“Is she a familiar of yours?” he asked, hoping he had just found the solution to his problem, one which would enable him to accomplish objective number two with far greater ease.
Crispin studied him, his gaze intent. Searching. “She is, yes, through my lovely wife.”
Crispin had gotten married whilst Morgan had been trapped on the Continent. Morgan had seen Crispin and his lovely duchess together on several occasions since his return, and the two exuded contentment and nauseating love with such disturbing devotion, he had been forced to excuse himself from their presence.
Mayhap here was something that would render Whitley’s wife useful after all, and mitigate the suffering he had endured in having to witness their lovesick banter and mooning glances.
“Perhaps you can introduce us,” Morgan suggested, a smile pulling at his lips for the first time this evening.
It was not a pleasant smile, and he knew it from the manner in which his friend stiffened and frowned. It was the smile of a predator about to snap his jaws upon his unsuspecting prey. Of the soldier who slammed his bayonet into the gullet of his enemy before the other man could act. It was born of ugliness. Of relief and anticipation, of grim, satisfying victory.
He felt like the very devil about to descend upon the angelic Lady Leonora. But he had no place inside him for compunction any longer. It had been excised from his body by weeks of beatings. He had always taken the beatings, the pain. And he would take Lady Leonora now in the same way: without flinching.
She was to be his prize.
“I am not sure that is wise,” Crispin said, his tone steeped in caution. “Lady Leonora is…delicate.”
He stared right back at his friend, determination coursing through him as surely as blood in his veins. “I require an introduction to the lady.”
“You intend to marry her?” Crispin asked then. “My wife will flay my hide if you dally with Lady Leonora and raise her hopes.”
“Others have flayed my hide, Cris,” he informed his friend bitterly. “Men with far greater determination to inflict pain than your duchess. Will you introduce me to Lady Leonora, or must I seek out another?”
Crispin exhaled on a reluctant sounding sigh, and Morgan knew he had won. “Very well. I shall introduce you. But if you hurt her in any fashion—”
“Lead the way,” he interrupted curtly, returning his gaze once more to Lady Leonora. His future marchioness.
He knew in his heart and in his gut right then and there, he would hurt her. He would break her. He would use her, and he would not feel the slightest hint of guilt, for one day soon,El Corazón Oscurowould face him once more, man to man, and he would have his goddamn revenge.
*
Freddy was married.
From her customary position at every social event, the resident wallflower seated on the outskirts of the ballroom, Leonora watched her dearest friend, Lady Frederica Kirkwood, smiling up at her dashing husband, Mr. Duncan Kirkwood. The evening’s ball was a grand event, the societal debut of the married couple. Mr. Kirkwood—a gaming hell owner and illegitimate son of the Duke of Amberly—was determined to be respectable. And Amberly, who was in attendance this evening as well, had lent his aid to that cause.
Leonora was happy for her friend. So happy a sheen of tears blurred her vision as she watched the dark-haired Freddy and her golden-haired husband whirling about the ballroom. They made a striking pair, truly they did.
A spear of some indefinable emotion shot straight through her at the sight. She did not wish to believe it was envy, for she loved her friend, and Freddy deserved every happiness. She deserved a husband who was handsome and who gazed upon her with rapt adoration, quite as if she were the only female in all London, because Freddy was kind and noble and tenderhearted, and there was no finer lady to be found than she.
No, Leonora did not begrudge Freddy all the wondrous change her friend had experienced since marrying the man she loved. But some small and wicked part of Leonora wished that for once in her nine-and-twenty years, she would not be overlooked. That she would not be Limping Leonora, whom no gentleman wished to wed.
That she would have a husband of her own.
He did not even need to be as handsome as Mr. Kirkwood. Leonora did not fool herself about her matrimonial prospects. She was not a catch. Her dowry was paltry, and her half brother was the enigmatic Earl of Rayne, of half Spanish blood and notorious for his reclusive ways. He had not been seen in town for some years. Indeed, Leonora had only heard from her half brother occasionally in recent years, through sporadic letters sent from abroad. She knew nothing of his whereabouts beyond his presence on the Continent. To Leonora, Alessandro had always been a caring, affectionate brother, in spite of his absences. Naturally, however, the whispers about his madness did nothing to aid her cause of husband hunting. And neither did her advanced age or infirmity.
Surely, she could find someone, however. A gentleman of consideration and compassion, one who would not look upon her as a creature to be pitied and scorned but instead as a woman who might be his bride.
“Do sit up straighter, my dear,” said Mama suddenly, breaking her customary silence. “He is looking upon you now.”
“He?” Leonora stiffened and instinctively adjusted the fall of her gown, making certain no hint of her lame leg existed beneath the diaphanous silk crepe. She gave a hasty glance about the ballroom, but as far as she could see, they were surrounded by the standard cadre of glittering, tittering lords and ladies, and not a soul of them were paying any attention at all to Limping Leonora or her invalid mother on the border of the fete.
“Do not cast your eyes wildly about the room,” Mama chastised, her lips scarcely moving as she pinned a smile in place and fanned her face with such slowness it had no effect at all.
She frowned at her mother. “Are you overheated?”
Mama made a sound of long-suffering. “If only I were not so often abed, struck low by my failing health, I could have taught you how to snare a husband. How do you think I wed His Grace? It was not by sitting in a corner.”
Leonora’s cheeks went hot with embarrassment. Though this was an old quarrel between herself and Mama, it was nevertheless a dagger whose blade had not dulled with time. It still had the power to cut deeply into her flesh, and it did each time.
