The Duke of Diamonds (The Games of Gentlemen Book 1) Read online

  The Duke of Diamonds

  Emily Windsor

  Copyright © March 2020 by E. Windsor

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ASIN: B086C29FVM

  This book is written using British English spelling.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Also by Emily Windsor

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Obsession.

  Delicate yet spirited. Undeterred by life.

  She embodied all he yearned for.

  Casper trailed a solitary finger along the thin black ribbon caught in a tight bow at her nape and longed to lean close, to loosen it with a single nip of his teeth.

  Tendrils of walnut-brown hair caressed her earlobe and he traced the curls, ached to feel such resplendence upon his bared skin.

  The defiant beauty, however, refused to turn at his impudent touch, denying Casper her silken face. Instead, she merely presented him with a blushing cheekbone, glimpse of stubborn chin and naked shoulder held straight and bold.

  Some labelled Casper cold and obsessive, tedious and brusque… Yet with this woman, he felt anything but. He burned, body consumed with want, flushed with pride and possession.

  She belonged to him.

  Yet if he were to be truthful, utter perfection remained out of reach. A pale, curved scar marred that exposed shoulder, skin cast sallow against the coils of darker hair, and her gown flamed a brash crimson lake.

  It mattered not.

  Duty to his estate, the burden of responsibility, suffering tenants, failing crops – all was soothed in her presence.

  He willed that cheek to turn, to have her gaze upon him and whisper words of temptation. So reaching out once more, he grazed a thumb across the lace edge of that brazen frock as it rode low upon her back, revealing a contrary pure-white corset laced with lemon ribbon.

  But naught. No female sigh nor sensual shudder.

  Casper Brook, the eighth Duke of Rothwell, murmured a derisive laugh, twisted from her, snuffed out the candle and with quiet tread, strode from his study.

  Leaving the exquisite portrait in darkness.

  Chapter 1

  To deal with the devil.

  The shabbier side of London. April 1816.

  “I ain’t sure yer fully understand yer situation, Missy. This ain’t no charity house, and I want me dough paid back sharpish. Now, if you were a tad more…agreeable, that might be a different matter. Always work for prime skirt in my gaff.”

  Mr Filgrave – surely an invented name in order to instil terror – then reached into his puce-striped waistcoat to produce a goose quill toothpick with gold handle and ruby finial. Applying it to his front tooth with the utmost concentration, he simultaneously managed to scratch his groin, leaving no doubt in Evelyn’s mind as to what his “work” entailed.

  “I can promise you, Mr Filgrave, that with my employment as scene painter at the theatre, I can pay you at least one shilling a wee–”

  “I mean to say,” the moneylender continued, fingers now caressing and not scratching at all as he perused Evelyn’s form, gaze lingering upon her bosom, “you ain’t a bad bit o’ mutton except for that devil’s red hair.” Mr Filgrave removed the toothpick and peered at the impaled contents. “But that ain’t a concern, Miss Pearce. My other girls can dye it blond.”

  Evelyn’s eyes flitted around the room in search of some improbable saviour but they instead fell upon a plate of half-consumed eggs and bacon which lay on the nearby side table, producing in turn a queasy then ravenous sensation in the pit of her belly.

  Breakfast was a commodity that she and her younger sister could no longer afford – along with new gloves and delicate sensibilities.

  The rest of the room lay in shadow, light cut by the packed-in dwellings and leaden-grey cloud that smothered the city, but squinting, she could just make out the grim minion who’d ushered her in, along with a squat trinket cabinet, a hefty sofa of Pomona green, and a rather inept painting of a nude.

  Never should she have fallen within this moneylender’s sordid grasp but wishes were two-a-penny in the back lanes of London, and this meeting at Mr Filgrave’s Dyott Street premises offered a last opportunity to make a deal with the devil.

  She debated her options. After all, there now remained only two ways to pay off her debt.

  Number one: be more…agreeable.

  Mr Filgrave began once more detaching breakfast from his rear cavities, face contorting with the trickiness of the task. Grimy fingernails plucked at a stained cravat – egg yolk, if she wasn’t much mistaken – and the scent of gin oozed from his skin. No doubt he’d been a handsome fellow many…many years ago, but the wages of sin and blue ruin had been costly, bloating his features and pouching his eyes.

  This villain who held her to ransom had been born in the gutter, supped with rats as a child and spilled the blood of others as a man. He cared not that Evelyn’s sister had been so ill or that the doctor had refused to attend without first hearing the chink of coin. Mr Filgrave cared only for gain, notoriety and puce silk handkerchiefs.

  Lolling upon a satin and giltwood chair that the Prince Regent would be envious of, he flicked a hand aloft and the grim minion slid from the corner shadows to fill his goblet. Evelyn salivated at the rich ruby, despite the early hour of the day. Once, she had drunk such wine from glittering crystal too, been a gentlewoman in silk slippers and elegant frocks.

