Never Trust a Scoundrel Read online

  Gayle Callen

  Never Trust a Scoundrel

  To my daughter, Laura:

  Though it will be difficult

  to let my last child go off into the world,

  I watch the beginning of your journey

  with anticipation and pride,

  knowing that you’ll find your way.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Grace Banbury, out of breath, her heart pounding, slammed closed…

  Chapter 2

  Daniel Throckmorten watched the blood drain from Grace Banbury’s lovely…

  Chapter 3

  Grace sat still, afraid to think about what she’d done.

  Chapter 4

  Daniel allowed the silence to continue for a few moments,

  Chapter 5

  At the ball that night, Grace felt like a princess…

  Chapter 6

  Daniel hadn’t expected Grace to fall so easily into his…

  Chapter 7

  Returning from a call on Beverly, Grace let herself in…

  Chapter 8

  Daniel overslept. He washed and dressed quickly with the help…

  Chapter 9

  As the sun beat down on Daniel’s shoulders, and he…

  Chapter 10

  She tasted like the sweetest fruit, strawberries and honey and…

  Chapter 11

  After dinner, when all the guests were reunited in the…

  Chapter 12

  Grace was worried about how both she and Daniel could…

  Chapter 13

  Before midday, Grace noticed that the carriage was turning off…

  Chapter 14

  Daniel knew she’d been making plans, unlike other women who…

  Chapter 15

  Daniel knew he wasn’t himself in the morning. He ate…

  Chapter 16

  That evening, just after the sun had set, the carriage…

  Chapter 17

  Daniel knew he could have gone to Grace’s bedroom, pursued…

  Chapter 18

  The heat of passion had overtaken Daniel’s mind, consuming all…

  Chapter 19

  Daniel pulled up outside Grace’s door in an open carriage,…

  Chapter 20

  Daniel came up on his elbows. “No?”

  Chapter 21

  It was almost over, Grace thought the next evening as…

  Chapter 22

  Daniel stared down at Grace in bemusement, watching as her…

  Chapter 23

  When Daniel awoke the next morning, he discovered that the…

  Chapter 24

  It was easy enough for Daniel to follow Jenkins’s carriage…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Gayle Callen

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  London, 1845

  Grace Banbury, out of breath, her heart pounding, slammed closed the front door of her brother’s town house. She’d been knocking for many minutes in the darkness, hoping a servant would let her in. And when that hadn’t happened, she’d tried the door, and as if God had answered her prayers, she found it unlocked. Now she locked it quickly behind her and put her back against it, dropping her portmanteau to the marble floor, struggling with the enormity of what she’d done.

  She’d run from her village home without even the company of her maid, traveling by public coach for the first time in her life. In her reckless fury, she’d barely remembered to take the coins she’d been so frugally saving.

  She told herself she was safe—for now. But what would Edward do when she told him that their mother had gambled away the ownership of both this town house and their little country manor? In humiliation, her mother had fled just last night, leaving no clue to her whereabouts, except a note promising to earn back enough money to recover what she’d lost.

  Earn back money with more gambling, Grace thought furiously. As if that ever worked.

  Nausea threatened again, but she forced it back down. The future was a yawning, frightening blackness that would swallow her if she let it. Better to think of one thing at a time.

  How could their mother betray them? She was supposed to be a lady, the widow of a gentleman, but for most of Grace’s life, she’d conducted herself as a woman who could not long be separated from the risks and excitement of cards.

  And now a stranger had dared her to risk everything.

  Grace had a small dowry that her father had legally kept from her mother, with no access to it except through marriage. She had always wanted to marry for love, had hoped that she could succeed where her parents had not, but just last year she’d badly tarnished her own expectations. If necessary, she supposed she could seek security as a companion.

  But what about her brother? He was a gentleman; these two small homes were his inheritance. How would he live now? Who would marry him?

  The house was eerily silent, with an empty echo that felt wrong. No one had come to the door, and obviously Edward was out for the evening. She could only assume that not even a servant was at home. But how could that be?

  There was a lamp burning on a solitary table in the entrance hall, and it cast flickering shadows on the bare walls. Now that Grace had gotten over her useless emotions, she realized something was wrong. Bare walls? She lifted the lamp and walked through the first door, only to find a dining table and chairs, an empty sideboard, and more bare walls. What had happened to all their possessions, the china, the paintings Papa had collected on his trips to Europe? She might think that the house had been ransacked, but it didn’t have a feeling of violation. What it had was neglect, a light coating of dust on the large table, as if no one could be bothered to clean it.

  Or as if no servants lived here anymore.

  What had Edward done? Her feelings of worry, waiting with patience in the deep recesses of her mind, now surged back to tighten her throat.

