How to Tame a Wild Rogue: The Palace of Rogues

Dear Lord Athelboro,

I should like to thank you for the profound honor you conferred upon me with your offer of matrimony, and for the thoroughness and thoughtfulness with which you presented it.

I have taken as my guide the honesty and forthrightness reflected in your letter to write this one, and I hope you will not find my directness untoward: I am unable to accept your offer, for by the time you read these words, I will be a married woman.

I wish for you the same extraordinary good fortune with which I have been blessed, and I hope you find a life’s companion who brings to you the same joy which now characterizes my every day. I have come to believe that we all deserve it, at any age.

Yours sincerely,

Daphne St. Leger

Daphne read this aloud to Lorcan before she sent it via a messenger Lorcan had hired.

He remained motionless for a second or two after she’d finished, so proud of her elegant way with words, and absolutely captivated by that last sentence. For it was merely true, and this was a miracle to them both.

“You should tell him he was outbid by a rogue,” Lorcan teased.

She laughed.

Lorcan quickly obtained a marriage license and they were wed in her local church two days after she’d returned home, without fuss, fanfare, or her father in attendance.

In part because Daphne had chosen to spend the night at the local inn with Lorcan before she married him rather than keep apart for one night, or remain under the roof with her father.

She could not deny the sting of his absence. He had been invited, of course. Nevertheless, she felt for the first time in her life so light she thought she might drift away like a champagne bubble, and clearheaded, and free. And safe. Finally, at last, safe. She understood she had never fully felt this way in her life.

For Lorcan took immediate charge.

“My wife is not and will never again be a solution to any of your financial troubles,” he told Daphne’s gathered family evenly. “And I am not a bank. I will settle upon you, Lord Worth, an allowance to be managed by my Man of Affairs, and any and all purchases or investments you wish to make will require permission first. I will pay your debt, but only the one time. I will not have Daphne concerned about your welfare.” He paused. “Because she loves you.”

The words were nearly accusatory. Implicit in them, and both men knew it, were the words, “and you hardly deserve it.”

Daphne might forgive her father. Lorcan might forever struggle to, however.

Daphne and her father locked eyes. Hers were sympathetic, and tentatively warm. But resolute. She would not countermand her husband.

The earl swallowed, then turned away. For perhaps the first time, a flush of shame washed his cheeks.

“I’m not a child.” Her father was seething. But he knew he had no standing.

Lorcan found it strange how closely the Earl of Worth resembled his beloved wife. His features were perhaps more chiseled. His eyes a bit darker. But the soul which peered out of them was more complicated, and less warm. Understandably, he’d not been treated to any of his vaunted charm yet.

“No, you’re not a child,” Lorcan said patiently. “You’re a grown man who ought to have taken care of his family. But you have demonstrated that you cannot be trusted with money, and harm has come to your family, and someone I cherish, as a result. Honor and a title and an estate are about all that’s left of your legacy. If you do not wish to destroy your family name forever, you will cooperate.”

Ultimately, Lord Worth agreed to the arrangement. Daphne witnessed his shallow nod, agreeing, with sadness and relief.

They all knew rapprochement would be a longer time coming.

“I expect the two of you,” Lorcan said to Montague and Charles, “to remain aware of your father’s affairs, as well as manage your own.”

Her brothers were shaken when they were apprised of the true carnage done to their inheritance by their father. To their credit, they both seemed to understand that railing about it was pointless.

“We’re so sorry, Daphne,” they both said. Quietly.

They did indeed each have a little money of their own, which they had invested sensibly. It was nothing compared to the inheritance they had expected.

“Sheep,” Charles said suddenly. “Wool! We have the land, Monty has the brawn, I have the brains—”

“Ho there!” Montague interrupted indignantly.

“We’ll make a go of it. The next generation will be proud.”

“If you wish to discuss investment opportunities, or if you need employment, I will be happy to assist,” Lorcan told them simply. “And now, my wife . . .” He turned to her. Daphne flushed when he paused at that word. He savored it every time. Imbued it with a universe of meaning. “. . . and I are returning to London. We’ll be living there permanently.”

“Finally home, I see. Good afternoon, St. John,” the Countess of Vaughn had said to her son as she sailed down the hall of their St. James Square town house, his father trailing her. She paused to plant a kiss on his cheek.

St. John’s eyes went wide. He’d frankly been a bit wounded at the lack of fanfare. He’d been gone—missing!—for days. In a terrible storm!

His mother gave a little laugh at his expression.

“We knew you’d be in good hands at The Grand Palace on the Thames,” she reassured him.

He stared at her. “How on earth did you know I was at The Grand Palace on the Thames?”

