Regency Scandals and Scoundrels Collection Page 2

  “Then I shall have to tell her.” The earl clenched his jaw and swung his stare to Jacinda. “Your father assures me you are a proficient decipherer. And while I hesitate to believe the female mind capable of such complexity of thought, I am willing to witness a demonstration.”

  Jacinda bit down to keep from offering a retort. What a despicable creature the earl was. “What manner of demonstration do you require, my lord?”

  How she hoped it was one in which her palm connected with his insufferable cheek.

  “One of your ability to break a cipher, Mrs. Turnbow.” His expression remained hard, as harsh as his voice.

  She glanced to Father, who refused to meet her gaze, and knew a sudden, consuming flare of panic. Her hands tightened on the fall of her serviceable muslin gown. “Forgive me, but I do not see the necessity for such a thing. I am not a decipherer at all, as you must know.”

  The last thing she wished was for Kilross to somehow use her ability against Father. From the moment he had assumed his position at the Foreign Office, the earl had been loathsome in his endless displays of the power he wielded. Was that what this was? One more way for the earl to attempt to remove her father from service to the Crown? Dear heavens, she hoped not. If Father should lose his position…

  “I do not require your protestations of false humility, Mrs. Turnbow,” he snapped. “I require the demonstration for which I have asked. Have a seat, if you please.”

  Swallowing her resentment, she did as he ordered, resuming the seat opposite her father at his large, ornate desk. Kilross extracted a folded missive from his coat and opened it, laying it on the desk before her.

  “You have precisely one-half hour to tell me what this says, madam.”

  “She will have it solved in less than ten minutes, my lord,” Father said with calm, paternal faith.

  Jacinda stared at the paper before her, a mass of jumbled letters that contained no outward meaning. She was confident in her abilities, but she had never before been observed or timed. Her palms went damp. It would seem she had no choice but to play her role in Kilross’s despotic exercise.

  “Your time begins now,” he clipped, hovering over her shoulder.

  Doing her best to blot out his odious presence, she took up her pen and put her mind to work. Alphabetic ciphers were often formed with the use of a cipher wheel. Testing her theory, she sketched out a square of the alphabet running in varied rows and columns. Observing the variance of the letters and the frequencies, in no time she was confident she knew the meaning of the simple cipher.

  “Full fathom five thy father lies,” she read aloud. “Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something strange and rich.”

  The words were Shakespeare’s, and their subject sent an ominous quaver through her. Even so, they were not quite right. She glanced up at Kilross. “The last line ought to be into something rich and strange. The rhyme is off, you see.”

  The earl’s lip curled as he leaned over her to study the page. The sour scent of sweat and pipe smoke assailed her. “Clever, Mrs. Turnbow. But one must take care never to be considered too clever, for it hinders one’s usefulness, I find.”

  An icy tendril of alarm licked through her. She kept her palms flattened to the desk, took a deep, calming breath. It would not do to betray her sense of disquiet to Kilross. The man was like a dogged fox who had scented the weakness in his prey. But she would not allow either herself or Father to be taken up in his jaws and made his sacrifice.

  “What usefulness have you in mind, Lord Kilross?” she asked softly then, for there must surely be a reason for his appearance today and the demonstration he had forced her to make. Some motivation behind his use of the passage from The Tempest and his thinly veiled threat.

  “Before we proceed, let me be clear to the both of you.” Kilross straightened to his full height and slanted a narrow-eyed glare of warning at first Jacinda and then Father. “This is a matter of supreme import and confidence. If a word regarding what I am about to say should be breathed beyond this chamber, I shall find out. And when I do, your days as a decipherer for the Crown will be done. I will crush the both of you beneath my boot heel without the slightest qualm. Am I understood?”

  Jacinda shot to her feet, outraged at the man’s temerity. “Lord Kilross, my father has been an esteemed decipherer for the Crown all his life. Not only that, but he is the best decipherer in England, capable of assisting our army as no other. How do you propose to remove him after all his years of flawless service when he is currently engaged in deciphering Napoleon’s greatest cipher?”

