One Wicked Night (16 page)
Authors: Shelley Bradley
“Lord Daneridge to see you, Your Grace.”
She paused. “Show him in, Mannings.”
The butler opened one imposing door, and Lucien entered. Immediately, his eyes fixed upon the petite width of her back as she stood stiffly before the white marble fireplace. He noted she had dressed, from the cap covering her glorious golden hair to her no-nonsense slippers, in unrelieved black. Because she meant it or because it was socially expected?
Slowly, she turned. She crossed her arms over her chest. He wondered if the gesture was designed to ward off the cold or keep him away.
“My lord,” she acknowledged, her voice barely above a whisper.
Lucien nodded in return. He took three steps toward her; on the fourth, she backed away.
Her skin did not appear a healthy peach tone, as it had the night he had held her. Today, she looked pale and gaunt. The change had as much to do with her grief-stricken state as with the mourning black she wore. Her blue-gray eyes, rimmed in sleepless, tear-induced red, stood out in her oval face. For an adulteress, she looked genuinely anguished.
“I’m sorry,” he offered, and discovered he felt the sentiment.
She bit her lower lip mercilessly. Lucien saw her wrestling against the urge to cry.
“I heard less than an hour ago,” he continued.
Still, she said nothing.
She looked out of place here. Delicate amidst the towering mahogany bookcases lined with political and historical titles, incongruently sorrowful beside the ivory and warm green of the library’s decor, utterly feminine within her late husband’s masculine high-ceilinged domain.
Behind her, above the fireplace, hung her gilt-framed portrait, one she obviously sat for in happier times. Her painted expression was placid, her smoky blue eyes open and friendly—so different than the guarded look she wore now. The artist had captured the curve of her mouth perfectly. Her lips whispered that she knew a secret, a pleasurable one. Lucien found himself wanting to persuade her to share it with him.
“Why did you come?” she finally asked, interrupting his runaway thoughts.
Clearing his throat, he answered, “Mr. Higgins came to see me this morning. He delivered this missive your husband wrote me last week.”
Serena took the letter from his extended hand with trembling fingers. Slowly, apprehension flashing across her pale face, she unfolded it. Lucien held his breath while she read. He wondered how much of this, if any, would be a surprise to her.
As her eyes moved across the paper, she gasped. Her cheeks suffused with a becoming pink that relieved the severity of her mourning black.
She finished and refolded the missive, careful to keep her gaze directed down.
“Well?” he prompted. “What does this mean?”
She blinked rapidly, unsuccessfully fighting off a barrage of tears. The crystal drops fell down her face as she clutched the letter in her hand. “I’m so sorry. Terribly sorry. Cyrus should never . . .” She trailed off in obvious mortification.
“Never what?” he asked, determined to keep his voice gentle.
She paused and turned away. Lucien watched as sobs shook her shoulders. “H-he should never have contacted you this way, never tried to force responsibility for my welfare upon you.”
“But he did because he knew I seduced you, is that not right?”
Gaze averted down, Serena nodded.
Lucien stared at the nape of her neck, watched tendrils of her fair hair caress her soft skin. Her shoulders shook in grief again. His self-control snapped. Certainly she deserved a bit of sympathy on her loss. Even if she had cuckolded the man, she had clearly cared for him on some level.
He moved toward her and set aside his cane, leaning it against a gleaming mahogany desk. He remembered the searing blade of grief well, still experienced its gut-ripping pain every day. And she looked like a woman seized by that pain. He paused, puzzled by an urge to lend her comfort, despite her deception. How would she react to the physical contact? How would he?
He reached for her, lightly placing his hands on her shoulders. Beneath his palms, her shoulders lifted and stiffened, but she did not protest. Slowly, praying he would not scare her, he turned her into his arms.
He needed only half a step to close the distance between them and cautiously took it, hearing the rustle of her black crepe as he moved closer to her body. His heart thudding against the wall of his chest, feeling an awareness of her almost tangible grief, he eased his arms around her. Without a word, she accepted the embrace, the fabric of her widow’s weeds swaying against his legs as she cried.
