Lady Scandal Read online

  He had everything under control, until she proved him wrong…

  London, 1784

  Sophia Baneham has lived in the poison of her dead father’s shadow for longer than she cares to admit. Now she exists outside of polite society’s influence, holding gambling parties for London’s most dangerous men. When a man walks into one of her soirees, a compelling mix of charisma and icy control, he offers the lady of sin a wager she can’t refuse...

  Lord Randolph is a spy in the service of His Majesty, but he’s given an oath to protect the daughter of his mentor. Even as his gamble of marriage starts to spiral out of control and his passions ignite, Randolph is determined that he’ll handle things his way…

  But when danger closes in, Randolph won’t just have to protect Sophia from an intended killer. He’ll have to protect her from himself...

  Lady Scandal

  a Furies novel

  Wendy LaCapra

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Wendy LaCapra. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Scandalous is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Erin Molta

  Cover Design by Kelley York & Liz Pelletier

  Cover Art by The Killion Group Inc.

  ISBN 978-1-63375-297-9

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition July 2015

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more from Wendy LaCapra… Lady Vice

  Don’t miss out on more Scandalous romance… A Spy Unmasked

  For Her Spy Only

  Sins of a Duke

  The Highlander’s Choice

  The Wager

  All right, Rev., this one is just for you.

  Chapter One

  Earl Baneham’s Rules for Winning

  “Reveal nothing of your intent.”

  Lady Randolph, née Lady Sophia Baneham, stood silent and still in the Dowager Duchess of Wynchester’s parlor while recalling the first rule printed in her father, the Earl’s, secret and much-coveted book, Earl Baneham’s Rules for Winning. She knew every rule by rote, though she had sworn for the sake of conscience and soul never to learn them by heart.

  Tonight, however, she would call forth the darkest part of her being.

  The mantel was cool under her palm; cool as the poker in the fire was hot. With her eyes fixed on the flames, she spoke to her friend Thea, the current Duchess of Wynchester.

  “Go to bed,” she said. “Lord Randolph will come for me. When he does, I must meet him alone.”

  Thea made a sound of distress. “I cannot leave you.” Her skirts rustled as she paced. “You were there for me when I left my husband. You were there for Lavinia when she left hers. We are the Furies and we have remained united through heartache, scandal, and near-ruin.”

  “This is different, Thea.” The roots of this fight stretched down deep into deadly Baneham secrets.

  “The dowager,” Thea’s cadence slowed with frustration, “shared her home with us so we could remain together.”

  Sophia turned, reached out, and cupped the duchess’s cheek as she would have a child’s. Her impending separation from the Furies thrust a dagger into her heart. The Furies had been her solace and her strength, but her reprieve had ended.

  Associates of her father’s greatest enemy, Kasai, had been seen on English soil, fulfilling her father’s prediction that the man would not relent until he had devastated the lives of every Baneham. And, if being hunted by her father’s enemies was not bad enough, tonight she had discovered she had tied herself—for better or worse—to a deeply duplicitous man…a spy who’d trained under her blackguard father.

  Both the other Furies would take up her fight, but the vengeance sworn on her house was hers to face alone. She rubbed Thea’s cheek with her thumb and sighed. At least she need only endure Thea’s persistence, since Lavinia, recently exonerated of her estranged husband Lord Vaile’s murder, was currently enjoying the much-deserved attentions of Maximilian Harrison, her beloved, within the neighboring mansion.

  “Listen, dearest,” Sophia said. “Randolph married me under false pretense. I alone can force him to reveal the reason behind his deception.”

  “Force Randolph?” Thea snorted. “He could heft you with one hand.”

  “True. But I have this…” Sophia bit her lip and sent Thea an affected smoldering look, “and, should sensual distraction fail, I have this.” She curled her fingers around the poker’s handle and stoked the fire. “Randolph is just a man. And like all men, his power lies primarily in my acceptance of it.” She set back her shoulders. “I will convince him I will not leave him and then cajole him into revealing his secrets.”

  Thea’s eyes widened. “But you are planning to run, aren’t you?”

  Sophia’s smile stalled beneath her eyes. “A Lady does not run, Thea.”

  “But you are,” Thea insisted. “You are planning to take the gold we made from our gambling salons and leave Randolph for good.”

  And Thea often accused her of being able to read minds.

  “Do you think I,” Sophia widened her eyes, “famously enamored of silks and comfort, would flee into the night in this storm?”

  Thea swiveled toward the window with a scowl. “This storm is nothing more than a squall—the worst will be over in minutes.” She turned back, eyes hard with stone-solid resolve. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I can tell you only this,” Sophia said with a hard look of her own, “I do plan to go into hiding. I have good reason.”

  “Oh, Sophia,” Thea’s distress sang through her words. “You will return, won’t you?”

  “I do not know,” she confessed.

