The Sins of Lord Lockwood Read online

  Delightful . . . Heart-Pounding . . . Sexy . . . Unforgettable . . .

  Savor “romance at its finest” (New York Times bestselling author Liz Carlyle) in these acclaimed novels from Meredith Duran!

  A LADY’S CODE OF MISCONDUCT

  BookPage Top Pick in Romance

  “Political intrigue drives a captivating historical romance . . . a smart love story, peopled with complex and absorbing characters.”

  —BookPage

  “A Lady’s Code of Misconduct is chock-full of emotional depth, passion, and compassion. Duran delivers a wonderfully crafted romance with an intriguing historical backdrop, and characters readers will hold in their hearts.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Although Duran has written a novel as layered as an onion, the characters are well-drawn and the plot flawlessly executed. Add in some very steamy sex, and the fifth installment of Duran’s Rules for the Reckless series can’t help but delight. This book weaves its spell so thoroughly that the most fortunate reader will be the one who has time to read the entire thing in one sitting. A masterful tale of suspense, forgiveness, and love.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  LUCK BE A LADY

  RT Book Reviews Top Pick

  “Flawless novel . . . These intelligent, multilayered characters embody the best aspects of this wonderfully indulgent series.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Well-paced, simmering with sexual tension, and peopled with memorable characters, this is a love story to be savored.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  LADY BE GOOD

  RT Book Reviews Top Pick

  “Lady Be Good has extraordinary characters plus enthralling developments.”

  —Single Titles

  “Romance, passion, heartbreak, excitement, suspense, and a stellar resolution . . . Lady Be Good packs an emotional wallop!”

  —Fresh Fiction

  FOOL ME TWICE

  RITA Award-Winning

  USA Today Bestseller

  “In modern romance, there is still room for the hero that Byron described as ‘that man of loneliness and mystery’ . . . It’s possible that no one writes him better than Meredith Duran, whose books are as dark and dangerous as the heroes they feature.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Meredith Duran unceasingly delights . . . as a wordsmith and a master at understanding the elements that connect complex, genuine, and lovable characters.”

  —Buried Under Romance

  “Incredible sensuality. . . . Crazy hot.”

  —Fiction Vixen

  THAT SCANDALOUS SUMMER

  RT Book Reviews Top Pick

  “Sophisticated, witty, smart romance.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “A powerful story with emotional punch. . . . A joy to read.”

  —The Romance Dish

  AT YOUR PLEASURE

  RT Book Reviews Top Pick

  A Romantic Times nominee for Most Innovative Romance of 2012

  An American Library Association Shortlist selection

  “Unforgettable. . . . Rich in texture.”

  —Romantic Times (41/2 stars)

  “Fast-paced, heart-pounding . . . a wonderful read!”

  —Fresh Fiction

  A LADY’S LESSON IN SCANDAL

  RT Book Reviews Top Pick A Desert Isle Keeper for All About Romance

  An American Library Association Shortlist selection

  “Compelling, exciting, sensual . . . a nonstop read everyone will savor.”

  —Romantic Times (41/2 stars)

  “Top-notch romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  WICKED BECOMES YOU

  RT Book Reviews Top Pick

  “Witty, often hilarious, sensuous, and breathlessly paced.”

  —Library Journal

  “Sexy, inventive, and riveting, it’s hard to put down and a joy to read.”

  —All About Romance

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  This book is for all the people who reached out over the past ten years to ask me about Lockwood, thereby persuading me that his story should be told. Without you, he might always have remained in the dark.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For a decade now, I’ve been thanking my editor, Lauren McKenna—but with each book, I have learned more from her, while being amazed anew by her talent and skill (and charm). No writer could ever hope for better.

  My thanks as well to the rest of the team at Pocket, including Sara Quaranta, Melissa Gramstad, and others behind the scenes, for your hard work, support, and unflagging patience with dilatory writers.

  A grateful curtsy to my agent, Holly Root, and Taylor Haggerty, also of the Root Agency, who solve problems while I’m still scratching my head in befuddlement over what the problems might be.

  Above all, my bottomless gratitude to my family: my extraordinary parents, the gorgeous fam in Washington, my sister S. J. Kincaid, my in-laws (who graciously took the pup when I desperately needed sleep), and my husband, who specializes in the defusing of writerly angst with a grace and good humor that keep me smitten and awed by my miraculous fortune in finding him.

  PROLOGUE

  August 1857

  He had never lost a fight before. He was built like his forefathers, long and lean and quick of foot, but with fists like hams and an insensitivity to pain. Childhood brawls with his cousin, scraps on the playing fields at Eton, one moonlit assault by ruffians on the road to Oxford—he had always emerged the victor. He had become a legend among his friends. He had the instinct, they joked, of an assassin.

  But he had never fought while in chains.

  The chains choked him. They closed around his feet. He stumbled to his knees, blood thick in his mouth. A foot struck his temple. He fell hard on his belly, the wind knocked out. He could not see his assailants in the darkness. His eyes were still blinded by the noonday glare above deck.

