Sutton’s Seduction: The Sinful Suttons Book 4, page 1
SUTTON’S SEDUCTION
THE SINFUL SUTTONS BOOK 4
SCARLETT SCOTT
Sutton’s Seduction
The Sinful Suttons Book 4
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2022 by Scarlett Scott
Published by Happily Ever After Books, LLC
Edited by Grace Bradley
Cover Design by Wicked Smart Designs
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
For more information, contact author Scarlett Scott.
www.scarlettscottauthor.com
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
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Don’t miss Scarlett’s other romances!
About the Author
For my girls
PROLOGUE
LONDON, 1816
Archer Tierney was a despicable arsehole, the sort of cull who would as soon stick a knife in your back as smile to your bleeding face. The tongues wagging about him in the East End claimed he’d killed his own mother with his bare hands for stealing from him. It was no secret that those who owed Tierney funds and failed to recompense him found themselves paying instead with their blood.
He was also one of the last men who had seen Logan before he’d vanished. The need to find out what had happened to his beloved brother, despite Tierney’s hang gallows reputation, had brought Hart Sutton to the devil’s lair.
He ground his molars and held still as one of Tierney’s minions searched him for weapons. He’d brought none. He was many things, but fool wasn’t one of them. Meeting Tierney on his own territory, without a blade or a pistol to protect himself, did not exactly set him at ease. But it was necessary if he wanted an audience.
The scarred guard patting his trousers, coat, and boots straightened, apparently having satisfied himself that Hart was indeed defenseless. “Tierney will see you now.”
Hart nodded, then grimly followed the man as he led him down a shadowy corridor to a door. Three subtle knocks were delivered in quick succession.
“Enter.”
The guard opened the portal and looked to Hart, nodding toward the threshold.
He stepped inside, keenly aware of the man at his back, but willing to take the risk. He had no other choice. Each day that passed without knowing what had become of his brother was akin to a dagger in the heart anyway.
Tierney stood by a window, hands on his hips. He was dressed in black, nary a hint of lightness to be found on him, not even in his neck cloth. His eyes were twin obsidian discs, glittering in the low light.
“Sutton,” he greeted, unsmiling. “What do you want?”
“My brother,” he said, venturing just deep enough into the chamber that he could hold a conversation, but not too near.
Tierney was like a serpent, ready to strike. Lethal.
“You’ll be needing to specify, Sutton. You’ve a lot of damned brothers.”
“The only one who’s missing,” he elaborated, clenching his jaw as the lingering pain, never far from the surface, shot through him. “Logan.”
“Can’t say I’m familiar with the name,” Tierney replied smoothly.
“You’re lying.” Hart maintained his calm, despite issuing the accusation.
Tierney’s mask of cool confidence slipped, and his lip curled in a sneer. “Careful, Sutton. I don’t like being called a liar. I’ve killed men for lesser slights.”
Hart had no doubt the villain had. But he also knew Tierney would not dare to start a war with the Suttons. Not because of battered pride. There would need to be greater provocation, and Hart would give him none.
He inclined his head. “Let us be honest, Tierney. I know you trade in tipping the cole to swells who need blunt to fund their gambling debts.”
“Indeed.” Tierney strode slowly forward, almost as if he were engaging in a leisurely stroll. His accent was well-educated, suggesting he had not always dwelled in the bowels of the East End among thieves and molls as he did now. “As far as I am aware, you and your family are responsible for providing those poor swells with a place to lose all their funds. We are, in a sense, business partners.”
It rankled Hart to be placed in the same league as a coldhearted villain like Tierney. But there was no sense in arguing the point.
“I’ve been told you saw my brother the day he disappeared,” he said instead.
Tierney stilled. “By whom?”
He was not going to surrender his secrets. “It ain’t important.”
“It is to me.” Tierney’s tone was laden with lethal promise. “I make it my business to know which coves are leaky and which can be trusted.”
Hart had no doubt of that. Nor did he doubt that the poor culls who could not hold their tongues found themselves with the blade of one of Tierney’s henchmen in their sides.
“And I make it my business to use leaky coves to my advantage,” he countered.
Tierney’s expression was hard, his nostrils flaring in a brief sign of displeasure. “If you won’t tell me, then I won’t be helping you.”
