Tall, Dark and Disreputable
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Deb Marlowe
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Chapter One
Berkshire, England—Summer 1821
Ribald laughter and drunken babble spilled out into the night. The owner of the Spread Eagle Inn took cheerful part in the bonhomie as he shooed his last customers into the dark. He stood a moment, listening as they scattered, secure in the knowledge that they would be back tomorrow and that the satisfying weight of coins in his apron pocket would only grow heavier.
Inside his taproom, quiet settled over the abandoned tables and peace wrapped itself around the place in lieu of the dissipating curtain of smoke. Mateo Cardea alone had not stirred when the innkeeper called. Here the fire burned warm, the ale was good and the accommodating wench in his lap ran soft fingers through his hair. He should have been blissfully content.
He was not.
The lightskirt slid a finger around his ear. She leaned in close, her brassy blond hair tickling his jaw, her other hand trailing a whisper-soft caress against his nape. Mateo could feel the tough calluses on her fingertips. He closed his eyes and imagined the touch of them against his other, more sensitive areas.
Arousing as the image might be, Mateo still could not summon the enthusiasm needed to climb out of his chair. Ridiculous. A few paltry coins and the girl was his for the taking, yet the thought did not dredge up more than a faint stir of desire.
The yawning innkeeper ambled back into the taproom. He cast a glance at Mateo and crooked a finger at the girl. ‘Get these chairs atop the tables, Etta, and I’ll help you sweep up,’ he said, not unkindly. The girl gave a soft groan of protest, but rose up and out of Mateo’s lap. She trailed a finger over his shoulder and down the length of his arm as she went. Mateo recognised the gesture for the promise it was and briefly waited for an answering surge of interest.
It did not come. Inside him there was no room for such clean and simple things as peace and desire. ‘Dio nel cielo,’ he breathed. Oh, but he was tired of the unfamiliar burn of anger in his gut and the caustic flow of resentment in his veins. For weeks he’d been like this, since he’d first discovered his father’s shocking betrayal.
All of it gone. Everything he’d spent his life working for, planning towards, gone with the reading of a few cold words. Years of biting his tongue, of endless explanations, of patiently coaxing his father to more modern business practices, and still the old man had not trusted him in the end. Mateo was in disgrace and, for the first time in a hundred years, control of Cardea Shipping had fallen outside the family. It was more than a man’s pride could bear.
His indifference was more than the strumpet could bear. She had worked her way back over to his side of the room and into the dark corner behind him. Now she leaned against him, blocking the heat of the fire, but warming him none the less when she bent low to encircle him in her arms. Her impressive bosom pressed soft against his back.
‘Are ye even here, tonight?’ Etta asked, demanding the return of his attention. ‘What are you thinkin’ of, that’s got your mind so far away?’ She stiffened a little and drew back. ‘Some other woman, p’raps?’
Mateo smiled. ‘I am not so foolish, sweet.’ With a sigh of regret he acknowledged the need to evade her interest and retire upstairs alone. Tomorrow held fair promise to be the worst day of his life and no amount of mindless distraction tonight would help ready him for it.
‘What is it, then?’ she demanded, circling round to the front of him again, her bottom lip forming a perfect pout. ‘Something important, I hope,’ she said low in his ear, ‘to be distracting you from the bounties at hand.’
He disentangled himself and drew her around to his side. Taking the girl with him, Mateo crossed the small distance to the bar. Here the innkeeper tidied up, trimming the wicks on cheap tallow lamps and polishing the worn wooden counter with pride. Mateo took the furthest stool and gestured for the girl to perch next to him.
‘No, tonight I have been lost indeed—thinking of fathers, and of sons. Do you know,’ he continued in a conversational tone, ‘that my father once caused a city-wide riot over a wh—’ Etta straightened in her seat and he cleared his throat ‘—over a celebrated courtesan?’
She relaxed. ‘He never!’
Mateo smiled at her obvious interest. Even the innkeeper sidled closer to listen. ‘Oh, but he did. It happened in Naples, long ago. La Incandescent Clarisse, she was called, the greatest beauty in Europe. Endless poems were written to the soft pink of her lips, to the sweet curve of her hips. Playwrights named their heroines for her, artists worshipped her as their muse. Men followed her carriage in the street. My father was only one of many caught firmly in her spell.’
‘What happened?’ The girl’s face shone bright and she had briefly forgotten her practised seduction.
‘The inevitable.’ Mateo shrugged. ‘La Incandescent got with child. All of Naples held their breath, fascinated to hear who she would name as the father.’
