My Rogue to Ruin

Book 4: The Wild Wynchesters

by Erica Ridley

Genres: Action & Adventure; Sagas; Regency Romance

Synopsis

The riotous Wynchester family has taken on a new case to expose a forger, but the prime suspect isn't at all what he seems in this captivating Regency romp from a New York Times bestselling author.

Marjorie Wynchester has always let her siblings take the lead when it comes to planning their investigations. But someone in London is trying to pass off counterfeits, and this time she's the only one with the skill needed to find the culprit. Soon, all the evidence leads her straight to Lord Adrian Webb.

Adrian is a roguish scoundrel of the first order, but he never meant to get caught up in a forgery scheme. Especially one that’s snowballed out of control. Now a blackmailer is out to ruin him, and the most alluring woman he's ever met is trying to put him behind bars.
Every time Marjorie thinks she has Adrian figured out, her assumptions turn on their head. He’s a heartless scoundrel. A loyal brother. A smooth liar. A good kisser. Er…wait… Is winning her affections just one more attempt to avoid the law? Or is it possible he’s not such a rogue after all?

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

July 1818

London, England

It was a glorious morning for a robbery.

The warm sunlight felt like splashes of pink and green against Marjorie Wynchester’s upturned face. Her bonnet slid from her head with a whoosh of yellow, rescued by a white ribbon at her throat. The sky above the museum was uncommonly blue today, and speckled with fluffy clouds. The aquamarine breeze, constant enough to keep the air fresh but not so strong as to give a chill. Even the taste in the air was less like hot summer tinged with coal, and more like bouncing spirals of orange and gold.

She would have thrown her arms in the air and twirled through the garden in delight were it not for two important considerations.

First, her joy would not be understood. No other person of her acquaintance could feel and smell and taste colors the way she could. Marjorie had asked every artist and aspiring artist she’d come across in academies and societies all across London. They looked at her not as though she were mad, but rather with envy, as though she had a special power they would do anything to possess.

The manager of the art studio where Marjorie volunteered suggested with some awe that it might be her body’s method to compensate for partial deafness. It was not. The extra colors and smells and sensations in her life predated the bout of smallpox that had stolen her birth family and half of her hearing. They had helped her get through all the darkest periods in her life.

“Is this the place?” piped up a tentative voice. “The British Museum?”

Ah, yes. The second reason Marjorie could not fling her arms wide and spin through the wide green garden like a wood sprite.

It was not yet time for the robbery.

First came art. She had her newest gaggle of nine- and ten-year-old little girls eager to prove themselves in their first expedition as a group. Most hoped art would become part of their profession one day.

“This is the place,” Marjorie confirmed, smiling at her charges.

Although her words often sounded muffled to her ears, she had been told—with varying degrees of kindness, or lack thereof—that her voice could be loud and atonal to others.

The little girls didn’t mind. They thought Marjorie was a goddess. Almost all professional art instruction and organizations were by and for men, and certainly not accessible to wide-eyed girls with not-yet-stained pinafores protecting their dresses. They clutched their precious wooden boxes of paints and brushes to their chests.

No matter what else happened in the museum today, she would give them a Saturday to remember.

Marjorie glanced over her shoulder at her brothers. The bright white of their footmen’s wigs covered up the black of their hair, and set off the rich brown of Jacob’s skin and the smooth caramel of Graham’s. In any costume, her roguish brothers were striking and dapper.

Real footmen could have handled this step, of course, but playing as servants gave them an additional reason for visiting the museum, and an ostensible explanation for any abnormal activity observed.

“Ready?” she asked them.

Her brothers grinned at her. Each lugged half a dozen oak easels in his strong arms. “Ready.”

“Then follow me.”

With a pile of protective canvas tarpaulins folded over one arm, Marjorie led the group through the main doors. The attendant greeted her by name and with a smile. Marjorie did the same. She was as familiar a sight within these walls as the frames about the paintings or the shelves beneath the curiosities. Often she gave her artistic re-creations to the staff so that they could take home a little bit of the beauty that surrounded them every day.

The museum had just opened, making Marjorie and her group among the first through its doors. The empty halls made this a splendid opportunity for young artists to have the museum mostly to themselves for the morning.

