Ripe for Scandal (38 page)

T
he house Nowlin led them to in Dublin appeared unoccupied. The knocker was off the door, and there was no sign of servants
or Granby. Gareth tried the door, but it remained stubbornly locked. He retreated to the walk and stood studying the house.
It was narrow, made of soot-darkened stone, and identical to twenty others running in a solid row down the street.

Devere shook the handle.

“We could break it down,” Nowlin said. “Or slip in a window and have a look around.”

“You’re sure this is the right house?” Gareth asked, glancing up the street.

“Yes, sir. Number six.”

“Well, then, I suppose one of us should wait here while the others return to confer with the Lord Magistrate.”

“I say we have a look around and wait in comfort,” Devere said, pushing the door open.

Gareth raised a brow, and Devere held up a pen knife before folding it shut and shoving it into his pocket.
“So now you’ve added housebreaking to your list of crimes?”

Devere shrugged and walked into the house. “I suggest we have a quick look around for signs of habitation.”

Gareth drew his pistol from his pocket as Devere did the same. Nowlin hurriedly shut the door behind them. Devere walked off
to explore the ground floor, and Gareth moved toward the stairs. At the top of them was a small hall with doors on three sides.
The stairs twisted up another floor behind him.

There were footprints in the fine layer of dust that covered the dark wooden floor. Gareth followed them to the middle door
and pushed it open. The chair was still swaddled in a linen drape, but there was a coat tossed carelessly across its back.

A trunk, open and belching forth its contents, sat under the room’s only window. One drawer of the clothespress lolled open,
overflowing with scraps of paper. Granby’s belongings were strewn all across the bed, as though he’d been sorting them.

Gareth picked up a stack of paper and sorted through it. Debts of honor. Markers and IOUs in at least a dozen hands. He swiftly
leafed through them. Nowlin’s appeared to be mixed in with the rest. With a smile of grim satisfaction, he collected them
all and went to inform Devere and Nowlin of what he’d found. They had him, and after they burnt his cache of markers, he’d
have no hold over Nowlin.

Devere checked the frizzen of his gun for the hundredth time. Gareth uncrossed his ankles and flexed his
calves. The Irish constable that the Lord Magistrate had sent to arrest Granby motioned for them to stay still.

They’d been lurking in one of the spare rooms beside Granby’s bedchamber for several hours, while Nowlin and another constable
hid on the ground floor in case Granby managed to get past them. Two more constables, including the man that Sir Tobias had
sent, were waiting outside.

A whistle, like the cry of a starling, was followed by the sound of the front door opening and brought Devere’s head up. It
shut with a solid
thump
, and then someone could be heard ascending the stairs. The bedroom door likewise announced its use, and Devere cocked his
pistol.

Gareth climbed carefully to his feet. The others did the same. The wood of the gun butt had grown warm in his hand. The deadly
little instrument had only one purpose, and Gareth very much wanted to use it.

The constable gave them a stern look and eased the door open. He’d oiled the hinges when they first arrived, and the door
swung as silently as they could ever have hoped.

“Mr. George Granby,” the Irishman said, voice deafeningly loud. “I’ve an order here for your arrest on the charge of murder.”

When no response was forthcoming, the constable lifted one foot and smashed open the door. By the time Gareth reached the
room, Granby was halfway out the window, backlit by the moon like a silhouette. The constable had him fast by the skirts of
his coat.

“Come back inside, sir. Nothing out there but my men and a hard drop to the cobbles. And that’s if you miss the spikes.”

A shout from below caused Granby to lose his grip and lurch outward. The constable hauled him back inside, the sound of tearing
stitches loud as he did so. Granby landed with a thump and came up swinging.

He took the larger man down and lunged for the door. Gareth sent him sprawling with a kick. Devere’s gun went off, wood splintered,
and the stench of saltpeter filled the room.

Granby skittered across the floor and scrambled up, armed with a poker. Devere and the constable closed in on him, hemming
him in on both sides.

Granby ignored them, eyes trained on Gareth. His breathing was heavy, labored, like a dog at the end of a fight.

Gareth raised his gun as the constable took hold of Granby’s wrist. A grimace passed over Granby’s face, and he took a deep,
audible breath.

“I’d love to shoot you,” Gareth said. “Watching you hang won’t give me nearly the same satisfaction. Swing. Swing, damn you.”

Granby’s hand opened, and the poker clattered to the floor.

The constable took a firmer grip on Granby and shoved him toward the door. Granby’s boot heels dragged heavily across the
floor.