Hart knew that revealing the source to Tierney would only lead to the source being killed. But even had he wanted to reveal who had told him about Tierney and Loge’s meeting the day Loge had gone missing, he could not do so.
“I overheard it at The Beggar’s Purse,” he said.
“Convenient,” Tierney quipped. “The home of drunkards, whores, and fools. Tell me what was said.”
“That Loge was seen with you,” he answered swiftly. “I want to know what he was doing here and why.”
Tierney smiled. “No one comes to me with demands, Sutton.”
He was not going to cower. Archer Tierney did not scare him. Nothing and no one did. He was determined to find out what had happened to his brother.
Hart raised a brow. “I just did.”
“You’re either exceedingly brave or stupid,” Tierney said, strolling to his desk with the slow, deliberate motions of a predator assessing its prey.
“Mayhap a bit of both,” he acknowledged. “But I want answers about what happened to my brother, and I’ll not leave until I have them.”
Tierney extracted a sheaf of what appeared to be vowels from his desk, dropping them to the surface. “I’m willing to help you, Sutton. For a price.”
No price was too great to pay for his brother’s life.
“Name it,” he said without hesitation.
* * *
The sound of her father’s quiet weeping echoed in the stillness of the night. Emma lingered in the hall outside his study, wondering if she dared interrupt his misery. Since Mother had died the year before, Father had been slipping deeper into despair with each passing day and month. Time had not lessened his grief; instead, it had only seemed to heighten. The loving man who had doted on his three daughters had been replaced by a hollow ghost who wandered the halls when he returned from his jaunts in the early hours of the morning, smelling of spirits, the dark circles beneath his eyes a testament to his lack of sleep.
Still, Emma hesitated before she knocked. Her father was not ordinarily home at this time in the evening. Ever since Emma had been inadvertently compromised at the Addington ball the previous month, he had been disappearing with greater frequency, and she knew her disgrace was the cause of his absence. So much hope had been pinned upon her ability to make a good match.
Emma had been prideful and stubborn, wrongly assured of her position in society. She had so foolishly believed that nothing she could do would tarnish her reputation. But one stolen kiss on a moonlit terrace, and everything had been forever changed. Lord Vincent, the man who had compromised her, had declined to offer for her hand. What a dreadfully awkward discussion that had been the following day, with her aunt, Lady Rosamund Morgan, presiding over the affair.
Lord Vincent had regretted to inform her that he was incapable of making an offer for her hand.
The death blow had been dealt.
Lady Emma Morgan, diamond of the first water, most-sought-after debutante in London, the hope of her family, had been ruined.
She knocked on Father’s study door.
The only answer was his continued weeping, so she rapped again, louder this time.
“Who’s there?” demanded her father. “Donley, is that you?”
“It is not Donley, Father,” she called. “It is Emma.”
Pe
Gone.
Every bit of gold, each gem.
Nothing but memories remained.
“Emma?” her father repeated from within the depths of his study. “What’re you doing wandering about at this time of the evening, my girl?”
His words ran together in a strange mix that was nearly incomprehensible, which could only mean one thing. He was in his cups.
Deeply so, unless she missed her guess.
But then, it would hardly be a different or new state for him.
“I wished to speak with you,” she said grimly. “May I enter?”
“If you must.”
His voice was reluctant. Likely, he did not wish for her to see him in such a state of distress. For some time now, he had been doing his utmost to keep Emma and her sisters, Abigail and Cassandra, from knowing the extent of both his grief and his gambling.
She opened the door and crossed the threshold, her eyes attempting to adjust to the murk within. A reduced household meant less light, and the lone taper her father had lit by the armchair at the scarcely glowing hearth did nothing to illuminate the chamber.
Tightening her grip on the candle she had brought with her, she approached him. He did not bother to rise, which was quite unlike Father, even when he was under the influence of drink. The Earl of Haldringham was always a gentleman.
“Emma, poppet,” he said, speaking to her as if she were a girl.
For a moment, she feared he was so inebriated that he was imagining them years ago, in the happy past of her childhood, when she had roamed the fields of Ralston Abbey and no losses, worries, fears, or disappointments had yet to infiltrate her heart.
“Where is your Aunt Rosamund?” he asked, dispelling her worry.
“She has gone to bed for the evening, Father,” Emma said, blowing out her taper before settling it next to Father’s on the table. The last year had taught her how to be economical. No sense in wasting one candle if another was already burning.
