Heartless (34 page)

“I promise nothing.”

“Very well.” He dropped his hands back to his sides and walked to the door. “After so many years of marriage, one would think she’d learn,” he muttered to himself. Turning, he added, “I will just have to lock you in here until you do.”

Lady Brianna’s scream echoed off the stone walls of the castle corridors as her husband firmly locked her in. He just laughed.

“And people call
me
heartless,” a deep voice mocked.

“You are,” Prestwich assured him. He walked away and the duke fell into step beside him.

“True. But I wonder how long that room will actually hold a woman as determined as your bride. Care to lay a wager on it?”

“Very well.”

“Leandra’s locket says your lovely wife will join us for dinner tonight without apologizing or groveling or whatever it is she has refused to do.”

Prestwich eyed the other man with dislike. “You would bet a piece of your wife’s jewelry?”

“No, Prestwich, I would not, despite my heartless ways. I am informing you that I have discovered a way you may be of some assistance.”

“Indeed?” the baronet drawled. “How so?”

“If I win the wager, you have to get Leandra’s locket back for me. Her stepmother refused to let her take it when she was forced from her home and I want it back.”

“And if you lose?”

The duke shrugged, stopped walking, and looked into Prestwich’s eyes. “I will tell you everything I know about the person or persons trying to kill me and let you and Vi proceed as you see fit.”

“And you will stop tormenting your wife?”

“My wife is my business, Prestwich. You’d do well to remember that.”

Prestwich snorted. “I accept your bet on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You are not to assist my wife in any way.”

“And you are not to deter her in any way other than locking the doors to her bedchamber and locking her window.”

“We’re on the fourth floor.”

“How well do you really know your wife?”

The duke was not surprised to see his unwanted guests had not only failed to leave, they seemed more determined than ever to stay. Never before had he had the dubious honor of being surrounded by those closest to him, friends and family. These were the people he could trust with his life.

So which one wanted him dead?

He shrugged. It suited his purposes that they remain, so their reason for doing so mattered little.

Instinct told him the gold filigree locket gracing the younger Lady Harwood’s throat belonged to Leandra. He meant to have it before the little harpy departed.

But, just to be sure, he asked his wife to describe it. This interview went as he expected considering their rocky relationship of late.

“Describe it? Whatever for?”

Derringer frowned at her suspicious tone. “Curiosity,” he told her with a careless shrug.

“I have no need, I daresay,” she replied. “As you are a man, I venture to say you have noticed with what ample charms my dear sister-in-law is endowed. You have but to look higher to see the exact locket given me by my father. She wears it to spite me and yet cannot know exactly what sort of pain she causes.”

The duke smiled. “As I suspected. I thank you for your information, madam wife,” he said with a courtly bow. “Shall I see you at dinner? We have far too many guests for you to gracefully withdraw I am afraid.”

“Then why do you bother to inquire after my attendance? It appears as though the decision was never mine to make.”

“Husbandly consideration?”

Leandra’s left eyebrow quirked at this. “Indeed? Why do I feel the need to disregard such a suggestion? Perhaps because a considerate husband would never threaten to beat his wife for caring about him, or humiliate her before guests simply to make sure she is aware of her place of lesser worth for being born a woman.”

The duke made no reply, offered no apology, indeed his very expression did not even change from the mask of vague interest he’d worn throughout her diatribe. It made her want to strike him.

“Have you nothing to say? A defense of some sort would be appropriate now, I should think. Anything to justify what you have said and done to intentionally hurt me.” She shook her head angrily when he opened his mouth. “No, do not. I care not what your excuse is. I care not how you feel, your grace. Leave me, please.” She turned away, his dismissal clear in her rigid posture.

“Merri, I—”

She swung around, fury engulfing her diminutive form. “Do not call me that! Never call me that! My father loved me. He called me that. It is reserved for my friends, Lord Derringer, and those that love me. You have made it all too clear that you feel no such emotion for me so I would greatly appreciate it if you would refrain from taking such a liberty.”

Derringer stared at her. He was so completely shocked that he stood there blank-faced while she clenched her small hands into fists and actually screamed. He blinked once and reached for her as she dissolved into wrenching sobs.

