Courting Chaos (Dunaway's Daughters Book 2) Read online

  Courting Chaos

  Dunaway’s Daughters, Book 2

  by

  Lynne Barron

  For my very own reformed rake.

  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

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Excerpt Portrait of Passion

  About Lynne Barron

  Books by Lynne Barron

  Chapter One

  London, June 1821

  When asked, Miss Hesperia Eris O’Connell, known affectionately and otherwise as Harry, invariably proclaimed herself to be the daughter of a merchant, born and raised in a tidy little townhouse in Bloomsbury until the age of six, at which time her mother and father perished in a boating accident, and she was taken in by distant relations.

  It wasn’t so much a lie as a shifting about of particulars, locations and principal players designed primarily to avoid sharing so much as a single awkward moment with people ill-mannered enough to question the origins of an unmarried lady of dubious parentage and uncertain fortune. And truly, as far as Harry was concerned, ill-mannered people deserved nothing less than to be fed falderal and fairy tales.

  It wasn’t Harry who’d originally come up with the fiction based loosely upon facts; the tale was first circulated by the scandalous Bathsheba Sinclair, the ninth Duke of Montclaire’s mistress of more than thirty years. And, not coincidently, one of the principal players, as well as Miss Harry O’Connell’s beloved grandmother.

  Harry might have dined on the true story six nights out of seven, were she of a mind to dine amongst ill-mannered ladies and gentlemen.

  Alas, since Bathsheba had quietly and peacefully passed away in her sleep nearly four years past, Harry preferred to dine with various friends and acquaintances up and down St. Sebastian Place. All but Sunday evenings, which were reserved for dinner with her great aunt, the infamous Alabaster Sinclair. If one or more of Harry’s five sisters should happen to join them, all the better. Though not necessarily Annalise, whose propensity to prophesize doom and gloom tended to bring on a megrim.

  Still, even sitting down to a full twelve-course dinner with Annalise was preferable to suffering through a visit from the Earl of Dunaway.

  So it was that upon spying his lordship alighting from his carriage, Harry hurried out the back door of her flat, rushed down the narrow stairwell, crept through the bookstore below and fled past said carriage pulled up to the curb of the bustling street.

  All without a bonnet to cover her hair or the spare shilling she kept in the pocket of the pelisse she’d neglected to grab from the peg on the wall. Which explained, in a decidedly circuitous if not entirely convoluted manner, how she’d ended up three doors down in the back room of the Pickled Prince watching two men stripped down to their trousers pummel the stuffing out of one another.

  On a Wednesday afternoon when, according to the strict schedule she adhered to with something approaching devotion, she ought to have been en route to the Montclaire Museum.

  “Is there some particular reason we are watching these men dance about almost entirely unclothed?” asked Mary Katherine Price, her dearest friend in all the world, as well as her sister. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s quite an exhibition.”

  “You ought to see it on Thursday evenings when the room is packed with spectators,” Harry replied. “All of them swigging the ale Mr. Prince brews below stairs and shouting wagers Tommy and Cedric are only too happy to collect upon should a man consider sneaking out without making good on his losses.”

  “Tommy and Cedric?”

  “Prince’s bullyboys.”

  “Bullyboys,” Kate repeated, clearly fascinated. “Are they here now?”

  “They aren’t needed, as Wednesday afternoons are reserved for those gentlemen willing to pay three pounds to spar with the reigning champ.”

  “Three pounds? To get beaten to a pulp by that bear of man?”

  The improbably named George Posey was something of a bear of a man, nearly as wide as he was tall, thick-necked and barrel-chested with ginger hair cropped short enough to reveal a network of scars crisscrossing his scalp like a map of England’s toll roads. Sadly, he was as slow-witted as he was slow on his feet, owing his seven-week reign as champion to the power packed into those few punches he landed and his ability to stagger to his feet no matter how many times he went down.

  Sweat gleamed on Mr. Posey’s flushed face and ran in rivulets down his pale, heaving chest. His opponent—taller, darker and leaner—appeared to be only mildly winded as he tossed out quick jabs and jocular insults in equal measure. In fact, he seemed almost bored by the champ’s efforts as he blocked one punch after another.

  There was a certain graceful rhythm to the gentleman’s movements, to the fluid bunch and shift of the muscles in his arms and back as he feinted left, blocked a blow and landed one of his own to the slower man’s jaw.

  Mr. Posey went down hard on his knees, his big, round head hanging between twitching shoulders. Not two seconds later, he looked up, smiling wide enough to show off the few teeth remaining in his mouth.

  When Harry found herself ogling the raven-haired man’s posterior as he bent to help the champ to his feet, she quickly looked way. The very last thing she needed, today of all days, was to become distracted by the sight of a taught arse shown off to perfection in superbly tailored buckskin trousers.

  A dozen men—laborers straight off the docks, by the looks of them—loitered about drinking, smoking and watching the match. Harry spared them a glance only long enough to wonder if they had money riding on the bout, and whether Mr. Prince pocketed a cut of the wagering.

  If so, he might take a bath with this particular bout.

