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Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue

Stephanie Laurens

Prologue

February, 1829

T
he castle was silent and still. Outside snow lay heavy on the land, a white blanket smothering hill and vale, loch and forest.

He sabbatum in the arsenal, one of his retreats. Head bent, he full-bodied on cleaning the guns used earlier that day, when a break in the weather had allowed him and a small group of others to venture forth. They'd bagged enough fresh meat to keep the castle supplied for a calendar week, maybe more than. He'd taken some modest satisfaction in that.

Meat, at to the lowest degree, he could provide.

The sound of determined footsteps reached him. All satisfaction fled. What replaced it . . . he couldn't put a proper name to the roiling mix of fury, frustration, and dread.

His mother stalked into the room.

He didn't lift his head.

She came to a halt at the stop of the central tabular array at which he sat.

He felt her glare, merely stoically continued to reassemble the gun he'd been cleaning.

She broke first. Slapping a mitt on the tabular array, she leaned forward to hiss, "Swear it! Swear that you'll practise it—that you'll become south, seize one of the Cynster sisters, and bring her hither so I tin have my revenge."

He took his time reacting. Clung to the slowness he habitually used to cloak his true nature and so ameliorate control others. However, in this example, his mother had schemed well enough to put herself beyond his control, indeed to the extent that he now found himself in hers.

That stung.

The
what if
s still resounded in his head.
If
he'd paid more than attention to her ramblings, might he accept noticed some sign of her scheme before? Early enough to step in and put a stop to it? Yet she'd been thus for as long as he'd been onetime enough to notice, filled with black thoughts, with called-for vengeance at her core.

His father had never seen her clearly; to him she'd always put on a sweet face, a mask impenetrable enough to cloak the bitterness below. For his office, he'd hoped his male parent'southward death would drain the blackness bile from her heart. Instead, the poison had welled fifty-fifty more corrosively. He'd grown too accepted to hearing her ravings; he'd stopped listening long ago.

To, it seemed, his and others' cost now.

But it was likewise late for regrets, much less recriminations.

Raising his head enough to run across her optics, letting nothing he felt prove in his face, he held her gaze for a moment, so briefly nodded. "Yes, I'll do it." He forced himself to say the words she wanted to hear. "I'll bring one of the Cynster sisters here, then y'all tin have your revenge."

Chapter One

March, 1829

Wadham Gardens, London

H
eather Cynster knew her latest programme to find a suitable hubby was doomed the instant she set foot in Lady Herford'due south salon.

In a distant corner, a dark caput, perfectly coiffed in the latest rakish style, rose. A pair of sharp hazel optics pinned her where she stood.

"Damn!" Keeping a smile firmly fixed over her involuntarily clenching teeth, as if she hadn't noticed the most startlingly handsome man in the room staring then intently at her, she let her gaze migrate on.

Breckenridge was hemmed in by non one but 3 dashing ladies, all patently vying for his attending. She sincerely wished them every success and prayed he'd accept the sensible class and pretend he hadn't seen her.

She was certainly going to pretend that she hadn't seen him.

Refocusing on the surprisingly large crowd Lady Herford had enticed to her soiree, Heather determinedly banished Breckenridge from her listen and considered her prospects.

Most of the guests were older than she—all the ladies at least. Some she recognized, others she did not, only it would be surprising if any other lady present wasn't married. Or widowed. Or more definitively on the shelf than Heather. Soirees of the style of Lady Herford'due south were primarily the province of the well-bred but bored matrons, those in search of more than convivial company than that provided by their unremarkably much older, more sedate husbands. Such ladies might non be precisely fast, withal neither were they innocent. All the same, as by common accord said ladies had already presented their husbands with an heir, if not ii, the majority had more than years in their dish than Heather's xx-five.

From her cursory, initial, assessing sweep, she concluded that most of the gentlemen present were, encouragingly, older than she. Near were in their thirties, and past their mode—stylish, well-turned out, expensively garbed, and thoroughly polished—she'd called well in making Lady Herford's soiree her offset port of call on this, her first expedition outside the rarefied confines of the ballrooms, cartoon rooms, and dining rooms of the upper echelon of the ton.

For years she'd searched through those more refined reception rooms for her hero—the man who would sweep her off her feet and into wedded bliss—only to conclude that he didn't move in such circles. Many gentlemen of the ton, although perfectly eligible in every way, preferred to steer well articulate of all the sweet immature things, the young ladies paraded on the marriage mart. Instead, they spent their evenings at events such as Lady Herford's, and their nights in various pursuits—gaming and womanizing to name simply two.

Her hero—she had to believe he existed somewhere—was most likely a member of that more elusive group of males. Given he was therefore unlikely to come to her, she'd decided—after lengthy and animated discussions with her sisters, Elizabeth and Angelica—that it behooved her to come to him.

To locate him and, if necessary, hunt him down.