  No, panic would not help. In the morning, she would tell Edward everything their mother had done. He would explain why the town house was so bare. Together, they would come up with a plan. They’d only ever had each other, and now that bond was all they had.

  But some part of her knew that Edward would have no good explanation for the condition of their home. For several years, she’d been seeing the signs of the gambling fever he’d caught from their mother, his restlessness, his need to be in London. She had tried to distract him, to lecture him, and finally to plead with him. He had always laughed off her concerns, swore that all gentlemen gambled, and that he was in command of himself. But the condition of the town house said otherwise.

  She checked the kitchens and found no one, then moved to the small pantry that had been converted into a bedroom for the cook, whose gout prevented her from negotiating the stairs. But even that room was empty. She ran up the stairs to the third floor and found every servant’s room just as deserted.

  She’d never spent a single night of her life alone, though that wasn’t nearly as frightening as the gaping uncertainty that was her future.

  She walked back down a flight to the family bedrooms. To her relief, Edward had left hers alone. There was still her favorite painting of the sea at Brighton on the wall, and a little vase that her father had brought her from France.

  When her stomach growled, she went down to the kitchen but only found biscuits and apples. After lighting a candle and leaving the lamp in the front hall for her brother, she carried the food back to her room and ate in silence, trying to ignore the tight heaviness in her stomach.

  As she changed into her nightgown, she was glad that she’d worn clothing she could remove herself. She had wanted to bring her lady’s maid, Ruby, but how wou
ld Grace be able to pay her wages? But oh, she missed her cheerful company. Ruby somehow managed to walk the line between servant and friend in a way that made Grace feel perfectly comfortable.

  Of course, there was no water in the pitcher, and she was not about to pump from the well in the garden at this time of night. It was summer, so she could do without coal burning in the grate. But still, she wrapped her dressing gown about her and climbed into bed with her journal. A chill moved through her, making her shiver.

  She always tried to write in her journal every night. It provided the thread of her days, gave her things to refer to when she wrote long letters to Edward. She gritted her teeth as she remembered how infrequent his letters had become. Maybe if she wrote about her mother’s betrayal, the reality wouldn’t hurt so much.

  Several pages later, she sat back and looked at her cramped writing, splotches of ink, and to her horror, the smudge of a single tear.

  How had she become such a weak creature? She’d known what her mother was capable of; she’d spent a lifetime learning to protect her feelings. Every time her mother swore things would be different, there was always a dark part of Grace’s soul held in reserve, waiting for her mother’s inevitable slide back into the gambling she couldn’t control for long. Now Grace’s whole life had been gambled away.

  Suddenly, the slamming of the front door echoed through the house.

  Edward, she thought, walking quickly from her room. She was relieved as well as sad, for she’d have to tell him what their mother had done. He was a year younger than her twenty-three years, close enough that they’d grown up together. He was her dearest friend. She could make him see that it wasn’t too late for him, that he could stop gambling now.

  As she hurried down the stairs toward the entrance hall, a solitary man looked up, and she stumbled to a halt, still halfway up the staircase.

  It wasn’t her brother, but a stranger, dressed in elegant black evening clothes.

  She caught the banister, feeling off-balance. Some distant part of her knew she should be frightened, but she couldn’t quite feel that, not when he looked like every girl’s fantasy of a dashing nobleman.

  She could tell he was tall by the way he dwarfed the bare hall. He slowly crossed his arms over his chest. He wore a cool, contemplative look as he studied her, as if he sized up everyone for their weaknesses. Well, she wasn’t weak.

  The lamp below him cast a yellow glow across his face, with its harsh lines and steep angles. His brown hair was dark and a touch too long, showing little concern for Society’s fashions. His eyes were the deep brown of cocoa that burned if you sipped too fast. He showed his disregard of politeness by glancing down her body instead of only at her face. She suddenly remembered what she wore, and though she longed to clutch the dressing gown closed at her throat, she wouldn’t let herself betray such vulnerability.

  She coldly said, “How rude to force yourself into a home not your own. If you wish to see Mr. Banbury, he’s not here. You may show yourself out.”

  His smile was slow and dangerous, and she began to worry about more than bodily harm, even as her skin heated. She had been foolish enough to come to London alone; what if others saw her arrival and knew that now a man visited as well?

  “I didn’t know that Banbury had a mistress,” the man said, his voice of a deep timbre that rumbled within her.

  She stiffened. “I am Miss Banbury, his sister. And again, I must ask you to leave.”

  To her surprise, he straightened as his smile faded. His arms fell to his sides stiffly, almost as if he faced her across dueling pistols. She didn’t understand his wariness, and wanted to take a step back up the stairs, but feared he would take it as a sign of retreat, emboldening him.

  “I don’t have to leave,” he said. “I’m Daniel Throckmorten, the new owner of this town house.”

