Forever a Lady

Matthew pointed, trying not to feel too insulted. “I’m not playing with the law here, Coleman. Unlike in New York, I’ve got no marshals here to protect my arse, and these Brits are crazy. They’ll hang you for anything. Especially if you’re unlucky and Irish. And as you damn well know, I’m both. Now, off with you.” Matthew settled back onto the mattress, snatching up his card. “I’d like to be alone with my card, if you please. I have a feeling it’ll give me a lot more respect than you just did.”

“Christ. Don’t make me tear that bloody thing in half and shove it up your ass.”

Matthew swiped up the pistol from the floor beside him with his other hand and pointed it at Coleman with a mocking tilt of his wrist. “Get the hell out of my room. I’m not paying four shillings a night to have you in here.”

“We need twenty pounds each, Milton, if we’re ever going to get out of Town. Twenty. My boxing will only bring in a few pounds per match, unless I start dealing with aristos. And as good as I am, I can only take so many hits a week. As for you working over at the docks? You’ll only bring in about two pounds a week. At best. Count that on your fingers, man. You may have time on your hands, but I’m not staying in this piss of a city beyond two weeks.” He paused. “How much do you think you could get out of this aristo, given what you did for her? If you slather on that charm I know you’re good for?”

Matthew sighed and set the pistol back onto the floor. “I don’t know. This whole idea of me calling on her for money merely for doing something ingrained in me feels dirty.”

“No one does dirty better than you, Milton.”

Matthew rolled his eyes. “I’m not that dirty and you know it.” He tapped the card against his chin before glancing down at it. “I still can’t get over the way she looked at me. I’m telling you. There was something there. I could see it and feel it. It was as if she and I were meant for bigger things.”

“Bigger things?” Coleman snapped, angling toward him. “What the devil is wrong with you? We’re not talking about some tea dealer’s daughter here. We’re talking nobility. Do you know what that is, Milton? It’s better known as the trinity. Meaning, there’s them, there’s the King and then there’s God. Notice that I didn’t mention you at all. Why? Because you don’t exist. And you never will. They don’t touch people like us. Not unless it’s to their benefit.”

“Stop saying ‘people like us.’ You yourself are of nobility, for God’s sake. You’re—” Matthew scrubbed his head in exasperation, knowing it. To think that the same man he’d been training with and aspiring to be more like since he was twenty had been an aristo in hiding all along. It was something the stupid bastard didn’t have the decency to tell him until they up and boarded the ship over to Liverpool. A part of him felt betrayed, though he understood Coleman hadn’t been given much of a choice but to abandon who and what he was.

Matthew dropped his hand from his head. “You came here to straighten your mess of a life out and move on. That’s what you said. Only, you’re not doing shite. You’re up and drinking and playing cards like some fecking sharp with money you don’t have, making a bigger mess of not only your life, but mine. Why the hell aren’t you facing the reality you came to face? I know why I came here. Because it was better than being dead and it was your goddamn idea. And whilst the swipe is over, I’m not leaving until I hold you to your reality. Call on your parents, and that uncle and nephew of yours who dug you up through the papers back in New York. Because seething on and on about a past you can’t change isn’t helpful to anyone. Especially yourself.”

Coleman’s features tightened as his blue eyes cooled to rigid ice. “I’ll see them when I’m ready to see them. And I’m not fucking ready. Isn’t that obvious?” Coleman stepped out and slammed the door, rattling the lantern.

Matthew sighed and hoped the man didn’t do anything stupid. Holding up the card again, Matthew stared at the name Lady Burton and hoped he himself didn’t do anything stupid.

CHAPTER FIVE

All information printed pertaining to the struggles

of others are not necessarily true.

—The Truth Teller, a New York Newspaper for Gentlemen

St. James’s Square, Thursday afternoon

THE FOOTMAN GRACIOUSLY gestured toward the open doors of her father’s library. “’Tis a joy to have you back in London, my lady.”

“Thank you, Stevens.” At least someone was happy regarding her return to London. Bernadette clasped her bare hands together and entered the cavernous library lined with all those endless books she used to gather from the shelves as a girl and stack up all around her. Not to read, mind you, but to build a full deck of a ship she would then climb on top of and teeter to sail across the expanse of the...library. The room still looked the same. It even smelled the same: mildew laced with cedar and dust.

Her chest tightened. It had been years.

Scanning the brightly lit room, she found her father and drifted toward where he sat, her verdant skirts rustling against the movements of her feet.

