Any Wicked Thing Read online

  “Is this what you want, Freddie? Money for your silence about his indiscretion and mine instead of an honorable offer of marriage?”

  Her eyes dropped. “Your father is right. I—I cannot marry you.”

  Adding insult to injury. “Will you really sell yourself so cheap? After all your deception, it hardly seems worth your maidenhead. Unless I wasn’t the first to begin with.”

  This proved too much for Joseph Wells. Sebastian’s head snapped back against the stone floor from a surprisingly strong blow. He lay dazed as, one by one, his enemies left him alone in his puddle of vomit and semen.

  His father was the last to leave. “I’ll speak to you in the morning as well. We have numerous things to settle between us.”

  Sebastian counted the metallic rattle of the spurs to the door. He had wanted to see the stars. There were plenty now, whirling around the insides of his eyelids. If he could pull himself up from his ignominy, he would leave Goddard Castle tonight, even if he wound up falling off his horse into a ditch. He could not get much lower than he was already.

  Frederica locked her bedroom door. After five minutes, her father ceased his pounding and pleading and went away. If he remained, he’d call attention to himself, as the guests were still scurrying through the hallways on their search for the blasted unicorn. She had crafted it herself out of papier-mâché, when the duke had teased she was the only virgin in the castle.

  She was a virgin no longer, but she hadn’t even been kissed well. She tipped the pitcher of water into her bowl and scrubbed between her legs, rubbing hard enough to flay off her skin. There was very little blood. She deserved more—enough to punish her for her folly and ruination.

  It had not been Sebastian’s fault. As she sat in the banquet hall, she did not think of hunting for the unicorn, but of hunting for Sebastian. He would be her virgin’s prize. She’d gone upstairs and changed out of her princess finery into her second, rejected costume. The slutty milkmaid outfit was so very shocking she did not know what she had been thinking to sew it up. It was hellishly revealing and uncomfortable, as if she had had a bad fairy sitting on her shoulder urging her to use less fabric than was decent. She had laced herself so she could barely breathe and searched the castle until she found Sebastian in his stupor. Once she discovered he was not in his room, it had not been hard to locate him. He was in the one place everyone had been forbidden to go.

  He was naked, doing the most salacious, unimaginable thing she had ever seen. She could have walked out when she came upon him in the north tower, but she had been unable to take her eyes away from his hand and his penis, even blinded by the smoke. He hadn’t recognized her, masked and half-naked as she was. In the flickering candlelight with blinking stars overhead, she had become a different person. When she extinguished the candle, it had been so easy to whisper and flirt, climb atop him and take him into her body, ride him in the dark.

  It had not quite been everything she’d dreamed of. Two illusions shattered in one night. Next she’d discover she was a changeling—some fairy’s prank had placed her in the bosom of Sebastian’s family to torment her. Maybe she was about to be snatched back from whence she came.

  It might be better to disappear. How could she face anyone when they could not possibly understand? She had loved Sebastian most of her life, for all he went out of his way to bedevil her. But whatever she had dreamed of, she could not marry him now under such circumstances. He would hate her for trapping him, curdling whatever she felt until she’d be more alone in a marriage than she was now. Every time he looked at her, he would remember this night and its consequences, the knowledge that their fathers had a secret life their children had been too stupid to see.

  Freddie loved her father. He was gentle and patient with her when he was home. But, of course, the duke—she had always called him “Uncle Phillip,” as he claimed her as part of his household, and probably to annoy Sebastian—had always come first for him. Now she knew why. It wasn’t only because they shared a passion for antiquities.

  At first, she had not understood what she was hearing as Sebastian held her so tight she thought her ribs would snap. Then everything collided—the liquor, the risk, the knowledge. The ragged words her father uttered across the room, dropping like stones down a deep well. She had been dizzy, then shamefully sick all over Sebastian’s exquisite body.

  She had seen his disgust in the dim light. His hatred. They could never be friends again.