Smile amiably, she descended the shallow steps to the floor of the salon. Lady Herford's villa was a recently built, quite luxurious domicile located to the north of Primrose Hill—close enough to Mayfair to be easily reached past carriage, a pertinent consideration given Heather had had to come alone. She would have preferred to nourish with someone to bear her company, just her sister Eliza, just a year younger and similarly disgusted with the lack of hero-material inside their restricted circle, was her nearly likely coconspirator and they couldn't both develop a headache on the same evening without their mama seeing through the ploy. Eliza, therefore, was presently gracing Lady Montague'southward ballroom, while Heather was supposedly laid upon her bed, safety and snug in Dover Street.

Giving every appearance of calm conviction, she glided into the crowd. She'd attracted considerable attention; although she pretended obliviousness, she could feel the assessing glances dwelling house on the sleek, bister silk gown that clung lovingly to her curves. This item cosmos sported a sweetheart neckline and tiny puffed sleeves; as the evening was unseasonably mild and her carriage stood outside, she'd elected to acquit only a fine topaz-and-amber Norwich silk shawl, its fringe draping over her bare artillery and flirting over the silk of the gown. Her advanced age allowed her greater freedom to wear gowns that, while definitely not equally revealing equally some others she could run into, nevertheless drew male eyes.

One gentleman, suitably drawn and a impact bolder than his fellows, broke from the circle surrounding two ladies and languidly stepped into her path.

Halting, she haughtily biconvex a brow.

He smiled and bowed, fluidly graceful. "Miss Cynster, I believe?"

"Indeed, sir. And you are?"

"Miles Furlough, my dear." His optics met hers as he straightened. "Is this your first time hither?"

"Yes." She glanced around, determinedly projecting confident assurance. She intended to pick her homo, non allow him or any other to option her. "The visitor appears quite blithe." The noise of untold conversations was steadily ascent. Returning her gaze to Miles Furlough, she asked, "Are her ladyship's gatherings customarily so lively?"

Furlough's lips curved in a grin Heather wasn't sure she liked.

"I think you lot'll discover—" Furlough bankrupt off, his gaze going past her.

She had an instant'south warning—a primitive prickling over her nape—and so long, steely fingers closed nigh her elbow.

Heat washed over her, emanating from the contact, supplanted almost instantly by a disorientating giddiness. She caught her breath. She didn't need to wait to know that Timothy Danvers, Viscount Breckenridge—her nemesis—had elected non to be sensible.

"Furlough." The deep voice issuing from above her head and to the side had its usual disconcerting consequence.

Ignoring the frisson of awareness streaking downward her spine—a susceptibility she positively despised—she slowly turned her head and directed a reined glare at its cause. "Breckenridge."

In that location was zip in her tone to suggest she welcomed his arrival—quite the opposite.

He ignored her endeavour to depress his pretensions; indeed, she wasn't even sure he registered information technology. His gaze hadn't shifted from Furlough.

"If yous'll alibi united states, old human being, there'south a matter I demand to discuss with Miss Cynster." Breckenridge held Furlough'south gaze. "I'm sure you understand."

Furlough's expression suggested that he did even so wished he didn't feel obliged to give way. Only in this milieu, Breckenridge—the hostesses' and the ladies' darling—was well near impossible to combat. Reluctantly, Furlough inclined his head. "Of course."

Shifting his gaze to Heather, Furlough smiled—more sincerely, a tad ruefully. "Miss Cynster. Would we had met in less crowded surrounds. Perchance next fourth dimension." With a parting nod, he sauntered off into the oversupply.

Heather let free an exasperated huff. But before she could even assemble her arguments and turn them on Breckenridge, he tightened his grip on her elbow and started propelling her through the crowd.

Startled, she tried to halt. "What—"

"If you have the slightest sense of self-preservation you will walk to the front door without any fuss."

He was steering her, surreptitiously pushing her, in that direction, and it wasn't all that far. "Let. Me. Become." She uttered the control, low and delivered with considerable feeling, through clenched teeth.

He urged her up the salon steps. Used the moment when she was on the stride in a higher place him to bend his head and breathe in her ear,
"What the devil are you doing here?"

His clenched teeth trumped her clenched teeth. The words, his tone, slid through her, evoking—every bit he'd no dubiousness intended—a nebulous, purely instinctive fear.

By the time she shook gratis of it, he was smoothly, apparently unhurriedly, steering her through the guests thronging the entrance hall.

"No—don't bother answering." He didn't look downward; he had the open front end door in his sights. "I don't care what ninnyhammerish notion you've taken into your head. You're leaving. Now."

Hale, whole, virgin intacta.
Breckenridge only merely bit back the words.

"There is no reason whatever for yous to interfere." Her vocalization vibrated with barely suppressed fury.

He recognized her mood well enough—her customary one whenever he was most. Ordinarily he would answer by giving her a wide booth, but here and at present he had no choice. "Practice y'all have whatever thought what your cousins would practise to me—let alone your brothers—if they discovered I'd seen you in this den of iniquity and turned a blind middle?"

