Leslie Lafoy
Authors: The Rogues Bride
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Contents
Praise for
Leslie LaFoy’
s Delicious Historical Romances
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Leslie LaFoy
Prologue
San Francisco, California
December 1885
Two hundred and ninety-one days at sea.
Well, not all at sea,
Tristan amended as he made his way up from the dock. Out of that there had probably been twenty or so, all total, that he’d spent ashore. Which, when it came down to it, hadn’t been often enough or long enough at any one time for his legs to remember how to walk on land with ease.
He smiled wearily. A hot bath, clothes he hadn’t grown sick of, a meal—of fresh meat—prepared by a real chef, and a bed that didn’t move all night … There was nothing like traveling forever and a day to make one appreciate the simple, heavenly pleasures of home. Pleasures he had every intention of wallowing in as soon as he delivered the manifest to his company clerk.
He passed between two buildings—a hotel and a boardinghouse—that hadn’t been there when he’d left ten months ago climbed the wooden steps of Townsend Importers, Ltd., with considerably less élan than he would have preferred, and pushed the door open. The bell overhead jangled, the heat blasted toward him, and his clerk looked up from behind the desk.
“Hello, Gregory,” he said, grinning as the young man’s thick spectacles fogged over.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Townsend,” he replied, lifting the glasses and squinting in Tristan’s general direction. “And welcome home. How was your voyage?”
He wouldn’t bore Gregory with the details. Advancing to the desk and removing the manifest from his coat pocket, he supplied, “Long, largely uneventful, and hopefully profitable. And how have you and the company been in my absence?”
“I’m well and the company is, assuredly, hugely profitable,” Gregory answered, using a handkerchief to clear his lenses.
“I did notice that the warehouse was almost empty.”
“And your accounts show it.” He settled the glasses back on his face, quickly looked Tristan up and down, and then, as usual, got straight to business. “I saw you sail into the harbor this morning. Full steam as usual. I’ve placed the ledger on your desk with the mail beside it.”
Tristan handed over the manifest, asking, “Is there any correspondence that might be construed as even remotely pressing?”
“There appear to be some personal letters, sir. I put them in a separate stack on top of the ledger. Other than that, they’re the usual things. Employment and merchandise inquiries along with social invitations from people who couldn’t seem to remember that you were on the other side of the world. I ordered it all by date with the most current on the top.”
Ever organized. And honest to a fault. “You are the perfect employee,” Tristan offered, heading toward his office. He stopped halfway there and turned back to add, “You might want to spend the next few minutes cleaning out your desk.”
Gregory instantly went pale.
“I bought you a new one in Singapore,” Tristan hurried to assure him. “An ornate teak monster with abalone inlay. It was being off-loaded when I left the dock and should be up shortly.”
“Thank you, sir!”
He couldn’t tell whether Gregory’s thanks were for the new desk or for the fact that he was still gainfully employed. Either way … Tristan smiled. “Hold the thanks until it’s in place in one piece. A heap of exotic kindling is nothing to be excited about or grateful for.”
“It is when every time that door opens, a blast of cold damp crawls through my bones.”
While his glasses fogged over. “I bought a folding screen in Shanghai thinking to give it to Miss Sheraton,” Tristan mused aloud as he resumed the course to his office. “Maybe you’d appreciate it more.”
“Ah … Um…”
He stopped and turned back again, this time with his brow cocked. “Yes?”
“About Miss Sheraton.” Gregory cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to soften the blow.”
Uh-oh. That didn’t bode well. “She hasn’t died, has she?”
“No,” he drawled, sliding a finger under his starched collar. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and then said on a single rush of air, “She announced her engagement two months ago. To a Mr. George Baker of Seattle. His family is reportedly in sawmills.”
Sawmills, huh? Sarah had always appreciated the things a good dollar would buy. The ol’ lumber mill had better be a bottomless money pit if George was going to have even the slightest hope of keeping her happy for any length of time. “Well, I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised that she moved on,” Tristan offered to relieve his clerk’s obvious distress at having to deliver the news. “I wish the couple every happiness.”
“You’re not upset?”
No, not really. “Maybe just a bit irritated that I’m going to have to spend some time cultivating another convenient relationship, but beyond that…” He shrugged. “When’s the wedding?”
“Two weeks from this coming Friday.”
He nodded, wondering if somewhere in the stack on his desk he’d find an invitation to the affair. Not that he had the slightest intention of going. Meeting the groom could be decidedly awkward. “Why don’t you go through the manifest there and see what strikes you as being a suitable wedding gift from a former lover?” he suggested as he headed for his office a third time.
“Very good, sir.”
