Page 1 of Portrait of a Lady
Prologue
London, 1817
The Honourable Mr. Benedict Sterling glanced about the elegantly appointed drawing room, which he occupied with his guests, his eyes heavy-lidded from drink. ‘Honourable’; the title never ceased to bring a sardonic grin to his lips with the ridiculousness of it. There was nothing ‘honourable’ about him, despite the viscountcy he stood poised to inherit and the opulence of the townhouse surrounding him. His lack of scruples and disdain for all things proper had been achieved by design, not chance. His image of a dissolute rakehell had been cultivated from years of acting the rogue in front of anyone who mattered.
Lightly touching the tip of the stiletto he held in one hand against the pad of his forefinger on the other, he glared at the portrait of Viscount Sterling hanging over the mantle. His father stared down at him, blue eyes portraying the one thing Benedict had always believed to be true about the man: he possessed no heart, no soul. Perhaps that was why he’d persisted in trying to crush Benedict time and time again.
The joke is on you, old man,he thought, chuckling aloud.
When the viscount finally had the grace to die, his least favorite son would inherit and there was nothing the old fool could do about it.
Closing one eye and grasping the tip of the blade with his thumb and forefinger, he took aim and let the weapon fly. It landed right between the viscount’s eyes, leaving yet another notch in the portrait among hundreds of others. Target practice was the only reason he kept the painting displayed so prominently.
A chorus of drunken cheers went up from the men strewn about the room in various states of rumpleddéshabillé. His four friends had accompanied him home after an evening of debauchery. Dinner, drinks, and gambling at Boodle’s had been followed by a late arrival at the Theatre Royal—just in time to shoulder their way to seats in the pit, where they’d guffawed over the farcical pantomime. Upon leaving the theater, they’d been overtaken by the Haymarket strumpets, displaying their wares with indecent bodices and skirts lifted to display slender ankles and shapely calves. Benedict had been quite foxed by then and could only remember snatches of what had occurred from there.
Somehow, five men and seven women had stuffed themselves into three hired hacks, which had barreled through the crowded city streets to convey them to Benedict’s home in Berkeley Square. There had been a footrace down one of the paths snaking through the park at the center of the square, with the strumpets cheering them on. Before long, they’d stumbled over the threshold of his home and made their way into this drawing room, where a veritable orgy had taken place. Brandy had flowed, cigars had been lit, and the whores had set about earning their coin.
His father’s spies were everywhere—even within Benedict’s household, and nothing would please him more than word of what had taken place here getting back to the viscount.
“I say, Benny, good throw,” mumbled David from where he slouched in an armchair with a woman on each knee. “You can’t be nearly as drunk as I s’posed.”
He glowered at the other man, whose limpid blue eyes offered a sharp contrast to his olive skin and dark hair—inherited from his Greek mother. David always wore an indolent smile and was often accused of not taking anything too seriously.
“I’ve told you several times to stop calling me Benny,” Benedict groused, reaching for the crystal decanter on the side table at his elbow. “And Iamas drunk as you supposed, but even so, I possess better aim than you.”
“Some of us aspire to...different sorts of accomplishments,” David murmured, turning his head to nibble on one of his whores’ necks.
She giggled and squirmed in his lap, trading glances with the one occupying his other knee. Not to be ignored or outdone, the second whore leaned in and latched onto her friend’s neck, helping David work her into a writhing, panting state of arousal.
“That was impressive,” purred the painted doxy draped over Benedict, her legs stretched across the love seat.
She ran slender fingers through his pale blond hair, and he fought the urge to bat her hand away. Her rouged face and garish get-up did nothing for him, nor did the seductive glances she kept sending his way. The others had been too busy with their own whores earlier in the evening to notice he hadn’t bothered to sample her. He’d let her touch him and fawn over him, but had done little to encourage her.
“What happened to your head?” she asked, tracing one finger along the scar marring his left temple.
The thin line had long since healed, but being reminded of its presence sent twinges of phantom pain through his entire being. Taking a long swig from the decanter, he washed the bitter taste from his mouth with the rich flavor of the finest brandy money could buy. Spirits, depravity, excess, and revenge brought the sort of satisfaction he couldn’t get anywhere else. It made it easy to be gracious as he pushed the memories aside and gave the whore tracing the line of his jaw a tight smile.
“When I was a little boy, I was fond of climbing trees. Once, as I was making my way up a gigantic elm, trying to slip between two limbs growing close together, I became trapped. As I struggled to free myself, I was scratched by one of the branches. It stung like the devil and bled as if I’d been shot. My mother swooned in a dead faint when I turned up in the drawing room with blood trickling down the side of my face and staining my hair.”
“Oh, you poor love,” the whore crooned, leaning in to press her lips against the scar.
“Bollocks!” called a slurred voice from the other side of the room.
Benedict glanced up to find Dominick pointing an accusing finger at him from where he sat on the floor, his back propped against a settee with a half-empty glass in hand. Dark-brown hair fell over his forehead into flashing green eyes, a few days’ worth of stubble sprinkling his sharp jaw. Between his spread legs lay one of the Haymarket whores, her gown hitched up around her knees to display her bare legs and fallen off one shoulder to reveal a plump breast.
“Don’t believe a word he says, love. He must have been asked about that scar a hundred times, and he has told a different story about its origin with each utterance. Lies, I tell you...all lies!”
Benedict lifted an eyebrow in challenge. “It stands to reason that out of a hundred stories, one of them must be true.”
“Which is it then?” Dominick prodded, one hand idly fondling the naked breast of his companion. “The tree branch...the highwayman attack...the dark alley brawl off Drury Lane?”
“Not my fault you are too dense to have puzzled it out by now,” Benedict said with a dry snort.
“Perhaps the tree branch story is the right one,” Dominick mused. “And the rest are only concocted in a scheme to make yourself seem more interesting than you actually are.”
Benedict balled his free hand into a fist and raised it with a meaningful look at Dominick. “Need I remind you how I gotthese?”
Despite the menacing tone to his voice and the notching of thin, white scars crisscrossing his knuckles—a testament to the many pugilist matches he’d fought in and won—Dominick merely chuckled. Of course, they both knew Benedict would never follow through on the threat. Of all the men here, he and Nick had been friends the longest. He knew Benedict never struck anyone without provocation. When he did, though, he struck with purpose and power, a skill that had earned him quite a reputation at Gentleman Jackson’s before he’d started seeking out tougher competition in secret bare-knuckle brawls.
