“Let him try,” she replied, loud enough for those nearby to hear, her chin lifting with quiet defiance. “Desperate men often mistake volume for substance.”
Someone—she thought it might be Mrs. Winthrop—actually laughed. The sound seemed to break whatever spell Sterling’s words had cast, conversations resuming with determined brightness. Victoria turned back to Lord Fairweather, asking about transportation costs with genuine interest, though she remained acutely aware of the malevolent gaze burning into her back.
They stayed another hour, long enough to prove Sterling’s barb had not driven them away, before making their farewells. The carriage ride home passed in comfortable silence, Rees’s hand covering hers on the seat between them, his thumb stroking across her knuckles in soothing repetition.
Only when they reached the privacy of their bedchamber, doors firmly closed against servants and the outside world, did Victoria allow herself to relax fully. She sank onto the upholstered bench before her vanity, fingers working at the pins holding her elaborate coiffure while Rees shrugged out of his evening coat with a sigh of relief.
“He looked terrible,” she observed, watching in the mirror as Rees approached to help with a stubborn pin. “Damian, I mean. Like something is eating at him from within.”
Rees’s fingers stilled in her hair for a moment before resuming their gentle work. “There is something I should tell you.” His eyes met hers in the mirror, serious and watchful. “About Sterling’s circumstances.”
Victoria turned on the bench to face him properly, catching his hands in hers. “What have you done?”
“Nothing he did not bring upon himself.” Rees moved to his armoire, loosening his cravat with distracted movements. “But I have been investigating discreetly. Sterling has been living far beyond his means for years, financing his lifestyle through increasingly desperate gambling. His debts have mounted to astronomical proportions.”
“How astronomical?” Victoria asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer from the grim satisfaction in her husband’s voice.
“Forty thousand pounds, at minimum.” Rees turned back to her, his expression carrying that particular intensity she had learned meant he had been executing some complex financial strategy. “I have bought up most of it through intermediaries. He does not know I hold the notes, but I do. And I have made certain his creditors know exactly how precarious his situation has become.”
Victoria’s breath caught. “Rees...”
“There is more.” He crossed to her, kneeling beside the bench in a gesture that reminded her of that night when he had declared his love on the drawing room floor. “He has been courting Miss Hartwick—she has thirty thousand a year and a father desperate to see her married well. It would have solved all his problems.”
“Would have?”
“I paid a call on Mr. Hartwick yesterday. Laid out some facts about Sterling’s treatment of young ladies, his debts, his character.” Rees’s smile held an edge sharp enough to cut glass. “The engagement will never be announced.”
Victoria’s fingers found the hairbrush on her vanity, needing something to occupy them while her mind raced through the implications. “You have cornered him.”
“Thoroughly.”
She met his eyes, seeing the fierce protectiveness there, the calculated ruthlessness he usually reserved for rivals who had proven themselves unworthy of gentlemanly consideration. It should have frightened her, perhaps, this side of her husband. Instead, she found herself leaning toward him, drawn by the knowledge that this formidable will was bent toward her protection.
“A desperate man is dangerous, Rees.” Her voice emerged barely above a whisper, the words carrying all her fear not for herself but for him. “What if he lashes out? What if he tries to hurt you?”
“Let him try.” The words echoed her own defiance from earlier, but with steel beneath them that spoke of careful preparation rather than mere bravado. “I am ready for whatever he attempts. But Victoria...” He rose, pulling her up with him, his hands framing her face with infinite gentleness. “He will not win. Not this time. Not ever again. I promise you that.”
She believed him. Standing there in their bedchamber, the candlelight painting shadows and gold across his determined features, she believed absolutely that Sterling’s days of destroying lives for sport were numbered. The hunter had become the hunted, and Rees would not rest until the threat was neutralized completely.
Chapter 18
The comfort of White’s enveloped Rees like armor: leather and tobacco smoke, the subtle scent of power clinging to the mahogany paneling and deep chairs that had supported generations of influential men. He nodded to Lord Pemberton near the entrance, exchanged pleasantries with Sir Hartley about the mild weather, and navigated the familiar dance of acknowledgment and avoidance that governed this masculine sanctuary.
His usual table awaited in the corner, positioned for privacy and a commanding view of the room, a privilege earned through years of membership and meticulous cultivation of connections. The Times lay folded beside his chair, its financial pages already marked by an earlier reader tracking fortunes with pencil annotations. Rees settled into the leather with a satisfied sigh, raising a finger to summon his customary brandy, his mind drifting to the shipping contracts he needed to review that evening.
Then, an unmistakable shift in the atmosphere caught his attention. Conversations dipped to murmurs, heads turned like theatergoers sensing drama about to unfold. Rees looked up from his paper to find the source of the disturbance hunched at the bar, nursing what appeared to be his fourth or fifth brandy of the afternoon.
Lord Sterling, disheveled and strained, stood out starkly. His cravat was askew, waistcoat unbuttoned, and his normally gleaming hair hung limp and disordered. The hand gripping his glass trembled slightly; whether from rage or alcohol was unclear. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, giving his handsome face a hollow quality, a testament to sleepless nights spent calculating debts that refused to balance.
Their eyes met across the room, recognition morphing into raw hatred. Sterling abandoned his drink with enough force that liquid sloshed over the rim, his unsteady but purposeful stride cutting through clusters of members who instinctively stepped aside.
“You have destroyed me, Harcourt,” he slurred as he loomed over Rees’s table. The smell of brandy rolled off him in waves, mingling with the sour scent of desperation poorly masked by expensive cologne. “My engagement to Miss Hartwick is broken. My creditors are calling in debts. Every door that matters shuts in my face.”
Rees set down his paper with deliberate precision, each movement underscoring his control against Sterling’s deterioration. “Good afternoon to you too, Sterling. Though it appears your afternoon started earlier than most.”
“Do not.” Sterling’s fist slammed onto the table, making the brandy glass jump. Nearby members shifted in their seats, torn between the impropriety of staring and the impossibility of ignoring the spectacle. “Do not sit there with your calm when you have orchestrated my ruin. All because of your wife’s wounded feelings.”
The slur against Victoria sent ice through Rees’s veins, but he had learned long ago that cold rage accomplished more than hot fury. He rose slowly, using his height to compel Sterling to tilt his head back, maintaining steady eye contact.
