Lord Ruin (2 page)

“Love,” said Dev with one of his wry grins. “A most heinous crime.”

“Love.” Cynssyr lifted one brow in the supercilious disdain he usually reserved for certain rebuttals in the Lords. “You mean a man’s delusion he’s not been robbed of his freedom and a woman’s that she’s gained hers?”

“Exactly,” Devon said.

“How can you trust your judgment now?” He lifted his riding whip, but brought it down on his boot leg, not his horse. “Fools the both of you.” So saying, he urged his horse to a gallop. “Anne Sinclair,” he muttered. He heard Devon and Ben thunder after him and gave his horse its head. They had no chance of catching him now. Only the best horseflesh found its way into his stables. He had the best of everything. Wine. Horses. Women. Friends.

He wanted to roar with disgust and dismay. Devon married. What was he to do with himself then? To the devil with spinsters who set their caps on marriage, he thought as the chill wind whipped past him. “To the very devil with her.” Thus did the duke of Cynssyr, so deservedly referred to as Lord Ruin, dismiss the woman with whom he would soon be desperately in love.

The duke of Sin and the Angelic Sinclair, surely a match made in heaven.

“Well,” said Lucy, folding the page from which she’d read out loud. The rest of the paper slid off her lap and onto the floor. “Quite a triumph for our youngest sister.”

Mary held out Anne’s gloves. “He’ll propose to her at Corth Abbey.” They were in Anne’s room, about to leave for Sussex and Mr. Devon Carlisle’s country retreat now that Anne was at last well enough to think of such a journey, illness having kept her abed since the day of the Sinclair family’s arrival in London.

“He won’t,” Anne said, admitting just to herself that in actual fact she prayed he would not. She drew on a glove. She didn’t yet know the extent of the disaster, but according to Mary, all anyone had talked about during her three-week sickroom confinement was that man, that awful man, the duke of Cynssyr, courting Emily.

The Angelic Sinclair he dubbed her and, drat the man, the sobriquet stuck.

The only other subject of conversation that even came close to Emily and the duke was how yet another woman had been snatched right from Piccadilly Street. Whispers of the incident abounded, some ridiculous beyond belief. Violence underlay all the speculations, from the probable through to the fantastic. True, ransom had been paid, but no one, it seemed, believed the story stopped there.

“Yes, he will,” said Lucy. “Emily refuses to encourage him, but he is determined, is the duke.”

Anne turned. She had long ago accepted the unspoken expectation that she would care for their father for as many years as were left him. A pretty woman born to a family of beauties, Anne considered her looks little more than tolerable. With three beautiful sisters, few people, if any, noticed she was not at all unattractive.

“What sort of recommendation is that for a husband?” Fear made her tone sharp. Guilt, too. If only she’d gotten out and about sooner, events might never have come to this unfortunate pass. “Determined.” She sniffed. “What about love? Emily must be loved by her husband, and I don’t believe for even a moment he loves Emily.” She had no doubt whatever that marriage between Emily and Cynssyr would be disastrous. Marriage to the duke would be disastrous for any woman. “Love. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.” She gave her other glove a jerk in order to slide her fingers to the ends. “He doesn’t. He can’t.” She tugged hard on the cuff. “He never will.”

“He’s one of the most powerful men in England, and he wants to marry Emily.” Mary tucked a strand of Anne’s hair behind her ear. Somewhere between blond and silver-gold, Anne’s hair refused to hold a curl. A woman who cared for the fashion of ringlets might have despaired. “Have you nothing else to wear, Anne? Something blue to match your eyes?”

“I’m presentable.” That’s all a spinster need be: presentable. Her eyes were of little account, not quite blue, not quite gray. Besides, they were too darkly lashed and obscured by a pair of spectacles, gold rims holding narrow ovals of glass. Her features were regular enough, but to Anne, who had constantly the model of her sisters before her, they fell far short of beauty. Rarely did people look past the spectacles, since she dressed like the spinster she was, in plain, sober gowns without concession to style.

“Powerful,” she now replied to her sister. “From an accident of birth. It’s not as though he earned his exalted position.” If she’d known how closely her expression resembled Cynssyr at his haughtiest she would have been mortified. “He’s a dilettante who probably cares more for his tailor or his bootmaker than the less fortunate people of England. What does he know of the suffering of real people?” Bartley Green had its share of misery. The duke didn’t know a thing about people from villages like Bartley Green. How could he, a man to the manor born, have any understanding of poverty? Or of hopelessness clinging to one’s soul like the dampness of mist.

“For pity’s sake, Anne, he’s not a monster.”

“I’ll take issue with that.” In truth, she knew little of the duke except what she read in the papers and that consisted primarily of melodramatic accounts of his social exploits. Still, if even a particle was true, he was the sort of man a lady avoided at all costs. Satirists rendered the duke’s amorous pursuits in droll cartoons, frequently showing him addressing the House of Lords while women swooned at his feet. The caricatures made clear where his interests lay, and it wasn’t the subject matter of his speeches.

“Papa is beside himself, you know.” Lucy sighed. “Emily a duchess.”

“Emily a what?” came a voice from the doorway.

“Papa will not interfere this time,” Anne said stoutly, but low enough that only Mary and Lucy heard. “He won’t coerce another daughter into a disastrous marriage.” What Lucy thought of this reference to her late husband, she didn’t care. The stakes were too high for the nicety of silence on a painful subject.

Emily walked in, cooly elegant in a lilac carriage dress. Anne melted a little, as she always did when she looked at her youngest sister. She’d held an infant Emily in her arms, nursed her though illness and soothed her out of unhappiness. Beautiful, trusting Emily would be destroyed by a man like Cynssyr. Her sweet nature and high spirits would not survive the discovery that the duke did not and could not love her. Seeing her sister married to Cynssyr would break her heart. Emily needed love in her marriage. She deserved love. As their parents had once loved. This headlong rush to catastrophe simply had to be stopped.

