Page 8 of To Break the Rules

“Not that long, but I know him as well as anyone, I think. He doesn’t have many friends.”

“You astonish me,” Lucia muttered, turning the glass back and forward in her gloved hands as St Clair chuckled.

“You know, you ought to give him a chance,” he said. “He’s not an easy fellow to get along with, I admit, but he’s got a good heart under all that wrinkled cloth and scowling. He’s the sort of man you can rely on if you’re in a fix. He’d never turn away a friend.”

“Not that he has any.”

He smiled at Lucia’s terse remark.

“Cavendish doesn’t trust many people, it’s true. His father was an absolute brute,” he added, his expression sobering. “Young Silas ran away from home when he was fifteen and disappeared off the face of the earth. He was gone so long, everyone believed him dead. Yet about five years ago he surfaced again, a rich man in his own right. He lived on the streets of London for a while before he found work with a trader in Covent Garden. He learned how to buy and sell and invested in the business until he bought the fellow out. Now he’s got warehouses all over the country and is rich as Croesus, if you believe the rumour mill. His father never forgave him for it, of course, which pleased Silas no end.”

Lucia frowned, a more than a little surprised by the man’s history. No wonder he seemed so apart from the rest of the ton, who would rather die than admit to being in trade. She could imagine how they would ostracise him for having turned his back on his heritage and run away.

All at once she understood the contempt he felt for those around him, and the defiance of his ill-kempt appearance and refusal to conform. How bad must life have been to induce a young man raised to such privilege to subject himself to the squalor of life on the streets? Yet, despite it all, he’d overcome the odds and succeeded, returning to sneer in the faces of those who would reject him.

An unwelcome swell of pity rose in her chest at the idea and, even worse, she felt a deep sense of empathy.

She held her tongue, at a loss for anything else to add to the conversation.

“From his reaction to her, I think, Miss de Feria has rather gotten under his skin,” St Clair said, his words bringing a rush of colour to her cheeks, much to her consternation.

“Yes, like a tick,” she said, smiling sweetly as the earl gave a bark of laughter.

“No,” he said, struggling to compose his handsome face into something grave. “Not in the least like a tick. Like a man fighting to hold back the tide, if you ask me.”

Lucia frowned, bewildered by the analogy. “He quite obviously despised me,” she said, ever more incredulous as the earl and Matilda exchanged wry smiles. “What?”

“Nothing more than a suspicion,” St Clair replied, his tone soothing. “Only, it should not surprise me if you see our mutual friend again, in the not too distant future.”

“Not if I see him first,” Lucia murmured, scowling as her companions laughed at a joke she was not prepared to share in.

Chapter 3

Everyone is talking about Lucia. Do you think the things they say about her are true? That she is looking for a man to keep her? I cannot believe it. I don’t care who her mother was, Lucia has been nothing but the model of propriety. She’s far better behaved than I am! Just because she is beautiful, they think the worst of her. How I hate these old tabbies who gossip and tell tales about anyone they think might be having more fun than them. It’s nothing more than jealousy.

―Excerpt of a letter from Miss Bonnie Campbell to Miss Ruth Stone.

4th July 1814. Bond Street, London.

“What do you think?” Matilda asked, turning this way and that and regarding the pretty chip bonnet she was trying on in the looking glass.

“I think you could put a wet hen on your head and look stylish,” Lucia remarked, casting a longing glance at a pretty confection of sky-blue velvet and white ostrich feathers. She turned her back on it with resolution, lest the temptation get the better of her. She’d strained her finances to their limits and still had five more weeks to endure before things reached their inevitable conclusion, something she both longed for and feared in equal measure.

“I’ll take it, then,” Matilda replied, with the happy confidence of a woman who need never worry about money. Not that it had always been the case.

Matilda had confided her own sorry history to Lucia in full: every sordid detail, from her father’s gambling away their entire fortune, to her brother Nate’s efforts to make it back, and to the man who had ruined her reputation by merely being alone in a room with her. That the same man, the Marquess of Montagu, now sought to make her his mistress was something else Matilda had confided in her alone. Lucia knew that Matilda hoped she would return the intimacy and, indeed, she longed to do so, but her secrets were too dangerous to share.

Besides, the truth would be out soon enough.

Once Matilda had given directions for the bonnet and several sundry items, from gloves to stockings, be delivered to her home, they headed outside once again. It was a warm day, though overcast, with slumbering clouds hanging low and somnolent in an oppressive sky. The sticky heat made Lucia feel lethargic and irritable, and her temper was not the least bit improved as they saw Viscount Cavendish notice them.

For a moment the man hesitated, and Lucia was almost certain he would cut her, but at the last moment he seemed to think better of it and turned towards them.

“Miss Hunt, Miss de Feria. A pleasure to see you.”

Lucia arched an eyebrow at him. “Really, my lord? It looked very much like you wished us to a place of great heat,” she said, offering him a benign smile while Matilda smothered a laugh. “I felt certain you would turn tail and run away.”

To her surprise the viscount’s mouth twitched a little. “Not at all,” he said, those blue eyes glinting with the light of challenge. “In fact, I am so delighted by your company I do hope you will do me the honour of walking with me.”