Chapter One
Malice, as his friends fondly referred to him, sat on a bench in the garden of the Chase family home, staring at the newly emerging spring flowers sprouting from the ground.
His name was Lord Chadwick Hennessey, Marquess of Malicorn, but no one had called him by his given name since his mother had given it to him with her dying breath.
Which was likely why he hated being called Chadwick. It held too many ugly memories. He ran his hand through his hair, staring at a small green bud struggling to rise up through the dirt. He grimaced. He’d been that flower as a child. Struggling and straining to flourish, the very ground that was supposed to nurture him pushing him back into the dirt.
He straightened his back, drawing in a deep breath. He wasn’t that child any longer. He was a grown man now who never wallowed in self-pity.
Standing, he stared down at the tiny plant. He wouldn’t expend emotion on a flower but he could help it. Just a bit. He leaned over and brushed the dirt away from the small plant giving it more room to grow. Satisfaction spread through his limbs and he let out a long breath as more of the bright green stock came into view.
“Oh,” a feminine voice trilled from his left. “My apologies, my lord.”
He stopped, his fingers still in the dirt. He’d been caught caring about a tiny plant. Even worse, it was her who had made the discovery. His insides tightened. Despite the fact this was only the second time they’d met, he knew the sound of Lady Cordelia Chase’s voice without even looking at her.
Malice had carefully fostered a reputation of reckless abandon sprinkled with a healthy dose of sarcastic indifference. He rarely showed emotion toward anyone or anything. He most definitely didn’t want Lady Cordelia to think he was a sappy sort. It would give her the wrong impression. “What are you apologizing for?” Malice straightened, giving her a long look as he glared down at her. How odd.
She pushed up her glasses, nibbling at her lip. “For interrupting. Had I known anyone was out here, I would have come with a chaperone.”
He relaxed, his shoulders slumping down. She didn’t seem to have noticed that he was aiding tiny plants. “No need to apologize.” He cared not if she were chaperoned, despite the fact that she was a tender debutante. “How goes the wedding breakfast?”
Cordelia turned back to look at the house. “Very well. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just return inside.”
“No need.” He waved his hand. “I’ll escort you back to the wedding breakfast in just a moment.”
She cocked her head to one side. “I beg your pardon?”
He ignored her question, instead studying her from top to bottom. Her fair hair was tied rather tightly back from her face. The hair itself looked soft and he wondered how she might look with a looser coif. Her glasses perpetually slid down her nose, likely because it was the tiniest nose he’d ever seen with just a slight upturn at the bottom. When she looked at him over the top of the glasses, her eyes were a striking color of crystal blue like a lake on a sunny day. Quite pleasant.
On their very first meeting, she’d not been wearing the spectacles and had promptly tripped into his arms. She had a nice figure. Curvy without being overly large, and without the dark rims of her glasses, he’d noted the lovely shape of her eyes, large and clear with a gentle upturn at the outside corners. Glasses or no, a man couldn’t miss how nice the curve of her mouth was—so full and tempting.
He’d also realized she was a quiet and affable lady who would make an excellent wife.
Unlike many men, he’d made several decisions on that front. First, he planned never to fall in love. Emotions like that were an affliction. As the holder of the title, he was obligated to continue his line, by marrying and conceiving an heir. Not a part of his life he looked forward to.
His parents’ marriage had been brief, to say the least. Barely a year. He didn’t remember his mother, of course, but he couldn’t imagine that the union had been a happy one, if his own relationship with his father was any indication. Although his father would swear that all the love he felt had died with his mother. “Tell me, Lady Cordelia. How do you spend your time?” He assumed reading, knitting, and socializing were at the top of her list. All excellent pastimes for a wife.
She shrugged, inching back a bit. “I don’t know. What all ladies do. A little of this and a bit of that.”
He stepped forward. Her comment highlighted what he liked about her. She appeared to be a malleable woman. Easy in her temperament, which was exactly the sort of woman he needed.
And that was the main reason he was here. Cordelia, along with her sisters, had arrived at their secret club in the middle of the night. But the ladies weren’t supposed to be there. In fact, they weren’t supposed to know about the club at all. Now one of his partners, the Earl of Effington, was married to Cordelia’s sister, Emily.
When Emily had arrived with her two sisters, Cordelia and Grace, and her cousins, Minnie and Diana, all hell had broken loose. The men were concerned about the club’s secret, the ladies about their reputations. Emily and Jack had almost called off the wedding. And the other men had begun to fear for their club’s reputation and continued business. They’d made a thriving, financially successful gaming hell by creating an air of mystery about their identities. To make certain this continued, Malice and his friends had decided to watch the ladies and make certain they didn’t share their secret.
“Sounds delightful,” he said, his thoughts still on their first meeting a few weeks prior.