“Coward,” Gareth said as Granby passed by him.

CHAPTER 57

G
ulliver yawned, showing a great, pink gullet like the inside of a whale, and flopped back down onto the grass beside Beau.
They made a sight, the group of them all in black and white, as though matching their color scheme to the house.

Gareth repressed the urge to laugh. Jamie was safe. Beau loved him. And he was home. Jamie and Beau hadn’t spotted him yet.
He was free to simply watch them, a happy protectiveness sweeping through him. This was his. All of it.

Jamie glanced over at Beau, indignation writ large on his face. “Not down, Gully,” he said. “Sit.”

The dog continued to ignore him, but its tail swished. Gulliver had clearly been washed and groomed since Gareth had last
seen him. His white fur was actually white, and the mass of matts and tangles had been trimmed and combed out.

Jamie bent close and patted its face. “Gully, up.”

The dog rolled over, exposing its belly. Beau rubbed the expanse of pale skin.

“I don’t think you’re going to win that one, Jamie,” Gareth said loudly enough that all three of them jumped.

Jamie screwed up his face, nose scrunched like a rabbit. But he didn’t fling himself at Beau and hide as he’d been wont to
do. Beau grinned up at him, the purity of the welcome utterly humbling. She held out a hand. Gareth strode across the lawn
and tugged her up.

“Granby?” she said, eyes searching his.

“On his way to Newgate.” When Jamie squatted down next to the dog, back facing them, Gareth swooped in for a kiss. Her lips
were soft beneath his, soft and warm and welcoming.

“And Mr. Nowlin?” she said.

“He’ll have to testify, but he’ll be a free man after that. He can take his sister and go home. Granby certainly won’t be
in any position to press his claim, even if he wasn’t going to hang.”

Beau’s mouth curled into a smile. “Found his markers, did you?”

“And burnt them, every last one,” he said with deep satisfaction.

Laugher overwhelmed her, leaving her breathless and clinging to him. “I missed you,” she said simply.

“I missed you too.”

“Good. You’re supposed to.” She glanced over her shoulder. Gareth followed her gaze. Jamie was sitting next to the dog, getting
a very thorough tongue bath.

“Kiss me again and tell me that you love me.”

“Do I?”

She pinched him hard, scrunching her nose at him much as Jamie had at the dog. Gareth kissed the tip of
her glorious nose, dropped another kiss upon her cheek, and then found her lips. He swept his tongue across the seam of her
lips, dipped inside her mouth, and broke away.

“I love you, brat. Never doubt it.”

CHAPTER 1

B
ird chatter split the morning air, the sharp cries entering Roland Devere’s ear and cracking his head apart. He turned his
face away from the sunlight streaming from the window and draped his arm over his eyes.

Never try to outdrink Anthony Thane. Never bet against Leonidas Vaughn, and never fence with Dominic de Moulines. Three rules
to live by.

And he’d broken all of them last night, though thankfully not in that order. The evening had begun with a bout of fencing
at Angelo’s Salle and ended in an utter debauch at Lord Leonidas Vaughn’s house on Chapel Street. Vaughn’s wife had abandoned
them to it, not even bothering to scold.

The soft tread of someone in another room finally forced his eyes open. It sounded as though whoever it was were tiptoeing
about in their stocking feet, but the soft creaks of the floorboards was almost more irritating than the birds.

Roland pushed himself upright, head pounding
uncomfortably as he did so. His coat was bound up at the shoulders, and he yanked it about. He was still fully dressed save
for his shoes, which lolled beneath a chair across from the settee he’d spent the night on. His unbound hair swung into his
face, and he shoved it back, hooking it behind his ears.

The last time he’d downed that much port he’d woken upstairs in one of the finer houses of the impure with a troupe of disgusting
little
puttee
staring down at him from the bed’s canopy, their sly smiles and tiny pricks lurid in the morning light. Vaughn’s drawing
room was an infinitely more welcoming sight.

The League of Second Sons had caroused their way through London, their band growing larger and more raucous as they went.
They’d stormed Lady Hallam’s ball and invaded the Duke of Devonshire’s rout, and had been ejected from The Red Lion—the coffee
house the League had made their own—by the elder members. Ultimately, they had finished their night here in Vaughn’s drawing
room, or at least he had.

Roland had a vague memory of Thane flirting with Lady Ligonier just before his memory went black. Perhaps he’d been lucky
enough to accompany the lady home. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember anyone taking their leave, but he must have been
in quite a state if they couldn’t even get him up the stairs and into one of the guest chambers.