  But she wouldn’t take his father’s bribe. Despite what Sebastian thought of her, money and consequence had never entered her mind as she slipped into the tower room. She did not think “marchioness, future duchess.” She thought “lover,” and, if the gods smiled on her, “wife.” She hadn’t meant to trap him, but to make him see her with fresh eyes. He’d seen too much.

  Frederica wiped her face of the powder and rouge, rubbed the color from her lips. She would apologize to her father and the duke tomorrow. Make them understand that Sebastian had not been responsible. If Sebastian would listen, she would beg his forgiveness, too.

  She dropped her soiled costume on the floor and went to the mirror. Bright red lines from the corseting streaked her lumpy body. She was a woman now, but looked no different than she had this morning.

  She pulled a night rail from a drawer and climbed into bed. Against all odds, she fell asleep at once, the wine and the misery twinning to shut her eyes.

  When she woke late the next morning, the guests had left. Including Sebastian.

  Chapter 3

  YORKSHIRE, APRIL 1818

  If he thinks he can come here and lord and master it over me, he has another think coming.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF FREDERICA WELLS

  “No and no and no.”

  “Frederica, you know you can’t refuse to see him forever. This is his house, after all.” Mrs. Carroll spoke calmly, but Frederica was not one bit fooled. Her companion preened in front of the pier glass, retying the strings to her widow’s cap for the third time, getting the bow angled just so. Sebastian Goddard, the new Duke of Roxbury, was apt to make the most devout of widows toss up their black petticoats for a blissful tumble with the ton’s most revered, most thoroughly unrepentant rake. Mrs. Carroll was devout only when considering her own pleasure, and Sebastian its possible provider.

  “I can do anything I like. And this is hardly his home. I doubt he knows an inch of Goddard Castle—he’s only been here the once, and that was ten years ago. I imagine he’ll get lost and fall down the garderobe.” Frederica pictured Sebastian, stained and stinking. Some brave souls had once stormed Château-Gaillard through a latrine drain in 1204, if she remembered her history correctly. But mentally it was much more satisfactory to push Sebastian down than to picture him climbing up, conquest on his mind.

  “He is your guardian.”

  “I don’t need a guardian! I’m a grown woman, for heaven’s sake.” The terms of his father’s will had been explicit, however, and Frederica was stuck with him. She had dreaded the day he would come here again. Even after ten years, she had not been able to imagine what she would say to him. The fireplace in her chamber was filled with ashes that had once been saucy scribbled words, all of which seemed like wretched dialogue in a bad French farce.

  “You may be long in the tooth, but not,” Mrs. Carroll said shrewdly, “in possession of your fortune just yet.”

  “It’s hardly a fortune,” Frederica said with disparagement. Well, she supposed it was, really. She could live quite independently until her hair was silver and she didn’t have a long tooth in her head. The old duke had made surprisingly wise investments on her behalf. It was a shame he’d been unable to do the same for himself. The financial climate at the castle was chilly at best.

  Frederica stabbed at the fabric in her embroidery hoop with a vicious stitch. “Duke or not, I won’t have Sebastian Goddard bully me for the next two years. Whatever was his father thinking?”

  “If only you had married when you had the chance
, you wouldn’t find yourself in this predicament.”

  Frederica tossed her sewing aside. “Oh, stop! Not that again.” Living with her eccentric ducal guardian Uncle Phillip had been no picnic, but it had not been bad enough to marry the lisping, lecherous Earl of Warfield, one of several suitors who had come here at the duke’s invitation to court her like she was a Yorkshire Rapunzel in her tower. The ensuing attentions had been most unpleasant, Warfield leaving in high dudgeon to blacken her name after she brandished a fourteenth-century sword at him in defense of the virtue she had already parted with. No one wanted to marry a martial shrew, even if well dowered. Frederica was content to be left alone, although lately she had begun to wonder if independence was all that it was cracked up to be.