No coyness, no ploy to use the situation to instill pity; she was much different than Ravenna in that respect. Instead, she welcomed his comfort by moving further into his embrace, sliding her arms around his middle.
God, it felt good to hold her, so good he hated to admit how much. The embrace made him all too cognizant of the fact he had yearned for the perfect fit of her body against his, made him aware that one night with her hadn’t been nearly enough. With her softness, her pliancy, he could almost push aside the harsh fact that she was an adulteress.
Almost, but not quite.
He shoved the thought away and soothed her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “How did he find out about us?”
She swallowed and wiped her eyes with a soft, white handkerchief, exactly like the one he kept in his pocket.
“He—he overheard us talking in the library at the Raddingtons’ ball.”
Lucien swore softly. “How angry was he?”
Against his chest, she shook her head. “He wasn’t.”
He frowned, trying to digest her answer. “What did he say?”
“Very little. In fact, he didn’t tell me he knew about that night until last week.”
The same time Warrington had rewritten his will. A coincidence? Probably not. From everything he had heard, the Duke of Warrington had not been the kind of man who allowed anything to happen by coincidence. “Do you know why he waited so long to tell you?
At that, she swallowed and backed out of his embrace. “He had you investigated.”
“He
what
?” Lucien exploded. “What the hell for? Why didn’t he just call me out?”
“Cyrus never believed in violence and did not want to duel.” She shrugged. “As I said, he wasn’t angry.”
“Why did he send me this letter?”
She paused and turned. She began pacing, and Lucien watched the black toes of her slippers peek out from beneath a black flounce trimming the bottom of her dress. “I think you should sit down, Lord Daneridge.”
Was she planning to impart bad news?
She turned her gaze upon him, clearly refusing to say anything more until he had done as she bid. Reluctantly, a mixture of suspicion and apprehension moving through his blood, he sat on an emerald brocade sofa.
Serena took a deep breath, the air lifting her shoulders before she said, “You were right earlier. Cyrus believed, though incorrectly, our liaison should make my safety your responsibility, and he had you investigated because he wanted to ascertain your suitability as a protector.”
“And what was his verdict?” Lucien asked tightly.
She lowered her gaze. “He was quite satisfied, but you needn’t heed it. I hardly hold you accountable. I shall see to myself.”
Lucien cocked a brow in question. “Exactly what is this danger he wrote of so nebulously? I fail to see how this same highwayman could endanger your safety.”
“It’s nothing,” she insisted, her hands moving together. “Cyrus was quite protective of me, perhaps too much so. He often imagined all manner of perils that could befall me.”
Lucien didn’t believe her for an instant. He knew Warrington’s reputation. The man would never have written that note, would never have involved him in Serena’s life, because of an imagined danger. The man, quite simply, had been too shrewd for such nonsense.
And Warrington had been murdered.
The question was, what was Serena hiding?
“How about the truth this time?” He laced his tone with hard-edged command.
She hesitated, and he continued, “Either you tell me, or I shall find out for myself. Don’t think I won’t.”
She clenched frustrated fists. “Cyrus erred in sending you that missive. It means nothing.”
Lucien bolted from the sofa, ignoring the protesting jolt from his knee. “Damn it, he sent me the note for a reason. I want to know why.”
“Do not use that language with me! Whatever you think, I’m still a lady.”
“I’ll use any kind of language I damn well need to get you to tell me the truth.” He grabbed her arm, fingers gripping tightly. “If you’re truly in danger, I want to know.”
“You have no right!”
“I’m making it my right.”
Yanking her arm from his grasp, she held her palms forward to ward him off. “All right. The danger Cyrus wrote of is not from the highwaymen. It’s from the man who hired them.”
She paused, directing her gaze upward. Whether she fought off tears or asked for divine strength, Lucien wasn’t sure.
Finally, she continued. “My husband had no . . . legitimate issue. His nephew, Alastair, the former Earl of Marsden, is his legal heir.”