“Just so. I should have expected. It must be midnight by now, I suppose.” He held a crumpled handkerchief in one hand and a bottle of port in the other.
She imagined he must have scrubbed his face dry before she entered, hoping she would not see the telltale sheen of tears on his cheeks. Although the most obvious signs of his misery were gone, traces remained. His nose was red and his eyes were bloodshot.
“It is perhaps approaching midnight,” she acknowledged, for her mantel clock was broken, and they had not possessed the funds to see it repaired. “Why are you not at your club?”
Ever since their return to London for Emma’s second—and what she increasingly feared would prove her last—Season, Father had been growing increasingly erratic. He spent scarcely any time in their town house. Instead, he was always gone.
“I wished to stay here.” The smile he sent her was tremulous. His voice cracked beneath the strain of his pent-up emotion.
Her heart broke, for she had not seen him this distraught since Mother’s death. “Something is wrong, Father. Will you not tell me what it is?”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the backrest of his chair, as if he were overwhelmed beneath the weight of whatever invisible worries were causing him so much agony. “It is my burden to bear, my dear. Not yours.”
Again, his words were slurred. He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long draught, without opening his eyes.
“Please, Father,” she entreated, for she hated to see him this way. “Tell me.”
He lowered the bottle, a sound of raw despair leaving him. “Oh, Emma. My dearest, darling daughter. I have failed you. I have failed you all.”
“No,” she said. “I have failed you. I know you had great hopes for me to make an advantageous match and soothe the way for Abigail and Cassandra.”
Instead, she had caused a dreadful scandal, ruining her chances of ever being considered marriageable. The last month had shown her just how desperately reduced her reputation was. Her friends had fled her. The lords who had fought over her attentions no longer called upon her. Her invitations were rescinded.
She had, as a result of one reckless moment, become no one.
“Of course I was hoping for a good husband for you, and for your sisters to be settled as well.” Father shook his head, again bringing the bottle to his lips. “If your mother had been here, she never would have allowed any of this to happen.”
Emma did not disagree with his assessment; Mother had been the keystone of their family. She had doted on her daughters and had loved Father fiercely. She had been protective of her family. She had been kind and good and loving, and then, one day she had suffered a sudden illness, and she had been taken from them far too soon.
“We all miss her,” Emma said, knowing Father’s grief, like her own, must seem as if it would consume him some days.
Had that been the reason for the weeping she had heard from the other side of the door? Had he been sitting alone in the semi-darkness, thinking of Mother and allowing his sorrows to claim him?
“No one misses her more than I do.” Father’s voice was ragged. He shook his head slowly, as if attempting to clear it of a fog. “I pray she can forgive me for what I’ve done, and for what I must do.”
Perhaps not, then.
A new, troubling sense of apprehension curdled in her belly.
“What is it that you have done, Father?” she asked quietly. “Will you tell me?”
“I cannot bring myself to admit it. I have committed the ultimate sin against my family.”
“Please,” she implored, her worry growing. “When I went past the study door, I heard you weeping.”
He inhaled slowly, then exhaled. “I… I have lost everything.”
“Not everything,” she reassured him, the same words she had spoken many times in the year since her mother’s sudden death had rocked their family. “You still have your daughters.”
“Of course, and you are my treasures.” Leaving his handkerchief in his lap, he lowered his head to rest it in his hand, his torment visceral. “The only value I have left. I’ve lost everything else. Squandered it like a fool, thinking I could regain it if I only tried again…until it was too late.”
There was something in his voice that made a chill trickle through her. “What do you mean, Father? Pray, tell me so that I may understand.”
He lifted his head, meeting her gaze, his expression pained. “I haven’t a shilling left. I’ve lost it all, and then some. I’ve borrowed from creditors so that I would have enough to return to the hazard table, hoping my luck would return, and I lost that as well.”
Good heavens. Their circumstances were not just desperately reduced. They were dire.
“Everything?” she repeated, struggling to comprehend the magnitude of his revelation.
“Everything.”
Her mind whirled. “I have some gowns I could sell. Abigail and Cassandra have some jewelry that would fetch a fine price.”
She had hoped they would not be so lowered that her sisters would need to part with the few pieces their mother had left for them. But if it was a matter of putting food on the table and seeing them through, it would have to be done.
