Belle Read online

  Including Gabriel, Viscount Ashford.

  If only she might die before the final two rounds of cards.

  Chapter 2

  Lord Ashford, stared at his cards, but all he could see was Arabella Pierrepont, shivering on the dais, though whether from damp clothing or abject humiliation he could not tell. Most likely, both. Gabe understood anguish. The irony of his brother’s death on the hunting field, when he, the younger son, had survived five years of war, including the final terrible battle at Waterloo, was an anguish beyond bearing. So he had spent the past ten months flirting with London’s dark side, working his way down from rakish bachelor, habitué of the most elegant gaming clubs and brothels, to restless warrior—“touchy as all bedammed,” his friends said—and in search of excitement in all the wrong places. He had openly pursued an invitation from Baron Pierrepont, who, he’d been told, offered rather more interesting sport than cards at his exclusive evening games.

  Rather more . . . and then some. Gabe had expected a variety of delectable, willing whores, but Pierrepont’s own daughter? A girl whose striking sky blue eyes were blank one moment, flashing fire the next, and pleading for help the moment after that. Pierrepont had to be mad.

  The game commenced. Gabe, customarily decisive, suffered an unaccustomed moment of uncertainty. Should he make certain he lost, avoiding personal responsibility for Miss Pierrepont’s nudity? Or should he try to win and set an example by declaring her stays and chemise should remain in place?

  Derision would be heaped on his head. Indeed, this time he really would be forced to leave. And the game would go on, however many rounds it would take. Hell and the devil, there had to be something he could do!

  And when had he turned evangelical? his inner voice mocked. Gabe the rake, Gabe the gamester, Gabe the explorer of every dark dirty tavern, every mill, cockfight, street race, every brothel where he might not get the pox. Gabe who had sunk himself so low his father despaired of him, threatening at least once a month to cut off his heir’s allowance.

  But now—tonight—he’d discovered his seemingly bottomless pit had a limit. Yet he was no longer in the army. He had no horse, no rifle, no saber, no pistol, no men to back him up. He was a guest in Baron Pierrepont’s home. But later—oh yes, later, he vowed—he would find a way.

  But what if—when the poor girl was stripped naked—the men played for her virginity?

  Sickened, Gabe concentrated on his cards, and waited. Fate would be his guide.

  Arabella’s stays went to Mr. Nelson Braithewaite, a banker from the city, who had bought his way into the baron’s game by the sheer volume of his wealth. Each man there was well aware Braithewaite’s blunt was greater than all their assets combined.

  “Another round!” the baron declared. Cheers went up from a dozen throats.

  How could seemingly ordinary gentlemen, Arabella wondered, transform into slavering hounds with a fox at bay? It was insanity.

  Nothing left now but her thin chemise, still damp from the rain.

  Far, far away. She wasn’t here. She was on the old board swing in the garden at Pierrepont Park, the roses were blooming—yes, she could smell them. The sky was sunny, the birds twittering. Miss Tabitha, her gray and white kitty, sat licking her paws beneath the tree trunk.

  A single roar of triumph. Groans from the losers.

  “Chin up, girl! You’re a Pierrepont. Look him in the eye.”

  Papa truly was mad, Arabella decided. He’d only taken his little game this far once before, and when she begged him never to do it again, she thought he’d heard her.

  Apparently not.

  Arabella held her head high as Josiah Smithers, a wealthy merchant who had married the daughter of a marquess, approached, eyes gleaming. But the Cit was not so eager he didn’t know how to play his role in the evening’s display. Slowly, he untied the drawstring beneath her breasts before sliding the chemise off first one shoulder and then the other. An agonizingly slow tug down, down . . . a collective moan of appreciation from the voyeurs as her breasts were bared. Down over her hips, farther, farther . . . Lascivious groans as light brown curls, several shades darker than the golden blonde hair on her head came into view. With a flourish Smithers dropped the damp garment, allowing it to pool at her feet. His gaze flickered with rapacious intensity from breasts to crotch and back again.