  Smoothing her best patched wool skirt, Evelyn’s noggin commenced on some mathematics.

  Her neighbour Lucy Margate, who worked in much the same way, received half a crown per tup, less if sailors were in dock, but her gluttonous hog-grubber of an employer also retained seventy per cent for the display of wares and some bungling protection. Therefore, with a paltry thirty per cent of the proceeds, Evelyn’s debt of twelve pounds, six shillings and tuppence excluding today’s interest would be approximately paid off by…

  Shuddering, she deliberated option number two.

  The last resort.

  An option she’d pondered upon, begun, nearly finished, and then, blinded by guilt, buried beneath the bed.

  A remaining hope that, although made use of her artistic talents, would involve a certain degree of deception and, for want of a better word…forgery.
r />   Evelyn gazed to the moneylender once more, who returned a leer, tugged at the buttons on his breeches and licked his teeth.

  There was no alternative.

  She would endeavour to sell a forged painting to the reputed most callous duke of all England.

  A desperate action of bold duplicity.

  For Evelyn’s father, Sir Henry Pearce, had been an artist of considerable note and talent but of diminutive sense, leaving nothing when he died four years previous but debt, a few oils and a perfect pencil sketch of a never completed work.

  A never completed work that had a wholly completed twin.

  A twin this particular duke had paid handsomely for not one year past.

  If her deception were to be uncovered, she would be jailed, led to the gallows or transported to the Colonies. But money from that painting would mean she and her younger sister could leave London forever, find a quiet cottage in the wholesome countryside and grow vegetables.

  And perhaps the duke’s icy reputation was grossly overdone in the gossip papers?

  For in true society, weren’t all dukes gouty, braying and buffle-headed, with greedy hounds, jovial smiles and far too many acres?

  He’d never realise another hand – especially a mere female hand – had painted such a companion work. Could never comprehend in his noble noddle that the canvas set before him had not been dignified by the brush of Sir Henry Pearce himself.

  The Duke of Rothwell owned half of England it was whispered. He’d purchase the portrait, abandon it on a wall at some rarely visited country estate and never be the wiser.

  Evelyn thought of her pale and weakening sister, the coal-laden damp air, their grey lodgings and empty stomachs.

  “I’ll have your money within a month, Mr Filgrave,” she replied. “Never you fear.”

  “I never do, Miss Pearce.” A sly, designing smile flitted across the moneylender’s face. “But skirt like you ought ter. My boys ain’t as friendly as me and by the time you get ’ere, you might not be to my taste.” He took a sip of wine and smacked his lips. “And then I’d ’ave to look to yer fetchin’ sister fer m’gingerbread.”

  Briefly, Evelyn wondered if all this talk of food was a subtle type of persecution, but then her temper swiftly surged at his threat, desiring her to stab that toothpick into those stained breeches till he squealed. However, these past four years of hardship had taught her patience, fortitude and twenty-three ways to cook potatoes.

  Bestowing a low curtsey, she narrowed her eyes, a crocodile smile hiding gritted teeth. “My sister and I are not on the menu, Mr Filgrave, and even if it were so, I fear we’d taste far too bitter.”

  “How’d it go with Mr Filprick?”

  Evelyn stomped across Broad Street with hunched shoulders and folded arms but managed a smirk at her friend’s bon mot. “He’s promised me three weeks to find the entire cod of blunt,” she replied, over the rumble from her stomach.

  Miss Flora Kemp – neighbour, model, actress and, in her own words, “muse” – shook her head, ringlets bouncing. Gifted with hair the colour of moonlight and the delicate features of a cherub, she gave an air of fragility and refinement which sensitive artistic types adored…

  “Sodding hell, the scaly cove!”

  But with a mouth that Billingsgate fishwives would envy.

  “And now,” Evelyn muttered, “with additional interest of tuppence a day for delayed payment.”

  “Butter me arse and call me a crumpet!” Flora gracefully waggled a lace-gloved finger. “Filprick’s promises have less worth than wot Lucy charges for a screw on Friday nights.”

  “Quite so,” agreed Evelyn. “Half a crown.”

  “Nah, she’s cut her price to a shilling and thruppence since all the camp followers came home. Competition is rife and even Mona Whittaker has bought ostrich feathers as an incentive.”

  Evelyn sighed and tugged her old pelisse close about the neck, refusing to contemplate how long it would take to pay off her debt to Filgrave at such a tariff…or what a feather incentive might involve.

  Shooing away the boys who ran ragtag around them, fingers pinching for victuals from Flora’s basket, they hurried passed a gin shop, the only place doing a roaring trade.

