Any Wicked Thing Read online

  Maybe Cam would be interested in purchasing something or other from his father’s vast collection of rubbish and the quick visit might be worth the disruption. Sebastian needed money. Cam was a broker of all sorts of antiquities, enabling him to live on the fringes of society quite comfortably. People intuited that he had some connection with the ton. It was true, but not a connection Cam cared to reveal, especially when his father had jumped from the roof of this very castle rather than be hung as a spy. Very few people knew of his Archibald blood. Sebastian had only found out after a drunken night in Cairo when he complained long and loud about his own father’s foibles. Cam had been keenly interested in hearing about Goddard Castle, or Archibald Castle, as he preferred to call it.

  He found Cam sitting behind Freddie’s desk, his hands encased in white cotton gloves, holding a magnifying glass over some decrepit volume. Yes, Warren had put the man in the right spot to wait.

  “Sebastian! Did the cat just drag you in?” Cam rose with a grin and extended a gloved hand.

  “It’s raining cats and dogs, in case you haven’t noticed.” A crash of thunder emphasized Sebastian’s words. He’d expected to be hit with God’s lightning bolt the whole way home. “But you were probably too busy snooping around to notice.” He sank down into a bloody uncomfortable chair on the other side of his father’s desk. Cam resumed his position and gingerly closed the book he’d been examining.

  “You’ve got an amazing amount of stuff in this library. I trust you want to sell the contents separately at auction. I can help you with that. You’ll make more than I can afford to pay you.”

  Sebastian grimaced. “Here’s the thing, Cam. The sale of Goddard Castle needs to be delayed a little while.”

  “What? No, no. You know how I’m fixed. And you know how much I want Archibald Castle. You can’t shake more money out of me than I’ve got by teasing me, Sebastian.” Cam sat down again, looking every inch like most of the grim portraits in the long gallery.

  “It’s not that. I owe you, Cam, and I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. But there’s a—problem.”

  Cam grinned. “What’s her name? It’s the ward you told me about, isn’t it? Doesn’t want to leave? Is she pretty? She can stay here with me and warm my bed.”

  Sebastian struggled not to jump over the desk and throttle his friend. “She cannot! And she is pretty. Just not in the usual way.”

  “Prim and proper, is she?”

  Primness and propriety had very little to do with Freddie lately. He thought of her above him, her breasts swaying as she rode him. Sebastian shrugged. “She wants to buy the castle herself. She’s something of an heiress. I think we can deal together and come to some sort of agreement.”

  “In your usual way?” Cam winked.

  Sebastian shrugged again. He was acutely uncomfortable talking about Freddie, trying to recall exactly what he’d told Cam about her.

  “Good Lord. You’re being reticent, almost too discreet. Don’t tell me you’re going to marry the girl! This is the one who tried to trick you into getting leg-shackled years ago, isn’t it?”

  Blast. Apparently he’d confessed almost everything. He was fairly sure he’d omitted the actual deflowering and the massive quantities of vomit, however.

  Sebastian felt a twinge of guilt, but only a twinge. Cameron would see Freddie for himself, and very likely she’d lapse into her starchy self confronted with a man such as Cameron Ryder. “She’s a bit long in the tooth to be called a girl—eight-and-twenty, a dreadful bluestocking. She wears spectacles, and her fingers are black from ink. Not your type at all. And I have absolutely no intention of marrying her. I’ve known her since she was a little butterball baby.”

  Cam raised a golden eyebrow. “Not your type, either, then. Just how much money has she got?”

  “Rather a lot, and it’s rightfully mine to begin with. I’ve got to get to York and meet with my father’s solicitor there. The one in Dorset is as useless as a boil on my arse, and the business manager even worse. The pater was a totally disorganized bastard.”

  “Now, now. You don’t want me to take offense. We bastards want to keep our line pure.”

  “This is serious, Cam. Things are even worse than I thought when I first wrote to you. I expect my creditors to find me here any day and lay siege. In fact, when my butler told me I had a visitor, I was ready to turn tail and sleep on the moors. I thought you were the bailiff.”

