up over her, eyes closed in pleasure and pain and she knew he steeled himse

lf to leave her, refusing to release inside her. Refusing to risk her.

“Duncan.” He opened his eyes, stealing her breath with the emotion in them. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Not this time.”

He watched her for a long moment, as if searching for the truth in her words. She shook her head. “Not this time,” she said, tears welling as she was struck by the keen knowledge that this was the last time they would ever do this.

He took her mouth in a scorching kiss, deeper and more passionate than anything they had shared before, and he reached between them, setting his thumb to her, stroking over and over until she was crying out her release. Only then did he move, thrusting deep, spilling inside her, and she was lost to herself, to the world.

He came down over her and she wrapped herself around him, cradling him as the tears spilled over, and she wept. She wept for the beauty of this moment, the two of them against the world, she wept for herself, for the sacrifice that had set her on this path… the one she had vowed to make, somehow infinitely more devastating now that she understood what it was she gave up.

Love.

When he woke, she was gone.

He should have expected it, but it still rankled, the fact that she had left him here, in the heart of her casino, as she went to fight God knew what battle on her own.

I was on my own. I had to fight for myself. For Caroline.

No longer.

Did she not understand that he was her champion? That he would fight her battles? That he would do anything he could to save her and this place she loved?

He might not be able to have her forever, but he could give her this.

And it would be enough.

Christ. He had to rescind the reward. The Pandora’s box he had opened would ruin her and the club if he did not close it. He stood, pulling on his clothes quickly, wasting no time in returning to the main room of the offices.

It was empty now, and he approached the desk in awe and admiration. He thought of the first time she stood in this room, a girl of, what, twenty? Taken down by Society for a moment of risk. For a single mistake.

And she’d built an empire from here. From behind this desk.

And he’d thought he was the hardest-working man in London.

His fingers grazed the blotter, the silver pen that lay there, haphazardly, as though she’d dropped it in a rush to finish some other work. He smiled at the idea – his industrious love.

They made a perfect match.

He ignored the thread of sadness that coursed through him at the thought. At the way he ached for it to be true. For it to be their future. But his secrets were legion, and he would never saddle her with them. With the threat of his discovery. Of his punishment.

Of scandal, once more.

He looked away, his gaze falling to a small stack of letters on the edge of the desk – there were maybe ten there, a final, forgotten stack of what had been dozens of identical squares covering the surface of the desk when he’d entered the room.

He lifted the messages, knowing he shouldn’t. Knowing it was not his business, but somehow unable to stop himself. Each one was addressed in the strong, black hand that he had come to know as Chase’s.

Not Chase’s. Georgiana’s.

The letters were made out to members of the club – men he’d seen on the floor dozens of times. There was nothing about the names that linked them – some old, some young, some wealthy, some less so, a duke, two barons, three men in trade.

He lifted one addressed to Baron Pottle.

He slid a finger beneath the seal and opened the note – dread pooling deep within him – to reveal one line.

Tonight, the Angel falls.

Chapter 21

He’d never seen the floor of the Angel so full of people.

Of course, he’d never seen the floor of the Angel on a day such as this. All of London had turned up for what they were claiming would be the last night of The Fallen Angel. The rumors and gossip swirled as hundreds of members arrived, brandishing the same square note, penned in Georgiana’s hand.

“What does it mean?” a young man whispered to his cronies, collected around a faro table.

“I don’t know,” came the reply. “But what I do know is that a night like this at the Angel is better than twenty in ballrooms across Britain.”

That much was true. The room fairly teemed with members, a wide, rippling mass of black coats and deep voices, peppered with several dozen women wearing brightly colored silks – the ladies of The Fallen Angel had been allowed onto the floor tonight, masked and myriad.

What was she planning?

He’d been looking for Georgiana since he’d arrived, having lost her and all the owners of the casino earlier in the day. When he had left her rooms and headed to the floor of the hell, the place had been quiet – if one did not consider the banging on the doors, the shouting, and the near riot in the street.

He’d thought to destroy Chase and set Georgiana free.

