Page 1 of How to Court a Rake
Chapter One
London—late June 1826
Caine Parkhurst had the instincts of a bloodhound. He could scent trouble a mile away although he was seldom that far from it. A single man in a ballroom at the height of the Season didn’t have the luxury of distance. He was smelling some of that trouble now as he and his brother kept company with a pack of Parkhurst male cousins in the sweltering June crush of Lady Barnstable’s ballroom.
‘Here they come,’ Caine growled in low warning tones, nudging Kieran into alertness with a slight nod indicating the approach of a gaggle of giggling girls who were much too young to be circling a ballroom unchaperoned and just much too young, period. He made a grimace. Was that what youthful womanhood looked like these days? From the vantage point of his rather august thirty-eight years, eighteen seemed extraordinarily young and extraordinarily uninteresting. What did such a girl know of the world? She’d know even less of the particular world he inhabited—a much darker world than this chandelier-lit, sparkling sphere where safety was assumed. The world of the Four Horsemen offered no such assumptions. Death was always a knife tip away. Not that London understood that. They saw the Four Horsemen only as rakes.
‘Maybe they won’t stop,’ Kieran laughed, unconcerned. But then, Kieran was more tolerant of social foibles than he was. ‘I certainly wouldn’t, not with that grimace you’re wearing.’
‘No, they’ll stop. Five pounds says I’m right. Trouble always smells the same: lilacs, lavender, and lilies.’ Sweet smells, innocent smells, sometimes cloying smells worn by idealists and fools who knew nothing beyond the fairy-tale walls of their castles, never even suspecting that tonight his world crossed paths with theirs. Word had it, a saboteur might be in their midst, intent on obstructing a private shipment of funds and arms bound for the Greek independence cause.
Kieran gave a shrug of acceptance, his keen gaze homing in on the group now that there was money in play. He picked out a few. ‘There’s Townsend’s niece, Blackhurst’s cousin, and the one in pink is Darefield’s girl, first Season, significant dowry to back her. She’ll go fast.’
‘If she can keep that insipid laugh of hers under control.’ Caine scowled. He’d met Darefield’s daughter at Somerset House when the art show had opened back in May. She’d made an impression and not for the best. It would be the last time he’d let his sister rope him into attending such an event, whether she was a pregnant duchess these days or not. His gaze lit on the last girl in the group, elegant, willowy, serious. A young woman who’d seen a fair share of Seasons. A clear outlier for this coterie.
‘Lady Mary Kimber’s a rather odd member of such a group,’ Caine remarked. Odd because she was at least two years older than these girls. Was this her third Season? Perhaps her fourth? Yet even Lady Mary, who was generally regarded as an example of perfect English womanhood, looked shockingly young to him—one of many consequences, perhaps, of his participation in his grandfather’s diplomatic world, shadowy edges and all. If patriotic intrigue didn’t kill a man, it had no qualms about stripping away his innocence.
‘They’ll pass us by. They just want a peek at a questionable gentleman or two.’ Kieran was all nonchalant confidence. Caine hoped his brother was right. His cousins might be here for the debutantes and dancing, but he and Kieran weren’t. They were putting in an appearance tonight to satisfy their grandfather, the Earl, who had specifically requested they keep their ears to the ground in case the saboteur gave himself or his plans away.
He and Kieran were here at Lady Barnstable’s, while Lucien was at Lord Morestad’s birthday rout. Given his own amorous history with Lady Morestad, Caine had felt it in poor taste to attend her husband’s birthday party. Meanwhile, Stepan had taken up his post at a deserted inn near Wapping to prepare the horses and await the call to action if it came, which it very well might. Intelligence, via his grandfather’s trusted informant, Falcon, had brought to light earlier today that an Ottoman sympathiser was moving among society’s higher echelons. Thus, the Four Horsemen’s appearances tonight at various events across town in case there was further word about how and when the attempt to interfere with the shipment would come.
So far, nothing more had materialised and now it seemed that nothing might. That was the hope. If an attack was to happen at all, it would have to happen within the hour, which meant it would occur at the docks. By now, the arms would be loaded and the money would be en route under guard. The ship would sail at midnight with the tide.
The money in question was no trivial sum. It was a substantial amount of privately raised funds to support the Greek independence movement. The last thing the Greek cause needed, or England for that matter, was to have six hundred thousand pounds and a significant arsenal of weaponry fall into Ottoman hands. England was keen to support the independence movement, but less keen to publicly acknowledge that support as an act of official policy. If this shipment came to light, the government would have to answer for this lavish display of ‘private’ support and arms, which would displease certain European allies.
‘Besides,’ Kieran was still talking about the silly girls who continued to advance, ‘their mothers would murder them if they talked to the likes of us. The Four Horsemen are off limits to debutantes. We’re far too dangerous to their reputations.’ That reputation was indeed their best protection from becoming outright prey: four gentlemen brothers, grandsons of an earl, sons of a third son, none of them with significant prospects of their own, all of whom rode like hell, raked like hell and had reputations to rival Lucifer himself.
Caine had taken great care to make sure everyone knew just how wildly they lived, shamelessly promoting the idea that the drawing room of Parkhurst House was akin to a St James’s gambling hell and that they were not strangers to the Covent Garden opera singers. Matchmaking mamas approached the Four Horsemen with extreme caution if they approached at all. However, their naive daughters were less concerned with such considerations and perhaps more concerned with the mystery of what lay behind those reputations.
