Earl of Baxter (Lords of Scandal 8)

Prologue

July, 1815

* * *

War was glorious, Mason thought as he lay in the dank basement of some seaside church on the very edge of death. They didn’t tell soldiers that, of course. That they were about to die. No, they told them that they were nearly better, would recover any day now.

He was too sick to tell them they needn’t lie. He was prepared for death. He’d welcome it, in fact. Hell, he’d pushed so hard on the front because—and this wasn’t something a man ever said aloud—he’d wanted to die.

If he were honest, he should never have lived. Hadn’t his father told him that over and over on the rare occasions in which he bothered to visit his bastard son? “You shouldn’t have survived. Should have died with your mother.”

Mason shook his head. He’d done his absolute best to make his father’s wish come true.

“There now,” a soft feminine voice crooned close to his ear. “No need to fret, you’ll be all right.”

“I won’t,” he answered, raising a heavy hand and swiping at his eyes. When he dropped his hand, he blinked open his scratchy eyelids to look at the woman who had such a sweet voice.

No, not a woman. A girl. A child.

The girl tilted her head to the side and sunshine from a window above cast her in a holy light. His breath caught. He hadn’t thought himself capable of such a movement. His lungs expanded with the breath, drawing a deep gush of air—leading him to wonder if he’d died already and this was, in fact, heaven.

The child had a halo of blonde hair, twisted back from her face with just a few soft tendrils falling about her cheeks, highlighting her large blue eyes and the soft pink tint that flushed her skin. She looked just like the cherubic angels he’d seen in paintings in his father’s house, the one time he’d been allowed to visit.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, drawing in another long breath. He tried to raise his hand again and touch her face, but his arm wouldn’t work.

“Thank you.” She smiled at him, the look indulgent and amused. “But you’re a bit old for me.”

He might have laughed, if he could get the sound out. He hadn’t meant it like that. She was clearly only a child, but she had the sort of beauty that was so rare in his world. Maybe it wasn’t beauty at all, but innocence. Whatever it was, she seemed to glow with it, as though she truly was of another world. “How old are you?”

“I’m twelve.” She took a wet rag and wiped down his face with a gentle touch, light as her soft fingers brushed back his hair to make way for the damp cloth. “How old are you?”

“That is young,” he answered, closing his eyes again. This time in pleasure. It would be nice to die with such a tender hand at his face. “I’m one and twenty.”

“One and twenty?” she said, patting the cloth to his temple and helping to ease the fierce throbbing in his skull. “You’re young too. At least, that is, far too young to die.”

He shook his head. “I watched men far younger lose their lives,” he said to himself, then wondered if he should have shared such darkness with someone so young.

She ceased bathing him. The words were on the tip of his tongue to ask her to begin again, but then the soft bristles of a brush touched his hair and he nearly groaned aloud, the brush felt so good on his scalp. She was exquisitely gentle, and his fever-ravaged body reveled in the touch.

She sighed in answer. “I’m sure you did. I’ve had to watch that too, I’m afraid. You and I, we don’t get the luxury of naiveté, do we?”

He wished he could cry out in protest. He was a man, after all. The world was meant to be hard on him. But she, she was still just a girl. Her blue eyes should dance with delight, not death. “It isn’t fair.” His fists clenched in the sheet at his side and some measure of strength returned to his body. It was as though she were breathing life into him. “A girl as innocent as you should not have to see the darkness of the world.”

She shushed him with a soft pat and a gentle stroke on his arm. “That’s very kind.” Then her fingers stilled, her grip tightening in his arm. “But death isn’t the worst this world brings. I know that for certain.”

A wave of anger washed over him. “What’s happened to you that makes you say such things?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Tell me,” he gritted out. Somehow. It was important to know.

She shrugged. “My father wasn’t a good man.”

Dear lord. He knew about bad fathers. He’d suffered at the hands of a father who’d been callously cruel. But somehow, this girl seemed even more vulnerable. “Why not?”

She shook her head. “He gambled away every shilling we had. The money from his family, my mother’s money. Even the money she left me. He told me he’d replace it but…” She trailed off, clasping her hands in her lap. “Then he took his own life. The priest here says he’ll go to Hell for it.”