“Why in the devil would I do that?” Francesca protested. “I’d rather be stretched on the rack than actually marry him.”
“Because … should Alexander’s blackmailer become spiteful, or the money not get there in time, the protection of the Terror of Torcliff as your husband could save all our necks from the gallows.”
* * *
Piers stood back from the balustrade above Castle Redmayne’s ballroom and observed the swirls and eddies of nobility below him as they waltzed in time to “The Blue Danube.”
The candles flickered in black iron chandeliers cast by a blacksmith some centuries ago. Dancing shadows drifted over bejeweled masks, lending the revelers an almost macabre appearance. An overabundance of diamonds and gems caught the candlelight, draped and dangling from elegant throats and wrists. Piers unfocused his gaze, divining constellations in their lustrous gleam.
God’s blood, how he disliked these people. And none of them cared for him.
He was born a powerful man, so when he called them, they came.
It took all his will to appear unperturbed. Unaffected.
Yearning for the open plains of Africa or the dense jungles of the Amazon seized him. At least in such places, where plants and insects were just as deadly as the vipers and predators, he knew his place. He easily identified his enemies. He understood his power.
He’d earned it by right of strength and ferocity.
Here was a different terrain, one every bit as chaotic and treacherous as any he’d conquered abroad.
But these beasts were not so simple. Their hunting grounds, unfamiliar. He’d done nothing but slide into the world with the correct pedigree, and everyone below him either loved him or loathed him for it.
None of it made sense. The creatures swathed in finery spoke out of both sides of their mouths. When lions would roar and charge, they purred, then gutted you once you’d let down your guard.
He’d found among the animal kingdoms something he’d not realized he’d been searching for. An honesty, a simplicity, the like of which he’d never encountered in the human domain.
Such complicated creatures humanity had become. Swathed in the artifice of civilization …
A black bit of taffeta and muslin broke into his view, and Piers had to bite back a snarl.
Rose Brightwell. A dark beauty with a black heart and the charms of a snake. He’d been in her thrall for so long. Long enough to forget she was Rose Brightwell no longer.
Now she claimed Atherton as her surname, which was what she’d wanted all along, wasn’t it?
Only his name. His title. Nothing else.
And he’d be damned before she became a duchess.
“Did ye love her?” The brogue was as deep and rich as the Scotch he’d just swallowed.
Piers tensed. Only one man had perfected the ability to approach him without detection. And no matter how Piers honed his instinct as both a hunter and possible target, he’d never bested his half brother, Sir Cassius Ramsay, in the art of subterfuge.
Even when they stood side by side, as they did now, no one would assume they were family. Ramsay was archangel gold to Piers’s demon darkness. He’d not a lambent hair out of place, nor a whisker unshaved. As ever, Ramsay was perfectly starched, steadfast, and in Piers’s opinion, rather stuffy.
“Your Worship,” he muttered.
“Yer Grace.” They always greeted each other like this, formally, with barely concealed comradery, and halfhearted contempt.
Theirs was a complicated affection.
“Did ye love Rose?” Ramsay repeated, joining him to gaze down at the colorful chaos below them.
“I must have,” Piers mused. “Else why would I hate her so bitterly now?”
Ramsay made a noncommittal sound, and sipped from a champagne glass that, in hands the size of his, appeared to be from a little girl’s play set.
It would be the only drink he allowed himself. His one concession that he attended a grand ball instead of the gallows. Even his mask was dreary, an unadorned black silk band with slits for the eyes, tied in the back like some sort of highwayman. A paragon of self-containment, that was the Honorable Lord Chief Justice of the High Court Sir Cassius Ramsay.
“I imagine all this is for her,” Ramsay said, pointedly not looking at Rose Brightwell.
“All of what?” Piers wished his mask didn’t conceal his scowl.
His brother nodded toward the room at large. “All this pomp and drama and mystery. The unveiling of yer future duchess, et cetera. It’s quite unlike ye.”
What was it about an observant insight that made a man yearn for a drink? “I’ve a new reputation to uphold, or hadn’t you heard?” he said flippantly. “Doesn’t this seem worthy of the Terror of Torcliff?”
Ramsay snorted. “These people are as absurd as the moniker they’ve christened ye with.”
“On that, dear brother, we can agree.” Piers glanced at Ramsay through narrowed eyes, conducting an assessment of his own. “Yet you slither among these people as though they were your own. You should have been a duke, not I.”
“The thought has crossed my mind.” Ramsay lifted a wide shoulder in an insouciant shrug. “Necessity dictates I navigate their world. But only so that I may mitigate their barbarity.”
Piers smothered his surprise at the note of disdain his brother had allowed into his voice. He’d always assumed Ramsay enjoyed the way he’d infiltrated the ton. Not by way of birth, but by a prestige and presence, not to mention wealth, that they couldn’t ignore.
As an erstwhile duke, Piers had never looked up to his elder brother in any way but literally, as the bastard was all of three inches taller and outweighed him by a spare half-stone.
Perhaps Ramsay should have been the duke; he’d the temperament for it. All steely resolve and unimpeachable morals.
Or, should he have been the huntsman? He’d the stature for it. The ferocity. The iron will and apparent fortitude for suffering. His Scottish father had given him the rough-hewn build of his Highland ancestors, and their mother had imparted all the British imperious pretension his great, loutish body could convey.
“If I’m honest, I’m surprised you came,” Piers murmured. “It’s not even an election year. Why should both of us have to suffer through something so tedious?”
“I’m as breathless as the rest of the empire to meet yer bride.” Ramsay slid him a droll look from blue eyes identical to his. “Besides, I should be seen with strong family ties.” He clapped Piers on the back with a solid hand, and Piers wondered if he did it for his benefit, or for that of the ton. Their eyes were like a thousand tiny lances pricking him with dubious regard.
“Which family?” Piers sneered. “Your disfigured, ne’er-do-well younger brother, or our cousin who allowed himself to be seduced by my former fiancée while I was on my deathbed?”
The ghost of a wry smile haunted his brother’s lips before vanishing, and Piers tried to remember the last time he’d ever seen Ramsay smile.
Maybe never, come to think of it.
“I’m sorry she turned out to be like our mother.” Ramsay drank again, his features turning to stone as he gazed out toward the woman Piers had been avoiding all night.
“Case.” The nickname fell from Piers’s lips as easily as it had when they were boys. “I’m fairly certain someone attempted to murder my fiancée yesterday.”