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

by K.J. Charles

“Is it the, uh, the—” “Fellow who claims he’s the earl. Some ridiculous name.” “Perkin Warbeck.” “What? No, nothing like that.” “No—I mean the claimant—Perkin Warbeck was a pretender to the throne,” Odo explained earnestly, falling into step by him. “He declared himself to be one of the Princes in the Tower, you know, and attempted to take the throne from Henry the Seventh.” “Good for him. Did it work?” “Well—er—no? He was captured, and Henry hanged him.” “Even better,” Rufus said, and kept walking.

Lord Oxney was so obviously a man who gave people chances: there was a very kind heart under the thick muscle and temper. It made him staggeringly easy to manipulate. Luke made a silent vow that nobody else would be doing that while he was here.

Odo was speaking in complete sentences. (Rufus had asked how the devil he managed that. “I didn’t shout at him,” Doomsday said, “and I let him tell me all about the family history while we worked, in full detail. I think we reached the reign of Queen Anne.” Rufus had not pressed further: he could see when a man’s eyes held pain.)

Doomsday was at the desk, caught in a shaft of morning light from the window. His hair glowed like an angel’s halo in an illuminated manuscript, the savage scar just a misplaced scratch of ink, and Rufus felt the breath stutter in his lungs.

“A nobleman’s guide to courting a countess? Step one, take the lady’s hand and praise the delicacy of her skin with a salute.” Doomsday adopted a decidedly effete upper-class voice for that, simultaneously turning his hand and arm in a wonderfully elegant manner, offering Rufus his palm just like a lady. Rufus took it, bowed over it, and kissed it. He hadn’t intended to do that. It was just a joke, spur-of-the-moment, continuing the banter, except that he’d kissed Doomsday’s hand, not just the hand but the sensitive palm, had pressed his lips against warm skin, and even as he stood bowed over it wondering at his own incredible stupidity, he still held that hand in his.

“What’s step two?” “That would be a compliment on the radiance of her complexion, or perhaps the lustre of her eyes.” “Madam, your eyes are as brown as, uh. I don’t know. Bread?” Doomsday’s downswept eyes swept right back up. “Bread?” “I couldn’t think of anything else brown. Hot chocolate? A good beef stew?” “Stop talking now,” Doomsday said, extracting his hand.

He had at least resisted the temptation to describe Doomsday’s eyes as they deserved, although in fairness their deep brown was more than anything the shade of a cup of long-brewed tea, which probably wouldn’t sound any better than ‘bread’. The colour didn’t matter: it was their expression, the laughter and intelligence and occasional wariness, the life and light and just sometimes a flicker of something that Rufus could very easily persuade himself was desire.

Factions had formed. Several of the upper servants weren’t speaking to one another. Luke lived for it.

Rufus didn’t lust where he didn’t like. But he liked Luke Doomsday so very much, and now lust was flooding him in a way he’d never experienced in his life.

Doomsday’s door was open. That was odd. Needed checking. Nothing to do with a sudden urge to see how he looked asleep: that would be intrusive and frankly peculiar, and there was quite enough peculiarity in this damned house. Rufus edged to the door as quietly as he could, purely in the interests of security.

Gareth had already emerged from his study, hands out in welcome, and Luke grasped them with a flood of desperate relief that he hadn’t expected in the slightest, and that almost brought tears to his eyes. “Gareth. I have missed you.”

walking into the drawing room after an absence always brought back the first time he’d come here as a boy: shaking, frightened, sticky with his own blood, his face aflame with pain and his heart as badly torn. Gareth had brought him home and told him he was safe. Catherine had given him tea and fruit cake, found him a clean shirt, gently dabbed the dried blood away. They had given him refuge in the worst moment of his life, and Luke would never be able to repay that but he was bloody well going to try.

Joss was normally a measured, even-tempered sort of man. But he loved Gareth deeply, he protected his family, and he always knew what was going on. Those were the three pillars of his life and Luke had struck at all of them at once.

“No, he’d have talked to me about it and explained why it wasn’t your fault and made me be reasonable—” He broke off because he was starting to feel thirteen again. “I hear you,” Joss said. “That’s the thing about Gareth. I do the wrong thing now and again, don’t we all. I think, well, this is what I want to do, and I go about my way. And then he’ll say what I did was wrong and I’ll think, I don’t know how I didn’t see that. I look back and it’s clear as day I was wrong, but I don’t see it proper-like till he talks to me.