  Arabella’s surreptitious glance at Lord Ashford revealed him turning away, plunging his head into his hands, elbows on the table. Coward! Her only hope, gone.

  The full horror of her situation struck her. A lone female, naked, in a room full of men gone mad from gaming fever, drink, and willfully inciting themselves to lust. Her own father offering her on the altar of amusement.

  “And now,” said Baron Pierrepont, chortling with glee over his grand surprise, “a final round.” Sudden silence as all turned to stare at him, some with mouths agape.

  “No!” Arabella cried. “Beat me if you will, father, I go no further!” She picked up her chemise. Wrapping it tightly around her, she jumped down from the dais and stalked toward the door.

  To her astonishment, Viscount Ashford, all six feet two, fourteen stone of him, pushed back his chair and strode with her. Through the door, down the corridor, all the way to the bottom of the staircase. “You must leave this house,” he declared. “Now, tonight.”

  Her face crumpled as the impossibility of escape reared up before her. “I cannot. I have no money, no place to go.”

  “Then come with me now. No, no, I have no intention of ravishing you. I know a place where you will be safe.”

  Out of the frying pan into the fire? But what could be worse than a father who considered her a plaything, a source of amusement for his friends? She could already hear him bellowing behind her, urging his drunken friends into pursuit. Dear Lord, what to do?

  Arabella looked down at the folds of her crumpled chemise, which would barely cover the essentials. She gulped. “Like this?” The wicked creature actually laughed. How dare he?

  “Somehow I’ll find a way to reunite you with your fripperies. For now, we must be off before the drunken hounds come after you. Is there a back way out? No time to call for my carriage, I fear we must go in search of it.”

  Less than ten minutes later, Arabella found herself, clad only in her chemise and Lord Ashford’s elegant blue woolen jacket, in an open curricle, clattering through the streets of London, heading east out of Mayfair into the unknown.

  Hell and damnation, what was he doing? In twenty-four hours it would be all over London that he’d kidnapped a lady of quality.

  The ton’s reaction? A raised eyebrow. A yawn. Pierrepont was already nine-tenths of the way toward destroying his daughter’s reputation, tonight but a final nail in the coffin. Gabe’s own reputation was so soiled, a matter of kidnapping was a mere bagatelle.

  Yet even if disaster threatened, he could not leave the poor girl in that house. But what to do with her now? Truthfully, would he have been so daring if he hadn’t had a refuge in mind? For there was no doubt the wolves would rise if he kept the chit for himself . . .

  Ah no. Instead of reporting the crime to a magistrate, it was more likely Pierrepont would confront him for payment for his daughter’s services. Had the baron not been on the verge of gaming away his only child’s virginity not a half hour since?

  Gabe considered the matter long enough that the horses dropped into a walk. He shot a glance at Miss Pierrepont, who was looking straight ahead while her hands clutched his coat so tightly it appeared she would never let go. A tempting morsel, but mistresses were not only expensive, they were frequently demanding and nearly as determined as a wife that he remain monogamous. Which was damned absurd, considering how many delectable females there were in the world.

  And, besides, plunging the poor girl from one master to another in the space of a night was . . . well, it simply wasn’t right. She was a lady born and should have some say in her destiny. Even if the cards she was dealt were coming from the bottom
of the deck. Therefore . . .

  Gabe liked to think he was being selfless—there was a certain glow in knowing he had spared her from the clutches of those drooling bastards, but it wasn’t as if he were planning to deliver her to her grandmother. Or his grandmother.

  Hell’s hounds! One attack of conscience per night was quite enough. Lord Ashford turned his pair onto the road to Richmond and set them back to the trot.

  Richmond? Some still-functioning part of Arabella’s brain recognized the road from better days when she had been a guest for picnic excursions to Richmond Park. But Richmond in the middle of the night . . .?

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  Untrue. No matter how far she had withdrawn from the pain of this world, the essence of Arabella Pierrepont was still somewhere inside this shaking husk of a body. And as numb, rejected, and lost as she felt, one thing still mattered. She would never go back.