  It was a gamble to take a stand against Kilross, she knew, but she could not countenance the odious man threatening her father in such hideous fashion.

  “Jacinda,” Father cautioned, sounding pained.

  The earl’s sneer deepened. “My dear, naïve Mrs. Turnbow. You cannot imagine I am unaware of Sir Smythe’s ailing health. I am sorry to say the infirm and frail-minded cannot be entrusted with matters as profoundly impacting as that of unlocking the mysteries of enemy ciphers.”

  Dread settled upon her, heavy as a stone. “What do you want from us?”

  Kilross smiled, the grooves bracketing his thin mouth deepening. “What a delightful question. I shall be succinct. Specifically, I require you, Mrs. Turnbow.”

  The stone became a boulder of Sisyphean proportions. “Me, my lord? What need can you possibly have of a widow who lives a quiet life with her father?”

  The earl inclined his head. “Whilst I have no need of a widow, I do have need of a female who can decipher, one who will have easy access to correspondence and other private documents in the home in which she is employed.”

  Employed? She was a simple woman, but surely he did not intend for her to become a servant? She had lived a genteel life as the daughter of a knight, and whilst their staff was small and she aided with household tasks, neither was she suited to be a maid.

  “It sounds to me as if you wish me act the spy,” she said coldly. “I neither have the inclination nor the talent for subterfuge, nor will I engage in servitude to settle your whims, my lord. I am afraid you will have to seek someone else for the task you have in mind. Is that not right, Father?”

  But when she looked to her father for reassurance, his milky gaze flitted away, like a bird scared by an encroaching feline that was about to pounce upon its dinner. “I am afraid I have already promised you will assist Lord Kilross,” he admitted, his shoulders slumping. “There is a great deal at stake, and I am afraid no one else can be trusted but you.”

  Dear heavens. Father had already committed her to the earl’s plot. She went cold. “Father?”

  Father closed his eyes and pressed fingers to his temples. “Please, my dear daughter. Listen to what the earl has to say.”

  It would seem she had no choice. Her gaze swung back to Kilross. “Tell me what I must do, my lord.

  His eyes gleamed with triumph. “For one month’s time, you will become the governess for the Duke of Whitley’s sisters. Your task will be to comb through his correspondence and private documents, seeking any that are written in French or in cipher. You will then decipher all such messages and transcribe them for me, taking care to return them to their original placement without detection.”

  Her heart took up a rapid beat. The new Duke of Whitley had a reputation as dark as the devil himself. “But I am a widow, and I know nothing of being a governess.”

  Never mind she would be expected to live beneath the roof of a man as wicked as the duke, that she would need to trespass against him by riffling through his private papers, and expected to report back to the loathsome Kilross.

  “I will provide you with references, and you will present yourself as Miss Turnbow when you interview for the position. Whitley’s sisters have run off three governesses already, and he is desperately seeking a replacement. It is the perfect opportunity.” He paused. “You do
have the knowledge necessary to teach the little viragos, do you not? Watercolor, French, and the like.”

  “Yes, of course.” The earl was deadly serious, she realized as she studied his face, hoping somehow this was all a depraved jest. “What need can you possibly have for the private correspondence of the Duke of Whitley?”

  “Simple, madam.” Kilross’s countenance darkened with undisguised hatred. “The man is a traitor, and with your help, I am going to be the one who unravels his deceptions.”

  Chapter Two

  They said he was a war hero.

  What rot.

  Crispin swigged his whisky as he preferred, straight from the bottle, seated in the darkness of his study. The drapes were drawn, and he despised even the lone, wraithlike beam of light that crept past the window coverings through a tiny gap left by some harried parlor maid. He disliked the blazing orb that decided to rise in the eastern sky each morning with the ritualistic precision of a soldier.

  It reminded him that he was alive when he did not deserve to be.

  Give him darkness, drink, and warm, willing flesh over the bright lunacy of the sun any day. Give him night, everlasting distraction, mindless pleasure, any cursed means by which he could forget.