“I’m sorry we didn’t do better. Me, Ma, all the Doomsdays. I’m sorry I didn’t see more, and I’m sorry your father hurt you and we let him. I don’t know what I can do about that now, but Gareth called me over for it last night, again. He says we’ve never mended what Elijah broke, in you or between us, and I’ve no doubt he’s right. So…I love you, Luke. You’re my cousin, and a Doomsday, and a sneaking bettermy wretch with twice the brains of the rest of us together, and you saved Gareth’s life, and I love you. It queers me what you’ve been up to at Stone Manor, and I can’t say I’m happy about it, but whatever trouble you’re in, whatever you need to get out of it, all the Doomsdays are standing ready to help. Because I don’t care what you did: nobody touches you on the Marsh while I’ve got my strength. Hear me?” Luke felt a sob rise in his throat, and forced it back by sheer will.

“No, you’re blinkered,” Joss said. “Always have been. Once you set yourself to something, you don’t think about the consequences, you don’t see anything but your goal. You chased a couple of murderers over the Marsh on your own at thirteen years old because you were determined to find Gareth. Chuckle-headed thing to do, and you saved his life with it.” “And before that, I betrayed you and him to my father because I was determined to curry favour with a brute,” Luke said savagely. “Have you forgotten that?” “Haven’t forgotten why you were driven to it, either.”

“You tried apologising? Sometimes works, if you mean it.” “How? ‘I’m sorry I lied to you from the start and threatened to make you illegitimate and burgled your house and let you trust me and even shared your bloody bed while I was doing all that to you’?” “That…might take a while to get over,” Joss allowed.

Not that rain killed you, he thought again. It just hid the tears.

“Elijah Doomsday.” He spoke formally, in a carrying voice. “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.” He poured a measure from the flask onto the ground as he spoke, and stepped back. Luke stared at him, speechless.

“Elijah Doomsday.” His voice sounded thin. He cleared his throat. “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!” He took a moment there. Rufus stood, back straight, waiting. “I wanted you to love me,” Luke went on at last, quietly. “I would have loved you if you let me. But you didn’t, and that’s not my fault. I’m not going to forgive you, ever, because you chose to do it all. But I am going to forget you, because I’m tired of having you in my life. Oh, and on Louisa’s behalf: burn in hell.” He tipped a generous slug of brandy onto the wet grass. “Here’s your drink—” “Now sod off.” Rufus said it with him, softly, like a prayer.

“Don’t ask me not to care. Don’t ask me not to act when you’re in pain. You asked me for my protection when we first met and I promised you’d have it. I don’t go back on my word.” Luke’s ribcage was too small, and full of jagged shards. “I was lying.” “I wasn’t.”

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

“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.”

Rufus was trying to hold all of Luke in his arms at once. It wasn’t physically possible, but he didn’t let that stop him. “I will not let you go, I will never let you go. I have you. You’re safe.”

God damn it, I’m putting my foot down. You invoked droit du seigneur: well, I am exercising it. You asked for my protection, so you are mine to look after, and I am taking no more nonsense from you, Luke Doomsday.” Luke’s lips parted. “Uh…how?” “Last night, for one thing. ‘This won’t change anything’, indeed.” “It didn’t. Did it?” “No,” Rufus said. “Because I loved you before, and I wanted you before. But also yes, because you told me the truth. I think you’ve been telling the truth all along, even when you were trying not to.”

“You said when we first met that you needed a place. You do, don’t you? A place you belong, and that’s here. You made this house somewhere I could live. You made some of my family people I could live with.” “You did that, not me.” “But I didn’t see how to do it without you. We make things work together. This is your place along with me, and you ought to be here. You ought to be here and safe and loved, and ruling the roast like the overreaching little swine you are, and I will do anything in my power to give you that if you just stay with me. That’s an order. I’m begging you. Please.” Luke swallowed. “Truly?” Rufus cupped his face. “My Doomsday. The end of my world.”

“I already lost you over it, so to discover I was going to die for it—Joss was right. It’s ill-omened.” “Nonsense,” Rufus said. “You never lost me, and you’re not dead. You read too many novels.” “I’m not reading another Gothic novel as long as I live. At least there weren’t amphibians in there.”

Truly, Rufus, the money stopped mattering a long time ago. I hate to sound like a bad Gothic romance, but I came to Stone Manor searching for treasure, and found—” “You sound exactly like a bad Gothic romance.”

“I’m sure I made myself clear on this subject,” Rufus said. “Droit du seigneur, remember? You’re mine, Luke Doomsday, and I’m keeping you. I love you. I’ve never loved like this before, and I’m not sure I could do it again: it’s only you, for good or ill. God help me,” he added.

“I’ve spent a deal more time thinking about what I wanted to gain, and resenting what I didn’t have, than noticing what I actually had. That’s obtuse.” “It’s a not uncommon habit of mind.”