  The moon came out from behind a cloud and she caught glimpses of chimneys atop the roofs of the great houses built along the Thames. When she had picnicked on the heights of Richmond Park, the river had been so lovely, a meandering storybook stream of blue that bore no resemblance to the teeming cesspit it became as it passed through the city.

  Yet it was the same river, just as, a twelvemonth since, Arabella Pierrepont had been a naive young miss making her come-out and now . . .

  She should ask where they were going . . . but how could it matter? She was ruined. A runaway. If her father found her, she would be auctioned to the highest bidder, for he would never believe she returned to him a virgin. She would, therefore, pay whatever price was demanded by Lord Ashford for freedom from her father.

  A niggling ripple of awareness penetrated her fogged mind. Viscount Ashford, one of the ton’s most rakish young gentlemen, would never set up a mistress so far from town. Indeed, he had shown no interest in the only commodity she had left to offer. So where were they going? The longer they were on the road, the more likely her father would find them. “My lord,” Belle ventured, “do you think we are being pursued?”

  “Pursued?” the viscount mocked after a snort of derision. “They were all too drunk to stand, let alone take up the reins. If you expected Pierrepont to come flying after you ventre à terre, I fear you are very much mistaken.”

  “He could lay an information against you.”

  “And if he did, the whole sordid tale would come out. So no, I think he will let the matter rest. As long as you do not parade yourself in front of him for some months to come.”

  Was she really free? Euphoria should have her in its grip, yet the numbness remained. She was sitting, nearly naked, on the bench seat of a curricle in the wee hours of the morning with one of London’s most notorious rakes at her side. She had no clothes, no money, no place to rest her head. And Ashford’s no-nonsense tone lacked any sign of the passion one supposed necessary in a man who was contemplating setting her up as his mistress.

  Someday, Arabella vowed, she would be Mistress of her Fate, make her own choices, hold her head high. Clearly, it was not going to be tonight.

  As predawn crept around them, graying the black of night to reveal colorless trees, shrubs, and a dark ribbon of damp road, Ashford slowed the curricle at last, drawing up to a gatehouse set into a tall, stuccoed fence. Arabella tried to force her mind to function—surely she had once been told who lived behind this particular wall?—but no answer came.

  Lord Ashford leaned down, pounding on the gatehouse door. After three attempts to rouse the gatekeeper, a wizened little man, still wearing his nightcap, squinted up at them, demanding to know what m’lord thought he was doing, kicking up such a fuss in the middle of the night.

  “I am Ashford. Delivering a young lady to Lady Rivenhall.”

  “You know the rules, m’lord. Set the young lady down, she can walk from here.”

  Lord Ashford leaned low, his face inches from the gatekeeper’s. “The lady has had a very difficult night, she is barefoot, next to naked, and I’m damned if I’ll leave her at the gate.”

  The gatekeeper stood his ground. “No men, m’lord. Them’s the rules.”

  The viscount raised his whip. “Your choice. Open the gate or I will.”

  Arabella might be struggling to make sense of this latest exchange, but one thing she knew—she could not allow Lord Ashford to bully the poor gatekeeper, who was only doing his job. She grabbed the viscount’s whip arm with both hands and held on tight. “Tell me where I am to go,” she said to the old man, “then open the gate. I am anxious for this night to be over.”

  “’Tis but a short walk—we be close to the river here. Pound on the door and sumon’ll come. The lady always has room for one more.”

  “Lady?” Surely she had misheard the name Ashford spoke earlier.

  “Lady Rivenhall.”

  “Lady Juliana Rivenhall?

  “Yes, miss.”

  Merciful heavens, perhaps God had not abandoned her, after all.

  “It’s all right,” Arabella assured Lord Ashford. “My mother was acquainted with Lady Rivenhall, though she has dropped off the face of the earth since she was widowed. I cannot imagine how you thought to bring me here, but this is a walk I can make.” A look of chagrin crossed Arabella’s face as she gazed down to the ground. “I fear I must ask you for a hand down, however. I seem to be permanently attached to this seat.”

