A Devil Named DeVere (The Devil DeVere)(75)

"Very well, Diana." He sauntered across the room to stand beneath a portrait of a haughty, young man in the full-bottomed wig favored half a century earlier. The painting was done in the classical Italianate style favored by those on their Grand Tour. "Behold Lord Richard DeVere before his complete corruption by dissolution and vice."

Diana cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, seeming to study the arrogant features of Lord Richard. "I daresay you do favor your mother. But tell me of him."

"Lord Richard was born into a great fortune, traveled widely, and wed late in life, when fear of his own mortality struck with a certain scurrilous disease that his physician said no amount of mercury would cure. Desperate that his seed should not die out, what does the poxy bastard do but take a wife! Ironically, I later learned that his disease was already so advanced by that time as to make it impossible for him to sire any progeny."

Ludovic advanced to a second portrait of the same beautiful woman sitting alone and posed under a flowering tree. "Behold my mother. She was twenty-five years his junior, and the marriage was, as to be expected, an utter travesty. Lord DeVere was the biggest whoremonger in all Christendom, and my mother complemented him well as the greatest whore. Together, they were the most notoriously faithless couple in England. I was raised with all the privilege of my noble station to include a personal servant to wipe my arse for as long as I can remember, yet to this day, I cannot say with any certainty if that same servant might have been my true father."

Diana's jaw dropped.

He laughed again. "I'm not sure Lady DeVere would have known either, for she exercised no discretion. She may have consorted with a footman, a gardener, or even my father's valet, but of a certainty, I am not the spawn of Lord DeVere. Nor do I believe Hew and I are more than half siblings, though I would never tell him so. Our mother showed only enough maternal feeling to remain with us until Hew was out of leading strings and then eloped with her lover."

"You never heard from her again?"

"On the contrary," he smirked, "I heard from her immediately upon coming into my title. Her lover had long ago abandoned her, and she claimed to be in dire need of funds."

"Surely you refused her?"

"I did not. I have provided her a generous allowance these past dozen years, though I learned in my recent travels that she really had little need of it, for she has managed to provide a lucrative living for herself."

"With another lover?"

"With many, you might say. She is the keeper of a high-end Parisian brothel."

"Your mother?" She gaped again.

"Yes. It was a most unsettling revelation."

"I suppose so! And your father...er...Lord Richard...what of him?"

"The blighter still manages to live, despite the fact that his mind and half his face have rotted away."

"Good God," Diana murmured.

"Sometimes I wonder how good," Ludovic replied cynically. "So you see? My very birth defies all that is right and true. Perhaps you better understand now my aversion to wed? To reproduce? For I carry in my blood an entire legacy of corruption and sin. My entire existence is one great lie, Diana. My blood is tainted and my life a fraud."

"That's ridiculous!" she exclaimed. "You only use your history as a convenient excuse to do as you please."

"That's right, my dear. I live for pleasure because it's my legacy to do so for I am damned either way. 'Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.'"

"If you wish to elicit sympathy from me, I am sorry to disappoint you."

Ludovic shrugged and dropped his mask comfortably back into place. "The only thing I wish to elicit from you, my dear, are screams of rapture."

"Back to that again, are we? You waste your breath. Now why did you bring me here?" Diana demanded.

"You challenged me last night, Diana, taunted even, when you know damn well I never take such a thing lightly. So I wish to know what you propose by way of a wager."

"Perhaps I haven't had sufficient time to think on it," she hedged.

"Don't dissemble when we both know you had already something in mind before you even spoke."

"All right, my lord. I will tell you. I would very much like to rebuild my former racing stables, but I have not the means to do so without a quality breeding stallion."

"A woman has no business with a racing stud."

"Perhaps that is my concern and not for you to judge, my lord."

DeVere quirked a brow. "Very well. Then what are you asking? You wish me to wager one of my stallions?"

"Not just any stallion. I wish to you wager Centurion."

"The sire of my best prospect for the Derby?"

"I thought it would be more than you would be willing to chance." She turned for the door.

"I have not yet decided," he retorted. "I would first know what I might stand to gain from this wager."

"You once expressed interest in Cartimandua," she suggested.

"An unequal bargain," he replied. "A brood mare may produce a single foal per year at best, while a proven stallion can sire a hundred offspring at a considerable profit. No, my dear, you must offer a much greater incentive than that."