Briskly, she led her pupils away from the oils and watercolors and past the reading room for scholars, which was bustling with two dozen eager-eyed young ladies. Nothing like the dour-faced, serious gentlemen who usually haunted those walls. These women belonged to a ladies’ reading circle run by Marjorie’s sister-in-law Philippa. They met in a private library at the Wynchester residence on Thursdays, but had reconvened for a second appearance this week in order to—

Blond, lace-wrapped Philippa winked heartily at Marjorie as she led her students through the connected rooms.

Marjorie tried to send back a quelling glare. Winking before committing a burglary was hardly innocent behavior. But who could blame any of the Wynchester crew for their buoyant moods? Their latest client was hours away from seeing a cherished heirloom returned to her hands where it belonged. Nothing in this world was half as satisfying as putting wrongs to right. The air fairly sparkled with fireworks of pink and turquoise.

She herded her lambs toward the natural history galleries and began setting up easels on protective tarpaulin sheets all around the woodland creatures salon. The stuffed beasts were preserved in various poses under glass, making them the perfect models for young artists just learning to paint living things.

Less perfect had been her brother Jacob’s overly optimistic attempts to bring a selection of his live animals to the studio where Marjorie normally taught. The girls spent more time petting puppies and cooing over kittens than they did attending to their palettes and paint. The baby hedgehogs had been pandemonium.

Even worse were the occasions when big, strong Elizabeth attempted to model for the group. Marjorie’s sister was rarely without a sword or two and hated holding still for more than a second at a time. Each of the girls’ canvases looked as though she’d been invited to sketch a tornado. If they managed to draw anything at all! Elizabeth’s mouth moved as often as her body, and she could not stop herself from throwing her voice to poke fun at every person and object in the room. Most of Marjorie’s poor pupils could not stop giggling long enough to make a straight line.

This salon was much better. The animals were life-like but stationary, making them ideal models. They also weren’t currently speaking, which meant Elizabeth was somewhere else in the museum causing mayhem. Marjorie had begged her siblings to allow the girls to complete a painting or two before the excitement began.

Her brothers helped set up the easels, and the girls started to paint.

She strolled past each student’s canvas. “Lovely work. That’s it. Your shading is much improved. Look at those colors!”

At the studio in Charlotte Street, there was exactly one table in an out-of-the-way corner, with a large jug of water for rinsing off brushes without fear of splatter or other disasters. Today Marjorie set out multiple smaller pitchers at each girl’s feet, right in the center of their tarpaulins on either side of their easels. A convenient and irresponsibly dangerous location to place light, round-bottomed containers brimming with water.

Exactly according to plan.

Her brothers disappeared. At this hour, the museum employed one guard on each of its primary floors. The one assigned to this level poked his head through the doorway at reliable intervals, checking every half hour to ensure that the paints and the little girls remained a safe distance from the stuffed beasts on display, before hurrying off to inspect the other chambers.

Movement in the open archway separating the rooms caught Marjorie’s eye.

There at the threshold stood the most exquisitely handsome ton gentleman she had ever seen.

Black boots shined to perfection. Muscular legs encased in butter-soft buckskins. A moss-colored coat that set off perfectly the darker emerald of his waistcoat and the fluffy white cloud of his cravat. Bronze hair casually tumbled to perfection. A full, lush mouth over a strong jaw. Cheekbones that could cut diamonds. Heavy-lidded bright green eyes that watched her watching him with obvious interest. Even the air glowed with pinks and turquoise, and she caught the scent of spun sugar.

Marjorie was too startled by his direct gaze to blush. She did not attend balls or rub shoulders with aristocrats at vaunted venues such as Almack’s and Vauxhall. She was a wallflower. Because of the working nature of her visit, she wore an old gray gown. The stained muslin shimmered like oily pigeon feathers from past encounters with paint.

“Good morning,” she stammered.

“It is a good morning, now that I’ve had the good fortune to lay my eyes on you.” His voice was a rich chocolatey brown, rumbling over her skin with hints of green and blue and nutmeg. “What luck to stumble across the most beautiful woman in London.”

The dapper gentleman was bamming her. He had to be. A man such as this could have any woman he wished. He wouldn’t waste time on wallflowers. He wouldn’t even notice—

Except he had noticed her, hadn’t he? Was still gazing at her. Drinking her in as though he’d been praying for just this moment and had come to despair of ever finding her.

Being the object of such direct focus was a heady sensation. Her feet longed to step toward him, to let him look as close and as long as he pleased, provided he allowed her the luxury to do the same.

“I’m surprised you’re up at this hour,” she managed.