  “Lady Arabella, I am not at all sure I have done the right thing—”

  “I am here, I am exhausted, so there’s an end to it. I will do this.” As Ashford swung her down, he paused, holding her close, his gaze fixed to hers. “I should have explained—”

  “Hush. Tonight you have saved my life. I will be eternally grateful.” With that, Arabella shoved away from him, took a step toward the small door set into the side of the wall next to the closed carriage entrance. “Your jacket, my lord, I forgot.” His hands quickly closed around her shoulders, settling the blue woolen back in place. “Keep it as a remembrance, my lady.” He stepped back. “Go now, and pray do not be angry with me when you discover what this is all about.”

  Frowning over his parting words, Arabella turned and trudged through the gate, determined not to reveal how much the path’s tiny pebbles hurt her tender feet.

  Chapter 3

  Arabella woke slowly, to a kaleidoscope of terror-filled moments interspersed with glimpses of Lord Ashford’s stern face and the sound of his horses clip-clopping over the cobbles, rescuing her from the nightmare of Pierrepont House. And now . . .

  Warily, she peeked at the room to which a sleepy-eyed, obviously long-suffering housekeeper had led her last night, informing her that she would find nightwear in the chest of drawers, before lighting Arabella’s candle and returning to her bed.

  Oh! The bedchamber was indeed as fine as her first impression in the light of a single candle—and decorated in cheerful shades of peach and primrose, with an occasional splash of deep rose. Arabella sat up, surveying the room from the porcelain basin and pitcher near the bed to the tall walnut wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a chinoiserie dressing table, two comfortable-looking chairs set before the fireplace, an oriental carpet that echoed the colors of the furnishings—all illuminated by the soft light peeking around the draperies of the two tall windows on either side of her bed.

  Lady Rivenhall had exquisite taste . . . but Arabella already knew that. Before Lord Rivenhall’s death, his wife had been among the ton’s leading beauties, a young matron who set fashion rather than following the dictates of others. But since she was widowed—close on two years ago, was it not?—Arabella had heard nothing more than speculation about what London society considered excessive mourning. Lady Rivenhall had simply disappeared. Some said she had immured herself in a castle in Scotland, others opined that she had shut herself up in a gloomy mansion on the Isle of Wight. Still others maintained she had never set foot out of Thornhill Manor, her husband’s home of gray stone which sprawled along the banks of the upper Thames.
r />   Evidently, the last was correct, though why Lord Ashford had been forced to leave her at the gatehouse, Arabella could not imagine. For a woman of Lady Rivenhall’s reputation, a woman who had cut a swath through London’s finest gentlemen while her husband encouraged and applauded, an edict of “no men” seemed highly unlikely. She must have misheard, Arabella decided.

  Which still didn’t explain what she was doing here. Though she could not have been more grateful. It was as if a wizard had waved a wand and transformed her world from terrifying to a land of fantasy.

  A soft tapping at the door, and a young maid walked in, balancing a breakfast tray. “Good morning, miss. I’m Nell.” She laid the tray over Arabella’s knees before sweeping back the draperies over the windows, allowing bright sunshine to flow into the room, bathing the already cheerful room in golden light. “I’ll be bringing a gown and such in just a trice, miss. It’s gone ten, and I’m to tell you Lady Rivenhall wishes t’see you in the bookroom at eleven.”

  Arabella’s stomach heaved. Absurd. Lady Rivenhall was her savior, but, truthfully, all she wanted to do was stay right here in this lovely room—for days and days. At least until the nightmare of Pierrepont House was not constantly stabbing through her brain. Through her soul. “Yes, of course,” she murmured. “I’ll eat quickly.”

  The gown Nell brought was a better fit than she expected, although singularly lacking in adornment—a dark blue muslin, cut high in the neck, its austerity ameliorated only by a white lace collar and cuffs. The chemise, stays, stockings, garters and slippers were of the same fine quality as the gown. Nell had a bit of a struggle with her long waves of blonde hair, which Arabella had failed to put into night braids when she fell into bed at dawn. But at last the free-standing cheval-glass reflected a young lady, not a fugitive from her father’s house. Not a fallen woman.