  “Did you see how he shifted his weight at the last moment?” Kate asked, imitating said shifting with her own two feet, bare hands fisted in front of her face.

  “It’s called a feint, and poor Mr. Posey didn’t even see the jab coming.”

  “What a peculiar life you live, Harry.”

  “My life is not peculiar,” Harry retorted with a laugh. “My life is exactly as I imagined it to be from the moment I first arrived in London.”

  “You imagined consorting with pugilists, publicans and bullyboys?”

  “I imagined myself free to carve out my own destiny.” Harry spread her arms wide and spun slowly in a circle. “And voila, here I am.”

  “In a dirty little room behind a pub.”

  In the light of day and without scores of rowdy revelers packed inside, the room was a rather ghastly sight. To say the room was filthy was to give it far too much credit for cleanliness. Years of grime coated the walls, dirt-matted cobwebs hung from the ceiling beams and the floorboards were hidden beneath layer upon layer of mud and spilled spirits, not to mention the blood, sweat and tears of generations of pugilists.

  And Harry loved every inch of it, from the cobwebs to the scarred floor to the stench of stale tobacco in the air. Just as she loved the bakery where Mrs. French whipped up fresh currant scones every Sunday morning.
And the pawn shop next door where on any given Monday one might watch the parade of castoff courtesans selling a bauble or trinket to see them through until the next protector came along. She loved the cozy little book shop and the hours she spent there Friday mornings, reading tawdry novels to the elderly ladies of the neighborhood, while Mr. Preston visited his ailing mother in Cheapside. She loved the apothecary run by the two spinster sisters who secretly wrote those novels, and the small publishing house where they were printed on pulp paper and sold for tuppence on Tuesdays.

  London was Harry’s universe, Wellclose Square her world and St. Sebastian Place between Grace’s Alley and Smithfield Street her center of gravity.

  “Are you going to enlighten me as to why you insisted upon meeting with me today?” Harry asked. “Something monumental must be afoot that you could not wait until we take tea with Auntie Alabaster and Lilith tomorrow.”

  “In truth, I’m rather surprised you haven’t already heard the scuttlebutt making the rounds,” Kate replied. “You always know the latest gossip, never mind you don’t move about in Society.”

  “I move about on the rocky shoals from time to time.”

  “Only when it suits you.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Still, it is truly astonishing what you know.”

  “Knowledge is power,” Harry replied, “especially for a woman who walks a fine line along those rocky shoals. I navigate that line with nothing but my wits to keep me from losing my balance.”

  “You’ve your beauty and irreverent humor as well,” Kate pointed out, both fists raised to block an imaginary fist aimed at her jaw. “You might add a dollop of charm to your arsenal of assets.”

  “Beauty and irreverent humor are liabilities rather than assets for a woman in my precarious position. And I imagine my store of charm reached its capacity at approximately the same time my bosom ceased growing.”

  “Oh, Harry, surely you don’t believe one is related to the other?”

  “It’s as good an explanation as any,” Harry replied with an arch look at Kate’s breasts swelling above the beribboned neckline of her yellow day dress. “Lord knows, you could charm the trousers off a vicar, if you had a mind to do so.”

  “Speaking of vicars, we’ve a new one in Bartlesborough, and he’s ever so handsome.”

  “We weren’t speaking of vicars,” Harry interjected before Kate could launch into a description of the newest comely gentleman to take up residence in a village crowded with comely gentlemen of late. “We were speaking of the reason you insisted upon meeting with me today.”

  “Likely for the very same reason Dunaway came knocking at your door.”

  “You hope to aggravate me to no end?”

  “I hope to convince you to attend Madeline’s come-out ball.”

  “Attend a ball hosted by that man?” Harry demanded. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “It’ll be such a mad crush, no one will take note of you in the crowd.”

  “I’d sooner dance with the devil.”

  “You needn’t dance with Dunaway,” Kate pointed out. “Or speak to him, or even cast your eyes his way.”

  “And when he casts his eyes my way?” Harry asked. “When he takes note of me and decides to make mischief?”

  “He’ll not make mischief at his daughter’s come-out ball.”

  “That man would make mischief at a funeral,” Harry muttered. “Honestly, I cannot think of a single reason I would take the risk.”

  “I can think of five perfectly lovely reasons.”

  “Kate—”

  “We never see you, Harry.”

  “You see me every Thursday afternoon.”

  “Yes, Lilith and I see you for all of an hour each week,” Kate replied. “But Madeline and Annalise can hardly walk into Alabaster’s house in broad daylight. It’s all they can do to escape their mother’s eagle eye for the occasional dinner, and the last time Annalise managed it, you claimed a megrim and departed halfway through the meal. Sissy is decidedly put out by your continued refusals to call upon her so that she might tell you every last excruciating detail of her honeymoon. And Madeline is threatening to cease inviting you to join her for her morning drive through the park, for she cannot countenance the constant rejection. Truly, one would think you don’t care to spend time with us.”

  “You know that isn’t true,” Harry protested. “I’ve simply been busy.”

  “And if I were to tell you Annalise has a suitor, would you be too busy to take his measure?”