Lord Westrop’s head was propped and resting against the side of his leather wing-tipped chair, that snowy white hair combed back with tonic. His eyes were closed and his usually rigid features were endearingly soft as the center of his Turkish robe rose and fell with each breath he took.

Bernadette paused before him, quietly observing him. It was the most peaceful she had ever seen him. “Papa?”

He opened his eyes and looked up at her. His astounded features gave way to him sitting up. “Bernadette.”

“How are you, Papa?” She lowered herself to his booted feet and gathered his hands that had begun to show their age. She could see the veins.

He grabbed hold of her hands and smiled, shaking them in his. “You came back for me. You came back. I knew you would.”

He seemed so happy to see her. Imagine that. He still knew how to exhibit happiness. She’d forgotten how good of a man he was capable of being when the burden of losing everyone—a wife, two brothers and three sisters—didn’t eat at him.

She smiled as best she could. “I’m not staying long. New York is my home now. You know that.”

His hands stilled against hers as he searched her face with dark eyes. “Why do you always wish to make me suffer? You know I have no one but you.”

A deep sadness came over her. The same one that always gripped her whilst in his presence. “I am merely living my life now, Papa. The one I never got to live. ’Tis something I have old William to thank for. He adored me more than I deserved.”

“Damn right.” His aged features tightened. “Bloody deranged is what he turned out to be, leaving you with all that money and freedom. Look at you. Worth a million, yet living as some no-name Mrs. Shelton in New York City, cavorting with American ruffians like the Astors. I hear that you now entertain men on the hour.”

“If it were on the hour, Papa, I wouldn’t have time to call on you at all, would I?”

“And what of gossip?”

She lowered her chin. “There is all sorts of gossip, Papa. And it doesn’t mean it’s true. Which rumor are you referring to?”

“About you standing on the streets in nothing but petticoats out in New Orleans. What was that about?”

She cringed, knowing she was forever cursed to hear of that one awful misstep during her first days of freedom. “I was robbed whilst attending a street masking ball. That was why I moved from New Orleans to New York and took on an alias. The papers, not to mention all of stupid American society, made the incident out to be so much more nefarious than it was.”

His eyes widened. “What the devil were you doing attending a street masking ball?”

Why did she feel like she was ten years old again? “I have never been to one and I wanted to go.”

“Wanted to go. Indeed. Well. Serves you right. If you had stayed at home and devoted yourself to being a respectable widow, it would have never happened. I think it time you accept that your days of traveling and frolicking are done, girl. Done.”

She heaved out a breath. “I never got to travel or do much of anything. You know that. Neither you nor William ever allowed for it. As you well know, I was married barely two weeks after my debut, which wasn’t really—”

“All I want to know is where are the grandchildren I wanted? Why won’t you remarry in an effort to give me at least one?”

Her throat tightened as she fought to stay composed. After twelve years of trying to become a mother, allowing old William to bed her again and again in the hopes of having a child to love and cherish, she knew it was never meant to be. And in truth, she was done playing the role of a possession. “My days of matrimony are over. I have done my duty to you and to William, and to expect more or to say more is cruel.”

Her father’s features notably softened. “I did not mean to be cruel.” He hesitated and then quickly said, “Honor your father by leaving this New York City behind. Stay here with me. I would like that. You can take your old chambers. I haven’t changed anything. I still have all of your dolls and books and those porcelain figurines you always played with. You and I can read and play chess and should we need respite from London, we can always travel to Bath. Bath is a good, respectable place. We can take in the air by walking the Town, and during the summer, eat those flavored ices you used to love so much when you were a tot. Remember? ’Twas a good life. More important, a respectable one. So it’s settled, yes? You will stay right here with your papa.”

She slowly shook her head, dread seeping into every last inch of her. He didn’t seem to understand that she wasn’t a child anymore. “No. Though I do love you, I am my own woman now and I am asking that you respect me and my life.”

His dark eyes flashed. “Are you intent on stabbing me in the heart, knowing that I have no one but you?”

Bernadette rose to her feet, sensing her time with him was done. No matter how much she gave him, he was always desperately grasping for more until nothing remained. “I am not about to submit to this guilt you keep piling upon my soul. Not when I have submitted to you all these years at the cost of my life. Do you think I ever wanted to marry William? No. But you wanted me to, so I did. And therein my obligation ends.” She swallowed, trying to remain calm. “It was good seeing you, Papa. I trust you are receiving the yearly annuity I arranged through William’s estate.”

