However handsome the wicked Lord Ranelaw was.
However powerfully her own recollections of stallions and storms and headlong gallops stirred when she met his knowing dark eyes.
Ranelaw returned to his London house poorer by five hundred guineas. As Thorpe gloatingly pointed out, Miss Smith had saved her charge from a scandalous waltz with a rake and therefore he’d won the bet. Ranelaw’s encounter with the dragon had been so entertaining, it was almost worth losing a monkey to his friend.
Almost.
Smiling wryly at the surprising enjoyment he’d derived from the acid-tongued chaperone, he poured a generous measure of brandy from the decanter on the library sideboard. He downed the brandy, refilled his glass, and turned to the correspondence on his desk. He wasn’t usually sober at this hour. Hell, he wasn’t usually home at this hour. It was barely two. He should be carousing in some dive or losing himself in a woman’s arms.
After Lady Wreston’s ball, he could have continued the night’s entertainment. A new opera dancer had caught his eye, and he’d intended to fix his interest with her. She was a luscious pigeon, small and titian-haired. Last night she’d exactly fitted his current tastes.
Somehow tonight, after the ball, she . . . didn’t.
He swallowed a deep draft of brandy, the heat burning his throat. Setting the glass on the desk, he lifted the top packet from the pile.
He glanced through the reports from his land agents, decided nothing required immediate action, and turned his attention to the rest. Requests for parliamentary support, which he consigned to the fire. A perfumed plea from a discarded mistress who hadn’t accepted her congé. That too fed the flames.
He held to few principles, but one was that he never lied to his lovers. When an affair began, he informed the lady that the liaison would last precisely as long as his interest did—generally not an extended period. He wasn’t a good bet for faithful devotion. His family had schooled him early in the damage unrestrained passion caused. He hadn’t seen anything since to change his mind. He was essentially solitary and glad to be so. Only his frequent sexual encounters reminded him, should he need such a reminder, of his continuing link to the rest of humanity.
Grim thoughts for the early hours. Perhaps he should have stayed out after all. A self-mocking smile twisted his lips and he selected another packet from the stack.
Finally one letter remained. His gut twisted into its accustomed mixture of sick guilt and regret when he recognized the neat, feminine hand on the seawater-stained missive. She wrote every week from Ireland, and every week he forced himself to read her letter and answer it.
He resisted the urge to top up his brandy before opening his half sister’s letter. Instead he carried it across to the fire. He sank into an armchair, emptied his glass, and placed it with precision on the side table. Then with a violent gesture, he broke the seal and read Eloise’s loving greeting.
For a long time, Ranelaw stared unseeingly at the flowing lines of words. Instead his vision filled with the heartbreaking events of twenty years ago. Helpless rage and regret pierced him as he relived those hellish days of Eloise’s disgrace.
When he was eleven and his beloved half sister was eighteen, Godfrey Demarest had visited Keddon Hall. The late marquess and Demarest had linked up at some gaming hell or other. In his usual careless way, the marquess had invited the fellow to spend summer by the sea with the Challoner family. Any sensible man would pause before bringing a youth already hardened in vice into a house overflowing with pretty girls. Pretty girls who, thanks to parental neglect, roamed largely unsupervised. But then, nobody had ever accused the previous Marquess of Ranelaw of being a sensible man.
Throughout a sweltering June, Demarest doggedly pursued the most beautiful of the Challoner bastards. Naïve and lonely, Eloise swiftly fell victim to a rake’s practiced wiles, sweetened with pretty compliments and false vows of devotion. Demarest plucked her as easily as he’d pluck a honeysuckle blossom.
Nicholas had been jealous of the attention his favorite sister paid the handsome visitor from Somerset. He should have foreseen disaster and pushed Demarest off a cliff before he ruined Eloise’s life. After all, no child brought up in the harum-scarum Challoner household remained unaware of doings between men and women. But he’d stayed oblivious to the developing calamity.
By the time he knew, it was too late. Demarest swanned back to London, abandoning a bereft and pregnant Eloise. Clearly he’d considered the marquess’s by-blow fair game and believed he owed her nothing in return for her virginity. For all his blustering, Ranelaw’s father was too spineless to do more than beat Eloise and lock her in her room. The false lover never faced ultimatums from a furious papa. Instead Demarest blazed ahead to a carefree life and a rich marriage as if Eloise didn’t exist.
Eloise had her share of pride and fire. She’d been stubborn and unwilling to accept rejection at face value. She’d broken out of her room and begged Ranelaw to take her to Demarest. The bitter memory of that journey still made Ranelaw cringe. Twenty years later. His hand clenched on her latest letter, crushing it.
They’d careered through the stormy night in a gig stolen from their father’s stables, reaching Demarest’s London lodgings before dawn. Eloise had leaped eagerly from the carriage, clutching her small bag. Nicholas waited in the gig as she dashed toward the imposing town house. He’d waited when a superior footman answered and left her standing while he went inside. Nicholas still waited when the footman returned, informed Eloise Mr. Demarest wasn’t at home, and shut the door in her face.
His sister stood her ground, insisted her lover would see her. The footman left again.
She waited longer in the rain, her gay, new gown turning wet and heavy. Even from a di
stance, Nicholas could see her shivering by the time the servant reappeared.
The footman passed her a note and closed the door.
Ranelaw never learned what was in that note. But his sister was pale as snow when she returned to the gig. The only words she spoke were a request to return to Hampshire. She looked as though she wanted to die. All the bright, vivid life—the bright, vivid life that had attracted that louse Demarest’s interest, he realized now—was snuffed out. She was only eighteen but she looked older than the ages.
It was then Ranelaw swore one day he’d see that Demarest’s life wasn’t worth living. One day he’d destroy the weasel just as the weasel had destroyed Eloise.
The tragedy was that when Ranelaw made that furious vow, the most agonizing consequences of Eloise’s folly still awaited.
He closed his eyes and tried to block the corrosive memories. Anger, pain, betrayal surged up from his belly, threatened to strangle him. He drew a shuddering breath and pinched his nose hard as he closed his eyes, praying to a God he didn’t believe in for—
For what?
For a chance to change the past? For a chance to save Eloise? He wasn’t stupid enough to believe either possible.