  “So sell me Archibald Castle. Marry your heiress. Problem solved.” Cam snapped his gloved fingers, but there was no accompanying sound.

  “I don’t want to get married. Freddie doesn’t want to get married. She wants to write history books.”

  “You’re joking. By God, you’re not joking. And all this time I thought you were irresistible.”

  Irresistible or not, it would be a disaster to marry Freddie. To marry anyone in his current state of upheaval. But he would not bore Cam with his troubles. Instead, Sebastian pointed to the corner of the desk. “Look at those. I’ll bet she wrote most every word in them, even though my father took the credit.”

  Cam removed the gloves and took a volume from the knight book-end guards. “Roxbury’s Middle Ages. These have an excellent reputation in the trade, you know. They’re full of scholarship, yet accessible to the reader. Very popular. Schoolboys all over the country have it shoved down their throats and they don’t mind swallowing.”

  “Perhaps so. Freddie wants to finish the series—here. You know I’m a selfish bastard, no further offense to bastards meant. I may be her so-called guardian, but if she wants to spend the rest of her life watching the walls fall down around her, who am I to stop her? She can pay me from her trust and that’s all that counts. Now that you’ve actually seen the place, would you still really want to throw away good money on it?”

  Cam gave his dimpled chin a thoughtful stroke. “I’m not sure. But I am most anxious to meet the rich little bluestocking. I could do with an infusion of cash myself.”

  Sebastian felt an unaccustomed wave of proprietary interest. “We may have shared women in the past, Cam, but Freddie is not on offer.”

  “Steady, old man. Although it would be fun to see if I could poach a chit from a duke. As I recall, I beat you a time or two when you were only a marquess.”

  “She’s not my chit to poach. We are just—friends of a sort.” They used to be. What was between them now was impossible to describe.

  “Well, then. Open season.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” Sebastian said, his pride getting the better of him. Surely after what he and Freddie had already shared, she would not be attracted to Cameron Ryder. She had chosen him, Sebastian Goddard, as her first lover, after all.

  “Capital! You know how I thrive on competition. That should make my stay in this dreary dump much more amusing.”

  “I thought you considered this dreary dump to be your ancestral home.” Sebastian itched for his whiskey now. He also needed to make himself presentable for tea with Freddie. Cam, despite traveling, looked to be a regular Beau Brummell. “And you can’t stay. You’ll spoil everything.”

  Cam turned down his mouth. “Can’t stay? You invited me up here for two weeks. I’ll have you know I moved heaven and earth to get here. Left a very promising house party in Berkshire with two wellborn widows and a vapid viscountess after me just so I could inspect this place.”

  “Not even you could service them all. If you’d stayed in London, you would have gotten my message eventually. I wrote and told you not to come.”

  “But I’m here now, and not at all inclined to leave, Sebastian. Surely you don’t want to upset my valet and my driver. They’re knackered coming all this way. My valet may never forgive me, as a matter of fact. He’s not at all impressed with the accommodations.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your servants. I left my man Drummond at Roxbury Park.” Sebastian ran a hand through his damp hair. Cameron Ryder was an unexpected complication, but Sebastian supposed h
e owed him some courtesy. Owed him much more, really. “All right, you may stay a day or two, just long enough for your horses to recover and eat their heads off in my stable. But then I want you gone. I have plans for Freddie, and they don’t include you.”

  “Make it a week.”

  “Three days. That should give you enough time to rummage around here and listen for the echoes of your ancestors. But you’re not to say one word to Freddie about you buying Goddard Castle. Nor are you to lay a hand on her.”

  Cam laughed. “Not one finger. I won’t promise away my other appendages, though.”

  Sebastian smiled, but his cheeks felt frozen. “You really are a bastard. Don’t get in my way, Cam.”

  Cameron looked as though he wished to continue their banter but thought the better of it. “Say, what does a man have to do around here to get a drink?”

  “Tea is being served in the solar in half an hour. Get old Warren to lead you there. As you can see, I’ve got to go change.”

  “Been rutting in a field, have you? Who’s the lucky girl? Some Yorkshire milkmaid?”