Not particularly flirtatious, but true. The people of the beau monde were infamous for allowing the sun to reach its zenith before squinting their eyes and rising from bed. Marjorie hadn’t expected to find any other guests at the museum this early in the morning. Much less one who looked as though his morning toilette could rival Brummell’s.

The gentleman smiled. Marjorie’s insides melted like caramel in a crumb cake. Good Lord, was such a face even legal? How was she supposed to keep two thoughts in her head with a slow, sensual smile like that pointed in her direction?

“Have I shocked you with my country hours, little lamb? How I wish I had time to treat you to countless more surprises.” He glanced at a carved wooden wall clock and made an expression of poignant disappointment at the position of the hands. “How long will you and your cadre be enjoying the museum this fine morning?”

“Two hours,” piped up one of Marjorie’s pinafored girls.

Doubtful. They might have an hour, if her students were fortunate. Marjorie’s siblings wouldn’t take long to assume their places and put today’s caper into motion.

“Then I shall endeavor to return quickly,” replied the gentleman, his voice still a rich chocolatey brown. His green eyes never left Marjorie’s own.

This time, she did manage to blush. There was no misconstruing his interest… or her own. She could not recall the last time she’d been this flustered by a man. It would certainly be no hardship to see this gentleman again, for a second time in one day.

He bowed deeply, then spoiled the formal effect by tossing her a cheeky wink before striding away down the marble hall.

She stared at the empty spot where he had been for some seconds in stupefaction, still unable to credit that a man so fine would have interrupted his busy day specifically to flirt with her.

Fortunately, she had twelve little girls with wet palettes and a hundred questions to pull her back to the present moment.

To Marjorie’s surprise and gratitude, her charges were able to complete more than the two watercolors she had promised them. They were each on painting three or four when Philippa’s reading circle spilled into the room, indicating that mischief was finally afoot.

Marjorie lifted an especially fragile jug of water and hurried to her tarpaulin in the center of the room.

The toes of her half boots had barely touched the fabric when woodland beasts sprang to life all around them.

Oh, not the animals under glass. The stuffed models were the only creatures in the salon to hold their positions. Wild animals streamed from every other nook and cranny. Weasels, squirrels, cats, foxes.

A river of fur and clacking claws carpeted the room, creatures darting between legs and easels, barreling into one another, and sending the paint-muddied water bowls spinning across the floor.

The ladies’ reading circle screamed in unison, rushing about the room with their hands waving wildly. They swooned into each other’s arms, only to spring up with a howl and start dashing about all over again.

The first guard skidded into the salon with an expression of such shock, it took him a full minute to shout an alarm.

Marjorie chose that precise moment to lose her grip on the delicate pitcher of water.

The guard looked in her direction just in time to see a formidable splash. Large pieces of clay shot across the room as droplets of water rained down around her.

The clatter sent the animals swirling anew. Kittens and squirrels climbed over the stuffed beasts and across the guard’s shoes.

A second guard ran into the room, followed quickly by the third and final guard. They tried in vain to round up the wild creatures, succeeding only in chasing them from one side of the salon to the other, overturning more bowls of paint-water in the process.

Elizabeth threw her voice into every corner, using her skill of mimicry to make it sound as though the confused guards were barking incoherent orders at each other from opposite directions of the chamber.

The ladies’ reading circle continued to shriek and run amok, the spark in their eyes the only hint that they were not quite as panicked as they pretended.

A few of Marjorie’s students stood stock-still in wonder. They surveyed the circus with delight, their hands gripping their easels to protect their paintings from falling. The rest took advantage of the mêlée, either dashing their wet brushes against their canvases in a frantic attempt to capture the chaos of the moment, or dropping to their knees on the wet tarpaulins in the hope of petting a passing squirrel.

Marjorie’s sister Chloe was somewhere overhead performing the exchange. The tiara would then be passed to their brother Graham, who had a knack for disappearing out windows and up walls and across roofs.

The poor guards were still fruitlessly chasing the weasels and the foxes. They didn’t notice that the seemingly savage beasts were conveniently confining themselves to a single chamber while performing a carefully choreographed routine.

Marjorie could not see her brother Jacob, but he must have given some sort of signal. All of the animals slid to a stop at once, then scampered away in all directions, escaping in flying streams of fur. They vanished even faster than they had appeared.

The wide-eyed, out-of-breath guards scrambled to their feet in astonishment.