Lucien vaguely remembered from gossip that Marsden was a slovenly philanderer, a gambler, and a drunk. He had heard whispers that the earl’s creditors were becoming impatient, even physical, in their demands.
“If you know of him at all, you know he is a disgrace to Cyrus’s family,” Serena added.
“I’ve heard something to that effect.”
Serena paused. “I believe Alastair hired these highwaymen to kill my husband for his inheritance.”
Lucien stood unmoving in stunned silence. Did she understand the serious nature of her accusation? Her nervous expression, accompanied by her hand-wringing, told him she did, and believed it, too, with a fear she did not want to admit aloud.
With a deep breath, she forged on. “I also have reason to believe that once Cyrus’s will is read, Alastair will want me dead as well.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hoping for a few private moments to calm her nerves before the reading of Cyrus’s will, Serena arrived at the solicitor’s office in the City twenty minutes early. But when Mr. Higgins’s clerk escorted Serena into the dim, candlelit office, she found the small, cluttered room already littered by Alastair’s foul presence.
Behind her, the clerk carried in a small wooden chair. “Where would you like this, Your Grace?”
Serena pointed to the corner of the tiny room, the one furthest from Alastair, a scant two feet away.
Afterward, the clerk departed, closing her in with Alastair. She directed her gaze perfectly forward, neither looking at the shelves lined with deed boxes to her left, nor the cur slouching in a spread-legged position on another chair to her right.
At her cut, Alastair laughed, an obnoxious, smug chuckle that ripped through her raw grief and boiling anger. Serena sat stiffly in her appointed seat, refusing to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his insidious presence. She consoled herself with the thought that somehow, someway, she would see him in Newgate.
“What’s the matter,
Your Grace?”
Alastair taunted. “Are you offended that people will soon address me as ‘Your Grace’?”
Reluctantly, she turned her frosty gaze in his direction. Keeping a tight rein on her urge to jump from her chair and label him a killer, she lifted her chin. “Nothing that concerns you interests me in the least.”
She returned her stare forward and focused on Mr. Higgins’s bulky desk, nearly swallowed whole by stack after stack of documents. More than anything, she wanted to scratch the victorious, self-satisfied grin off of the face Alastair had for once shaven.
“Everything that concerns me will interest you from now on. You’ll be beholden to
me
for your upkeep.” He paused. “Would you like to see Warrington Castle again?”
Serena clenched both fists and teeth, refusing to answer. She loved the serenity of Sussex, loved the earthy people, the quaint castle village, the majesty of the keep itself. The sadistic bastard knew it.
“I know you want to go back to that pile of stones, but I won’t let you. I’ll deny you admittance, you holier-than-thou bitch!”
He inched to the edge of his chair, leaning forward across the much too small space separating them, into her line of vision. When she resisted meeting his stare, he grabbed her arm. Though Serena tried to twist away, Alastair’s vise-like grip ensured his hold. “Do you hear me? Warrington’s doors will never be open to you again.”
He jerked her closer. “I know your kind. You’re nothing but a fortune-hunting slut. You prostituted yourself into marriage for his money, didn’t you? Did you do your ‘wifely duty’ at his insistence? I’ll wager you did, and that you hated every minute of bedding down with a man old enough to be your grandfather so he could get a brat on you.” Alastair laughed evilly again. “But it never worked. It’s all
mine
now.”
He paused, the pale blue of his eyes resembling ice chips. A malicious smile turned up the corners of his thin mouth. “Unless you choose to share my bed. I could be persuaded to give over a couple of pounds for a good tumble from the Queen of Sanctimony herself.” He laughed. “I would love to know just how much of your mother’s hot blood you have. What do you say?”
Rage erupted inside Serena. She turned to Alastair and slapped his face with all her might, and couldn’t bring herself to be horrified by her own violence. Instead, she clenched her palm, which tingled with both impact and satisfaction, into a fist. “Does that answer your question?”