Regency Rogues: A Winter's Night. Elizabeth Beacon
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fortune in gold and jewels than decorating a vain and adulterous demi-rep with them all. The fortune she had been busy spending had been his as well—or it would have been if his father hadn’t stolen it before Colm was old enough to argue. Whatever Lord Christopher Hancourt had done with his son’s fortune, inherited from Colm’s fabulously wealthy maternal grandfather Sir Joseph Lambury, those jewels should be in the bank, waiting for Colm to take a wife. So here was proof, if he needed it, they were long gone. Colm’s maternal grandfather might have left his entire fortune to his only grandson, but that hadn’t stopped Lord Chris from spending it all before Colm was old enough to go to school.
He bit back a curse as the shock of that betrayal hit anew. All the wishing and cursing in the world wouldn’t make his lost fortune reappear and he should know; he’d tried every one when he was younger and seething with fury about the hand life and his father had dealt him. Rage and hurt fought to rule him even now, after eight years of soldiering and learning self-control at the charity school his eldest uncle sent him to before that. So how could he not curse his father for putting this heartless woman ahead of his children? That was the real question he had to answer if he was ever going to be content with what little he had left.
One thing he did know was that he should never have agreed to come here to Derneley House and meet the past head on like this. Pamela had grown up here, under the so-called care of her sister and brother-in-law, and reminders of the wretched female were everywhere. Portraits of the infamous Pamela seemed to jeer at him from far too many walls and it almost felt as if he might catch her and his besotted father up to something disgraceful if he turned round fast enough at times, although they had both been dead these fifteen years and more.
Still, he did owe the only one of his father’s brothers prepared to own up to him quite a lot. The current Duke of Linaire was so sheepish about asking him to come here that he couldn’t even claim he was bullied into it. No, he played down his revulsion at the idea of living in this house for however short a time he would be needed and had come here of his own free will, so he must endure this stupid suspicion that the woman who ruined his life was busy laughing at him from her front-row seat in hell.
He’d had to slot back into his old familiar disguise to live here for as long as this took as well. The Duke of Linaire’s librarian had been dismissed for selling one of the finest volumes in the Linaire Library to a rival collector and expecting the new Duke not to notice. As Uncle Horace would never find a man he could trust to do this task in such a hurry, here he was, Uncle Horace’s long-lost nephew, doing his best to do a good job with the neglected Derneley Library where he’d spent the last eight years with only one book at a time to his name, to be read and passed round other readers who liked to lose themselves in a book when life was almost unendurable on campaign. So he couldn’t even be himself now that he was back in London after all these years. Lord Chris’s son would never be welcome under this roof while Lady Derneley lived under it as well. She still raged about what she called the murder of her little sister to anyone who would listen and Lord Chris Hancourt had driven so recklessly along an Alpine road at twilight that the coach missed a bend and he and Pamela hurtled to their deaths. So here he was, Colin Carter again—just as he’d been in the army. He wanted to push aside the thought that he might have died under that name at Waterloo, if not for his sister Nell and the new Duke, but somehow it haunted him.
Nell had coaxed, or bullied, Uncle Horace into taking her to Brussels when everyone else was fleeing it as battle roared only a few miles away. Revulsion at what his little sister must have seen ate away at Colm every time he thought of Nell viewing the hell of slaughter and corruption the day after Waterloo. She had scoured the battlefield until she found him, dazed and half-conscious from loss of blood, and somehow got him back to Brussels to be nursed at the new Duke of Linaire’s expense. When he was pronounced likely to live, Nell raced back to England and her position as governess to four orphaned girls. Colm’s hands tightened into fists; his sister had to rescue him rather than the other way about and he so wanted to protect her; give her back the life she was born to. In his daydreams she was fulfilled and happy with a man who would love and cosset her as she deserved for the rest of her life. A reminiscent grin spoilt his frown as he reminded himself this was Nell he was thinking about. She wouldn’t thank him for such a husband, even if it meant escaping her life as a governess. He might as well forget the fantasy of giving Nell a Season so the world could see what a wonderful woman she was. She would chafe at the controls society put on marriageable young ladies and ask for her old job back.
So where was he? Ah, yes, Uncle Horace—the second eldest of his father’s three older brothers and the only one Colm liked and might even learn to love one day. Uncle Maurice, the next Hancourt in line after Horace, hated Colm for being his father’s son and he’d hated Lord Chris even more for succeeding with Pamela when he failed. Maurice ought to be grateful to have escaped her clutches, but Colm knew he would never forgive that slight to his reputation as a devil with the ladies. Colm frowned and decided he could well do without his Uncle Maruice’s approval, but Pamela probably chose the younger brother because he’d wed an heiress. Whispers of the fabulous Lambury Jewels locked away in a bank vault would have seemed too delicious to resist as well.
Drat, he was thinking about the wretched female again and how she had seduced and nagged and wheedled that part of his inheritance out of Lord Chris. So where had he been before Pamela interrupted his thoughts? Ah, yes, Uncle Horace—he was a much more pleasant member of the family to think about. As soon as Colm was declared likely to live, the doctors insisted Colm convalesce before he settled into his new life, and neither the Duke nor the Duchess of Linaire would listen when he insisted he was fit to work. They even packed him off to the seaside to recover, so how could he turn his back on the only other members of his family willing to own up to him?
Uncle Horace had only come back to England when he’d inherited the dukedom last year. He probably didn’t realise how huge the scandal had been when his youngest brother had run off with Pamela Verdoyne and then died with her on their way to a party she’d insisted on attending whatever the weather. Uncle Horace had been cut off for refusing to marry the heiress Colm’s father had wed instead by then. Sensible Uncle Horace, Colm thought wryly, and almost wished his father had run off with a woman he could love instead of meekly marrying that unlucky girl as well.
No—he was brought up short by the thought of the woman his father had loved so deeply and unwisely after Colm’s mother died—he decided Sophia Lambury was a far better parent to own up to than the current Viscount Farenze’s first wife. His mother might have been the pawn her father sold for a title and a convenient wife Lord Chris didn’t love, but at least she wasn’t a lovely, heartless harpy.
He shot the portrait of Pamela Verdoyne-Winterley hanging over the fireplace a hostile glare. She had been ripe and lush and beautiful, he conceded, but the mocking sensuality in her sleepy blue eyes said how aware she was of her power over fools like Lord Christopher Hancourt and how she revelled in enslaving lovers until they satisfied her every whim, whatever it cost them and theirs.
He compared her image to his shadowy memories of his mother and, yes, he definitely preferred having gentle, plain Sophia as his dam. So how would it feel to have Pamela’s blood running in his veins? Appalling, he decided, feeling sorry for the girl with that burden on her young shoulders. He didn’t know her, but for some reason he’d waited in the shadows to catch a glimpse of Lady Derneley’s niece tonight with the other servants. Miss Winterley had looked self-contained and almost too conscious of her mother’s sins, or was he being fanciful? Dark-haired and not quite beautiful, she looked very different from her notorious mother. He had to try not to snarl at the near-naked portrait of Pamela whenever he was in this room, but now he examined it for signs that her daughter had inherited her bold sensuality. Miss Winterley had her nose and slender build perhaps, but her eyes, the shape of her face and her height were all very different. Pamela’s daughter looked as if she, too, could be haunted by her mother’s sins a decade and a half after they had ended so abruptly on that Alpine pass.
So at least he didn’t have to fear a feral beast might lie under his own skin as Miss Winterley looked as if she did in her worst nightmares. Lord Chris was a fool who had loved a noble doxy beyond reason, though, and Colm hoped and prayed he would never love madly and without limits like his father. So they