“Well, for one, you were out with Mr. Delacorte. We know he wouldn’t abandon you,” his father told him. “But a most unusual man paid us a call and told us you were sound. He seemed to have gone through some considerable personal effort to get into our part of London through flooded roads on another matter of business—to visit a friend with an orangery—and he said that it had been dangerous indeed. He called upon us on impulse and assured us you would come home when the streets were passable.”

St. John could not believe his ears.

“Was this man’s name St. Leger?”

“Yes, that’s it. He said he couldn’t countenance your parents suffering over not knowing where you were.”

St. John, who had experienced more challenging emotions in the past week or so than he ever had in his entire life, had never been more flabbergasted.

Suddenly his mother peered beyond him into his room. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. “St. John . . . what is that?”

St. John adroitly sidestepped, blocked her view. Blushing.

His father’s eyebrows dove suspiciously and his voice raised incredulously. “Have you a woman in there?”

St. John hesitated.

Then sighed. “It’s a violoncello.”

“You . . . bought a violoncello?” the Earl of Vaughn said the word gingerly, as if he’d never said it aloud before.

St. John nodded, and with some resignation, stepped aside to reveal it, leaning against his bed.

His parents stared at it. “You stopped on your way home to buy a violoncello.”

St. John almost laughed, so confused did his father sound. “Yes.”

“Can you . . . play the cello?” his mother ventured.

“Yes. A little.”

His parents were modern and for the most part quite accepting people—after all, they managed to like Mr. Delacorte, and Mr. Delacorte was the very definition of an acquired taste—and while he’d made certain his daughters, Lillias and Claire, could properly play the pianoforte, his father thought—not without some justification—that musicians, poets, painters, singers, and the like were at all times about two steps removed from debauchery. (Which St. John knew wasn’t too far wrong. They all did indeed seem to know how to enjoy themselves.)

Lord Vaughn heaved a sigh. “Well, I suppose we’ll look forward to your recital,” he said ironically, shaking his head as he made his way down the hall, wondering if his children would ever cease to surprise him.

“St. Leger had us by the short hairs,” Tristan said half admiringly, half irritably to Delilah in bed the night the Zephyr had limped into port. He’d told her about the tentative agreement they’d all struck in the smoking room. “He had something we needed, and damned if he didn’t know how to work that to his advantage. He was ready with the figures. And I know how smart he is. How effective he is. How good of a leader he is. I was already halfway to yes before he was done speaking. But Delilah . . .” He sighed, and stretched and yawned on her name, and gathered her into his arms, and she burrowed closer into his body. “The main reason I said yes . . . well, the man has nerves of iron. I never knew him to blink at all even when he was tracked for smuggling. But when he first mentioned he had a ship, I noticed his hands were trembling just a very little when he was holding his cheroot. It meant everything to him. Because Daphne means everything to him.”

For a respectful moment they basked in the sweetness of someone else’s vulnerability and love.

“I’m happy for them,” Delilah said softly.

“Be happy for all of us. Inside a decade, we’ll be merchant kings. Barring caprices of fate here or there,” he murmured.

“ONE, two, three, ONE, two, three . . .” Daphne murmured to Lorcan. “Watch Mr. Delacorte and his partner now, they’re heading our way . . .”

He had taken to waltzing the way he’d taken to the sea, and Daphne felt as though she’d boarded a great galleon to sail about the ballroom of The Grand Palace on the Thames.

Hans, Otto, and Friedreich promised to come again as soon as they were able, and were told they’d be warmly welcomed, which was mostly true. Their farewell gift to their hostesses and hosts and fellow guests was an emotional concert, which gave Daphne and Lorcan another excuse to gaze into each other’s eyes while in each other’s arms, which was one of their favorite things to do. They would be moving on, too: Lorcan had found a very pleasant house to rent while they looked for a permanent home in London, for Daphne longed to set up housekeeping with him now that they were a couple.

“And we’ll invite everyone from The Grand Palace on the Thames to a party for your birthday, with dancing, and ratafia, and little cakes . . .” Daphne mused.

“. . . and oranges,” he added.

Since Lorcan didn’t know the actual day he was born, he had chosen the day he’d met Daphne as his birthday. Their winters, for the rest of their lives, would be filled with celebrations.

And so there ensued a bit of a lull at The Grand Palace on the Thames—a wistful one, as most lulls often were when they occurred, because they were often preceded by the departure of guests of whom all the residents had become fond. But Helga could exhale, now that the German musicians would be departing, and she could loosen, just a little, the constraints around the menu and the food budget. There was now time to mend Mr. Delacorte’s waistcoat, to aggressively pursue the drafts to repair them and to perform other loving and energetic acts of building maintenance.

But lulls become unnerving if they go on too long, for The Grand Palace on the Thames depended on new guests.

As it so happened, they were not fated to enjoy a dull moment. For the lull ended and drama began on a Wednesday, during a full moon, when it was finally Mr. Pike’s turn to open the door.

Two and a half years later . . .