  She was in danger. Mortal danger. Three years past, her hated father, Baneham, had been murdered and the deed had gone unacknowledged, unprobed, and unpunished. This morning she had unwittingly married his protégé. And, shortly thereafter, learned that the men who had murdered Baneham were once again on the hunt.

  What hope had she against such power?

  “I have been through every possibility, and the wisest choice—for now—is for me to flee.” Flee like a gazelle into the brush, hoping the lions would turn on one another in a battle to rule the pride. “Try to trust me, Thea.”

  Thea put a hand on her hip and considered. “What will Randolph do if he realizes you are about to flee?”

  “Randolph will not harm me in the middle of Mayfair.” She lifted a begrudging brow. “He is too cunning for such a lack of subtlety.”

  Thea cast a skeptical glance. “I trust your greater understanding of the man, but I will ready two footmen. If you need them, call. And promise not to leave before we t
alk.”

  “I will promise.” She would never leave Thea without a goodbye.

  “I still have a terrible feeling,” Thea said.

  Sophia squeezed Thea’s arm. “Goodnight, Thea.”

  “Goodnight.” Thea strode across the room, but paused in the doorframe to glance over her shoulder. “May fortune be with you, Sophia.”

  Sophia forced another smile. As her friend disappeared into the dark hall, she turned back to the flames and her smile disintegrated. Fortune would never shine long on Earl Baneham’s daughter.

  Baneham’s greed and dishonest dealings while in diplomatic service to the East India Company had made him an enemy of a man known as Kasai—the Butcher. After Baneham’s final return from India, he had given Sophia a warning: Kasai will come for us and kill us both. Or worse, he will kill me and take you so deep inside the desert you will never be found.

  She had thought Baneham mad. Within weeks, however, he was dead. Murdered. Since then, three long years had passed without threat to her life, and she had grown soft enough to believe herself free of her father, free of his corruption, and free of his enemy’s intimidation.

  Until tonight, when not more than a league away from the dowager’s home, Lavinia’s Max Harrison, who had been imprisoned by Kasai and had survived his brutality, had identified Kasai’s jackal henchman. Here, in London.

  She should have known better than to let down her guard. She would never be free of her father’s enemies. Just as she had never been free of his influence—even when he had been continents away.

  Hadn’t she thought herself free when she married her first husband, only to lose him to her father’s influence and, later, to death in a pointless duel?

  She stared at the shining-new band hugging her finger, shame weighing heavy as a boulder in her chest. Now she was married again. Closing her eyes, she wished away the memory of the vows she and Randolph had exchanged this morning, hours before she had learned of his true character and associations.

  If she had been properly minding her weaknesses, instead of gazing into Lord Randolph’s winter-grey eyes and marveling at his masculine perfection, she would have recognized the devil as a “graduate” of Earl Baneham’s corrupted coterie before she had taken his wager. A wager that, when she lost, granted him her hand.

  She wet her lips as she speculated. Who had Lord Randolph become since Baneham’s death? And what was his current aim? At best, he could be a mercenary in service to the East India Company or a spy in service to the crown. At worst, he could be selling his services to the highest bidder—possibly even Kasai.

  As a former student of her father’s, Randolph’s loyalty would always be to his own gain.

  She splayed a hand over her stomach as she inhaled through pain and fear. Through the exquisitely fitted silk, she felt the smooth edge of her busk—tough bone beneath beauty.

  No matter who he was, Lord Randolph had chosen the wrong woman to deceive.

  She would outwit her father’s enemies and break free from the corruption, blood, and lies that had tainted her father, and now tainted, by extension, any proxy. Violating her marriage vow was a smaller price to pay than the loss of her life.

  Outside, a coach rattled to a stop. Through the drumbeat-fall of rain, Randolph’s voice penetrated the walls. He had come to claim her. His wife.

  She removed the poker from the fire and set it to the side of the fireplace—the last step in a night of mad planning. Moments later, the mirror above the mantle reflected his entrance. She met his gaze in the glass.

  With a Bridewell-heavy click, he closed the door. Strain, no doubt born of his part in the night’s mission, had etched a crease into his brow. Even so, his broad shoulders and sensual-even-in-fury lips caused her wayward heart to lurch in the usual way.

  “The mission has gone to hell,” he said. “A possible traitor has disappeared with an associate I thought I could trust.”

  Randolph’s rolling baritone seized Sophia’s heart in a vise grip and twisted.

  Stay calm. She had her own two-fold mission now: extract information and survive.

  Slowly, he pushed a hand through his damp hair. She smothered her longing. So what if his locks fell about his shoulders in lovely, thick waves of sand-blond beauty? Being a fine specimen of a man did not make him any less dangerous.

