CHAPTER1
Hamilton Terrace
St. John’s Wood, London
August, 1818
Jasper St. Vincent, the Duke of Montford, had a talent for sin.
Some gentlemen excelled at sport, others at art or music, and still others were notable for their wit or fashionable eccentricities, but there wasn’t a single gentleman in London who could rival him for creative, inspired wickedness.
It was a curious gift, really, and not one he’d chosen. It had been foisted upon him, bred into his bones, a bequest from either his mother or father. He couldn’t be certain which, as both of them had been felled by a fever before he’d reached his sixth year, but one or the other had infected the St. Vincent bloodline with a truly dazzling streak of devilishness that was as much a part of him as the dimple in his left arse cheek.
Some days it was a blessing, others a curse. It depended on what was passing at the time.
“You’ve the most absurdly bewildered expression on your face, Your Grace. One would think we were playing chess rather than a simple game of vingt-et-un.”
Tonight, it was a curse. A scourge, a plague, a torment visited upon him from the very depths of the fieriest pit of hell, and atop a shockingly bright green silk divan on the other side of a baize table perched Satan’s favorite mistress herself, the plump, scarlet lips he’d once found so alluring curled in a malicious smirk.
Pure poison, those lips. It was a pity he’d drunk so deeply from them before he’d regained his wits. It had been a temporary madness only, but getting free of her had been no easy feat. She’d left scars behind. Not figurative scars, either, but actual mutilated flesh. He touched a finger to the thin, jagged line her silver hairbrush had left on his forehead. Half an inch to the right, and he might have lost his eye. As it was, his eyebrow would never be the same.
The scuffle with the hairbrush had put a final, irrevocable end to their affair—he drew the line at maiming, as every proper gentleman should—but in the month since he’d broken with her, Lady Selina Archer, once his delight, had become his greatest torment.
“It’s your play, Your Grace. Do try and attend to the game, won’t you?” Her smirk widened, her lips pulling back to reveal sharp, gleaming incisors. “Oh, dear. Are you unwell? You’re rather pale.”
Dear God, that smile was chilling, and how was it he’d never noticed before how unpleasant her voice was? Like the grind of shattered glass under a boot heel. His shredded nerves shrieked in protest with every word that fell from her lips. “I’m aware it’s my play, my lady.”
“Indeed? Forgive me, Your Grace. It’s been so long since you stirred, I thought perhaps you’d fallen asleep. It wouldn’t be the first time you’d slipped into a doze in my dressing room when you’d much better have remained awake.”
Once. That had happenedonce, and he’d been in his cups at the time.
But she was only trying to distract him, and he wouldn’t allow it.Couldn’tallow it, not when there was so much at stake. Another outrageous scandal was lurking on the horizon, right on the heels of the last outrageous scandal. That one had sent his grandfather to his bed for a week, and the one brewing now was a good deal worse.
If he didn’t put an end to it tonight, it might finish the old fellow off for good.
“Let’s get on with it, shall we, Your Grace?” Selina rapped her knuckles on the table. “Unless, of course, you wish to forfeit? Luck hasn’t been with you tonight, has it?”
Luck be damned. Luck hadn’t a thing to do with it. There was only one way to win a wager, and that was to never risk anything you couldn’t afford to lose.
He eyed the earrings she’d tossed on top of the pile of discarded cards.
Too bloody late for that now.
A bead of sweat inched its way underneath the white linen of his cravat and joined its brothers at the base of his neck. He longed to tear the damn thing off and toss it on the floor, but he wouldn’t give Selina the satisfaction of knowing she’d rattled him.
He was Montford, for God’s sake. He didn’tgetrattled. He didn’t panic, fret, fuss, agonize, or fall prey to excesses of emotion of any kind. Once he made up his mind to transgress, he did it with a style and aplomb that made him the envy of all of London’s scoundrels, and he was never much troubled with regrets afterward.
He wasmeantto regret it—there must be some Bible passage or other that warned a man’s past sins would catch up to him sooner or later—but there didn’t seem to be much point in fretting over some hazy, far-distant future punishment when the sins of the present were already crashing down upon him with all the brutal force of a runaway carriage.
“It grows late, Your Grace. I have another engagement this evening, and I’m certain you’re eager to return to whatever shiny new bauble has captured your attention. I daresay you’ve already replaced me. You’d think nothing of humiliating me in such a cruel manner, would you, Montford?”
“Ah, we’re back to this now, are we, my lady? Yes, I’m a rake and a scoundrel, a man devoid of all proper feeling, a man of no tenderness, a cold-hearted blackguard who treats his lovers as if they’re nothing more than playthings.”
And so on, and so forth. It was her usual harangue. In the end, her dramatics and endless recriminations were the reason he’d put an end to what had been a rather agreeable arrangement between them. Well, that and the fact that she’d been encouraging the attentions of other gentlemen. He’d never been particularly good at sharing with others. It was an affliction, alas, common among young children, and dukes.
“You’re a beast, Montford.” Selina thrust out her lower lip in a tremulous pout. As recently as a month ago, that pout would have so inflamed his passions he’d have tumbled her into the nearest bed, but he was no longer taken in by her performances.
Now, it left him cold. “A beast, indeed. If I recall correctly, you rather liked that about me at one time.”