Lord Henry Havelstock plucked up his hat and patted his handkerchief across his damp forehead, something he’d done five minutes ago and would likely need to do again in another five minutes. The fact that the sun seemed to be conspiring to boil everyone in London like crabs in a pot had not deterred his wife from insisting on a shopping trip—shopping was her very favorite thing to do—to The Strand. He found it easier to indulge her, to set her loose with his money and her lady’s maid among the shops while he waited elsewhere; he might have to talk to her otherwise, and he had tired of listening to her years earlier. He could not quite say why. He loved his children well enough; both were currently home with their governess. He had realized too late that what made him feel alive was newness and beauty, and he was too young, he felt, for life to become so relentlessly uneventful. Still in the prime of his life. Perhaps a mistress would be just the thing. One could always get another mistress if one grew bored. Rather unlike a wife.

As if his thoughts were made manifest, a woman entered the ice shop in which he had taken refuge and he promptly lost his breath.

She was glowingly, arrestingly lovely. Her frock was the color of marigolds. Her bonnet was tied beneath one ear with a satin ribbon of the same color. Her mouth was soft and full and her complexion called to mind the finest pearls.

He stared, suffused with restlessness and longing.

Perhaps the heat was the reason recognition took so long to set in.

When it did, it nearly knocked him off his feet.

“Daphne?” He almost choked the word.

She turned swiftly about at the sound of his voice.

She froze, too, her lovely brown eyes huge with astonishment. But her expression registered not much more than recognition. Certainly it betrayed nothing of the shock he felt. Nor did it convey dismay or pleasure. It was pleasant enough but abstracted, as if her thoughts were entirely elsewhere.

It had been a decade at least since he’d seen her, but Lady Daphne Worth had never before looked at him as if he hadn’t mattered at least a little. He was badly jarred.

He could not seem to stop staring. His last memory of her was her face, pale with shock and contorted with an effort not to weep. Some days, when he felt taken for granted by his wife, he conjured that image to remind himself that he had once mattered so intensely to someone. He had been appalled to hurt her. It had seemed at the time it could not be helped.

He had heard, not too long ago, that she had yet to marry. He wondered if she would be amenable to another arrangement of some kind.

Suddenly the sun was nearly blotted out, as though by an eclipse.

Henry’s head shot up to discover one of the largest and most fearsome men he had ever seen filling the doorway of the shop.

An earring—an earring!—glinted in his ear. A scar—a scar!—streaked down his jaw. He was riveting, in a sort of primitive way, he supposed.

Henry took an involuntary step backward.

In the man’s arms wriggled a little boy, a handsome imp with curly dark hair whose eyes were crinkled with amusement, as were his father’s—for the man was surely his father, the resemblance was unmistakable—as if the two had been roaring with laughter just before they entered.

When she saw them, Daphne’s smile could have lit all of London and Henry’s breath caught at its beauty.

“Mama!” the little one cried in delight, and Daphne reached out to gather him in her arms.

Henry’s mouth dropped open.

Lorcan looked from Henry to Daphne and back again.

“Lord Havelstock . . . allow me to present my husband, Mr. Lorcan St. Leger, and my son, Archer St. Leger.”

The huge man’s arm curved around Daphne and his child and the three gazed back at him. Clearly a snug, inviolable little family unit.

In shock, Henry at first could say nothing.

It was at once clear to him Mr. St. Leger knew precisely who Henry was. And who he had been to Daphne.

“Havelstock,” he said politely. His expression changed very little apart from a sardonic eyebrow twitch, but it was cool, and contained a touch of cynicism.

And the faintest hint of pity.

Pity alarmed Henry.

He realized he was looking into the face of a man who was singularly happy because he had everything in the world he wanted: Daphne, and the child.

Henry bowed slightly. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said. Seldom had anything felt less true. “Archer is a fine name.”

The little boy beamed so brilliantly at him that Henry’s mouth reflexively twitched into a smile.

“We named him for the Sagittarius constellation,” Daphne told him. The boy had caught hold of her bonnet ribbon. “He was born in December.”

“You did like stars,” Henry said faintly, after a moment. She’d liked a lot of things, hadn’t she? He’d stopped listening, after a time.

“Oh, yes. Lorcan and I are very nearly star experts,” Daphne said dreamily, somewhat saucily, tipping her head back to look up at her husband, who was gazing down at her. His smile was possessive, peaceful, and content. Whatever it was between them, they amplified the temperature of the room by about ten sultry degrees.

Henry flushed.

“I hope you’re well, Henry,” she said, sincerely and politely, as if she was suddenly remembering him. But she said it without much interest, as her arms, and clearly her heart, were full. “Lorcan has recently won a seat in Parliament. Perhaps you’ll see him there? We must move on. We promised Archer an ice.”

“Ithe!” Archer bellowed.

They left Henry standing alone.