He and his brothers were the wild Parkhursts. Their cousins were the desirable Parkhursts and therein lay Kieran’s miscalculation. The giggling girls might not stop for the Four Horsemen, but they’d definitely stop for Alexander Parkhurst, one of the Season’s most eligible bachelors as the scion to the heir of the Earl of Sandmore. Unfortunately, he and Kieran had the dubious privilege of standing next to that eligibleparti. Attention by association as it were. It was Caine’s estimation that they would pay for that proximity, collateral damage in the making.
‘Ladies.’ Alex bowed politely to the group of girls in acknowledgment of their attentions. Caine made no such conventional overture. Beside him, Kieran swore under his breath, his wager lost.
The ‘ladies’ in question curtsied, eyelash-fluttering gazes moving with adolescent excitement between the gentlemen in the group. Townsend’s niece offered Alex her hand. ‘I believe we were introduced at my aunt’s Venetian breakfast last week.’ Ah, that explained the chit’s boldness, then. She was presuming on a prior introduction. If it had been up to him, Caine would have said something like, ‘Forgive me, I do not recall’—probably without the ‘forgive me’ part—but Alex was cut from a much better cloth of manners. Then again, his cousin had prospects to preserve. Alex didn’t have the luxury of speaking his mind.
‘Yes, I believe we discussed your aunt’s rose garden.’ Alex smiled—whatever suffering he felt over doing the pretty was neatly hidden away behind grey eyes that reflected polite, neutral interest. That might have been the end of it if the orchestra hadn’t chosen that moment to start back up, the sounds of instruments tuning inviting guests to return to the dance floor. The Townsend girl’s gaze took on an expectant quality and Alex, damn him, felt obliged. ‘Would you do me the honour of this dance?’
Townsend’s niece—Caine had no idea what her name was and didn’t care to learn it—blushed prettily and made a polite show of concern for leaving behind the party of girls with her. How would it be, she protested, to dance if her friends were left on the sidelines? Caine’s cousins, thedecentParkhursts, leapt into the breach, making offers to the other girls until only he and Kieran were left with Lady Mary Kimber. She’d hung back during the bold interaction. Perhaps she’d been rightly mortified by the behaviour of her companions. ‘I’ll get us some punch,’ Kieran offered, effecting his escape.
‘You’d better get me my five pounds. It looks like I won this wager,’ Caine growled as Kieran slipped off to the refreshment room. In this crush, it would take him a good twenty minutes to make the journey. Until then, Caine was stuck with Lady Mary Kimber, daughter of the Earl of Carys, one of the most impeccably mannered, well-dowered girls on the marriage mart, the personification of dutiful and beautiful, and the least likely to seek out the company of the Four Horsemen.
Her father had made no secret in the clubs that Lady Mary was meant for a duke. She had, in fact, spent a week at the end of May at the Duke of Harlow’s house party expressly for that purpose. But Harlow had come back with his intentions firmly and rebelliously fixed on a pretty nobody from Dorset despite Lady Mary’s beauty, bloodlines and bank account. Her father had thrown a fit over it at White’s a few weeks back.
‘It seems our friends have deserted us,’ she said to cover the awkwardness of the growing silence. It was skilfully done. The line offered him a choice to take it up as commiseration or as an invitation to ask her to dance. A gentleman would do the latter. He was not that man. He was on a mission from his grandfather.
‘I am not dancing tonight, Lady Mary,’ he explained bluntly. Even if he was dancing, it would not be with her. Lady Mary Kimber was no more his type of woman than he was her type of man. He liked a lick of fire, an edge of steel, a certain sensual confidence in his women. He had an opera singer he consorted with in Piccadilly on occasion who ticked all those boxes quite nicely and expected nothing in return that he wasn’t willing to give. He did not see the dutiful Lady Mary checking those boxes and she was most definitely the sort of woman who would have expectations.
‘A ball seems an odd choice of entertainment for someone who doesn’t wish to dance.’ Her grey eyes gave him a challenging stare, one slim brow arching in an attempt to call his bluff.Didshe think he was bluffing? Her boldness surprised him. Maybe she did tick one of his boxes after all.
‘I am here supporting my cousin,’ he offered in explanation.
‘Ah, thedecentParkhurst,’ she said with a cool detachment that translated into the smallest of smiles on those soft pink lips of hers as if she hadn’t just rendered him an insult, or at least tried to.
He laughed, rather enjoying this unexpected show of sharp wit. ‘You’ll have to do better than that if you want to offend me.’ Such wit rather begged the question as to why she hadn’t bagged the Duke of Harlow. Had Harlow not liked the sharp honesty? She’d certainly not lost him on account of her looks. Lady Mary was objectively pretty, albeit in a non-standard sense. No blonde hair and blue eyes here. Instead, her beauty lay claim to quicksilver eyes, glossy nut-brown hair and a willowy figure with enough height to give her a sense of poise the other girls lacked. There were other attributes, too: the slim, elegant column of her neck that begged a man to run his hand down its length and those sensual lips that invited kisses without trying. His eyes were riveted by them and his thoughts followed.
‘Offending you was hardly my intention, Mr Parkhurst. I was merely stating a fact.’ There was more of that delicious coolness she seemed to cultivate so well in a heated ballroom. With a little practice she could freeze a man at twenty paces. What a duchess she would be with a look like that. Harlow was definitely missing out.
‘Neither was insultmyintention, Lady Mary. I simply find it expedient to make my position known from the start. It saves people from disappointment later on.’ By people, he meant naive debutantes who had a fancy to take to the floor with a notorious rake.
