One Wicked Night (17 page)

Alastair recoiled, slinking back into his chair before turning his hate-filled glare upon her. “You’ll regret that. You
will
share my bed, and be happy to do it, too, if you want to see Warrington Castle again.”

Serena barely restrained the urge to spit in his face. “Judgment day will come before I let you touch me!”

Before Alastair could reply, Higgins’s clerk opened the door. The bespectacled man cleared his throat and carried yet another chair into the room. Alastair retreated to his seat.

Lucien entered the office. Immediately, his unnerving green gaze found her. He studied her, his eyes narrowing in question, then suspicion. A moment later, he swerved his gaze to Alastair. Serena swallowed, certain Lucien would see the red imprint of her hand on the miscreant’s cheek.

He faced Alastair, quiet menace dominating his stance, filling the air around him. Alastair returned his glare, his narrow face holding insulting dismissal.

Lucien continued to stare. Alastair met him, measure for measure. Tense moments dragged on. Serena fidgeted during their strained silence. She felt as if they were holding a contest of wills to see which could force the other to flinch first.

Serena held her breath, wondering what Lucien would do, praying he would not make a scene. She hardly felt relief when Alastair swore and looked away from the silent battle in apparent indifference. The fury behind his facade hardly fooled her. She made a mental note to inform Lucien about Alastair’s vindictive nature.

Without a word, Lucien yanked his chair from the clerk’s hands and slammed its wooden legs against the hard floor directly between her and Alastair. The resulting thump resounded ominously in the small office.

Biting her lip, she turned her gaze to Lucien’s familiar face and read the animosity in the hard edge of his jaw, in the tense set of his broad shoulders beneath a Devonshire brown coat.

For days, she’d tried not to think about the financial aspects of Cyrus’s death as they related to her. She had no doubt he would have thought to provide for her, but agonized that Warrington Castle, the largest of the entailed estates, was beyond her reach forever. And Alastair thought of it as a pile of stones. Dear God, with that attitude, she knew he would neglect it, never put money into its upkeep. He would clearly run it into the ground, and the thought filled her with impotent rage. Legally, she could do nothing.

She also wondered exactly what Cyrus had left her to warrant sending Lucien such a dire warning regarding her safety.

Mr. Higgins sat behind the cluttered desk and cleared his throat, his small mouth pinched tightly in disapproval. “Before I start, I must tell you I’ve summoned you to my office for this reading because His Grace requested it, despite the fact I told him it was highly irregular. And I apologize, Your Grace,” he said to Serena, “but surely you know how unusual it is to have a woman present at such a time, wife or not.” Serena made no answer, and Higgins continued as if he’d never expected one. “However, I will honor his request and summarize the will’s contents, as it is a very lengthy document. Of course, it will be made available to you upon request.

“First, His Grace bequeaths five hundred pounds to every servant for every five years of their employment.”

Alastair grunted. “Get on with the important details, man.”

Brows raised, Mr. Higgins continued. “And to Waterson, my valet of thirty years, I leave an additional two thousand pounds, plus the aforementioned amount, as well as the cottage in Wales.”

Alastair squirmed in his chair, a whispered curse littering the air.

Mr. Higgins cleared his throat. “To Catherine, Madeline, and Anne, my three natural daughters, I leave each twenty-five thousand pounds in trust with their mother, Maria, until their majority at twenty-one, plus an additional ten thousand pounds each for their dowry, should they choose to wed. If not, they will each receive that sum upon the occasion of their twenty-fifth birthday.”

Alastair shot up out of his chair, his face a mottled red. “Over a hundred thousand pounds to his by-blows? That’s bloody ridiculous!”

Suddenly, Mr. Higgins paused. Serena looked up from her lap and scanned the room. Alastair sat perched on the edge of his chair, his round face flushed and tense. Mr. Higgins appeared thoughtful, as if trying to choose his next words. Lucien leaned back in his chair, his casual posture doing little to hide his interest.

After several silent moments, the solicitor ventured, “This next portion of his will, His Grace rewrote just a week before his death. It’s most odd, I must say.”

“What is it?” Alastair demanded to know, his face a bright, unbecoming red, his eyes narrow.

Glaring at Alastair, Mr. Higgins said, “To you, he left the entailed estates of Warrington Castle, Coleshill in Berkshire, and Eltham Lodge in Kent, as well as the entailed family jewels.”

“What else?” Alastair demanded. “How much money?”

Higgins ignored Alastair and turned to Serena. “Your Grace, again, I find this most odd, but your husband left all other family funds, all liquid assets, all five unentailed properties, including the London town house, and everything within each residence, exclusively to you. The value of your portion of the estate is an estimated four hundred thousand pounds.”

Serena gasped and closed her eyes. Cold dread pervaded every muscle, every pore. This was the reason Cyrus had written Lucien asking him to protect her; Cyrus had known exactly how enraged—and deadly—Alastair would be upon hearing this.

As if to prove her and Cyrus correct, Alastair exploded from his chair. “
All
the money? He left his whole bloody fortune to that whore?” He whirled on Serena. “No doubt you learned from your slut of a mother how to mesmerize a man, how to squeeze his cock with your tight little—”

“That’s enough.” Lucien’s voice sliced through the thick animosity vibrating in the stifling air. Alastair fell silent, his wild eyes blazing hate at Serena.

Alastair turned his malicious gaze to Lucien.

Higgins glared at Alastair. “Please sit. There is more.”

