Her Notorious Viscount

Jenna Petersen

N
icholas Stoneworth raised his head reluctantly and tried to determine if the pounding that echoed in the room around him was part of a dream or reality. Since it mirrored the painful throbbing of his alcohol-laden haze, he decided it was, unfortunately, real.

With a groan, he pushed away the arm of his companion, a delightful flame-haired barmaid named…Anna? Annabelle? Arabelle?

Well, whatever her name was, when her arm flopped off his naked belly she didn’t stir, just sank a little further into the warmth of his bed.

Getting to his feet, Nicholas searched around for a dressing gown as the winter chill slapped his skin. The fire had been the least of his worries the night before when he and…Alexandra…no…Amelia? When he and his
paramour
came stumbling into his room.

Now his small chamber was chilled and he was paying the price.

And still the pounding at his door went on, making his head ache and his stomach turn from the alcohol he had consumed hours before.

“I’m coming, goddamn it!” he bellowed as he tied his robe around his waist negligently and strode down the short hallway.

Nearly ripping the door off its rusty hinges, he threw it open.

“What?” he bellowed into the face of his best friend and fellow pugilist, Ronan “Rage” Riley.

Normally Rage was smart enough not to rouse him before afternoon. The two men had grown to be almost like brothers after all their years in the underground, participating in the fights that had made Nicholas both revered and reviled in varying levels of Society.

Rage’s dark hair was sticking up at odd angles, and the strange, almost pained look on his face stopped Nicholas in his tracks. He stared at his friend for a long, silent moment, watching as Rage’s eyes softened with pity.

His stomach sank. This visit was not going to end well.

“What is it?” Nicholas asked again, this time his voice softer. “Tell me.”

Rage opened his mouth and shut it, almost as if he couldn’t find the right words. Then he shook his head and merely said, “Stone, your brother is dead.”

Nicholas staggered back, the force of his best friend’s blunt statement hitting him in the gut like a sucker punch. If he had been nauseous before, the feeling now grew until it was overpowering. His headache faded into the background of a far deeper, more powerful pain. One that overwhelmed him until he couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t
think
about anything except the echo of his friend’s voice.

Your brother is dead. Your brother is dead. Your brother is dead.

Although he didn’t recall moving, Nicholas found himself on his knees on the uncomfortable wooden floor. When he lifted his hands they were clenched in fists and shaking. His breath came in broken, sick heaves.

He looked up at Rage, wishing he could call him a liar. Wishing he could punch him and make his friend take back those four horrible words. But he couldn’t. He knew Rage too well. His best friend wouldn’t tell him such a thing unless he had evidence that it was a fact.

And that meant that Nicholas’s life had just been altered in every way imaginable.

J
ane Fenton watched as another group of giggling, simpering young women spun by her in the arms of the current group of eligible bucks and titled lords. She held back a sigh and tried to keep her toes from tapping to the beat of the country jig, beneath her plain, serviceable gown.

How quickly things changed. Just two years ago,
she
had been one of those silly girls, enjoying her Season with all the hopes in the world for the future.

“Jane,” the Countess Ridgefield said at her side. Her employer lifted the gold-rimmed spectacles she kept on a chain around her neck and scanned the crowd. “Do you see anyone of my acquaintance?”

Jane stifled a smile at the picture Lady Ridgefield made. The feather Jane had placed in her employer’s hair earlier in the evening had begun to list downward, sticking out at an odd angle to the side of her head. Her spectacles, which she really should have been wearing all the time, although she argued that point with Jane incessantly, were crooked and gave Lady Ridgefield a madcap appearance that lightened Jane’s heavy heart considerably.

Although flighty, Lady Ridgefield was one of the kindest women Jane had ever met. She knew full well she was lucky to have obtained a position as her lady’s companion. Other young women of her acquaintance had not been so fortunate in their employers.

Rising to her tiptoes, Jane scanned the crowd.

“Lady Williamston is over by the punch bowl,” she said, then lowered her voice to indulge in Lady Ridgefield’s love of gossip. “Likely putting whiskey in her cup from that secret stash she keeps in her reticule.”

Her employer giggled like a school miss. “Anyone else?”

Jane continued to whisper little details of the attendees around the room, adding her own commentary to the descriptions until Lady Ridgefield’s cheeks were pink with pleasure.

“Whom would you like to speak to first?” Jane asked with a pull of dread in her chest.

Once they were with the other ladies of her employer’s rank, she would be forgotten again, despite the fact that many of the women had once been friends of her mother and father. This constant reminder of what she’d lost was never easy for Jane, no matter how she prepared herself for the inevitable.

“There is a commotion over there,” Lady Ridgefield said with a wave of her fan. “What is happening, Jane? I cannot see!”