  Sometimes Frederica thought that the old duke had invited the least suitable men on the planet to Goddard Castle to meet her. She suspected in his heart he hoped she was still carrying a sputtering torch for Sebastian. If she was, she planned on dousing herself in very cold water before she saw him again.

  Mrs. Carroll adjusted a suspiciously bright red curl and turned from the spotted glass. “Very well. All my nagging doesn’t seem to matter a whit to you anyway. But now, my girl, you are about to pay for your stubbornness. I shall enjoy watching the new Duke of Roxbury torment you.”

  Frederica stayed her impulse to stab the woman with her sewing scissors. “You really are the most odious companion.”

  The woman gave her a nasty smile. “I am a necessary evil. You wouldn’t want to be left all alone here with him, now, would you?”

  Frederica shuddered. Trapped between a bitch and a bastard. Her late guardian had been oblivious to Mrs. Carroll’s waspish nature, but then, women were not his specialty. With him, she had always been a model of false rectitude. Uncle Phillip would not hear a word against her, which had made Frederica wonder what she might be holding over his head. But he was dead now, and Frederica had suffered long enough. Why not do precisely what she wished right this very minute?

  “All right. I will see him. And the first thing I shall ask him to do is to dismiss you.”

  Mrs. Carroll blanched, revealing suspiciously bright red circles of rouge as well. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Why, I believe I would. When he discovers you helped yourself to some of his mother’s jewels after Uncle Phillip died, I think he’ll see reason.”

  “How did you—” Mrs. Carroll bit her tongue and her face mottled to match her paint most unbecomingly.

  It had been a guess—an educated one, as Frederica had no absolute proof. Mrs. Carroll was a wily woman, always locking her rooms behind her. But why be so secretive when one had nothing to hide? And Uncle Phillip had no interest in and was careless with valuables that were less than three hundred years old. “I’m as good a snoop as you are. I’ll write you a reference if you go away today—I can lie as well as you can, too. But leave the duchess’s things behind.”

  “Today! You little bitch! I will go, and good riddance to you. Sebastian Goddard will have you in his bed before the week is out, not that you deserve him. But I hear he fucks anything, so even an antidote like you stands a chance.”

  “Get. Out. Now.”

  Frederica picked up her embroidery, not flinching when the heavy door slammed. She was not an antidote.

  And she’d been in Sebastian’s bed before, with disastrous results.

  Well, she had not been precisely in his bed. But the consequences were the same, and she was ruined. He’d been much the worse for drink and drugs, and she had been in disguise and tipsy herself, so eager and enthusiastic to take advantage of him that she had no one to blame but that footman who passed her those extra glasses of apricot ratafia. And what happened afterward made the night unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.

  Frederica had been a remarkably stupid girl the night she’d taken advantage of that fancy dress ball so Sebastian could take advantage of her. Or vice versa. She wasn’t sure she was all that much smarter now, for just the thought of Sebastian’s long dark body anywhere near hers gave her palpitations. But he couldn’t stay up here forever in his father’s castle folly. A few days of it would bore a man like him senseless.

  The late duke had purchased the near ruin on a whim almost a dozen years ago. It had sucked up a vast proportion of the Roxbury treasury and was still a drafty, dangerous place, the moors beyond it even worse with their sinkholes and fierce winds. Sebastian would soon go back to London or Paris or wherever there was sufficient amusement to be had and leave her alone.

  Frederica removed her spectacles and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She didn’t want to see her embroidery anyway—she was making a dog’s dinner of the vines and flowers on the pointless pillowcase. Why embellish something that was to be drooled on? It was not as though she’d ever have a man in her bed to impress with her neat French knots and chain stitches. And if that was all he’d be looking at—

  A perfectly wicked thought crossed her mind. True, she had pledged to herself to never marry. She planned on hiring a much nicer companion than Mrs. Carroll in two years when she came into her funds, and living modestly on her inheritance, with perhaps a faithful dog or a few cats. Perhaps both. Men were, on the whole, disappointing creatures who cared for nothing but their own comforts, and often had fleas besides. Sebastian was the very model of such a man—selfish, careless, reckless. The play upon the family name—he was known as the God of Sin by the chin-wags—was surely deserved.

