Chapter One
LONDON – NOVEMBER, 1891
If there was one thing Joseph Rathborne-Paxton resented more than anything in the world, it was being treated as the baby of his family. Yes, he was merely twenty-one. Yes, he had not had the same wicked education that his brothers had treated themselves to in their formative years. Yes, he had believed their father’s pious drivel and had lived in real fear that his immortal soul was in peril every time he so much as smiled at a woman or bet a few pounds on the horses. He'd even contemplated taking the cloth, if it meant his father would finally, at long last, approve of him. But that did not make him a prat or a fool. It made him quite sensible, if he did say so himself.
So to be left behind while all his brothers moved on—while Sam and his wife, Alice, were off living the country life in Winchester, Dean was swanning about after his famous actress wife, Nanette D’Argent, and Francis had taken his new bride, Priya, to Lisbon on a honeymoon, Joseph was left eating a stodgy breakfast with his aging mother and Aunt Josephine. He loved both women dearly, but….
“…and then the young chit had the gall to suggest to me that perhaps the knickers needed to be taken out a bit,” his mother told his aunt with heroic levels of indignation. “Can you imagine?”
“The gall of that girl,” Aunt Josephine said, shaking her head as she cut her sausage into infinitesimally small pieces. “I tell you, Muriel, shopgirls these days are too cheeky for their own good.”
Joseph’s mother hummed in agreement. “I could not agree more. Why, in our day, young women and men knew how to respect their elders, if they knew what was good for them.”
“Indeed,” Aunt Josephine said with a nod. “You and I never once spoke out of turn or made a cheeky comment to our mother or Aunt Ermengarde, or anyone who deserved respect.”
Joseph did his level best not to roll his eyes at the two women. Not only had he been treated to the same indignant talk about the lax morals and loose standards of young people, people his own age, at nearly every meal he’d attended with the two of them for a fortnight now, he doubted very much that either woman had been as well-behaved as they claimed. In his experience, every young person of whatever generation got up to exactly what they pleased. It was only when they turned old and had more to look back on than to look forward to that they forgot their own misspent youth in favor of criticizing young people of the day.
Not that he was doing much to be a credit to people his own age, he thought with a sigh, chewing morosely on a piece of toast. Being left behind didn’t only mean he had no one to keep company with at meals but his mother and aunt, it also meant he felt as though he were at arm’s length from the things that truly mattered.
And for Joseph, what truly mattered was that his family was still in danger. His brothers might have found their unsuitable brides and deflected whatever ill-intended gossip their peers in society might throw at them, but Joseph still had the expectation to marry and both restore the family’s wealth and denigrate its name hanging over him. Because even though the villain had been absent for a time, Montrose was back.
He took another bite of his toast with particular force, then chewed it with a scowl. Montrose had spent the entire summer menacing the Rathborne-Paxton family as some sort of scheme to get back at Joseph’s father, Lord Vegas, for a thousand grievous sins his father had committed over the past few decades. Sins that had only just come to light in the spring and caused Joseph’s world to be upended. His father had always been a cold and strict man, but unlike his brothers, Joseph had always believed that he could somehow, someday, at last, earn his father’s love by being good and following every rule and every precept his father set for him.
It truly had broken Joseph’s heart to discover his father was the epitome of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It made him feel as though everything he’d spent his entire life striving to be was a lie. And that meant he had no idea who he was now or where he stood in the world. It was a horrible, sickening feeling. He put down his toast and reached for his tea, taking a big swallow in an attempt to clear the feeling.
It wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t confide in his brothers about it either. They merely laughed at him for being “an innocent” and teased him for letting their father pull the wool over his eyes for so long. He considered it grossly unfair that his brothers treated him in such a way, particularly as all he’d ever wanted from them—and from his father—was to be loved.
Joseph made a disgusted sound, loathing himself for harboring such sentiment, and took another swallow of tea.
“Joseph, darling, are you quite certain you are well?” his mother asked from across the table, interrupting her further conversation with Aunt Josephine to do so.
No, Joseph thought to himself. I am being treated like a child in short pants, left behind by the men I wish to emulate, and treated as a laughingstock. I am not a laughingstock; I am a man.
Aloud, he said, “I am fine, Mother.”
His mother looked as though she didn’t quite believe him, but nodded and continued gossiping with Aunt Josephine.
Joseph cut into his egg with the side of his fork and watched the yolk run out. It was, of course, unmanly of him to wallow in self-pity. On the one hand, he could not help those feelings as they struggled within him. On the other, they did nothing to prove all of the things his brothers said to him wrong. And he desperately wanted to prove that they were wrong. He wanted to prove that he was, in fact, a man. He was strong and decisive. The lessons his father instilled in him might have been as false as fool’s gold in the end, but what he did with those lessons was what truly mattered.
And what Joseph wanted to do was become the unlikely savior of his family.
Montrose was back. The villain had dared to show his face at Francis and Priya’s wedding reception. He had threatened the Rathborne-Paxton family yet again. Before, when Montrose had first attacked his father, it had been about seeking revenge against the aristocracy—a mad pursuit that had caused Montrose to bankrupt and humiliate several wicked noblemen in the past, even leading one to take his own life. And while it could be argued that Montrose only attacked men and families who had indulged in horrible sins—gambling, prostitution, ruining others to save themselves, and the like—the means and methods Montrose used to seek his revenge were worse than those of the men he attacked to begin with. Montrose did not just take aim at the sinners, he obliterated entire families, including innocent members of those families.
The Rathborne-Paxton family had united to stand against him. Sam and Alice had discovered that Montrose funded his nefarious deeds on credit and that the man was gravely in debt. Montrose had attempted to bribe Nan into giving him the money he needed to satisfy his own creditors, and when that attempt had failed, Montrose had disappeared for a while. He was back now, which meant he’d found the funding he needed to carry on with his mission of destruction. Which was why he had shown his sallow and macabre face at Francis and Priya’s reception.
Well, Montrose may have returned, but he would not emerge victorious. Sam, Dean, and Francis might be gone, their father might have fled to India to play court jester to Raja Jogendra Dev Raikut of Jalpaiguri, but Joseph was still standing. He considered himself to be the last and greatest line of defense for not only his mother and his brothers, but for himself too. He would defeat Montrose, no matter what it took to do so.
He set his fork down with a bit too much vigor, causing a bang like a small firearm going off. His mother and aunt both jumped.
“Good heavens, Joseph,” his mother said with an impatient shiver. “What is the matter with you this morning?”
I am fed up with being shunted to the side, like an unimportant trinket. I have been underestimated by my family for the last time. I will prove to you all that I am as much a man as Francis and the others are.
“Nothing, Mama,” Joseph said, feigning an apologetic smile. “My fork slipped.”
His mother hummed. “Do take care, Joseph. And finish your breakfast. You know that you are fragile, and you tend to be cross when you are hungry.”
Joseph did his best not to gape with indignation. “Yes, Mama,” he said, starting in on the last of his eggs.