And, instead, he’d destroyed all that she’d worked for.

“Good play with the reward, West.” A man Duncan did not recognize approached from a nearby table, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “It’s time we scare the bastard out of his hole – after all, he’s been fleecing us for years! I’m surprised they’re still letting you in!”

Another approached. “But you are willing to put five thousand quid on it? You’ll get hundreds of people tossing false names at you.”

He already had them – speculation had begun arriving at his offices, theories based on everyone from His Royal Highness to the son of a Temple Bar fishmonger. “I shall know the truth when I see it,” he said, disengaging from the conversation.

Of course, he had not known the truth when he’d seen it. In the hours since her revelation, he’d found a dozen ways he should have known that she was more than she seemed. That she was stronger, smarter, more powerful than the men who gamed at these tables each night.

But he had misjudged her, just as the rest of London had.

At the far end of the room, he saw Viscount Langley at a hazard table, throwing the dice with gusto. If the cheers that rose around him were to be believed, Langley was on a roll. He was moving before he had time to think better of it.

Making his way across the floor toward the viscount, Duncan thought back to that first night, on the balcony with Georgiana, when she’d named Langley her choice of suitor.

He remained a good choice.

Unmarked. Noble. He would care for her.

Or West would make certain he suffered abominably.

Langley tossed the dice. Won again. Frustration settled heavy in Duncan’s chest. Why did this man win, where Duncan would no doubt lose?

He watched the viscount for long minutes, until he lost, and the dice were relinquished to a croupier. Duncan resisted the pleasure that came at the groans. “Langley,” he said, and the viscount turned toward him, curiosity made even greater by the fact that they’d never spoken.

He pulled the viscount aside. “My lord, I am Duncan West.”

Langley nodded. “I recognize you. I confess, I am rather a supporter – you have won my vote for a number of bills that we’ll be looking at this season.”

Duncan was set back by the compliment. “Thank you.” He’d support the marriage, but did he have to like the man?

He took a breath, released it, and the viscount tilted his head, leaning in, “Sir, are you unwell?”

Yes.

He would be unwell forever once she became the Viscountess Langley, but he had promised her this moment. This win.

Tit for tat.

“You are courting Lady Georgiana,” he said.

Surprised, Langley looked away and then back, and West saw the guilt in his eyes. He did not like the pause – the meaning in it, as though Langley was not, in fact, courting Georgiana.

Except he did like it.

He liked it a great deal.

“Are you not?”

&n

bsp; Langley hesitated. “Is this for publication? I have seen how keen your newspapers have been for Lady Georgiana’s return to Society.”

“It is not for publication, but I hope my newspapers have made a positive impression.”

The viscount smiled. “My mother is certainly invested in the lady.”

Success, he supposed.

“I imagine some would call my interactions with the lady courtship,” Langley replied, finally, and Duncan heard the edge of doubt in the words.

Duncan wanted to roar his disapproval. Did the man not see what he had been offered? “Are you mad? She is a tremendous catch. Beyond measure. Any man would be proud to call her his. She could have a king if she wished it.”

What had begun as surprise on Langley’s face was soon transformed into careful curiosity, making Duncan feel like a proper ass when he was finished.

The viscount did not hesitate in his reply, keen understanding in his tone. “It strikes me that it is not a king who wishes for her. Quite the opposite.”

Duncan’s gaze narrowed at the suggestion. At the truth in it. “You overstep yourself.”

“Likely, but I know what it is to want something you cannot have. I see now why you have taken such a keen interest in the lady.” Langley paused and said, “If I could trade my title for your freedom, I would.”

Duncan was suddenly deeply uncomfortable with the conversation. “That is where you are wrong. There is no freedom in being untitled. Indeed, if anything, there is less of it.”

The title brought security. Safety.

He, instead, lived in constant fear of discovery.

And that fear would ever shadow his future.

He met the viscount’s gaze. “You are her choice.”

Langley smiled. “If that is true – and I am not certain it is – I would be honored to have the lady to wife.”