  “I asked the stage manager at the theatre if he could lend on my wages but…” She trailed off as Flora’s eyebrow rose to her hat brim.

  Despite Evelyn being their finest scene painter, her employment only provided enough for lodging and food, with a smidgeon left over for necessities. And she’d heard the gossip – her wage was half that of the lads who splashed paint around as though they were limewashing a house.

  “Shame yer went to that Filprick for bread ’n butter in the first place.”

  The empty pit in Evelyn’s stomach widened.

  To be sure, but her sister had been so ill, and Evelyn had fretted it was the dreaded lung disease. The grasping doctor had prodded and poked, bled her till she’d fainted, blamed her hacking cough on the dank weather that lay like a rotting blanket upon the city this year, and then charged three quid. Flora said she would’ve done the same for tuppence, without the bloodletting…and with warmer hands.

  With such a frigid winter and now a spring that refused to blossom, the rest of the money had been spent keeping the fire lit, the bed linens dry and the candles burning for her late-night painting sessions.

  Accompanied by her sister’s endless cough, she had rendered her father’s pencil sketch upon canvas in that dim light, imitating his work with wearied hand until the last faked brushstroke upon sham lip.

  “I-I’ll have to sell a painting,” Evelyn confided, skipping over a suspect murky puddle.

  “Didn’t think you’d any of yer pa’s stuff left?”

  Evelyn puffed in her mittens. Upon Father’s death, the Pearce sisters hadn’t slid into genteel poverty but dived belfry first. Shopkeepers, models, colourmen and so-called friends had knocked on the door for owed money before Father had been cold in the ground.

  All the furniture had been sold off from their elegant home and they’d moved lodging, then moved once more, every month creeping street by street to the east, until they’d reached the back alleys of Covent Garden.

  Papa’s art had been sold long ago.

  “I, erm. Well…” Evelyn chewed her lip. “It’s hard to explain…”

  Halting on the street corner – never a good idea in Seven Dials – Flora swung her basket with hand on hip. “Spit it out, girl.”

  A couple of young bucks brazenly gazed their way and began to throw lewd gestures.

  Oh, sod it, as Flora would oft say. “You see, Papa painted me when I was seventeen. For the Academy Exhibition.”

  “Nice. As an angel or sommit?” Flora spun back from returning equally lewd gestures at the bucks.

  “Not exactly. He wished to paint virtue and downfall but couldn’t find a suitable model: pure innocence corrupted by social influence and destitution.”

  “Eh?”

  “He painted me as a…retailer of love.”

  “Come again?”

  “A whore, damn it!” The bucks cheered and she grabbed Flora’s arm, dashing on. “He painted me as a fledgling whore in shameless crimson, standing in a bedroom with rumpled sheets and coin on the table. It was entitled The Veiled Fall of Innocence.”

  “Bet that caused a rumpus with them artsy fusty-guts.”

  Indeed. The Royal Academy had judged the turned pose eccentric, the subject matter vulgar, and the artwork had been quietly rejected for a wholly nude Venus with strategic curls – but that was fine, being Classical and all.

  “My back was twisted to the viewer so no one could tell it was me, and my red hair was coloured to dark walnut so as not to clash with the dress.”

  Evelyn sighed as they passed the bakers, the fragrance of rising dough taunting her nostrils. “The painting was a failure back then but Papa believed in it, so he sketched out a twin work to be entitled The Fall of Innocence Unveiled. The same, except I would no
w face the viewer.” She frowned. “But a commission to paint a Siamese cat arrived and he never converted it to oils. It got put in a drawer where it remained till his death.”

  “But a measly sketch ain’t gonna cover the debt, is it?” Flora said, winking at a passing gentleman as he tipped his hat.

  “No. I…” How to phrase her deceit? “I…I interpreted it in oils…from his charcoaled draft.”

  Those eyebrows of Flora’s, which could speak volumes, for once spoke only one word.

  Prison.

  Evelyn pursed her lips and pulled her bonnet low as a wind belonging to December whipped its ribbons. Easter had come and gone yet the sky appeared dingier than the coalman’s apron.

  “So, did yer forge– I mean interpret yer own mug?” enquired Flora.

  “Lud, no. That’s the only difference.” They crossed the cobbled road, deviating to avoid the horse manure. “I had Maisie Pilkington pose for the face.”

  “Hardly a picture of innocence. She was born in Newgate jail.”

  “But pretty and seductive. Men view this type of painting not with their eyes but with an entirely different appendage.”

  “So d’yer have a dup– I mean, art collector in mind?”

  Evelyn nodded and huddled close. “Father’s friends knew of his intention and so rumours of its twin have always circled amongst collectors. The Duke of Rothwell already owns the first one, paid a mint for it, so he won’t be able to resist.”