  If Baneham’s specter hadn’t risen, however, and if she still believed Randolph to be the lazy rogue he’d acted, right now she would be welcoming his return by smoothing her fingers through those waves, pressing her palm against his chest, and lifting her lips to his—just as she longed to do.

  Pity she had to leave him, really. The kind of pity that blasted a gaping hole where her stomach had been.

  He sauntered toward her while his predator eyes studied her face. “I inquired after your friend. The dowager’s butler informed me that Lady Vaile is resting.”

  The butler did not know Lavinia had used a secret, swiveling bookcase that connected this house with the next to join Max Harrison in his bedchamber. Nor did Sophia care to inform Randolph of the truth.

  Randolph may have dishonestly earned her confidence by testifying on Lavinia’s behalf when she had been falsely accused of murdering her husband, but Sophia refused to be again fooled. Randolph had never cared for her or her friends. He cared for nothing but his own mission—and what his true mission was, only he knew.

  For now.

  He stopped walking, unsurprisingly, just beyond the reach of her poker. “You would have been proud of the way Lavinia goaded the real killer into revealing the truth. He died by his own hand.” Randolph’s monotone suggested familiarity with gore. “I would have returned Lavinia to you, if an agent of mine had not gone missing. I know you must have been worried.”

  She narrowed her eyes, her expression revealing just what she thought of his concern.

  “Speak, Sophia,” he ordered. “Say something. Anything.”

  She clapped her palms together and concealed her shaking fingers by tucking her hands beneath her chin. “What do you wish to hear?”

  “I know you are angry with me,” he said with an edge of impatience, “and I am sure your pretty head is full of dark delusions. But the past does not affect what is between us. We have our marriage to consider now.”

  The word marriage bounced off her gut like a coward’s blow.

  “I am not angry” —she was furious— “and my pretty head is not full of delusions.” Not anymore.

  He resumed his slow prowl until she felt his heat against her back. My. Had he always been so tall?

  “Play ice-hearted queen, if you must,” he said, “but look me in the eye when you lie.”

  “With pleasure.” Her skirts swished as she turned. She fit between his shoulders like a small painting fit an over-large frame, but victory did not always go to those with a physical advantage. She granted him the most dazzling of her smiles, a smile she used to knock men on their heels. Weaving a purr into her words, she added, “Then again, what does a hard look in the eye mean, one liar to another?”

  Randolph had sense enough to step back.

  “I did not tell you of my past connection to Earl Baneham,” he said low and quiet. “But my deception was for your protection.”

  She hated hearing the Earl’s name on his lips.

  Earl Baneham. Her father. Or, as they’d called him when he worked for the East India Company, The Ruthless. The Earl had taken pride in his reputation, and had insisted that any man he mentored show proof he possessed the same quality. Her gaze dropped to Randolph’s clean, gloveless fingers. She did not want to know what atrocity those hands had committed to gain access to her father’s lethal—and very secret—club.

  She sidled away from Randolph…and closer to the poker. Information. She needed information. “How long did you work for Baneham?”

  “There are few who assisted the government in the same capacity as I, who had not worked with your father.”

  “Not an answer.”
/>   He sighed. “I began assisting him during my grand tour.”

  Five years? How could she have been so blind? She kept her dry, rough eyes wide open.

  “Tell me,” she asked, “how well did you absorb the Earl’s tutelage? Did you memorize his book of rules?” She wagered he had a copy of those rules in his pocket. “Did you believe, like his other starry-eyed students, that he held every answer to questions of power and authority and governance?”

  “He was wise and effective,” he said.

  “More like brutal and cold-blooded. I do not need a lecture on the earl from one of his lackeys.”

  He stiffened. “I was hardly Baneham’s lackey.”

  “To the Earl, everyone was a lackey.”

  “Oh?” he asked. “Why then, did he trust me with his most valued possession?”

  “His most valued possession?” Her voice edged up like a cocking pistol.

  “You.”

  The single syllable exploded in her mind.

  “So, I am a possession the Earl could will to a particularly esteemed devotee?” She bared her teeth. “A possession from the Latin possidere—to be master of, to own.”

  “A possession from the Latin possidere—to have and hold.” His smooth voice rolled over her fury. “I would protect you with my life, Sophia.”

  How did he make his lies sound smooth and genuine? How did he keep his gaze intent and sincere? Bitterness practically wafted from hers just as the heat wafted from the fire.

  Ah, he would be dangerous to someone inexperienced with a heartless man. But she was the daughter of a killer.

  “However angry you are at me,” he continued, “you cannot doubt my ability to keep you safe.”

  Safe? She was not safe and never would be.

  “No, Randolph,” she said quietly. “I do not doubt any of your abilities.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  She was not lying. She did not doubt he was fully prepared to carry out whatever mission he had undertaken. What she did not know was who he was working for. Death lurked in the shadow of every night, biding its time, and waiting. Trusting the wrong man would leave her dead, just as it had her father.