  The lauds he received were not rightfully his to claim. The true hero was dead, tortured slowly to death by a Spanish butcher, what remained of his broken body never found. The true hero had possessed the daring of a thousand men, the fearlessness of an immortal, the fierce, bone-deep loyalty no other soldier could ever claim.

  By contrast, Crispin was a pretender. A poor, faded imitation who had somehow survived the bludgeoning attack in that Spanish farmhouse and woke to the ghastly specter of the dead French captain’s burned head looming over him. He would never forget the sight or the blood, dark and red and copious, the severed hand wearing Morgan’s signet ring on the stone kitchen floor.

  The sickening realization that he had been left for dead while his best friend had been taken to face unfathomable horrors still brought bile to his throat. He drank again, liquor burning its devil’s path down his gullet, straight to his empty stomach. He was soused, and he knew it because he couldn’t recall the last time he’d consumed a morsel of food. The inkiness of his study swirled about him, hazy and indistinct.

  And though he did not recall summoning his butler or answering a knock at his door, suddenly, Nicholson stood at the threshold, clearing his throat in a long-suffering manner. “Your Grace.”

  Crispin shook his head as if it could clear his stupor. It could not, and so he lifted the bottle back to his lips for another generous draught.

  “I beg your pardon, Your Grace.”

  Glowering in the direction of his butler because his eyes refused to sharpen, he slammed the half-empty bottle onto his escritoire. “What can it be, Nicholson? Can you not see I am otherwise occupied at the moment?”

  He preferred to live his life in a fog of whisky-induced stupor and licentiousness. Presently, there were no whores about, but that could be rectified at any moment with but a note from the famed Duke of Whitley and the proper amount of coin.

  Yes, a whore did sound like just the thing, now that he thought on it. Before his butler could respond, he raised an imperious finger into the air, jabbing the darkness. “Nicholson, have a carriage sent round for Mrs. Nulty, if you please. Send along a note making it clear she is to bring her friends Madame Laurier and Mrs. Reeves, as well.”

  The golden-haired Mrs. Nulty, the raven-tressed Madame Laurier, and the redhead Mrs. Reeves. His cock stirred in his breeches despite the substantial amount of whiskey he’d consumed. Ah, yes. The perfect trifecta. He’d had them before, but never all at once. Why not begin with Madame Laurier sucking his—

  “Ahem, Your Grace.” His butler had the temerity to interrupt the bawdy bent of Crispin’s thoughts.

  His gaze, having flitted into the ethers of his dismal study, the better to entertain his fantasies, now snapped back to the servant. Two Nicholsons stared at him with twin disapproval until his eyes at last began to function properly and the twain met as one. “Why the devil do you linger, Nicholson? Send for my companions at once.”

  “I would, Your Grace,” began the servant he was about to sack for insubordination, “but earlier this morning, you advised you wished to interview Miss Turnbow yourself, and as she has arrived and has been awaiting you for the last half hour, I thought—”

  “I do not pay you to think,” he snapped, biting off the remainder of the servant’s words. He wanted his distraction. Needed his distraction. Now. Already, his hands had begun to tremble, a weakness he despised. “And precisely who the hell is Miss Turnbow?”

  “The gentlewoman who wishes to become Lady Constance and Lady Honora’s governess, Your Grace.”

  Ah, hell.

  His innocent sisters.

  The burden left to him by his sainted brother Phillip, who had, of all things, choked on a beef ragout whilst disguised. According to Nicholson, his brother had consumed half a bottle of blue ruin in the better part of an hour and then commenced his final supper.

  Crispin had seen years of duty on the Peninsula, had faced scores of enemy soldiers. Infantrymen, guerilla soldiers, cannonades. Musket fire and the hell of dead and wounded men. He had infiltrated enemy lines with the ease of a mosquito. But his brother, the heir, the duke, the-larger-than-life hero, had met his end with one bite of a dish that—judging from Crispin’s experience with the chef’s dubious capabilities—likely had not even been edible.