She shrank away. “No! Don’t touch me!” Each word was separated with much feeling and intense loathing. Her eyes sparkled like emeralds, as hard and unforgiving.

The duke’s heart felt like a lead weight in his chest. He had lost. He admitted it. It was too late. But he could still retrieve that which was rightfully hers.

With one last pain-filled look, Derringer left her to her grief.

Leandra dried her face only to burst into tears again. It was just too much. She was ashamed of losing control of her tongue and her emotions. But being in love with a man as loathsome as the Duke of Derringer had finally pushed her too far. Where was that man she glimpsed so very briefly from time to time?

He was still there, she admitted. But her hurt feelings over his well-known rudeness would not allow her to see him in any kind of objective light.

With an effort, Leandra managed to get herself under control. She washed and dried her face at the washstand in her dressing room and rang for Liza. Dinner was soon and she wanted to be dressed as befitted her station.

Granted, looking well had always acted as a sort of armor for a woman since times immemorial. This thought rested comfortably in the back of Leandra’s mind an hour later as she descended the stairs for dinner in a dark blue dress of shimmery satin with an overdress of silver net.

Hesitating on the landing, she took a deep breath. How could so much have happened in one day?

Her husband stood outside the doors of the drawing room, awaiting her arrival. His breath caught at the sight of her. She was like a midnight sky covered in stars. Her dark brown hair was swept up away from her face with silver combs encrusted in diamonds and sapphires and allowed to hang loosely down her back. It caused the most painful ache in his chest to realize that he had lost a brilliant piece of heaven because he was too used to having his own way all the time.

He would have given her every farthing of his inheritance if he thought it would help. But she was not minded as other women seemed to be. She didn’t care for wealth and power. It was one of the main reasons he loved her.

She paused before him, her poise once more a part of her. With a graceful curtsy, she murmured, “Good evening, your grace.”

Derringer bowed, his heart breaking at her formal, emotionless tone. Her insistence on the improper form of address saddened him. How he wished she’d stop emphasizing her belief that she was so much beneath him on a social scale. How he wished he could tell her she was above him and everyone he knew, regardless of title.

“You are beautiful tonight, your grace,” he said, meaning every word.

He offered his arm to escort her into the drawing room, as manners deemed proper. She looked steadily at his face, glanced at his arm, and finally gingerly placed her hand on it.

It was enough to make a grown man cry. The duke thought for a moment that he might disgrace himself in just such a way. But he managed to swallow the lump in his throat and smile down at his tiny bride.

She stared hard at the floor. He wondered if perhaps there was some kind of insect or something that had caught her attention when he noticed her shoulders tremble.

The duke removed her hand from his sleeve and, instead of entering the drawing room, he took her down the corridor to a small, little used salon.

Turning her to face him, he said, “I wonder if you might let me say something.”

Leandra looked up, tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. She brushed them impatiently away, angry that she had allowed her emotions free reign again. “What, your grace?”

Derringer sighed. “I was wrong.”

She blinked, stared at him silently for a long moment, blinked again, sniffed, and then released a mirthless laugh. “You almost convinced me, your grace. Excellent attempt.”

She turned to go but found her way impeded by her husband’s grasp on her arm. She looked up at him. Would he beat her now?

“I am in earnest, Lady Derringer. I was wrong for threatening you, wrong for belittling you, wrong for telling you that you were unimportant to me. I was wrong. I would beg your forgiveness if I thought I deserved it, but I do not. You would be far better off without me in your life and I daresay would welcome the respite.”

Leandra mulled this over, fighting back a fresh onslaught of tears. He seemed so very sincere. His black eyes were sad, his expression somber, and his bearing held a note of defeat.

She couldn’t just give in, however, no matter how much her heart and soul cried out for her to do so. It was suicide to trust such a man.

“Why did you threaten me?” she asked instead.

Derringer tensed. Every time he thought of that incident, he was tortured by new visions of her horrible death. In fact, he’d started having nightmares about her falling down the stairs. The same stairs that…