  “Annalise has a suitor?” Harry made no effort whatsoever to hide her surprise. “A man is actually courting Annalise?”

  “I don’t know as he’s courting Annalise so much as the Earl of Dunaway is courting him,” Kate replied. “As I understand it, they’ve ironed out all but the final sticking points of the marriage contract, or purchase agreement, as the case may be.”

  “He’s a wealthy man, then?”

  “Wealthy?” Kate chortled. “He is the answer to all of Dunaway’s prayers, no matter how blasphemous. It’s said everything the gentleman touches turns to gold, silver and most recently iron, tin and copper.”

  “Much the same way everything that man touches turns to ashes.”

  “That man has a name.”

  “Not to me, he doesn’t.”

  “Pretend all you want,” Kate said with an indulgent, almost apologetic smile. “You will never convince me Dunaway doesn’t inhabit some small place in your heart.”

  Harry O’Connell might have been cursed with a lamentable inability to wipe her heart clean of all the useless clutter hiding in the corners, but she possessed talents of far greater value to a woman living on the periphery of London Society. Talents such as the ability to calculate odds faster than a cardsharp, recognize ramifications in a trice and hatch a scheme quicker than a debutant could fake a swoon upon being caught in a compromising position.

  Above all else, Harry possessed a single-minded, stubborn determination to accomplish but one mission in her lifetime. That mission was to destroy all the Earl of Dunaway held dear. As the handsome wastrel held very little dear, Harry had been waiting quite a long time.

  “Tell me everything you know of Annalise’s sweetheart.”

  “In truth, he’s something of a mystery, but I’ve poked around a bit, and what I’ve learned is quite interesting,” Kate replied. “Though, when it comes right down to it, not the least bit surprising.”

  “Out with it, Katie Price,” Harry ordered.

  “Well, for starters, Mr. King builds boats.”

  “Mr. King builds boats,” Harry repeated. “Surely you don’t mean Mr. David King of Winters Ship Works in Blackfriars?”

  “I believe his business is in Blackfriars, just south of the bridge.”

  “The same Mr. King who purchased the bankrupt ship works a decade ago, sought and won contracts to build frigates for the royal navy and luxury yachts for the royal family?” Harry continued incredulously. “The man who almost singlehandedly transformed the business into an immensely profitable endeavor in less than four years’ time?”

  Kate stepped around one of the stevedores for a better view, tugging Harry along with her. “They say he’s quite brilliant.”

  “Brilliant does not begin to describe Mr. King.” Harry stared off into space, only belatedly realizing the dark-haired pugilist inhabited that space when she recognized the finely sculpted cheekbones, square chin and straight, patrician nose. She’d seen him at the theater not long ago, and while she could not readily call up his identity, she wasn’t likely to forget so handsome a visage. “Not only did Mr. King turn the ship works around, he had enough sense to invest a portion of the profits in an insolvent munitions manufactory and later invest a goodly sum in a struggling textile mill. Blackfriars Textiles now provides the linens which cover more than half the beds and tables in England.”

  “Are you acquainted with Mr. King, then?” Kate asked, wincing as Mr. Posey landed a blow to his oppo
nent’s jaw. “Criminy, he ought to have seen that coming.”

  “How on earth would I be acquainted with Mr. King?”

  “Perhaps you were introduced at some time and you’ve simply forgotten who he is,” Kate suggested. “It would hardly be the first time.”

  “I can assure you Mr. King is not a man I would forget having met.”

  “You know an awful lot about a man whispered to be something of an enigma.”

  “Bathsheba invested a bit of pin money in the ship works some years ago,” Harry replied with a wave of one hand. “And seeing as she made a pretty penny, I cobbled together a small sum to invest in Mr. King’s latest venture.”

  “Fancy that,” Kate said. “You and Dunaway have something in common, as it was the mining operation that caught his lordship’s attention.”

  “Never say that man hopes to purchase shares in The British Consolidated Mining Corporation,” Harry whispered, distracted by both the implications and the grin lifting the corners of the handsome pugilist’s lips as he ducked another jab.

  “Final sticking points, Harry.”

  “He expects to be given shares in exchange for his daughter’s hand in marriage?”

  “Annalise’s bride price, as it were,” Kate agreed, dodging to the right as if to avoid the blow that landed on Mr. Posey’s chin. “And all but ironed out, so the story goes.”

  Harry let loose an inelegant snort, turning a few heads their way. “It’s just that, Kate, a story. A fairy tale that man created to keep the creditors from knocking at his front door.”

  “Not even Dunaway at his most desperate and dissolute would dare risk what little remains of his fortune on a fairy tale.”

  “That man has borrowed against his future expectations?”

  “He’s wagered absolutely everything on the match.” Kate gave a decisive nod of her head as if to emphasize the point, though it hardly needed emphasizing when one considered Dunaway’s penchant for playing deep when any sane man would know to toss down his cards and walk away from the table. “His lordship has taken out loans all over Town, opened up accounts at all the best shops and mortgaged Lady Dunaway’s dower property.”