She snorted and tried, surreptitiously merely unsuccessfully, to costless her elbow. "You're equally large as any of them—and demonstrably just as much of a bully. You could see them off."

"One, maybe, but all six? I retrieve non. Let alone Luc and Martin, and Gyles Chillingworth—and what about Michael? No, look—what about Caro, and your aunts, and . . . the list goes on. Flaying would be preferable—much less pain."

"Y'all're overreacting. Lady Herford's house hardly qualifies as a den of iniquity." She glanced back. "There's nothing the least objectionable going on in that salon."

"Not in the salon, perhaps—at to the lowest degree, not still. But you didn't go further into the house—trust me, a den of iniquity information technology about definitely is."

"But—"

"No." Reaching the front porch—thankfully deserted—he halted, released her, and finally let himself look down at her. Let himself look into her face, a perfect oval hosting delicate features and a pair of stormy gray-blue eyes lushly fringed with night brown lashes. Despite those eyes having turned hard and flinty, fifty-fifty though her luscious lips were presently compressed into a sparse line, that face up was the sort that had launched armadas and incited wars since the dawn of time. It was a face full of life. Full of sensual promise and barely restrained vitality.

And that was before calculation the effect of a slender effigy, sleek rather than curvaceous, still invested with such fluid grace that her every motility evoked thoughts that, at to the lowest degree in his instance, were better left unexplored.

The only reason she hadn't been mobbed in the salon was because none just Furlough had shaken gratis of the arrestation the outset sight of her mostly caused quickly enough to get to her before he had.

He felt his face harden, fought non to clench his fists and belfry over her in a sure-to-be-vain attempt to intimidate her. "Yous're going dwelling house, and that'due south all there is to it."

Her eyes narrowed to shards. "If yous attempt to strength me, I'll scream."

He lost the boxing; his fists clenched at his sides. Holding her gaze, he evenly stated, "If you do, I'll tap you under that pretty little chin, knock yous unconscious, tell everyone you fainted, toss yous in a carriage, and transport you abode."

Her optics widened. She considered him only didn't back downwardly. "You lot wouldn't."

He didn't blink. "Endeavour me."

Heather inwardly dithered. This was the problem with Breckenridge—one simply couldn't tell what he was thinking. His face, that of a Greek god, all make clean planes and abrupt angles, lean cheeks below loftier cheekbones and a strong, square jaw, remained aristocratically impassive and utterly unreadable no affair what was going through his mind. Not even his heavy-lidded hazel optics gave any clue; his expression was perennially that of an elegantly rakish gentleman who cared for little beyond his immediate pleasance.

Every element of his appearance, from his exquisitely understated attire, the astringent cut of his clothes making the lean strength they concealed simply more credible, to the languid drawl he habitually afflicted, supported that image—1 she was fairly certain was a comprehensive façade.

She searched his eyes—and detected non the smallest sign that he wouldn't practise precisely as he said. Which would be merely besides embarrassing.

"How did y'all get here?"

Reluctantly, she waved at the line of carriages stretching along the curving pavement of Wadham Gardens as far as they could see. "My parents' carriage—and before you lecture me on the impropriety of traveling across London lonely at night, both the coachman and groom have been with my family unit for decades."

Tight-lipped, he nodded. "I'll walk you to it."

He reached for her elbow again.

She whisked back. "Don't carp." Frustration erupted; she felt sure he would inform her brothers that he'd found her at Lady Herford's, which would spell an cease to her plan—one which, until he'd interfered, had held existent promise. She gave vent to her temper with an infuriated glare. "I can walk twenty yards past myself."

Even to her ears her words sounded petulant. In reaction, she capped them with, "Just leave me alone!"

Lifting her chin, she swung on her heel and marched down the steps. Head determinedly high, she turned right along the pavement toward where her parents' town carriage waited in the line.

Inside she was shaking. She felt childish and furious—and helpless. Just equally she always felt when she and Breckenridge crossed swords.

Blinking dorsum tears of stifled rage, knowing he was watching, she stiffened her spine and marched steadily on.

From the shadows of Lady Herford's front end porch, Breckenridge watched the bane of his life stalk back to safety. Why of all the ladies in the ton it had to be Heather Cynster who so tied him in knots he didn't know; what he did know was that there wasn't a damned affair he could exercise almost it. She was twenty-v, and he was ten years and a 1000000 nights older; he was certain she viewed him at all-time equally an interfering much older cousin, at worst as an interfering uncle.

"Wonderful," he muttered as he watched her stride fearlessly along. In one case he saw her safely away . . . he was going to walk home. The night air might clear his head of the distraction, of the unsettled, restless feeling dealing with her e'er left him casualty to—a sense of loneliness, and emptiness, and time slipping away.

Of life—his life—beingness somehow worthless, or rather, worth less—less than it should.

He didn't, truly didn't, want to think about her. At that place were ladies among the oversupply inside who would fight to provide him with diversion, but he'd long ago learned the value of their smiles, their pleasured sighs.

Fleeting, meaningless, illusory connections.

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