A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel (The Doomsday Books, #2)

by K.J. Charles

“Of course answers! I want to know why you treated me like that. A few days ago I was happy. What the hell happened?”

didn’t know you then, and once I’d started I couldn’t just—and you needed help, and I suppose I thought I could do some good while I was here. Earn my place. I thought I’d get things running smoothly, so when I left, you’d be in a better position. I thought that would make up in some way for, uh—”

“That’s why I thought the money was mine to take. That’s why I lied to you and cheated you and ransacked your house. My father was killed for it, and I wanted it.”

“I want to know,” he said softly. Luke lowered his hand. Rufus didn’t let go for a few seconds, his hand warm and firm, then released him. “It was,” Luke began. “I…” “Was it your father?”

“No, I do: I went and told my father, a vicious, violent brute, that Joss was tupping the new baronet. I just don’t know what I thought would happen. Maybe that Pa would clasp me to his bosom and tell me he loved me after all. He never used my name, you know. The others called me Goldie, but he called me ‘bastard’ if he spoke to me at all, and I still went running to him with that to use against Joss, who never did me wrong in his life.”

Luke grabbed his hand, willing him to believe. “I swear it. I never lied about us. That was wonderful, you were wonderful, and I spoiled it all because of money, and a worthless man who’s been dead for thirteen years.”

Had the cockiness been another lie? Or was it armour, something to protect the hurt child within? Or perhaps it was simply Luke’s defiant stance against everything and everyone that tried to tell the scarred, scared smuggler’s bastard his place.

You need free run of Stone Manor to do that last, and it sounds like you owe me several days’ work if you’ve been playing the fool on my time.”

Are you seriously expecting me to work with Odo again? What kind of bastard are you?” He could have kicked himself as the word came out. “I didn’t mean—” “Of course you don’t want Mr. Odo. So you need to hire a new secretary.” “I will. And in the meantime, you need to put this whole business to bed. To rest,” he corrected himself, too late.

“I’m the true earl!” Conrad shouted back. “Me! I earned it! Who the devil are you to foist yourself on this family, you half-bred bastard slop-seller?”

Rufus had known men do stupider things, junior officers who had got themselves into extraordinary tangles. Strong passions, whether for people or gold or vengeance, could lead to terrible decisions. For example, Rufus himself had invited Luke Doomsday back into his house.

“You do work for me. That means obeying orders.” He shouldn’t have said that. Luke’s lips parted, and Rufus was vividly, painfully reminded of orders given, a fair few of them in this room. Luke’s taste for playing with his title and position had been an erotic delight; he cursed it now.

“Sir Gareth lived and your father died, and you’re complaining. You wanted it the other way around?” Luke’s mouth opened. Rufus reviewed what he’d said, and found it sound in the essentials, if a little blunt.

“You can’t change the past.” Luke’s head came up defiantly. “I can change its consequences. Why shouldn’t I? That money nearly killed Gareth, and it did kill my father. Why can’t I make it do some good?”

“You were a disgrace, as a father and a man. You failed your son in every way; you took what wasn’t yours to take; you had a dog’s death and deserved it. I thank the man who snapped your neck because he saved me soiling my own hands. It’s a good thing you’re gone, and past time you were forgotten. Here’s your drink, now sod off.”

“If you’d treated other people properly, I wouldn’t exist. If your aim was better, I’d be dead. I’m sorry for my part in getting you killed, but if you didn’t want all that to happen, maybe you shouldn’t have cut my fucking face open!”

“Yes, my lord. You should get your brandy from Joss, by the way. His is quite a lot better.” “I prefer to pay duty, thank you.” “He declares most of it now,”

“Don’t you dare deny me this. I want to find it. I’d prefer if there was a map, of course, ideally written in dried blood.” “You’re ten years old at heart, aren’t you?” Luke muttered, and Rufus took the casual jibe like a gift.

“I wouldn’t have thought even Joss could talk his way back from the twitter you caused, but here you are.”

Rufus had pulled off his shirt and stockings and was sitting on the bed bare-chested and barefoot, and the sight stopped Luke in his tracks. “Uh. Excuse me.” “If you didn’t want me in deshabille, you should wait for permission to enter.

“I don’t know what you think I should be doing, but if it includes kicking a man when he’s down: no. You’re unhappy, damn it. What do you want me to do about it, sit and watch? Christ, you’re confusing.” “I’m confusing? You ought to be furious with me!” “You really are an unforgiving son of a bitch. Do something about that. You might start with yourself.

Rufus was stroking his hair, a gentle, absent motion. “Luke, Luke. What the devil am I going to do with you?” You’re going to send me away as soon as I find the money, and I don’t want to go. I don’t want the bloody money. I want what we had, what I threw away.

“We know not,” Matilda added venomously. “We know exactly why not.” Luke felt cold snake down his spine, but as a Doomsday, ‘never admit anything’ was branded into his soul. “There is no ‘why’, Mrs. Conrad. Lord Oxney very graciously offered me a chance to redeem—”

“And, forgive me for stating the obvious, but once you are the earl, what’s to stop you deciding you aren’t grateful to me after all?”

Pagan launched into a lecture about someone called Zarathustra, Roman mysteries, Greco-Roman practice, levels of Mithraic initiation, the Roman remains at Lympne, and the conclusive yet nonexistent evidence of a thriving Mithras cult at Stone.