‘Who was it?’ she breathed. ‘Not your da?’
‘After a fashion. You see, Clarisse could only narrow down the field. The father of her child was either my father, or Thomas Varnsworth.’
‘No!’ The innkeeper gasped.
‘Him what’s the Earl of Winbury?’ Etta asked, amazed.
‘The old Earl, rather,’ Mateo replied.
The innkeeper could not contain his shock. ‘But his daughter lives—’
‘Yes, I know,’ Mateo interrupted. ‘Shall I continue?’
They both nodded.
‘Upon hearing the news, Lord Thomas—for he was not the Earl yet—and my father got into a terrible row. They fought long and hard, nearly destroying La Incandescent’s apartments, and still they raged on, until the fight eventually spilled out into the streets. Spectators gathered. Someone spotted the tearful Clarisse and the rumour spread that La Incandescent had been harmed. The crowd grew furious, for Clarisse was a favourite of the people, and soon the two men found themselves fighting for their lives.’
‘And all over a strumpet?’ the innkeeper said in wonder.
‘Hush, you,’ the girl admonished. ‘Let him finish.’
Mateo shifted. Too late he worried about raising the tavern wench’s expectations, but that thought set off another surge of bitterness. It had been a woman’s damned expectations that had ruined his life. Portia Varnsworth had once expected to marry him. Mateo’s father had expected him to go along with the idea. Mateo might have expected somebody to consult him on the matter, but no one had bothered.
Etta, however, appeared to have taken the tale as a challenge. She raised a brow and tossed him a saucy grin. ‘I’m summat well known, myself, in these parts,’ she said.
‘Indeed?’
‘Oh, aye,’ she purred. ‘Would you like to know what I’m famous for?’
‘He don’t need to know now,’ grumbled her employer, ‘and not in front o’ me. What ye do upstairs is yer own business. Down here, it’s mine. Don’t ye want him to finish his tale? And you’ve a taproom to straighten first, in any case.’ He nodded for Mateo to continue.
‘Ah, yes, well, my father and Lord Thomas were arrested—for their own protection. They spent two days in a cell together and came out the best of friends.’
‘And the lady? Clarisse?’ Etta leaned closer.
‘When they were released, she had gone. She left Naples and disappeared. No one ever knew where she went, although rumours abounded. My father and Lord Thomas made a vow to find her and searched for years.’
She stilled. ‘Did they? Find her, that is?’
‘No,’ he said soberly. ‘Not to my knowledge. But they never stopped looking, either, until their dying days.’
Her eyes shone in the dim light, bright with unshed tears. ‘That’s the most romantic thing I ever heard.’ She sniffed.
The innkeeper snorted. ‘Then I would say you were in sore need of a little romance.’ He nodded towards Mateo. ‘He might be the one to give it to ye, but first—’
‘Aye, I know, I know, the taproom,’ Etta grumbled. The weight of her gleaming gaze felt nearly solid on Mateo’s skin. ‘I just mean to give him a taste of what comes after.’ She slid down from her stool and reached for him.
Mateo saw the stars in her eyes. The girl’s mind tumbled with fancies and dreams and he knew that he had perhaps not been so wise in his choice of tales. It is no bad thing to create a vision of things that might be, but of a certainty he would not be the one to bring her grand ideas to fruition.
He stilled as her arms went around him. He had no wish to damage her feelings. A woman had brought his world to a crashing halt, but he would not take his revenge on this, her artless sister. He sent a swift plea to the heavens for something, anything to distract the girl and extract him from the awkward situation of his own making.
The knob on the taproom door rattled. A floorboard creaked in the passage outside. Mateo jerked to attention along with the others as the door opened swiftly and his name echoed through the empty room. He stared, speechless, at the figure framed in the shadowy entrance and he knew that in the future he would be more careful in what he wished for.
* * *
A breeze wafted over Portia Tofton’s flushed cheeks as she approached the Eagle. The night air was cooler than she had expected. She didn’t care. She had her indignation to keep her warm, her dead husband’s pistol to keep her safe and a fervent desire to shock the wits out of Mateo Cardea to keep the purpose in her step.
Coming to a halt in front of the inn, she cast it a look of loathing. The beady eyes of the building’s painted namesake returned her glare. The raptor’s outstretched talons glittered in the moonlight, sending a shiver down her spine
Mateo had arrived in the village today; word was out and spreading fast across the county. Weeks it had taken for him to take ship and make his way here, but had he come to her? She snorted. Of course not. Apparently not even the loss of his family legacy was enough to tempt him to her side. Despite the urgent wording of her request he had holed up in the most disreputable tavern for miles around. No doubt he’d spent the day drinking, carousing, and who knows what else, while she had been left to twiddle her thumbs.