Jane turned toward the entrance to the ballroom. As silly as she was, Lady Ridgefield could be quite observant when it came to matters of Society. Indeed, an unnatural crowd had formed at the entrance to the ballroom. Someone very important must have entered. How pleased Lady Ridgefield would be if Wellington or even the prince himself joined their party tonight. It would keep her employer happy for months, which Jane had come to see as a lofty life goal.

Finally the crowd parted, almost as if Moses himself were moving them aside. But it wasn’t a biblical figure who stepped away from the fray. No, indeed, the man who sauntered into the ballroom did not look like the kind to
read
a Bible, let alone belong in one.

Rather, he looked like sin.

Jane sucked in her breath despite herself. The stranger was tall, very tall. More than half a head bigger than any of the men who surrounded him. But it was more than his superior height that drew her attention. He had a presence about him. A strength that was reflected both in the lean lines of his body and the way he moved.

He was dressed…oddly. His coat was a few seasons behind the fashion and his shirt looked a little faded. Plus the items were ill-fitted, too tight in some places and far too loose in others.

Certainly he was aware of the scrutiny of those around him. One would have to be daft not to see and feel it. And it wasn’t friendly interest, either. Shock, anger, even disgust were reflected on the faces in the crowd.

Jane looked at the interloper more closely, surprised by the ire he inspired. There was something familiar about him, but she didn’t think they had ever met.

“It is a man,” Jane murmured since Lady Ridgefield had now begun tugging on the woolen sleeve of her ugly gown. “I do not know who he is. I feel like I’ve seen him before, but…”

She trailed off. He was getting closer now, and for some odd reason her heart began to pound.

“I know who it may be!” Lady Ridgefield whispered. “Oh, I had heard he might be making a return to Society, but I never thought he’d dare come here tonight!”

“Who is he?” Jane asked, ever more distracted the nearer the man came.

His eyes, God, they were beautiful. Bright, almost painful blue against his tanned skin and dark, close-cropped hair. She started when she realized one of them was faintly blackened, as if he had recently been in a fight.

And then he turned his gaze on her. Those eyes that had so surprised and captivated her moved over her in one sweep. If Jane’s heart had pounded before, now it felt as though it stopped completely. As though time had frozen as this man looked at her.

But then he moved on, dismissing her just as everyone dismissed her.

Jane sighed.

“Yes, indeed,” Lady Ridgefield crowed as she lowered her spectacles and grasped Jane’s arm in a death grip. She was practically vibrating with excitement. “That
is
him! His name is Viscount Nicholas Stoneworth. He just inherited the title from his poor late brother—”

“Anthony Stoneworth,” Jane finished, her gaze rushing to the man who now had a name to go along with his harsh, handsome face.

A name that explained why Nicholas Stoneworth seemed so familiar. He had been Anthony Stoneworth’s twin brother, and Jane had seen the late viscount dozens of times. Perhaps she had even danced with him before she fell into her current situation. The other man had always seemed gentlemanly and kind enough.

But the expression in Nicholas’s eyes was far from kind. And there was nothing gentlemanly about him. He resembled a tiger who had been caged for exhibit. Dangerous and feral.

“The poor viscount died just six months ago and it’s been a terrible ordeal for the family,” Lady Ridgefield continued conspiratorially.

Jane flinched. “Death is always difficult, especially of so young and healthy a man. It was a riding accident, wasn’t it? And he had children?”

“Daughters,” Lady Ridgefield said with a sad nod. “Hardly out of the cradle, both of them. But the ordeal comes almost as much from Nicholas Stoneworth himself, as from the tragedy of his brother’s death. After all, he dissolved into the underground years ago, doing Lord knows what, but some people say he owned a gambling den, fathered a hundred bastard children, even that he was involved in…
pugilism
.”

Well, that would certainly explain the black eye. Jane’s gaze flashed to the man a third time. He had a drink in his hand now and was glowering at anyone who dared come within an arm’s length of him. No one seemed willing to test the parameter he had established.

Yes, he looked like he belonged in the London underground. Jane held her breath. She had never yet met anyone who had
real
connections to that dark and dangerous world, no matter how hard she searched. Yet here someone had been dropped almost into her very lap! Perhaps it was providence.

“The underground?” she repeated, knowing that her employer would not be able to keep herself from gossiping.

“Yes. I don’t know the particulars of why they quarreled, but he was all but disinherited by his father. Yet, what could they do when Anthony died? Nicholas Stoneworth is legal heir to the Bledsoe title since his brother didn’t have sons.” Lady Ridgefield sighed. “It is a truly terrible thing in every way. And I always liked the boy as a child.”

Jane wanted to ask more, but Lady Ridgefield was already moving across the ballroom. “Come now, we must find Griselda! I
know
she will have something to say about this.”