“See here,” barked Marjorie’s sibling Tommy, in costume as a belligerent old lady. “What kind of establishment are you people running?”

“I…” stammered the guards, exchanging flabbergasted looks. “I never…”

Marjorie’s soon-to-be sister-in-law Kuni strode toward the students, looking regal as ever in a flowing gown of bright, eye-searing pink. “Oh dear, just look at those tarpaulins!”

The ladies’ reading circle spontaneously recovered from their shrieking and swooning, and sprang into action at once. “We’ll help! You girls stand still. We’ll have you put to rights in no time.”

In moments, Marjorie’s pupils, the reading circle, and the entire Wynchester clan were out the door, bursting into the sunlight with their canvases and easels and smiles bright enough to fill the sky with rainbows.

“That… was… marvelous!” All twelve damp-kneed, paint-splattered little girls danced around Marjorie, tugging her hands and clothes in glee. “Can we do it again next week?”

One more time.”

Lord Adrian Webb sent his hackney driver on another jaunt through Mayfair. What difference did a few more minutes make? Seven years had passed since Adrian was last on English soil. Seven years since he’d flirted with a pretty English rose, like the one he’d met this morning.

Had they been long years? Short years? A little of both, he supposed. Years ago, his puritanical father and conniving brother had done their best to ensure there would be no pesky homesickness to deal with, but there was no accounting for the tiny little things one became maudlin for after years of drought.

Gray skies, sooty with coal. The terrible, insipid tea at Almack’s. Rain, every bloody day for months on end. Burning the roof of one’s mouth after biting into a pie too soon after it left the oven. Staying out all night at Vauxhall to watch the fireworks and dance till dawn, despite the crush of people and stench of sweaty bodies.

Adrian missed London despite himself, blast it all. He hadn’t meant to, or wanted to. He’d been all over the Continent. To places that welcomed him, in contrast with the frigid reception that awaited him here.

If indeed any reception awaited him here.

“Stop.”

The carriage was already halting. After five circuitous trips through the same cobbled streets, the driver had no trouble anticipating his passenger’s commands.

The crescent Adrian was keeping under surveillance was his own.

Well, not his own. It belonged to Adrian’s father, the Marquess of Meadowbrook, and would pass to Adrian’s elder brother Herbert, the earl. But it was the same town house they’d lived in the first half of every year throughout his childhood.

The London social season roughly matched the parliamentary sessions. This year had ended early, in June, but the family tended not to remove to their country estate until mid-July. Which gave him at least another fortnight.

At least, such had been their custom. He hadn’t spoken with any of them in seven years. Hadn’t exchanged a single letter. Who knew how his family might have changed in his absence?

Especially Iris. She was the real reason Adrian was here. Not his father, who had sworn never to speak to him again. Or his brother Herbert, who had stopped speaking to Adrian as well, albeit with less cause.

His sister Iris had been thirteen the spring Adrian had been banished. Young enough to still belong in the schoolroom and old enough for him to catch glimpses of the woman she would one day become.

One day was here. One day had come and gone. She was grown now, and he had missed it. He had missed her. Adrian was starved for any contact with the one family member who might still love him. If the others hadn’t poisoned her against him by now.

According to Debrett’s Peerage, Iris was still unmarried, so at least he hadn’t missed that. Not that he’d be invited to the wedding. He wasn’t even certain she would allow him through the door.

Adrian was certain his sister was at home.

Father had left for his club in the coach-and-four. Herbert was off at his residence with his countess. Iris, as far as Adrian could tell, was home alone. This was the moment to pay an unexpected, clandestine call.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he muttered.

Adrian gave the driver an extra coin for his troubles, then hopped out of the hackney and onto the street. The cobblestones felt strange against the soles of his boots. Strange and familiar and uneven.

He strode up to the front door with the confidence of a man who usually got his way… and who had a calling card bearing a false name in his pocket just in case.

He needn’t have bothered with subterfuge. Except for a few laugh lines and the lone silver hair peeking among his curly brown locks, Adrian looked much the same now as he had the day he left.

The butler recognized him at once. “What a pleasant surprise, my lord!”

“McPherson, looking handsome as always. How have you been?” Adrian injected his tone with a jolly note, as if he could break through the invisible wall keeping him out with the force of his charm alone.

“It is good to see you. But I’m afraid…” McPherson winced and shifted his weight. “I was told to summon your father if you were ever to appear.”

“Who is it, McPherson? I’m accepting calls,” came a woman’s voice.