How utterly predictable.
No. Portia squared her shoulders and took a step forwards. Such treatment might be standard in her old life, perhaps, but it was not at all acceptable in the new. She was a widow now. Her husband’s death had granted her a new freedom and independence that she meant to take full advantage of. Heaven knew—and everybody else did too—that it was more than he’d given her while he lived.
She raised a fist to knock loud and long upon the tavern door, but noticed it stood slightly ajar. She put her hand on the knob and paused. Gone were the days that Lady Portia Varnsworth—or even Mrs. James Talbot Tofton—meekly did as she was expected. She’d had enough of men ruling her life. Though her brothers might try, there was no one left with the authority to order, bully—or, worse, ignore her. And Portia meant to keep it that way. She wanted nothing more than her independence, the chance to be in charge of her own destiny. She’d thought she had it, too, until that wretched solicitor had come calling.
But no matter. She had a grasp on the situation. One even exchange with Mateo Cardea and she would have her freedom—and her home—safe again. It only wanted a little courage and a good deal of determination. Sternly she reminded herself that she had an ample supply of both. Boldly she pushed the outer door open and let herself in, steeled to face—
Empty darkness. Silence.
‘Is anyone there?’ Some of her bravado faded a little as she stepped forwards into the gloom. Portia paused to take a good look, curious to see the place servants and villagers whispered about. The ante-room appeared perfectly ordinary at least, certainly not like she’d imagined a reputed den of debauchery and iniquity. Disappointed, she continued forwards.
A doorway sat at an angle to the right. From beneath it shone the faintest glow of light—and from behind it she caught the low murmur of voices. She crept closer.
There. Faint but unmistakable: Mateo Cardea’s wicked chuckle.
Portia stood helpless against the intense shiver of reaction that swept through her. As a young girl she’d spent hours tagging after Mateo and her brothers. She’d lurked in hallways and corners, listening for that infectious sound. Five years older than she, Mateo Cardea had been an ideal, the unsuspecting object of her first consuming love. An absent smile from him had held the power to light up her day, but it had been his rich laughter, full of mischief and exuberance, that had set her young body a-tremble.
Not that he had ever taken notice. Despite their friendship, she’d never been more than background scenery to him, a secondary character in the drama of his young life.
She was determined that things would be different now. All day she had sat, waiting for him to come, seething when he did not. Until—as the hour grew late and her temper grew short—she’d finally decided that this time she would begin with Mateo as she meant to go on. She would force him to look at her, to see her, to truly recognise her for the woman she was. Mateo, her brothers, indeed the whole world—it was time that they all took a second look at Portia Tofton.
With a purposeful and careful tread she approached the door. But he was not alone. Feminine tones mixed with his, and then both faded away. Portia’s face flamed. Etta was as notorious as the Eagle itself. Of course Mateo would be with her. Everyone else had been—including Portia’s own husband.
She was a different woman, now, though. She would not sit idly by and be ignored. She turned the latch as quietly as she could and paused once more. The manner of her entrance must lend itself to the image she wished to convey. She wished to appear a woman of self-possession and authority. A woman he could desire, whispered some deeply buried part of her. She shushed it. Above all, she would not be a supplicant.
She shifted her weight, hoping for a strategic glimpse into the room before she entered. A board creaked loudly underneath her, but Portia did not heed it.
It was he. Her stomach fluttered in recognition. How well she knew that rogue’s twist of a wry grin, the tangle of inky, wind-tousled curls, and the spark of wickedness dancing in a gaze as warm as her morning chocolate. Her pulse tumbled nearly to a stop, then rushed to a gallop as her mind made sense of the rest of the tableau before her.
Mateo Cardea at last—but perched on a stool, the infamous Etta entwined around him tighter than the Persian ivy Portia had coaxed up the walls of her arbour. She gripped the door handle until her knuckles whitened. God, but it was the old hurt all over again. How many times in a woman’s life could she withstand such a whirlwind of pain and humiliation?
One too many times. But this would be the last. She breathed deeply and willed her spine straight and her voice steady. With a flourish she swept the door open and stepped into the taproom, trampling her heart underneath each tread of her foot. ‘Ah, here you are, Mateo,’ she called. ‘As ever the scapegrace, I see, seeking pleasure when there is serious work to be done.’