“And then see that it’s delivered with a brief note expressing my congratulations.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dropping down in the leather chair behind his desk, Tristan considered the neat paper piles Gregory had lain out for him. The business correspondence had been opened and dealt with—as indicated by Gregory’s concisely written notes on each piece. Ah, a good clerk was so hard to find. And a good clerk who didn’t blink when asked to handle the messier details of life … If the books were just half as solid as Gregory had implied, Tristan was going to give the man a big, fat pay raise.
Tristan’s gaze went to the ledger, to the four letters stacked atop it. His heart tripped and his good mood evaporated. Dragging a deep breath into his lungs, he looked out the office window and willed himself to see the ships and the sunlight sparking off the water of the bay. His mind, however, refused to abandon the past and played for him the memories of a long ago and far distant life. The ivy-covered stone of Lockwood Manor on a clear spring day was the best of the images, but it was a fleeting thing, unable to stand the assault of broken china and hurtling silver, of his father bellowing and crashing through the dark, cold halls and half-stumbling, half-crawling midway up the central stairs before falling back and rolling down to lie in a snoring, drunken heap on the foyer floor.
“Gawd,” Tristan growled, shaking his head. His attention back to the present, he focused his gaze on the letters again. The letters that were arranged with the most recent on top. “Get it over and done,” he told himself as he reversed their order. Recognizing his stepmother’s handwriting, he clenched his teeth and braced himself for bad news as he tore it open.
It was dated February. The week he’d sailed out for the Far East.
Dear Tristan,
It is with great regret and sadness that I write to inform you that your father and your eldest brother have passed together into the arms of our beloved Maker. I will spare you the apparent details of the tragedy at this moment, respecting your need to mourn their untimely if not altogether unexpected loss.
Your brother James will, of course, assume your father’s title once the official inquest has been concluded. At that point, should you so desire and if it is acceptable custom in America, you may make yourself publicly known as the Viscount Steadham.
Emmaline and I are enduring the situation as well as may be expected.
With warm regards,
Lucinda
Not altogether unexpected
… Lucinda certainly had a gift for the oblique statement. Tristan sighed and read the note again, wondering just how they’d met their demise. It was a toss-up between both of them drinking themselves blind and doing something stupid like falling off the roof or drinking themselves blind and finally killing each other. The real mystery was in how they’d managed to keep themselves alive for as long as they had.
Tristan laid the letter aside with a wry smile, noting that Lucinda hadn’t asked him to return to England to wear the title on home soil. Apparently she’d taken his … romantic … rebuff to heart. Of course, his having fled to the farthest edge of the United States had probably helped in the cause, too. “Out of sight, out of mind, and all that,” he muttered, selecting the next letter from the stack.
“Ah, here’s the plea to come home,” he said softly, tearing open the letter from James. Dear, sweet, utterly placid, quietly artistic James. Tristan noted the date and smiled. May. Almost three months. He wouldn’t have thought it would take James that long to send for help.
Dear Tristan,
As we have long speculated, Father spent his every earthly effort ensuring that he left the estate in financial ruin. We did not, however, have the slightest inkling of just how deeply he had dug the hole. To say that the estate is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy is a gross understatement.
You know that I have never wanted to be the marquis. We both know that I do not have the intelligence to discharge the responsibilities with any sort of competence. Neither do I have the temperament to bear the strain of such burdens.
I am truly sorry to do this to you, but you are far better suited to the task than I. Please remember the good years of our childhood and do not hold my cowardice too strongly against me.
Always your loving brother,
James
Tristan reread the last line, his hands shaking and his heart thundering. No. No, it wasn’t what it seemed. James wouldn’t do that. He tossed it aside and quickly opened the next letter, another one from Lucinda.
Dear Tristan,
It is with deep regret and sadness that I must write yet again to inform you of a family tragedy. Yesterday morning your brother, James, was found drowned in the Thames.
There was more, but Tristan didn’t want—or need—to read it. Throwing the letter down and wiping away tears, he picked up the one from the family’s solicitors. Expelling a long, hard breath, he opened it. The salutation thudded in his numbed brain. The expression of regret rippled cold and hollow through his heart. And the grim details that followed finished knocking the last of his world from under his feet.
Chapter 1
London, England
March 1886
It was a simple choice: either smoke a cheroot or kill someone. Simone drew the flame into the end of the tightly twisted length of tobacco, puffed in utter relief, and shook out the match. Not, she silently mused, shoving the burnt match into the dirt and leaning back against the garden wall, that there weren’t a few people whose death would make the world a better place. And not that anyone would think it appropriate to see it in that light or to thank her for the improvement.