Page 4 of Rules for Heiresses
“Remove your coat,” Courtland ordered.
“What? No!” The boy’s coppery eyes rounded with panic. “What kind of establishment is this? I’ll have you know I will seek out the owner of the Starlight and have you thrown bodily from this hotel. How dare you, sir? You cannot do this.”
“You’re in luck,puppy. I’m the owner so feel free to state your grievance at any time. Now, remove that coat.”
“This is an outrage,” the boy insisted, his thin shoulders trembling with indignation.
His mouth opened and closed, a rivulet of sweat trickling from his temple to the hairless apple of his cheek. He was a baby. Courtland wouldn’t put him at more than seventeen, if that. The thin brown mustache over his lip seemed out of place on his face, and it also seemed to be traveling of its own accord and curling away at the corner. The more the youth struggled, the more it shifted. Courtland’s gaze narrowed on the brown stubble along the lad’s sloping downy jaw where sweat mixed in with the chin hairs.
What in the hell? Was thatink?
“Remove your coat or Rawley here will do it for you. Or break your arms if you don’t cease struggling.”
His man of affairs and second cousin, Rawley was a large local with a razor-sharp wit, a quick brain that outmatched many, and enough brawn to deter the most hardened of troublemakers. Courtland had hired him years before, and now, he trusted him with his life.
“No, wait,” Hunt pleaded. “Please.”
Someone in the crowd jeered. “If you have nothing to hide, take it off.”
In the next moment, Rawley yanked the coat off the boy’s shoulders, buttons popping. A high-pitched yelp tore from the boy as the plain waistcoat went next, leaving him standing there in a linen shirt, hastily knotted cravat, and trousers. His narrow frame shook, shoulders hunching forward, arms crossed over his middle.
“Please, cease this,” he begged in a plaintive whisper. “You don’t understand.”
Courtland hesitated at the hushed desperation in the boy’s voice. It wasn’t in him to publicly shame someone this young who might have made a mistake and could learn a valuable lesson, and besides, he liked the boy’s spirit. However, before he could order Rawley to take him to his private office, his burly factotum, Fawkes, shoved through the crowd. He was closely followed by a perspiring, balding, well-heeled man.
“What is it, Fawkes?”
“Mr. Chase. An urgent messenger has arrived.” The man was fairly bursting with news, and a dribble of unease slid down Courtland’s spine. “From London. From—”
“Your Grace,” the unknown man said in a loud voice, and every muscle in Courtland’s body solidified to stone. “I’m Mr. Bingham, the private solicitor of the late duke, your grandfather, His Grace, the Duke of Ashvale, God rest his soul. As your grandfather’s eldest heir, you’ve now been named duke. However, the will is being contested, claiming you are deceased, though clearly, my own eyes attest that you are not.”
Thunder roared in Courtland’s ears. This was not bloody happening.
For all intents and purposes, Lord Courtland Chase, the rightful Marquess of Borne and heir to the Ashvale dukedom,wasdead. But the damage was done. Amid the chatter now soaring to the rooftop, he opened his mouth to say what Bingham could do with the title and the rest of his message, but was thwarted by the young thief who now seemed to have lost half his mustache and was gawking at him with wide, incredulous eyes that burned with an unnaturally disturbing degree of emotion. Not shock or wonder or even awe like everyone else in the room, but…recognition.
“Cordy?” the boy whispered.
Courtland hadn’t heard that name in well over a decade, but it was a like a punch to the chest, more powerful, deadly even, than the wallop about him being duke. No one had ever called him Cordy…no one except…
His jaw hardened, confusion pouring through him. “Who thefuckare you?”
Two
Ravenna forgot that she’d been accused of cheating and almost stripped down to the altogether in front of a crowd in a popular local hotel and club. Not even the whispers ofYour Graceand theDuke of Ashvalecould take away from the fact that her childhood friend and nemesis, her once-upon-a-time betrothed, whom she hadn’t seen in eleven years and also thought long dead, was standing in front of her.
Hale, healthy, and cold as a winter ocean.
And so obviously alive.
No wonder he’d seemed so familiar. The last name was common enough, but her brain hadn’t connected the mister with the lord. Ravenna blinked her shock away. His family had mourned him. Stinson, Cordy’s younger half brother, had been devastated and inconsolable after his death, even taking to burning down the woodland fort she and Cordy had built. Ravenna had let him, guessing it was due to his inconsolable grief. A breath shivered out of her tight lungs. If Cordy was alive and living here all along, why wouldn’t he have let his family know?
“Answer me, damn you!” he demanded in a growl. “Where did you hear that name?”
The terse command shook her out of her memories.Blast it.If she admitted to knowing him, he might know whoshewas. And well, she wasn’t exactly dressed as Lady Ravenna Huntley at the moment. Revealing herself as the daughter of a duke and an unmarried female in the midst of a gaming room full of men would be the pinnacle of stupidity, not that her decisions leading her here hadn’t been foolishly reckless. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t in England; the scandal would be swift and inevitable. She had to deflect somehow, at least until she could run.
Piercing dark eyes held her prisoner, but Rawley, the enormous and handsome man with deep brown skin who had several stone of muscle on her, had released her arms. This was it! Her moment to escape. Her nemesis must have seen what she meant to do in the sudden tension of her body because he snarled a denial and lunged across the table for her.
For once, her small stature helped as she snatched up her fallen coat—it had her winnings in it, after all—and shoved through the dense crowd. She could hear a predator’s frustrated roar, and even as she reveled in her almost victory, a part of her quailed at the savage sound.