* * *
A rush of anger pulled Mateo off of his stool and out of the circle of Etta’s arms. In an instinctive reaction his knees braced, his toes flexed within his boots to grip the floor and his breath quickened to match the sudden racing of his pulse. It was an old impulse, standing fast to face his enemies—except this adversary was neither a ship of the line bent on impressing his men nor a fat merchant clipper ripe for the picking. Instead it was a slip of a girl in a sky-blue pelisse.
He stared as Portia Tofton sauntered into the taproom as if it belonged to her. But this was not the shy, round-shouldered girl he recalled from his youth. From her head to her curvy figure and on to her dainty little toe, this was a woman to be reckoned with. Her stylish bonnet beautifully framed the look of cool amusement fixed on her face. Mateo’s jaw tightened even as she removed it, letting it swing by ribbons of shaded velvet.
For so long he had imagined this confrontation. In his mind he had rehearsed his collected entrance into her presence, practised the biting words with which he would consign her to the devil. Now it would seem she had connived to rob him even of that satisfaction.
His fists clenched. An air of assurance hung about her as she stepped into the candlelight. And why not? She thought she had him right where she wished. Heedless of propriety, unmindful of the great wrong she had done him or perhaps just without regard for his feelings, she stood there, all expectation, smiling up at him.
That smile made him wild. Fury set his temples to pounding, but he would be damned before he would let her see it. ‘Peeve!’ he called. ‘It is you, is it not?’
Her expression of triumph dimmed at the use of the old nickname. Relentless, he pressed his advantage. ‘But I see that much is the same with you, as well, my dear.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Still, after all these years, you are pushing yourself in where you do not belong.’
If he had hit his mark, she hid it well with a toss of her head. ‘Come, let’s not be rude, Mateo,’ she cajoled.
He nearly choked. ‘Rude? You conniving little jade! You would count yourself fortunate should I stop myself at merely rude!’
‘I don’t think the occasion warrants it.’ She cast a quick, curious gaze about them. ‘This is a place of…conviviality, is it not?’
He had not thought it possible for his anger to grow hotter. But the roiling mass of resentment inside him ignited at her words—and his control slipped further as the flames licked higher. Incredulous, he gaped at her.
He pushed away from the bar, away from her. Retreating back to the dying fire, he glared at her. ‘Conviviality,’ he scoffed. ‘Is that what you expected from me? Damn you English, and damn your deadly, dull-mannered ways,’ he said thickly. ‘And damn me if I will greet with equanimity the woman who has usurped my life’s work, and then—as if I am but her lackey—calls me to her side with a damned insulting peremptory summons!’
Her eyes narrowed and she took a step towards him. ‘Mateo—’
‘Stop,’ he ordered. ‘By God, I am not one of your reserved English gentlemen! Come within an arm’s reach of me and I won’t trust myself.’ He turned away from her and gripped the stone mantel over the fire. ‘Never in my life have I struck a woman, but you, Portia Tofton, tempt me beyond reason.’
Perhaps he had gone too far. At the bar, the innkeeper made a slight sound of protest. Etta watched with avid interest. But Portia barely reacted.
‘Ah, Mateo…’ she sighed ‘…I’d forgotten how incredibly dramatic you become when you are angry.’
She could not keep the slight mockery from her tone—and that was all it took. The last of his restraint tore away. Everything this infuriating chit did and said only fuelled the blowing gale of his anger.
‘Dramatic?’ he ground out. ‘I am betrayed. I am robbed of the future that I have laboured all my life for. I am a laughingstock where once I was a respected businessman. And I am furious. What I am not is dramatic.’ He whirled around and advanced on her with menace alive in his step. His voice, gone rough and threatening, reinforced the truth in her words and the lie in his. But Mateo was beyond caring. Hell and damnation, but she pushed a man too far! And she was—at last!—a bit frightened. God help him, but he wished to frighten her.
She stood her ground, though her eyes widened, and her fingers crushed the velvet of her ribbons. ‘I believe you have let the Cardea temper and your own imagination run away with you,’ she said. ‘I sent an urgent request for you to come and discuss this situation. There is a vast distance between urgent and peremptory.’
‘Ah, it is my mistake,’ Mateo growled. ‘Yes, I am sure your urgent need of a long and thorough gloat required my presence. Well, I can assure you, I feel your triumph keenly enough without such a humiliation.’