  Not three hours ago, he had been dragged topside, flogged in the harsh sunlight for causing trouble below. Then the captain had ordered him strung out over the bow, so the salt spray from the churning waves had spattered his wounds, a venom that even now burned.

  His assailants surrounded him and aimed again.

  A heel drove into his skull. Howls and hoots rose from the darkness. “Teach ’im!” someone cried. “Teach ’is bloody lordship!”

  Raucous laughter. A fist slammed into his back. Then another foot struck his chin.

  Deep in his brain, something seemed to pop free. He floated into a deeper darkness, and a strange peace diffused through him, softening the world into mist.

  When his eyes opened again, a dim light pervaded the thick, dark stench of the holding cell. Hellfire trembled over the mass of packed bodies, the single barrel dedicated to the prisoners’ waste. It had long since overflowed. The sludge glittered.

  He made some movement and pain lanced through him. The floorboards sucked at his wet clothing.

  “Shh. Lie back now.” The voice came from nearby—coarse, thick with mucus. “Best give what broke time to knit.”

  Something itched inside his throat. It took him a moment to register that it was laughter, black and curdled, stillborn in his mouth.<
br />
  He was the fifth Earl of Lockwood. He had been abducted onto a prison hulk. He was chained and bound for the Australian colonies.

  What was not broken? The world had gone mad.

  He gingerly turned his head, looking for the advice giver. A hundred men packed the room; he saw hunched shoulders, heads, limned by lamplight. Lamps were forbidden. But he understood, seeing eyes glitter from darkness, that the risk was worth it. The sight, at last, of a face twisted with compassion—of hooded eyes meeting his squarely, from a face lined with age—returned him to himself abruptly.

  He sat up, damned be to the pain and broken parts. “Listen,” he said hoarsely. “You must believe me—”

  The old man’s face changed. Flattened into indifference.

  Liam felt the withdrawal like a knife in his belly. He fell silent, waiting with breath suspended, battling with the last shred of pride not to beg the man to look upon him kindly again.

  He, the Earl of Lockwood. Desperate for a convict’s kind look.

  “Doesn’t matter what I believe,” the old man said at last. “What matters is, you want to live or not.”

  Did he want to live? Above deck, strung over the waves, he had been wrapped in rage, throttled by it, his single aim to loosen the bonds and hurl himself into the water below.

  Five days ago, the urge would have seemed nonsensical. Five days ago, arrayed in silk with his new bride on his arm, Liam had seen nothing but her face, and the future.

  But both were gone.

  His breath caught. He held himself still beneath the cascading weight of that thought.

  Both were gone.

  This was not a nightmare. This stinking pen, the jailers, the cruel blue shoreless sea he had glimpsed above—this was real.

  Some last childish piece of him still balked. It took hold of his tongue. “There was a mistake—”

  “Aye, we all heard it,” the old man said. “Again and again. Kidnapped and traded for a real criminal. You see what it’s got you, this tale. They don’t like lunatics here.” The old man smirked. “And they like lords even less. So either way, lad, you’d best change your story.”

  Either way. The truth did not matter: that was what the old man meant.

  Astonishment leached through him. The old man was right.

  There was no hope.

  “The Crown’s a fine instrument,” said the old man. “There’s a lad over in the corner, no older than fifteen, sentenced for stealing handkerchiefs. I ain’t going to defend the law, you see. It’s the hand of the powerful, no justice in it. But one thing I will say—that hand does the bidding of those what can pay it. Ain’t no rich man ever sentenced by accident, or transported by mistake.”

  Somewhere across the room, the lamp guttered out.

  Hisses and curses filled the darkness. Liam stared into nothing.

  It had not happened by accident. Those men had been waiting for him on the wharf.

  As for the other possibility . . . “It was no mistake,” he said softly.

  Of course it had not been a mistake.

  How had he not realized this already? Peers of the realm did not get abducted by mistake, traded for true prisoners by mistake, transported by mistake.

  “Aye, well, then you’ve got enemies.” The old man sounded reassured. “Better than being a lunatic, to be sure.”

  This rising tide of fury was not better. It was apocalyptic. This nightmare was by design. Someone had plotted it for him.

  He knew who had plotted it. He had only one enemy.

  My God. What must Anna be thinking? For all she knew, he had disappeared of his own volition. Was she weeping at this moment? Was she raging against him?

  From the darkness came a vision of her at the altar, her face alight with joy. Freedom tastes sweet, she had whispered as they’d kissed.

  Freedom was what they had promised each other. Not love. He had not dared speak of love to her, though he’d wanted to, badly. Later, he’d told himself. On the honeymoon. In Paris, at sunset.

  The ship shuddered. Groans and gasps filled the pen as the floor abruptly tilted.

  “God save us,” muttered the old man.

  “A storm is coming.” Liam could offer this. Above deck, he had caught the crew’s mutterings, their fear, which they had then exorcised, violently, on his body.

  This would not be the first transport ship to be sunk in a storm, if God willed it.

  But God clearly had no interest in men’s affairs.

  “First test,” said the old man. “First of many to come, I expect. Count yourself lucky. Young lad like you. Young lad with enemies—the strongest kind.”

