On a Wicked Dawn

'Ten o'clock, my lord.' Crossing to the window, Cottsloe drew back the curtains. 'Miss Ffolliot has arrived and is breakfasting with Miss Emily and Miss Anne. Her ladyship has yet to come down.'

'Very good.' Luc relaxed, smiled. 'I've some good news, Cottsloe, which, needless to say, must go no further than you and Mrs. Higgs, if you would be so good as to pass the word to her.'

Cottsloe's face, until then set in typical butler imperturbability, eased. 'Her ladyship did whisper that there'd been some encouraging developments.'

'Encouraging indeed — the family's afloat again. We're no longer run aground, and even more than that — financially, we're once again precisely where we should be, where we've pretended to be all these years.' Luc met Cottsloe's steady brown eyes. 'We're no longer living a lie.'

Cottsloe beamed. 'Well done, my lord! I take it one of your investment ventures was successful?'

'Extravagantly successful. Even old Child was bowled over by how successful. That was the note I got yesterday evening. I couldn't speak to you then, but I wanted to tell both you and Mrs. Higgs that I'll make out drafts to you both for all your back wages this morning. Without your unfailing support, we'd never have weathered the last eight years.'

Cottsloe blushed and looked conscious. 'My lord, neither Mrs. Higgs nor I is in any hurry over the money —'

'No — you've been more than patient.' Luc smiled disarmingly. 'It'll give me great pleasure, Cottsloe, to at last be able to pay both of you as you deserve.'

Phrased in that way, Cottsloe could do nothing but blush again and acquiesce to his wishes.

'If you would both come to the study at twelve, I'll have the drafts waiting.'

Cottsloe bowed. 'Very good, my lord. I'll inform Mrs. Higgs.'

Luc nodded and watched as Cottsloe retreated, silently closing the door. Sinking into his pillows, he spent a moment thinking grateful and fond thoughts of his butler and his housekeeper, who had stood unwaveringly behind the family throughout their time of need.

From there, his thoughts wandered to his change of circumstances, his new life… to the events of the past night.

Mentally checking his faculties and his physical state, he confirmed everything was in working order. Bar a faint headache, he felt no aftereffects from the previous night's excesses. His hard head was the only physical characteristic he'd inherited from his wastrel sire; at least it was a useful one. Unlike all the rest of his father's legacy.

The fifth Viscount Calverton had been a dashing, debonair ne'er-do-well whose only contribution to the family had been to marry well and sire six children. At forty-eight, he'd broken his neck on the hunting field, leaving Luc, then twenty-one, to take over the estate, only to discover it mortgaged to the hilt. Neither he nor his mother had had any idea the family coffers had been ransacked; they'd woken one morning to find themselves, not just paupers, but paupers heavily in debt.

The family properties were all prosperous and productive, but the income was eaten by the debts. There had been literally nothing left on which the family themselves might survive.

Bankruptcy and a sojourn in Newgate threatened. Out of his depth, he'd put aside his pride and appealed to the only person who might have the talent to save them. Robert Child, banker to the ton, then aging, semiretired but still shrewd — no one knew the ins and outs of finance better than he.

Child had heard him out, considered for a day, then agreed to help — to, as he put it, serve as Luc's financial mentor. He'd been relieved yet surprised, but Child had made it clear he was only agreeing because he viewed the prospect of saving the family as a challenge, something to enliven his declining years.

He hadn't cared how Child wanted to see things, he was simply grateful. Thus had commenced what he now considered his apprenticeship in the world of finance. Child had been a strict yet immensely knowledgeable mentor; he'd applied himself and gradually, steadily, succeeded in eroding the huge debt hanging over his and his family's future.

Throughout, he, his mother and Child had had a firm understanding that no circumstance, no detail, could ever be allowed even to hint publicly at the family's state. While he and his mother had agreed readily on the grounds of the social consequences, Child had been even more adamant — one whiff of poverty, and they would be dunned, their secret would out, and the flimsy house of cards that he and Child had painstakingly erected to keep the family ahead of their creditors would come crashing down.

By unstintingly applying themselves to keeping up their facade, with the costs initially underwritten by Child himself, they'd succeeded in maintaining their status. Year by year, their financial position had improved.

Eventually, as the burden of debt had shrunk, under Child's guidance, he'd moved into more speculative investments. He'd proved adept at sizing up risky opportunities and making large profits. It was a dangerous game, but one in which he excelled; his latest venture had proved more rewarding than his wildest dreams. His ship had very definitely come in.

His lips twisted wryly as his mind scanned the years — all the hours he'd spent poring over account books and investment reports in his study while the ton imagined he was indulging with opera dancers and Cyprians in company with his peers. He'd come to enjoy the simple act of creating wealth, of understanding money and how it grew. Of creating stability in his family's life. The undertaking had been its own reward.

In many ways, yesterday had been the end of an era, the last day of one chapter in his life. But he'd never forget all he'd learned at Child's feet; he wasn't about to eschew the rules that had governed his behavior for the past eight years, nor was he likely to desert an arena in which he'd discovered not only an unexpected expertise, but his own salvation.

That conclusion left him facing forward, looking into the future. Considering what he wanted from the next stage of his life — considering what Amelia had offered.

He had, through all the years, set his face firmly against marriage as a way to refill the family coffers. With his mother's support and Child's acquiescence, he'd reserved that option as a last resort, one he was deeply relieved he'd never had to pursue. Not, as Amelia had supposed, because of the potential expectations of a wealthy wife, but for a far more entrenched, deeply personal reason.

Put simply, he just couldn't do it. Couldn't even imagine it, marrying a lady for such a cold-blooded reason. The very idea left him chilled; an instinctive, deeply compelling aversion rose at the mere thought. Such a marriage was not one he could live with.

Given that, given his code that had precluded any thoughts of marriage while he was incapable of adequately supporting a wife, he'd spared no real thought for the institution.

A small voice whispered that he had thought of Amelia — not as a wife, but as a woman he'd expected to have to stand by and see married to some other gentleman. As always, the thought left him uncomfortable. Arms over his head, he stretched full length, deliberately shifted his mind, and felt the constriction about his chest dissolve.

Thanks to some peculiar quirk of fate, she wasn't going to marry another — she was going to marry him.

That prospect was very much to his liking. He hadn't considered the fact that yesterday's victory left him free to pursue marriage if and when he wished, until she'd suggested it. But now she had… now she'd offered…

He wanted to marry her. The impulse that had risen last night at her words — the instinct to seize and claim her — had diminished not one whit in the intervening hours. If anything, it had grown more definite, an amorphous urge solidifying into conviction and rocklike resolution. Now he was debt-free, now he was rich, marrying her was, at least as far as his instincts were concerned, not just permissible but highly desirable. He felt no aversion, but rather an unexpected degree of impatience.

Mind racing, he mentally constructed the future as he would have it, Amelia centrally featured as his wife, then turned his mind to achieving that goal. The hows, whys, wherefores…

Accustomed as he was to checking every action for potential ramifications, the problem was immediately apparent. If he told her he no longer needed her dowry, what reason could he give for wanting to marry her?

His mind simply stopped, remained stubbornly blank, refused to countenance the reason by even thinking it. He grimaced, changed tack, tried to see his way forward…

Correcting her mistake, thus freeing her from their verbal contract, and then attempting to win her back was