The Devil Is a Marquess (Rescued from Ruin Book 4) Read Free

slender form. As she heard the click of his walking stick on the cold marble of the entrance hall, her head came up with a jerk.
    “Really, Mother. Pink?”
    She dabbed her perfectly shaped eyes and just beneath her small, perfect nose then smoothed her perfectly arranged, white-blond coiffure with one delicate hand. “If you expect me to mourn your father—”
    He laughed and moved to lean his shoulder against a column alongside the banister. “Of course not. Black has never flattered you. However, you are hardly a rose in its first bloom. Now, scarlet, on the other hand. Most appropriate. Or, perhaps green. I understand the ladies of Covent Garden find it disguises the stains of their profession.”
    Cool, silver eyes gleamed with spite. “You would know.”
    Again, he chuckled. “Has Mr. Pryor made an appearance?”
    She gripped the bannister and pulled herself to her feet. Even standing on the bottom step, her forehead only came even with his chin. “No.” She sniffed and dabbed again at the corner of one eye. “Why are you here? To revel in my misery, I suppose.”
    He had not remembered this was the day Lady Rutherford would be forced to find other accommodations, so no, he’d not intended to torment her. He paid her little notice, and certainly not enough to desire such a thing.
    One of the burly men, built along the lines of Reaver, clomped across the marble and stood in front of Lady Rutherford, whose features melted into a plea. “Please, sir. I—I have nowhere to go,” she begged.
    Pryor’s hired man glanced to Chatham with the beginning stages of panic.
    Chatham sighed and grasped his mother’s upper arm, pulling her off the step and dragging her a few feet away from the stairs. “Lady Rutherford is overwrought,” he said. “Be about your business.” As soon as the man began to ascend the stairs, Chatham tossed his mother’s arm away.
    She rubbed it as though he had bruised her. Ridiculous. Theatrical. She might be a duplicitous whore born and married to the aristocracy, but she had given birth to him. Besides, brutality was not in his nature.
    He had never hurt a woman in his life. Unless one requested such specialized treatment and paid an additional fee, of course. That, however, was the sole exception, and one of which he was not particularly fond.
    “Where am I to sleep?” she hissed. “Have you given a moment’s thought to me in your eagerness to dispense with your father’s possessions?”
    “No. I do not care a whit where you sleep. Nor did he. Probably for the best, considering how many beds you landed in.”
    Suddenly tearless silver eyes narrowed to slits. “Disgusting, selfish man. I despise you with every fiber of my body. I should have smothered you in your cradle. I should have—”
    “Now, Mother.” He tapped her temple lightly with his fingertip. “Remember the vein that bulges here when you let your anger loose upon the world. Most unattractive.”
    Two more men entered and clomped past them toward the dining room.
    Her face took on a harsh cast as she stared past his shoulder at their retreating backs. In the daylight, he could see fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Within five years, he calculated, her beauty would abandon her entirely. He wondered what she would sell then. Mentally, he shrugged. The problem was hers, not his.
    “They are taking everything, Chatham. Everything. I’ll have nothing left.” She was pitiful. A mewling, helpless harlot.
    He sighed. “Rutherford’s solicitor already arranged for your jointure to be distributed. That should be more than enough to rent a house or—”
    “It is spent.”
    He blinked. “Spent. Four thousand pounds.”
    She smoothed one of her ruffles and sniffed. “I had not been to a modiste in two years—”
    “Unbelievable.”
    “—and that old coach smells of mold—”
    “Mother.” His eyes fell to the glittering necklace around her pale throat. He’d assumed it was glass, as all her