The brute turned his attention to the solicitor. He stormed across the minuscule room to lean nose-to-nose with Mr. Higgins. “I’ll contest the will. The old fool was insane.” His gaze shifted to Serena, stabbed her with a hate-filled glare, then returned to the solicitor. “Or bewitched.”

“Sit down,” Higgins commanded. Once Alastair had reluctantly done so, the solicitor explained, “If you contest, as His Grace assumed you might, you forfeit all rights to the entailed lands. Those would instead to go charity.”

Higgins cleared his throat, casting a disdainful glare upon Alastair before turning his attention to Serena. “Now, I must apologize in advance for this indelicacy, Your Grace, but I am required to ask if there is any possibility that you are . . . oh, how shall we say”—he formed a tight smile of embarrassment—“perhaps with child?”

For a moment, Serena didn’t know how to respond. The possibility she was indeed pregnant existed, but she knew, as Lucien would, exactly who had fathered any babe she might be carrying. She was suddenly aware of three sets of eyes riveted on her. The weight of Lucien’s stare pulled her gaze to his. Briefly, she met the hard probe of his green eyes, demanding her answer. She couldn’t respond, not honestly, not here—and not before Alastair.

Knowing a prolonged stare would arouse Alastair’s suspicions, her gaze skittered back to Mr. Higgins. Instantly, Lucien’s casual posture vanished, replaced by an on-the-edge-of-his-chair pose that told her he would exact answers, whether she wanted to give them or not, as soon as he could orchestrate a moment alone with her. And she had no idea what she would say, when, or even
if
, she would trust him with the truth.

But the announcement of an impending heir would buy her and the Bow Street Runner time to prove Alastair’s involvement in his uncle’s death. It would also save Warrington and the other entailed estates from Alastair’s cruel ruin and the dukedom from scandal and disgrace. It wouldn’t be a lie . . . exactly; she wasn’t certain of the truth herself yet. She would worry later about the consequences if she proved barren. She sighed. Cyrus would have wanted her to do this.

Judiciously avoiding any eye contact with Lucien, she prayed his shock wouldn’t give away her ploy or reveal her sin.

Taking a calming breath, Serena announced, “I am with child.”

****

With child? Yes,
his
child. Lucien curled his fingers around the arms of the wooden chair, using every ounce of his strength to restrain the turmoil within him.

Alastair’s voice ripped the momentary quiet. “That’s a lie!”

Was it?
Mr. Higgins didn’t seem to put any stock into Alastair’s doubt.

“Splendid news,” he vaguely heard Higgins say to Serena. “Might I ask when the babe is due?”

Serena paused, then whispered, “The middle of March.”

Quickly, Lucien subtracted nine months, and swallowed a lump of incredulity. The child’s conception would have been roughly eight weeks ago, in June—exactly when he had taken the duchess to his bed.

He fixed his intent gaze on Serena’s delicate profile, willing her to look his way, to either confirm or deny his suspicions. She did nothing.

“In light of your news, Your Grace,” Higgins began, “all entailed estates and jewels will be kept under my executorship until the birth of the child and the determination of its gender.”

“I will not have this!” Alastair yelled. “This . . . this fortune-hunting slut and her brat cannot steal what is mine!”

“I’m afraid that until we learn the child’s gender, you have no other recourse. It is the law, my lord,” Higgins responded, barely hiding smug satisfaction.

“Lord Daneridge,” Higgins directed his speculative gaze to Lucien. “This is where you are mentioned in the duke’s will.”

Lucien’s entire body tensed, excruciatingly suspended from an invisible string that the solicitor’s next words could snap in two. Good God! He’d just learned Serena carried his child. What now?

“Indeed?” He forced a casual note into his voice.

“Yes, this is the oddest portion of the will. His Grace indicated that, should his wife be breeding and the child is male, he wished you to act as the new heir’s trustee until the child’s eighteenth birthday.”

For long moments, no one spoke. Lucien himself was too stunned. What kind of muddled thinking had led Warrington to this provision? An instant later, Lucien realized that brilliant thinking was his answer. Warrington hadn’t trusted his nephew to protect the child’s interest in the family fortune, but he could trust the child’s biological father. And Lucien knew he could never legally prove he had sired the child. Because Serena had been the duke’s wife at the time of conception, the law assumed the babe was Warrington’s spawn and heir.

Damn! Warrington had him well trapped, and from the wide-eyed expression bursting across Serena’s shocked face, Lucien could see she realized it, too. He would be shut out of his own child’s life except in the most impersonal ways, unless . . .

No. It was an unacceptable solution. Hell, it bordered on unthinkable. So why was he thinking it?

Alastair rose. The man’s silent fury and threatening gaze first fell upon Lucien, then Serena. “This isn’t over yet, you whore. I won’t let you take what is mine!” he vowed before storming out of Higgins’s office with a slam of the door.

Mr. Higgins cleared his throat, and Lucien was vaguely aware of the little man speaking to Serena. She responded softly, and the sound of her sensual, husky voice permeated the shell of Lucien’s shock.

Higgins turned his back for a moment to return Cyrus’s will to its designated box; several just like it lined the room’s many shelves. Lucien’s gaze swerved to Serena.

He watched her swallow. She did that when she was nervous. Her hands trembled, and her breathing was altogether too shallow. Her exquisite profile bespoke tension. Her face was so taut, Lucien felt certain that if he touched her cheek, she would shatter as surely as glass.

“Look at me.” He whispered the demand.

She bit her lower lip, a sign of anxiety, and Lucien felt another jolt of pure alarm that catapulted him from his numbing shock. She turned wide, smoky eyes on him in a face much too pale.