  Frederica’s paltry attempt at sexual experience a decade ago should probably not even be counted as such. While she had undoubtedly lost her virginity, she’d never been transported to heaven as was rumored possible. Over the years, she had achieved it for herself with considerable effort without going insane or blind, but how lovely it would be to be brought to abandon by a skillful lover.

  A Sebastian who was not dead drunk or full of poppy smoke. A Sebastian who had had ten years to hone his skills and earn his disreputable reputation. Of course, he might have picked up something far less desirable than knowledge—gentlemen were dying off left and right from debauchery. But if Sebastian didn’t have the pox or nasty little insects nesting in his nether hair, he just might do again.

  How very shocking. She was considering making a second mistake with Sebastian. In a real bed this time, with embroidered pillowcases and clean linens and candles scattered about the room illuminating his masculine perfection.

  Of course, there was a considerable impediment to her plan. Sebastian Goddard hated her.

  She would see him. But not like this, not in a worn-out dress with her hair every which way. She would bathe and ask for apple cider vinegar to bring out the shine in her light brown hair. She would powder her face and chest to conceal her unfortunate freckles, perfume herself from top to toe, find a dress that revealed just enough of her skin. And then, if she could figure out a way, she would seduce Sebastian all over again and see if the God of Sin was a misnomer or the God’s honest truth.

  Chapter 4

  She is nothing like I remembered.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF SEBASTIAN GODDARD, DUKE OF ROXBURY

  Unaware of the nefarious plans that were presently in train, Sebastian Goddard, eighth Duke of Roxbury—with a long string of other honorifics to his name—entered the inner ward to find his father’s elderly butler clucking over a haphazard pile of trunks.

  “What’s all this, Warren? Miss Frederica hooking it?”

  The butler blinked owlishly at him. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”

  “Is she running off? Have I scared her senseless before she’s even set eyes on me?” He hoped so. It was his ardent wish to rid himself of the duplicitous Frederica Wells for life.

  “No, sir. It’s her companion, Mrs. Carroll. It seems she’s been dismissed.”

  “Indeed? Did I tell her to hop the twig? I confess I have no memory of it.” Sebastian had dined with the woman last night—a saucy redheaded piece who all but wrote him an invitation on her dinner napkin t
o join her later in her bedroom. He was not averse to fucking older women, but did not want to complicate matters. Fucking anyone else in Goddard Castle was bound to bring him bad luck. Fucking Freddie had caused him no end of trouble and discomfort. He’d learned all about karma on his travels, and didn’t wish to put himself in further jeopardy.

  “Not you, Your Grace. Miss Frederica did so herself.”

  “Did she, now? Without her companion to stand in the way, I suppose she expects me to fall into her vile clutches so my virtue can be compromised.”

  Warren opened his mouth like a dying carp but said nothing. He seemed flustered by most everything Sebastian said. The duke would have to watch it so the old man didn’t have an apoplexy—good help was hard to come by in this blasted, bleak Yorkshire hell.

  What had his father been thinking of, buying this wreck of a castle? He’d asked the same question of Freddie ten years ago, and it made as little sense to him now as it did then. The Duchy of Roxbury had a perfectly respectable if dilapidated ancestral estate in Dorset. But his father had buried himself in all this rubble, neglecting his duties for years. Sebastian had been left with crushing debt and was now forced to sell every foot of unentailed land and every spare candlestick and chamber pot. It would be a pleasure to dispose of the castle, if he could find someone mad enough to buy it. He’d run out of assets, putting off evicting his unwanted ward as long as he possibly could. He’d always hated the castle, though his hatred of Freddie and his father had dissipated somewhat over the years. But no matter what he felt, the terms of his father’s will were clear.