A woman. Not a girl. And yet the voice was close enough to Adrian’s memories, he knew it must be his sister.

“Iris,” he called impulsively. “It’s me, your long-lost brother!”

There was a pause. An uncomfortably long pause that stretched on for so many minutes, Adrian had plenty of time to wonder whether she would refuse to see him. Or if she’d forgotten who he was altogether.

Then: “Adrian?”

Bright brown eyes appeared behind McPherson’s shoulder. Dark brown hair, not spilling haphazardly from messy plaits, but piled atop her head in artful curls. Instead of pinafores, a sprigged muslin day dress.

“I knew I missed you,” he blurted out, “but I did not know the half of it.”

“McPherson.” Iris turned to the butler. “Weren’t you busy polishing the silver when you heard the knock? I believe I called out that I would answer the door. I fear you had no idea who had come to call until much too late to have prevented it.”

The butler looked from Iris to Adrian and back again, clearly weighing the wrath of his employer against the wants of the siblings.

“Indeed,” McPherson said at last. “The silver is such a task. So time-consuming. I shouldn’t be surprised to discover I missed glimpsing your caller altogether.”

“Thank you,” Adrian murmured.

McPherson inclined his head and hurried away to make good on his alibi.

Adrian quickly stepped over the threshold and shut the door. Luckily, the terrace faced a large garden, rather than another row of houses right across the street. Nonetheless, neighbors were neighbors, and it would not be long before the marquess learned his black sheep had come bleating home.

“Can it really be you?” Iris asked in wonder. “Come to the green parlor.”

Adrian would have said he knew the way to the green parlor in his sleep, but after so many years of absence, his father’s town house was as strange as it was familiar.

Had there always been a slight creak in the floor when exiting the entranceway? Were the wall coverings no longer the same brilliant blue, or had Adrian’s imagination made his childhood home brighter than it actually had been?

Yet for all its muted hues and jarring creaks, the town house would always feel like home. A place he had once belonged. Inhabited by a family that had once been his. It was not the moldings and the ormolu he’d missed, but the good moments with his father and his siblings.

Especially Iris, with whom he had never exchanged a cross word. Of course, she’d been young then, and Adrian still perched on his pedestal. There were no longer stars in her eyes when she looked at him. He was just a man. Not even a particularly good one. As strange to her as the creak in the floor had been to Adrian.

Iris preceded him into the parlor. “I’ll ring for tea.”

“I don’t want to cause you any trouble,” he said hastily.

“I’m not making the tea. I’m just ringing—oh. You mean Father.” Iris’s brown eyes sparkled with the mischievousness he remembered from her youth. “I’ll tell him I didn’t remember that I wasn’t to let you in.”

“He doesn’t remind you regularly what a disappointment I am? A blight and shame on the entire family?”

“He doesn’t mention you at all. Neither does Herbert. I’ve not heard your name in… how many years has it been?”

“Seven,” Adrian said hoarsely.

Iris took a seat in a beryl armchair and gestured for him to do the same. “Not once in seven years.”

Well. That was a twist, wasn’t it.

Adrian supposed he should be happy that his fears of his relatives poisoning Iris against him amounted to naught. His dream of rebuilding their once-strong relationship now seemed to have a chance. Iris was six years younger than him, but they had been thick as thieves. He had always loved her more than anything.

But the thought of his name never even having come up in his absence… it hurt. He could not deny it.

“Father warned me,” he said lightly, trying to make a jest of the awkwardness. Playing the role he had been assigned. “‘No son of mine,’ ‘dead to me forevermore,’ et cetera, et cetera. I see he remains a man of his word.”

She made a sympathetic face. “If it makes you feel better, he’s cross with me, as well.”

“Is he?” Outrage shot through Adrian’s veins. “For what?”

“Failing to marry the doddering old earl he picked out for me.” Iris mimed a shiver. “Even if his aging lordship were young and dashing, I wouldn’t have wed him.”

“Why not?”

“I want to be like you. Go on a holiday and never come back. Maybe we could have run into each other, if I had started sooner,” she added wistfully.

His stomach twisted in sympathy. “Oh, pet, I missed you so much. If I had any notion of Father allowing you on a tour of any sort, I would have done everything in my power to be present for it.”

“Oh, he shan’t allow it,” Iris said sourly. “As soon as he realized that was what I was saving my pin money for, he stopped giving it to me altogether. But let’s not talk . . .