The front was carved with a sharp, clearly new representation of a man in an odd cap stabbing a bull, which was echoed by the unframed painting that hung on the wall behind it.

“If he had proof, he wouldn’t need to bribe me. He’s got nothing.”

“Luke.” Rufus’s voice was deep. “Giving you what you want is what I want. Hearing your desires and making them happen. There is—was—nothing that pleased me more in bed than when I pleased you. I would never do anything you don’t care for, and if you’re offering that as some sort of penance, don’t do that to me. You should know I wouldn’t do it to you.”

“It won’t change anything,” Luke said again. “I don’t expect that. But I miss you so much, and it’s the truth, and that’s all I’ve got left.”

Luke made short work of his shirt and breeches, kicking them away, and Rufus grabbed his arse, hoisting him up. Luke wrapped his thighs around Rufus’s waist, arms round his neck, skin against skin. Coming home.

This might be the last time. The loss was unthinkable.

down, eyes dark in the dim light. Luke stared up, lost. “Luke,” Rufus said again, and put a very gentle hand to his scarred cheek. Luke took a long, slow breath, let it out. Put his own hand to Rufus’s and covered it, letting himself feel the odd lack of sensation around the hard, curved ridge. No shame in scars.

That was because Rufus had pulled his mouth up and off, leaving his prick standing stiff and untouched. “Son of a—” “Language.”

“I’m going to do this until you’re begging,” Rufus said. “And then I am going to fuck you, and if you can walk tomorrow it won’t be my fault.”

Rufus trapping him, or the pair of them trapped together in this beautiful, grotesque wooden cage.

“Christ. My Doomsday. End of my world.” “Hold me,” Luke whispered. “Have me.”

“Do you need to move?” He needed to run away, except that he was pinned on a medieval bed under fifteen stone of earldom and also, there was nowhere else he wanted to be. “No.”

It was just that, for all he’d said This won’t change anything, he’d hoped it would. Not that Rufus would forgive him or ask him to stay, exactly, but that he might at least give Luke a little longer, instead of pushing him to find the money and get out. You should have begged for his forgiveness rather than his prick, then, he told himself, and went off to find Mr. Pagan and ask for the sodding key of the sodding mithraeum, since that was what sodding Rufus wanted him to do.

“And your man went off,” Emily said with immense satisfaction.

The Conrads’ eviction was long overdue, but he couldn’t avoid the fear that Rufus was in a mood to get rid of people he didn’t want. He’d known that. Last night had changed nothing; he hadn’t done it to change anything, or if he had, then he should have spelled it out to Rufus. Who would have doubtless refused him on those terms, so perhaps he should be grateful for that one last fuck and stop wishing for more than he was entitled to. The thought of what he was entitled to came back with some force a little later, when Mr. Pauncefoot arrived.

He’d found the fortune he’d dreamed of for thirteen years. The guineas his father had been killed over, and Gareth nearly murdered for. The money for which he’d betrayed Rufus. He’d once thought this moment would be triumphant. Instead, he flattened his hand against a dirty old sack of metal that had cost him everything, and grief hit him like a runaway horse.

He slumped forward onto the hard, worthless sacks of gold, entombed in stone, and silence so absolute it made his ears ring, and the choking darkness of the grave.

But Miss Colefax lit up like a candelabra when she saw Odo, winning a smile from him that made him almost handsome. She was earnest, awkward, plain, and took a great interest in ecclesiastical history. They would be happy as sandboys, Rufus thought, and added an extra fifty pounds to Odo’s salary on top of his apologies and assurances.

It was a highly successful mission, if a tiring one, and left Rufus, as he rode back with Odo, in a state of bitter envy that someone wouldn’t come along and solve his problems for him. Of course, Luke had done that, until he became the problem.

Luke, Luke, his apocalypse. Half of Rufus wanted to shake him till his teeth rattled; the other half to hold him close and tell him it was all right, he was forgiven, he was wanted, he belonged. Rufus had no idea which course of action would be better. Maybe he should do both.

He’d also said I love you, and Rufus was not even going to consider that now.

Won’t change anything, indeed. Balls. They’d needed one another with a clawing urgency, and Luke had said—what he’d said—and Rufus had pretended not to hear because he hadn’t known how to respond. And then he’d been occupied with family affairs all morning and not so much as spoken to Luke, after he’d laid himself bare— Shit and derision. He should have spoken to him, shouldn’t he? Even just to say Good morning and we’ll talk later. Not just tupped him, and told him it changed nothing, and left him alone, stewing over what must feel like a rejection.

He would not persuade himself of Luke’s guilt just because he’d been guilty before. If you gave a man a second chance, it should be a chance.

He walked in without knocking, which was an error, because the maid Tallant—Emily Doomsday—was sitting on a stool, naked to the waist.

She paused. “Reckon he was wrong. I don’t want goodbyes is the sort of thing Luke says, but it’s not what he means.” This was the kind of thing that left Rufus, a straightforward man, hopelessly adrift. “Because he means instead—?” “He means, I’m scared you don’t care, so I’m not giving you a chance to prove it,” Emily said. “He’s that way, Luke. Aunt Sybil says he’s hard to love but it’s not true. What’s hard is making him see it when you do, because he’s already decided you don’t.”