“A duchess,” Lucy supplied.

“If I were a duchess,” said Emily, mimicking a regal stance, “you should have to curtsey when I came into the room.” Her eyes twinkled. “And Anne would have to listen to me for a change.”

“We’ll see about that. Lucy, dearest, your bootlace is untied.”

“What? Again?” She bent down. “What a nuisance. I am forever coming undone.”

“Hurry up, Lucy,” said Emily. “Aldreth says the carriage is ready.”

Anne smiled grimly and adjusted her cap. “Shall we?”

With dry roads and no rain to slow them down, the journey into Sussex didn’t take but two hours. Too short a drive, thought Anne. And, indeed, they arrived all too soon. She hadn’t nearly enough time to lay plans against the duke.

Lucy dropped one of her gloves when the carriage door opened. “Go on, Lucy,” said Anne. She dipped her head to avoid being enveloped by Emily’s skirt as she descended.
“I’ll find it.”

“Thank you, Anne. You’re a treasure.” Lucy extended a hand to someone outside and stepped down.

Now, she thought, bending down, where was that glove? Not on the seat. “Come now, little glove,” she cajoled. “Blast, do stop hiding. Ah, hah!” There it was on the floor, kicked nearly out of sight beneath the lip of the seat.

“Welcome,” she heard a deep, resonant voice say to the others. “Welcome to Corth Abbey.”

Inside the carriage, Anne’s hand stopped inches from Lucy’s glove. She knew that voice. Memories and feelings rushed back, tugging at her heart.

“Anne?” Mary called from just outside.

She snatched the glove and for the space of a breath stayed bent down. Her pulse raced. She lifted a hand to her head to smooth her hair, then stopped. Curse her for her pride. What she looked like didn’t matter. Even if she were as beautiful as one of her sisters, what feelings Devon Carlisle may once have felt for her must be long dead. She recaptured her flight of fancy and gathered back the misgivings of her heart. Clutching Lucy’s glove, she stepped from the carriage, unnoticed.

Devon stood with Mary and Aldreth but he was bowing over Lucy’s hand, distracted, as most men were, by her beauty. Thus, Anne had a moment to compose herself. Though his circumstances had changed dramatically, he had not. His hair was still too long, and he still had that ungoverned air about him, as if he just barely restrained himself from some outrageous behavior. Four years had passed. She told herself she meant nothing to him now. Indeed, she expected he would show her only polite disinterest. He was rich now and ennobled while she was nothing but a spinster of no particular interest to anyone.

He let go of Lucy’s hand and greeted her father. Grinning, he gave Aldreth a thump on the shoulder. Then he turned to her. Anne felt her stomach contract with a kind of shivery sensation, equal parts trepidation and exhilaration, it seemed to her.

“Anne,” he said in the wine-smooth voice she remembered so well. “How glad I am to see you. You are recovered, yes?” He moved to her, taking both her hands in his and smiling that sinister smile of his.

“Perfectly, my lord.” She bent a knee. Papa, when in his cups, tended to talk rather too much. Too late, she learned that four years ago Devon Carlisle had admired her more than a little. She’d returned the feeling, never dreaming that a man of Devon’s qualities would think of her as anything more than a chaperon for her sisters. They’d talked for hours in the days before Mary’s wedding, when she’d spent more time at Aldreth’s estate of Rosefeld than her own home. Then, of course, Devon had been a penniless younger son, and that had been reason enough for Papa to discourage him when he’d called after the wedding and been summarily dismissed.

“Devon,” he said softly. “On that I insist.”

Her pulse tripped. Lucy and Devon, she thought in a sort of wild panic, would suit. Yes. Suit they would. A perfect match those two. “Yes, sir.”

“Devon,” he repeated.

Hearing that warm and tender tone, her stomach fluttered with butterflies. Unbidden came the thought that she really could not bear a disappointment. Too much time had passed. Too much had changed. Four years had put marriage further from her grasp. She might as well imagine herself a princess as imagine herself married, let alone married to him. Her place and her future were no mystery at all. She looked to Lucy who knelt over her boot, tying the laces yet again. “Lucy, dear, come along.” What she wanted wasn’t possible. Matters would end precisely where they had in Bartley Green.

“I own,” Ben remarked to Anne, turning his head so only Mary saw him smiling, “Bracebridge here meant to fetch the physic himself when he heard you were not well. He must have asked a dozen times if you were going to come with us.”

“We shall be a very merry party, I think,” said Devon quickly. He touched the bridge of his nose at the spot where it jogged slightly left rather than continue straight. “Lady Prescott has arrived.” Still holding one of Anne’s hands, he led them up the stairs. “And the Cookes. Mr. Hathaway, Major Truitt.” He gestured. “Breathe a word that the Sinclairs have accepted, and one must deal with all sorts of people desperate for an invitation.”

“Has his grace arrived yet?” Sinclair asked with a significant glance at Emily.

Dread knotted Anne’s stomach. That man, the duke who was an utterly unsuitable husband for any woman, but especially for someone in her family, would not toy with Emily’s heart the way he had with all those other women. No matter what. She didn’t know yet how she would prevent an engagement, but she would. Somehow she would.

Devon shook his head. “Alas, sir, no.”

Like that, Anne’s tension collapsed, the knot in her stomach unraveled. She leaned to Mary. “What did I tell you?” she whispered with undeniable exaltation. “Lord Ruin hasn’t even come, the coward. He got nowhere with Emily and has taken up easier prey.” A butler moved forward to take hats and cloaks.