  Cam had the uncanny knack of always hitting on the truth, no matter how unpleasant it was. Sebastian attempted a leering smile.

  “Will the fabulous Freddie be taking tea with us?”

  “That’s Miss Wells to you. Don’t be charming.”

  Cam shook his head. “Now you’re asking too much of me. Bad enough I’ll have to drink tea.”

  Chapter 27

  There is now one more mouth to feed.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF FREDERICA WELLS

  Frederica had been unable to nap, although she had tried, lying on her bed for half an hour after she dried off, staring at the timbers across her ceiling. Her body was in a state of agitation—the slightest press of fabric against her skin reminded her of Sebastian’s tongue. The swipe of the washrag at her nether region brought her nearly to orgasm. Her nose was filled with the smell of him, the starch and sandalwood, the semen, although he’d been thoughtful at least in the end. She blushed to think of all that he had done to her, and she to him, over the past few days. And now according to Alice she was to take tea with him like a proper young lady, as though they had not been rolling around at the waterfall like crazed animals in a rainstorm.

  She would swear off him tomorrow—no fencing or cleaning or setting eyes upon him. She needed to retreat into her library world, review her notes, finish a chapter. This afternoon he might take her again up against the wall after his whiskey—and she so hoped he wouldn’t, didn’t she?—but the next day was hers to command.

  She was drowning in sensation, and didn’t like it one bit. Sebastian had the power to unsettle her, she who was logical and private with her feelings. Apart from her almost-dead, girlish crush on him, Frederica had spent her whole life submerging herself in scholarly pursuits. There had been no room for anything or anyone else. But he had kissed her everywhere, touched her everywhere—spanked her, for heaven’s sake—and she simply wanted more. It was like eating too many cunning marzipan fruits. One day she would be sick from the richness of it, but right now she longed for the taste of almond paste on her tongue.

  She dragged herself off the bed to change her dress and do something about the nest in her hair. She did miss her runaway maid, but now that Frederica had experienced lust for herself, she understood why the girl had fled with the footman. Although there were plenty of places in the castle one could go to for a forbidden assignation. She would have to find one on one of her days just to keep Sebastian off balance.

  But it was still his day. She would not make it any easier for him. Choosing a deep gray charcoal dress that did nothing whatsoever for her figure and seemed to have a thousand damned difficult buttons, she braided her hair into a coronet and refused to pinch her cheeks or bite her lips for color. She looked as tired as she was, robbed of sleep and still weak at the knees from riding herself into orgasm.

  If it weren’t raining, the sun would now be low over the distant hills. If Sebastian weren’t here, tea would be her last meal of the day, and she would take it in the kitchen with the servants. Now poor Mrs. Holloway was knocking herself out for tea and dinner to please the duke even if he had no coin to pay her and the larder was emptying at an alarming rate.

  She was not going to spend the next two years pinching pennies and living solely by the kitchen garden. But perhaps she could convince him to release all her funds. He had the power to do so, and they could be quit of each other forever.

  She entered the solar, her mind filled with vexing domestic difficulties. When the tall fair man rose to greet her, she was so startled she squeaked.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Wells. I am delighted to make your acquaintance. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Cameron Ryder, an old friend of His Grace the Duke of Roxbury.”

  “Oh!” This was one of the men Sebastian had invited to the castle to buy it. And the same man who helped him get out of gaol. He was quite formidable physically, and almost too beautiful. If Sebastian was a dark angel, Cameron Ryder was all light. But he had the same devilish twinkle in his eye as his friend the duke. Birds of a feather, rakes taking pleasure wherever they landed. She felt her tongue thickening with nervous stupidity.

  “I didn’t mean to surprise you so. My arrival was unexpected. And apparently unwelcome. I understand you and Sebastian have entered into an agreement for you to purchase Archibald Castle. Or Goddard Castle, as it is called now.”

  Frederica stiffened. “He told you?”

  “Why, yes. Is it a secret? I assure you, I can be the most discreet of fellows. And I don’t know a soul in Yorkshire, although my family hails from around these parts.”