‘But I—’
He swung his arm in a sharp gesture and cut her off. He was close enough now to clearly see the puzzlement in her great brown eyes. Good, then. There was one question that had hung between them for years. He would answer it one last time and put an end to this entire farce. ‘We’ve both trod this ground before, have we not? It was not enough that you and our fathers sought to manoeuvre me into marriage? But I won that battle—so now you must find a new way to steal my future. Once again you have played a game without informing me I was a participant—and just as before you will find that I refuse to act as the prize.’
She gaped up at him. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Do not play the innocent with me, Portia, not after you have conspired to steal all that I value,’ he growled. ‘Perhaps it is not so inappropriate for you to be here tonight, after all. It is a fitting setting for you to learn that I will not be bought like a whore, no matter the bait that you dangle in front of me.’
Portia gasped. Behind him, Etta echoed her. The innkeeper dropped his cloth and took a step towards the corner of the bar. ‘That’s enough, now.’ He cast a conciliatory eye in Portia’s direction as he came around and approached them. ‘I don’t claim to know what there is between the two of you, but the gentleman was right the first time, Mrs Tofton. You shouldn’t be here, let alone at this hour. If word got out, your credit would suffer, and so would mine.’
All of Portia’s colour had faded at Mateo’s last heated words. As the innkeeper’s objection penetrated, her flush returned with a vengeance. Her chest heaved as an angry red wave crept upwards from beneath the standing collar of her pelisse. ‘I’m sorry for it, sir, but surely the damage is done.’ She cast a neutral glance at Etta and then regarded Mateo with the sort of loathing his crews reserved for an empty rum casket. ‘And well worth it, I must say, for suddenly I find several things have become clear.’
She looked away and this time it was she who took a step back. ‘I never thought—I can scarcely believe—’ She dropped her head, placed her hands on her hips and actually paced back and forth a few steps, seemingly lost in thought. Some of Mateo’s ire began to fade as he took in her air of bewilderment and the forgotten bonnet swinging against her knee.
She stopped suddenly, caught at the apex of her trajectory. Her chin lifted and at last he caught a glimpse of answering anger in her gaze—but there was hurt there too, and something bleak and sad.
‘I wished you to come because I needed your help.’ She spoke low. ‘I thought it possible that you might have some insight into why your father and mine would have acted so contrary to expectation and good sense. I know nothing of why your father made the choices he did. I’m sorry he died, but I was as shocked as you were to hear the contents of his will.’ She paused. ‘My father is dead, too, Mateo. And my husband, as well. Together they have left me in a dilemma as terrible as yours.’
Her words doused the burn of fury inside of him, but she was not done yet. At her side, her fists clenched. ‘I came here tonight to chide you, for I was unable to fathom why I had to ask you to come to sort this mess out in the first place, and why you would dally so long once you set out, in the second. But now I see.’
He watched her pull her bonnet on with shaking fingers. ‘I had no notion that your opinion of me had sunk so low, but truly, it matters naught. I ask you, please, to come to Stenbrooke tomorrow.’ She tied the strings with short, jerky movements. ‘You are both right. This is neither the time nor the place. But if you will come tomorrow, we will discuss this business.’ She swept the room with a glare that included all three of them. ‘Business, and nothing else. I trust I make myself clear?’ With an all-encompassing nod, she turned on her heel and strode out of the taproom and into the night.
The towering heat of his anger had faded to mere embers. She had cut the legs out from under him. Still, Mateo managed an involuntary step after her. The tavern owner deliberately put himself in his path. ‘Mayhap, sir, you don’t have all the facts you need,’ he said gently.
‘Aye, I fear you’re right in that.’ Mateo stepped back, scrubbed a hand from brow to jaw, and cocked an enquiring eye to the man. ‘She tells the truth, I think?’
The innkeeper shrugged. ‘They do say as she’s one for straight dealing, hereabouts.’
‘I would say it is either truth she’s given us,’ Mateo paused, ‘or a beautiful performance.’ He sighed. ‘I feel like the Mariner—discovering the world has shifted and the sun is rising in the west.’
‘A woman’ll do that to a man, eh?’
‘I fear so.’ Mateo glanced back at Etta. ‘Look at me. Knocked off my pillar of righteous anger in the space of a few minutes—and damned if I’m not exhausted from the fall.’ He reached beyond the man to grasp his ale and drained it in one long haul. ‘I am for bed,’ he declared. ‘It seems I’ve a mess to straighten in the morning.’
The innkeeper nodded his approval. ‘I’ll see that you are not disturbed.’
Mateo shook his head. ‘It’s far too late for that, my friend, but I thank you just the same.’