  “Strongest.” He was bound in chains, stripped of his name, kicked and beaten like a dog. He had never felt weaker.

  “Strongest,” the old man confirmed. “Ain’t no cure for lunacy, lad. But an enemy—oh, that can be fixed.”

  Liam did not want to think of his cousin. But Stephen’s face came to mind, regardless.

  The hatred did feel stronger than despair. It boiled through him, caused his battered hands to clench.

  “Yes,” the old man muttered. “A man can learn to live for revenge.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  London, spring 1861

  Anna had never set foot inside her husband’s London townhouse. They had met and fallen in love in the north of Scotland; he had wed and then abandoned her in Edinburgh. But she felt as though she knew the house from top to bottom. The newspapers were full of florid descriptions. The Times particularly admired the Moorish touches that Lockwood had added to the salons. The Telegraph preferred the stately dignity of his Louis XIV dining room. Everybody agreed that the Earl of Lockwood had laudable taste. Nobody mentioned that this taste was funded by Anna’s money. The earl had been broke as a fishmonger when she’d married him.

  Since she had paid for Lockwood’s furnishings, she felt no compunction at going to explore them, regardless of the hour, regardless that her husband had no idea she was in town. Then again, after years spent traveling only heaven knew where, he had not bothered to inform her of his return. So why should she prove more polite?

  Indeed, did he even know she was alive? Had he bothered to check? How much more of her money had he spent this week? Would he guess that she was armed, and not in case of brigands?

  These questions made fine games as she watched London pass, the streets wet and dirty. The hired coach was moving at a good clip, but the interior smelled musty. Had the city outside it not smelled worse—a fetid mix of coal smoke and sewage—she might have opened the window.

  It was nine in the evening. Beggars gathered around burning cans of rubbish to keep warm. Respectable folk strode past them, mufflers drawn against the spring chill, no tenderness in their faces as they looked through their starving brethren. A faint suggestion of lilac sunset still clung to the rim of the English sky.

  “This city’s huge,” murmured the girl across from her. Jeannie’s eyes were wide with wonder.

  Anna spared a moment’s pity for her. Jeannie had been raised on romances. She believed that all the filth might be hiding something interesting.

  As they passed Westminster Abbey, Jeannie sat straighter. “I know what that is! I’ve seen it in books!”

  “You read the wrong books,” Anna said. She had tried to train Jeannie into assisting with her experiments, but the girl’s literacy proved strangely changeable: when science was involved, Jeannie forgot how to read. She made a passable lady’s maid, though; her favorite magazines included extensive discussions of au courant hairstyles.

  “And there!” Jeannie laid a finger to the glass. “Is that the Tower, where they killed poor Nan Boleyn?”

  Jeannie also enjoyed history, but only the gruesome bits. “No. But it would not surprise me if every inch of this city were haunted by unfortunate wives.” At Jeannie’s skeptical look, Anna shrugged. “Englishmen make very poor husbands.”

  Jeannie grimaced. She was petite, with a doll-like, heart-shaped face, pea
ches-and-cream skin, and striking black curls. Gentlemen on the train had stared. Jeannie’s mother, suspicious of her daughter’s enthusiasm for this trip, had begged Anna to make certain she didn’t elope with a Sassenach.

  “Not all of them, surely!” Jeannie said. “Some Englishmen must be—”

  “All of them.”

  Jeannie slumped.

  The sights out the window changed, grew cleaner and more orderly. The hackney driver had lifted his brows at the address Anna had given, and now she saw the reason for it. Mayfair looked a different species of city from the environs they had passed: clean and well-swept pavements, smooth roads, and manicured parks around which large houses with bright-striped awnings marched in orderly lines.

  The coach slowed, drawing up at the curb beside a house lit from top to bottom. Anna cracked the window. The faint strains of a jig flavored the night air.

  The newspapers had also spoken of her husband’s penchant for parties. He used these glamorous gatherings to introduce his friends to new artists. Apparently one such party was under way tonight.

  She was not dressed for it. Her wool cloak was travel stained, and beneath it she wore a walking dress of brown taffeta on which Jeannie had sloshed tea not three hours before. If somebody mistook her for a maid . . . She loosed a slow breath.

  A fine anger had been brewing in her for days now. She had good reasons for her trip to London, and only one of them concerned her husband. Nevertheless, what a waste if she did not get to hit somebody! Preferably it would be Lockwood, but in a pinch, any of his friends would serve.

  Jeannie saw her temper. The girl was clever when it came to people. She caught Anna’s wrist as the driver opened the door for them. “A hotel?” she suggested. “The guidebook recommended several. We could dress your hair, and change into something more . . . fitting? The English are very formal, you know.”

  “Are they, indeed? What an expert you are.” Marvelous, too, how Jeannie’s accent kept changing to match their surroundings. In Newcastle, she’d dropped her r’s; by the time the train had passed Peterborough, she’d lost her lilt. “Tell me,” Anna said. “How does a girl raised by Loch Lomond sound more English now than the Queen?”