  Frederica practically fell down on the sofa. Her hands shook so badly she didn’t think she could possibly pour the tea that sat in its dented silver pot. Once again, Mrs. Holloway had outdone herself. There was even an entire decanter of whiskey for Sebastian and his guest, which Frederica very much wanted to pick up and drink down, even though spirits disagreed with her most profoundly.

  “I say, Miss Wells, are you all right? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost. One of the famous Archibald Walkers. Even I have heard of them. Am I to expect a display at midnight?”

  “By midnight I shall be in my own bed, and you are certainly not welcome to see any display!” How could Sebastian betray her like this? It was bad enough that the servants suspected what she had to submit to in order to keep her shelter, but to involve this stranger was beyond belief. Would Sebastian expect her to service this blond giant, too? Frederica felt a wave of dizziness swamp her.

  “Well, of course not. I would never intrude. Unless, of course, I was invited.”

  “Oh! You—you—you are every bit as bad as Sebastian.”

  He reached for a sandwich, smiling. “Guilty as charged. I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot, Miss Wells. You have misunderstood me. I was referring to the ghosts putting on a show for me, not you. Although no man could be averse to your womanly charms. Sebastian seems quite in your thrall. I’ve never seen him so besotted. He’s warned me off, you know, and disinvited me from staying any longer than three days. He wants you all to himself.”

  Well, she supposed that was a relief. But for Sebastian to be discussing her and what they did with Cameron Ryder—it was disgusting. Men were disgusting. Rutting, rude, abominable pigs, every one of them.

  “Uh,” she said.

  “You are aware of his feelings?”

  “Sebastian has no feelings, only appetites,” she grumbled.

  Mr. Ryder continued his menacing, catlike grin. “Speaking of appetites, would you mind very much if I help myself to a whiskey? I’ve had a long day of travel, and I’m parched.”

  “Suit yourself.” If he thought she would act as a proper hostess, he was mistaken. She folded her hands tightly in her lap, leaving the tempting morsels on the tea tray untouched.

  “Ah, there’s my old friend now. Sebastian, you dog! Your description did not do Mi
ss Wells justice. You never told me how lovely she is. I can see why you want me to disappear.”

  Frederica snorted. Sebastian cast her a guilty look and sat down next to her, much too close. She scrunched into the arm of the sofa, noticing how very worn the velvet was. One good pointed elbow on it and it would shred.

  “Cam, I’ll have some of that if you’re pouring. Freddie, you’re not taking tea?”

  “I am not hungry. Or thirsty. In fact, I’d like to skip tea and dinner altogether if you will permit it.” How galling to grovel in front of Mr. Ryder.

  “Ah, Miss Wells, I hope you change your mind. I’d like the opportunity to get to know you better before Sebastian throws me out. It doesn’t seem fair that he gets to have all the fun.”

  Frederica leaped up abruptly, her knees rattling the tea table. “Mr. Ryder, if you will excuse us a moment, I’d like a private word with the duke.”

  “Certainly. I’ll just go wander out in the hall with my whiskey, shall I?” He loped off with a smooth grace that Frederica found too provoking.

  She turned to Sebastian, who was biting into a jam tart.

  “Sebastian,” Frederica hissed, “how could you tell him?”

  “Tell him what?” he asked, once he’d swallowed.

  “About your blackmail. How I’m bedding you so you will sell me the castle.”

  Sebastian raised both eyebrows and opened his mouth, the perfect picture of surprise. “I never said such a thing! Honestly. Freddie, you must believe me. And anyway, it was your own damn idea! I’m not blackmailing you—you’re blackmailing me!”

  “He knows. He smirks.”

  “Oh, that’s just Cam’s smile. He always looks like a tomcat who’s gotten into the cream. Now, I did tell him you had offered to buy the castle, but not a word about the strings attached. I’d canceled his visit, Freddie. His and Sanderson’s both. Bloody hell, I hope he doesn’t turn up, too.” Sebastian took a large swig of whiskey. “Freddie, I know you think me an utter cad, and in general you are right, but I most assuredly did not tell Cam that we are playing at domination and submission. You can flog me with my best crop tomorrow if you don’t believe me, but know you will be beating an innocent man.”