He grunted. “’Tis measly.”

She half nodded. “I see. Thirty thousand a year is measly. I didn’t realize your tastes were so extravagant. If you need more, I can make it fifty thousand.”

He grunted again. “If I needed more, I would have asked. Now, are you staying with me or not?”

Why did she always stupidly cling to the hope that he could be the father she wanted him to be? “I am five and thirty, Papa. My life is practically half over. I have given it to you, I have given it to William and I

have given it to society. I do not intend to give up any more. I intend to frolic with whomever I please, whenever I please, and travel until my slippers fall off, regardless of what you and everyone else may think. Men do it all the time and no one even blinks. So let them all blink.”

He swiped a veined hand over his face, snatched up his cane from beside the chair and heaved himself up. “I ask that you not call on me again unless you either respectably remarry or decide to live with me. I have nothing more to say.” With that, he stalked out, leaving her to linger alone in the library.

An unexpected tear traced its way down her cheek. Annoyed with herself for even caring what he thought, she swiped it away and set her chin. She had done everything to make him happy at the cost of her own happiness and was finished with that and him.

She had spent twelve years of her life serving and bedding a scrawny, withered man who had grunted into her and knew nothing of her pleasure, let alone her happiness. Though she supposed she’d been fortunate, considering. For at least old William had treated her with an adoring, kind regard and devotion rarely found in aristocratic marriages. He had even left her his entire estate, despite her inability to sire a child for him. It was a gesture of the love he’d had for her. She regretted knowing that the old man had died without having ever once earned the one thing he’d wanted most—her heart. Sadly, her heart had yet to genuinely beat with love for a man. And at five and thirty, she wondered if it ever could.

But who was she to complain? Love was overrated anyway. As was holding on to one’s reputation. Neither allowed a woman a breath of freedom. And rakish though it was, she was very much looking forward to midnight and whatever salacious adventure it would bring in the guise of the Pirate King.

CHAPTER SIX

An edition of the works of Lord Byron has recently been published in England, expurgated, and omitting Don Juan, deeming all of the passages offensive to decency and good morals. Who are the British to decide what decency and good morals are?

—The Truth Teller, a New York Newspaper for Gentlemen

Piccadilly Square, midnight

EVERYTHING IN HER home smelled like fresh-cut flowers, tea leaves and fobbing cinnamon. It was a damn good thing he’d bathed, scrubbed and shaved for the woman before coming over or he would have bloody wilted everything.

Silence drummed as Matthew awkwardly lingered in a lavish, pale green imperial drawing room decorated with overdone wall hangings, marble statuettes and a variety of gilded clocks scattered upon the mantelpiece of a grand hearth.

Matthew scanned the impressive length of the room and angled his way past countless upholstered chairs and pedestal tables. He paused before a white moonstone velvet settee. The woman had more furniture than he had toothpicks. He couldn’t even remember what it was like to own furniture just to own it.

He adjusted the patch over his eye, ensuring it was straight. Glancing down at his great coat, which was spattered and streaked with crusting mud from riding about in last week’s mud and rain, he cringed. He wasn’t going to be making much of an impression. Certainly not the sort she’d made on him.

God. Why was he letting himself face her again at the cost of his own pride as a man? Oh, yes, he knew why. Because of Coleman. That son of a bitch had gambled away and lost everything, and now it was up to Matthew to clean up the mess.

The clicking of heels echoed down the candlelit corridor, drifting toward him through the open double doors.

Setting his calloused hands behind his back, he widened his stance and watched that entryway. His pulse thundered.

Within moments, a curvaceous, dark-haired woman appeared. The same one he’d wanted to seize and mold against himself when he first laid eyes on her in the park. Who knew British women had the ability to rile an Irishman into a full salute with but a glance.

It was felonious.

He tried not to linger on that exquisite appearance. Those black curls, which bore delicate wisps of silver that hinted she was a tad above his own age, were gathered and pinned around an elegant pale face. The only flaw on her face was a welt of a line on her jaw from the crop he’d been unable to save her from.

Since he’d last seen her, her riding bonnet had been stripped and replaced with a gathering of pretty, pale blue satin ribbons that had been woven into her hair, matching the shade of her azure evening gown. That delectable gown clung to her body and full breasts in a way that made him want to bite his hand to keep from biting her.

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