  Yet another person who had died when he ought to have lived.

  Whilst Crispin continued in his purgatory-of-a-life, with only cunny and liquor to soothe him. It all seemed so horridly unfair. Not a day passed where he didn’t wish he had been slaughtered by El Corazón Oscuro in Spain instead of Morgan.

  But he had defied the devil and all the odds against him, and here he was, cupshot, reasonably randy, with his bloody butler staring him down. Why the hell was Nicholson looming like a corpse risen from the dead, his expression frozen with haughty disapproval that not even a seasoned domestic like him could suppress?

  “What is it again, Nicholson? I am, as you can plainly see, quite occupied at the moment. I wholeheartedly dislike disruption of any sort. It is grievously disquieting to the constitution, you understand. If you will not fetch me the quim I require, then leave.” He sent the servant an evil grin, enjoying keeping the stodgy bastard at attention. His depravities shocked the stoic domestic, that much Crispin knew, but he also understood frankness disturbed him in an almost equal measure.

  “Miss Turnbow,” the much-aggrieved fellow intoned. “If Your Grace wishes to conduct the interview as planned, I shall have the green salon readied and you may join her there at your leisure.”

  Yes, that would all be very tidy and proper, wouldn’t it? But Crispin was not proper. Decidedly not tidy. Indeed, he did not give a good damn about anything other than burying himself in pleasure so he could forget the past. Except for his sisters, devil take it.

  He loved the minxes, and his duty to them took precedence over his need to quiet the monsters festering within his soul. Which meant he needed to interview the would-be governess. They had already run off… how many had it been? Three? Four?

  But as much as he loved them, he still had no intention of curtailing his lifestyle. His lifestyle was unconventional, he knew. Shocking to some. Appalling to others. He had long ago ceased to care about small-minded genuflections to societal whims. Facing death each day and witnessing the barbarities he’d seen had a way of changing a man forever.

  “Not the green salon,” he decided, gainsaying his butler. “Bring her here, if you please.”

  Nicholson looked, for the briefest moment, as if he had swallowed a slug. He hastened to school his features back into a semblance of calm, politic imperturbability.

  “Would you care for me to tie back the window dressings, Your Grace?” he asked with just enough pointed suggestion to make Crispin aware
the darkness of the room was a thing to be remarked upon.

  A thing which Crispin ought not to do.

  A sign of his weakness.

  A sign that, while he bore no scars from his years at war save the bullet nick on his upper left arm and the sabre slash on his thigh, he was nevertheless wounded on the inside. Less than whole. Scarred, cut up, bitter, and ugly.

  “Leave the curtains as they are,” he ordered curtly, irritated already.

  Why did everyone insist upon gainsaying him? He was the duke, and though it was a hollow title he had never wanted, it was his. It bloody well ought to mean something.

  “Do you require a lamp be lit, Your Grace?” Nicholson asked, his tone solicitous.

  Crispin gritted his teeth. “I require nothing, sir. Fetch the girl. I have needs to attend this evening, and none of them can be satisfied until this interminable interview with Miss Torncrow is concluded.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.” His butler bowed, sounding humble. “It is merely that I do believe the prospective governess’s name is Miss Jacinda Turnbow and not, in fact Miss Torncrow. As you wish.”

  Torncrow, Tornbow, Turnbow. Who gave a bloody damn? The chit’s name mattered not. All that did was completing this wretched audience so someone could take his hoyden sisters in hand and leave him more time to go about the business of drowning himself in blue ruin and quim, the order of these twin indulgences pas nécessaire. Some days, he hungered for the comfort of his flesh pounding into another’s. Others, all he required was a bottle and his hand.

  Today was a sousing and fucking sort of day. The nightmares had returned. He’d woken to earsplitting screams he realized were his own. Even now, he could feel the blood on his hands. Smell the foul reek of death. See Morgan’s disembodied hand.

  He took another drink of whisky, wondering what in Hades was taking the woman so bloody long to appear. Patience had never been one of his admittedly limited catalog of virtues.