Jane followed Lady Ridgefield blindly into the crowd toward her pack of friends across the room. But her mind was not on her employer’s gossip or even on anticipating Lady Ridgefield’s every need.

Instead, Jane could only think of Nicholas Stoneworth, and how he might be the key to everything her heart desired.

Nicholas Stoneworth glowered at the room around him. He hated being here, he hated the crowd, and he hated this blasted cravat that felt like a noose around his neck. Mostly he hated looking into the mirror before he departed the town home he had let in London and seeing his brother’s face staring back at him. For a moment it had been quite startling, and the maids would probably be picking shards of glass out of the Oriental carpet for months to come.

But he was here, by God. And he intended to drink as much as he could. In fact, as he snatched a third glass of whiskey off the tray of a ridiculously liveried serving boy, he intended to do so until he wouldn’t hear the whispers and see the stares of those around him.

Being on display wasn’t the problem. When he was in a boxing ring, he never minded the gaping masses that talked about him and cried out catcalls when he passed. Truth be told, he reveled in the power his impeccable record gave him.

No, it was the discomfort of not
belonging
where he was that troubled him. Everyone around him was judging him, just as his father had always judged him. They were all comparing him to his brother.

And he would never do anything but come up miserably short.

“Nicholas.”

He froze, drink midway to his lips, and stared with unseeing eyes at the wall across the room from him. That voice. Although they had spoken a few times in the past strained months since Anthony’s death, it was still a shock each time he heard it.

His father.

Slowly, Nicholas turned and faced the man whom he had never pleased in thirty years. He flinched. He wasn’t yet accustomed to how much older his father looked since Nicholas had left the family. The past six months had made him older still. His dark hair was lightened by gray and his eyes, the same blue eyes Nicholas and his brother had inherited, had lost some of their luster.

With practiced calm, Nicholas smirked. “Hello, my lord. Fancy meeting you here.”

His father’s jaw twitched as if his teeth were set, but he didn’t explode as Nicholas expected he would like to. Of course, that had nothing to do with a desire to control his infamous temper or an attempt at peace. It was more about maintaining appearances. Here in the ballroom, where everyone was either blatantly or secretly watching the exchange between estranged father and son, the marquis could not say whatever was truly on his mind.

“I did not realize you would be in attendance,” his father choked out.

Nicholas tilted his head. “I got an invitation from Lord Glormoker—”

“Glouchester,” his father corrected on a barely perceptible sigh.

“—and I assumed there would be alcohol,” Nicholas continued with a smile, though he felt little good humor at the utter disappointment on his father’s face. The old man had stopped trying to hide it long ago. “So I came. Although I wouldn’t count this”—he downed the watery drink in one swig—“as spirits of any kind.”

Though when he drank enough of them in short succession, they did help him obtain the desired haze. After another five or ten, he might be happily numb and survive the evening.

His father stepped forward and leaned in. “You are making a spectacle of yourself.”

“How so?” he drawled in response.

The marquis clenched his fists at his sides. “Those clothes are a disgrace. You have two days’ worth of stubble on your cheeks, you are drinking like a sailor, and is that a black eye I see?”

Another thin smile lifted Nicholas’s lips. He’d gotten that black eye sparring with Rage in the parlor of his town home two days before. Three of the poor servants had promptly resigned out of sheer terror, but the exercise had relieved Nicholas’s feeling of being trapped, at least for a while.

“I see you find this funny,” his father said in disgust, stepping away. “You care very little about your reputation, or the reputation of this family.”

Nicholas shrugged, years of bitterness welling up in him as he stared into the eyes so like his own. “And? Do you really expect more from me?”

“Not expect,” his father said as he turned away and strode back into the crowd in a few long, angry steps. “Only hoped. A fool’s hope.”

Nicholas stared at his father’s back as it moved away from him. Farther in the distance, he saw his mother watching him. Her face was crumpled and soft with pained emotion.

And suddenly the fun he’d had tweaking his father, the moment of pleasure he’d taken in living up to every expectation the old man held, disappeared. Leaving behind shame, disgust, and grief. Grief for his brother. Grief for what should have been, but would never be.

So he set his empty glass down and left the ballroom.

Jane watched surreptitiously as Viscount Nicholas Stoneworth and his father had it out in front of a large portion of the Upper Ten Thousand. Most of the people around her weren’t even surreptitious. They stared openly, practically drooling as the little family drama played out across the room.

She couldn’t help but feel sorry for them both. Although she couldn’t hear the soft words the men exchanged, it was plain from their expressions that there was a great deal of painful emotion between them. It actually put her to mind of her own brother and father, the way they had exchanged words in the weeks before Marcus vanished, never to be seen again.