  The coldness that had been hovering in the pit of Grace’s stomach now spread across her skin, shivering out to her fingers and toes. This man had gambled against her mother, took everything a weak-willed woman could offer, took the only two homes that Grace had ever known.

  “You are a bastard,” she said in a low, furious voice.

  He arched a dark brow. “No, not a bastard, but a man who plays cards.”

  “With a woman.”

  “Yes, a woman. I don’t discriminate or think women of less intelligence. They’re fully capable of being wily enough to gamble.”

  “It does not bother you that you are putting out an entire family?”

  “I know nothing of your family or its situation,” he admitted, tilting his head. “Should you not be directing your ire at your mother?”

  “I cannot, because after telling me about the loss of the property, she left.”

  But not before she’d taken the antique violin that had belonged to Grace’s father. Grace had been promised it since childhood, but it had disappeared the same night, another casualty to her mother’s need for gambling stakes. If Grace had it, she would discard her sentimentality and sell it if it were enough to buy them out of this predicament.

  “I have the deeds,” Mr. Throckmorten said simply. “That makes me the owner.”

  She had too much pride to beg for them back, and knew just by looking at his ruthless demeanor that it would be pointless. In all honor, he had won. She should not fault him—but she couldn’t help it. He had preyed upon the weakness of others. Someone had to make this man understand that gambling hurt far too many people. Her mother was no innocent, but any man should have been able to see that she could no longer control herself where betting was concerned. Or did only winning matter to him?

  He smiled. “I have never cared for my own town house. It is cramped and in a declining part of London. I much prefer this place. The company is far superior.”

  Could he possibly think she would find him amusing?

  “Come back in the morning to speak with my brother.” And she would have more time to think up a way to stop all of this.

  He ignored that and walked the same path she had, peering into the dining room. “I came tonight because I’d hoped to be here before everything I now owned was cleared out. Too late.”

  “It was not done because of you,” she said begrudgingly.

  “Ah.” He narrowed his eyes. “Was it your mother or brother with the run of bad luck?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Your brother, then. I don’t think you’d be defending your mother after all that’s happened.”

  Something in the tone of his voice alerted her, but she didn’t understand to what. She watched him prowl the entrance hall, looking at all the blank spaces on the wall, conspicuously lighter than the wallpaper around them.

  “Are you going to stay halfway up the stairs all night?” he asked.

  She foolishly took the challenge, descending several steps to him. “You need to leave. A gentleman would—”

  “But you already have proof that I am no gentleman.” He came to the edge of the stairs and looked up at her.

  They were so close that if they both reached out, they would touch fingers. She should be frightened, but she was not. She felt reckless with her anger and disappointment. After what her mother had done to her, nothing this stranger said would truly matter. She was at his mercy—if he expected her to beg for it, he would be unrewarded. And if he expected something else, he would discover quickly that she had learned the hard way how to take care of herself.

  But he was still looking at her, and to her chagrin, she felt overly warm everywhere his regard touched her. What was wrong with her?

  And then he glanced at her mouth. She had a sudden image of feverish kisses in the dark.

  She mentally backed away from the thought, knowing from experience the heartache that would follow.

  Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to be humble. “Even if you are no gentleman, you must have some compassion. Give me time to make plans. Perhaps we can come to some sort of agreement.”

  “Do you ha
ve the money to buy either home?”

  “No.” It was so difficult to pretend calm when she wanted to fly down the stairs at him, to pound his chest in punishment for what had happened to her.

  “Then we won’t come to an agreement.”

  “I need time to find a position for myself.”

  He cocked his head in curiosity. “A position?”

  “I am unmarried, sir, as well as unbetrothed. I will need to earn my way.”

  “Are you educated enough to be a governess?”

  “Yes.” She fisted her hands, wishing she didn’t have to stand here and take his interrogation.

  But he was watching her far too closely, and she had the strange feeling that he was humoring her.

  “You have another choice, thanks to your mother.”

  She stiffened.

  “She was getting rather desperate to continue the game, and another player wanted her to sweeten the pot, beyond her property.”

  “What more did she have left?” Grace asked bitterly.

  “You mean besides the violin?”

  “You have it?” she whispered.

  “I do.”

  “What else could she have possibly offered this other player? How greedy was he?”

  “Too greedy.” With a shrug of his shoulders, he added, “I had really only wanted the violin, but instead I won…everything.”

  “Just tell me,” she said coldly.

  “I won you.”

  Chapter 2

  Daniel Throckmorten watched the blood drain from Grace Banbury’s lovely face. Would she cry and plead? He hated when women used those tactics, all to make him feel like a bully.

  “How could you have won me?” she demanded, her jaw clenched, her eyes dry.

  He was reluctantly impressed. She had an abundance of composure for a woman who could not yet have twenty-five years.