Chapter One
Where one engagement unravels and the idea for another isborn.
A Duke’s Parlor
London 1818
Lady Louisa Radcliffewas accustomed to shocked silences.
Staring at the broad wash of moonlight spilling over her lavender slipper, she waited the requisite thirty seconds for her statement to register before lifting her gaze. Although the woman seated across from her in her mother’s garish salon was certainly used to strife. Bessie Dove-Lyon, matchmaker and owner of the notorious Lyon’s Den, had undoubtedly handled her fair share of scalawags and scandal.
Amid a candid negotiation about her future, Louisa refused to be humbled or deterred.
“You wish to trade fiancés?” Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s veil quivered with her gusty sigh, her teacup rattling as she slid it into place on the saucer. “The Earl of Harcourt swapped for Dominic Beckett, the disreputable second son of a viscount? A man who is not on my approved list. Not on anyone’s list, save for men toavoid.”
Louisa smoothed her gloved fingertip over a scorch mark on her skirt. She’d spent the morning in the attic, adjusting the mixture of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur for her latest pyrotechnic. She was closeto discovering an ideal chemical composition for a rocket unlike any seen before. “You said we were in the beginning phases of matrimonial discovery. That I could change my mind should it come to it. Or, broaden the field for other applicants.”
For the first time since they’d met six months ago, a relationship necessitated by a rather unfortunate detonation that had taken a sizable chunk of Baron Van-Meager’s front lawn during his annual country party, the Black Widow of Whitehall appeared to be speechless.
Louisa counted off her courtship program to date. “One tea at Gunter’s and two walks along Rotten Row do not make an engagement. Although Harcourt does wear spectacles on occasion, which I found charming.”
“But Edmund Fairfax is anearl,” her matchmaker murmured, pressing her hand to her temple as if to ward off a sudden headache. “Which would make you a countess.”
“A senseless earl, a dullard. What would that make his wife?” Louisa laughed, an unguarded burst that ended in the sort of snort her mother despised. “It’s no wonder he’s practically lost his inheritance. Do you know he thought the Magna Carta was a ship? He once described the Glorious Revolution as ‘a bit of a tiff.’ I nearly weep at some point in every conversation.”
Mrs. Dove-Lyon reached across the table and grasped Louisa’s hand. “Darling girl, you cannot expect to find a man who matches you in intelligence. In sparkorpluck. But those attributes, gifts society does not admire, mind you, are the reason you’re in this muddle. Being a dangerously clever female won’t win you any races in this world. The Earl of Harcourt will provide respectability, the solid footing you’ve lost with your pyrotechnic endeavors. Then, as his countess, you can burn his estate to the ground and survive the blaze.”
“Dominic Beckett—”
“Is a menace. Or was. A reformation requiring him to go to greatlengths to repair things with his brother, Viscount Kent. He might be ready for marriage in a year or two, when his finances are solid, his standing secure.” Mrs. Dove-Lyon released her hold and settled back against the settee. “I’m afraid to ask why it’s this man out of the countless in England you could have suggested to me.”
Louisa had held this last bit of information close, despite being an atrocious secret-keeper. “I met him once, long ago, a chance encounter he’ll have forgotten a thousand times over. We were mere children.” She pressed her hand to her rapidly beating heart, the memory never far from her mind. It was only when he’d recently started showing up in the scandal sheets again, this time the stories hopefully optimistic, that she’d thought of him as a possible suitor. “ButInever forgot, and I know you’re family. If he’s genuinely a bad sort, you’ll tell me. I ask you, should I leave my future to the dubious word of society?”
Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s startled breath shook the veil concealing her face. “I see what your father meant about not allowing myself to be fed to the lions. His Grace is a keen man, as is his daughter.”
Louisa brushed the comment aside with an airy wave, but deep inside, she knew it was true. She manhandled—as her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Branscombe, preferred to term it—everyone within close reach. Herpluckwas the reason she had no suitors. The few who’d come calling had left in a daze, one or two with charred clothing. Men preferred women with gentler interests, like embroidery and watercolors, not those who sought to detonate a baron’s shrubbery with a single, well-timed charge.
Although most had it wrong about her. She did want to marry. She simply wished to like the man.
And perhaps, someday,morethan like.
“I’m rarely astonished, Lady Louisa, but I am, by not only your knowledge of my family connection to the Becketts, a fact recognized by few, by your proposition. Your grandfather served as LordChamberlain to the royal household. Your grandmother was a dear friend of Queen Charlotte. Your bedchamber overlooks the very balcony where the Duchess of Cleveland leaned out, heartsick, to watch for King Charles II’s carriage. Both your dowry and visage are impressive, nay,intimidating. If not for several thankfully minor but lingering scandals and the sharpest tongue in England, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to pursue a husband for you. Dukes rarely work with me, but your father has chosen to in this instance. Proven by our moonlit meetings and my signing multiple contracts vowing absolute secrecy.” She adjusted the edge of the veil and whispered, a note of wonder in her voice, “Dominic Beckett, of all people.”
“Your familial tie was discovered on the first round of inquiries. My father’s investigator is quite good.” Louisa shrugged, another gesture her mother would hate. In point of fact, she’d been as shocked as Bessie Dove-Lyon when she discovered her matchmaker was related to the boy who’d aided her in a London bookstore when she was fifteen years old.
It had struck her as fate, a romantic notion she could not deny.
Smoothing her hand over the frayed edge of her sleeve—caused by an experimental miscalculation, more a spirited pop than an explosion—Louisa decided to ask. If what she heard was too horrid to contemplate, she’d simply have to consider the dullard. There were some things evenshecouldn’t countenance. “Was it women that forced the wedge between Dominic and his brother? Is he one of those irredeemable types who beds everything in London, risking the pox or something worse?”
Mrs. Dove-Lyon lifted her head, not one feature visible beneath the veil. “Goodness, you are blunt. But I’m happy to confess, that no, women were his brother’s weakness, not his. My feeling has always been that Dominic and his father had a challenging relationship that left him in a hideous place when he started university. He was rusticated after his first term, Oxford basically asking him never toreturn. A tender expulsion, because he is, after all, a viscount’s son. To say he gave up the ghost of propriety then would be grossly understating the situation. It was the risk he loved, games of chance, that sort of thing. One dare leading to an even greater dare, until he was lost to it. Lost to life.” Her gaze fell to her hands, and she straightened a seam on her glove with a sharp tug. “I see it at the Lyon’s Den every day. For whatever reason, souls with nothing to live for. Only this time, it happened within my own family.”
Louisa remembered the boy in the bookstore well.Toowell. His eyes, blue enough to shame the lapis stones in her mother’s heirloom necklace, his smile tight and slightly guarded. He’d bought her a book that day—Elements of Chemical Philosophy—when her father refused, leaving her standing at the counter without funds, embarrassment pinking her cheeks.What young woman needs a text on chemistry, Louisa?
She’d only known his name because he’d added the charge to the Beckett account.
He’d been generous that day, when her life hadn’t been rich in compassion. A five-minute association that had wormed its way inside her heart.
And remained there.
