The Dastardly Duke (16 page)

It had been seductively easy to slip into the role of innocent debutante. The dancing lessons upon which her aunt had insisted years ago, the dictums about fans and feathers and balls and not dancing more than twice with the same man—all of it had come back to her.

But she was not the innocent she had once been. Circumstances had intervened, changing what surely would have been a very ordinary life into something strange and isolating. Her father had died, she had lost her hearing, and her relatives had turned her out. Those events were written upon her as surely as the notes of Mozart’s music.

Hannah knew she would never truly belong to the
ton.
When the countess and Lucy learned the truth about her—as they undoubtedly would one day—they would despise her. They would be right to do so. She was not proud of deceiving them. She was not proud of what she had become.

Even her scheme to bring Lucy and Charles together—the only ennobling part of this masquerade—had borne no fruit. To be sure, Lucy had taken the night air with Charles at Lady Fairchild’s ball, but—save for the flush on her cheeks which Hannah attributed to the night breezes—she had returned looking unaffected by her tete-a-tete. Indeed, she had been laughing so gaily that Hannah had begun to wonder whether she and
Charles would ever find anything together as profound and serious as love.

Taking a deep breath, Hannah returned her attention to the Mozart variations she had chosen for tonight’s performance. With a wistful look at the clavichord across the room, she began to play.

A hand on her shoulder brought her up short. She looked up to meet the duke’s dark, brooding gaze. “What is that piece?” he demanded.

“Something my mother played for me as a child,” she stammered in surprise. “I believe it was an old French nursery rhyme.”

“My own mother used to sing that very song.” To her amazement, he sat on the bench next to her. “She was French,” he said after a pause. There was an odd pensiveness about him.

French.
Hannah’s eyes grew wide. The duke would have been a young boy during the Terror. But surely he and his mother had not been in France during that terrible time. In the next breath, he answered her unspoken question.

“We lived in Paris. After my mother’s parents were executed, she took me to her old nurse’s home in the country. We lived there until my mother grew ill and died.”

That night in his study—when he revealed that he lost his mother at the age of six—Hannah had assumed that he had been living in England at the time. Now it appeared that he had been alone, save for an old nurse, in a country to
rn
apart by bloodthirsty madmen. Yet he had not met his father until the age of fifteen. Why had the man not come for him earlier? Why had he left his motherless young son to the mercies of a bloody revolution? Hannah dared not ask, but the duke seemed to read her mind.

“Foolishly, my mother believed that he would send for us,” he said, his eyes filled with the sardonic anger that seemed to be a permanent part of him. “But he had only married her for her dowry. When she lost everything, he no longer wanted her.”

“But he was a duke,” she protested. “Why would he need her wealth?”

A cynical brilliance shone in his eyes. “So as not to be dependent on his sister. Aunt Eleanor married a wealthy earl who
could have bought and sold my father several times. When my father inherited the dukedom, the estate’s financial circumstances were such that he was forced to apply to her for funds. He would have hated that.”

“And so he needed a rich wife,” Hannah said slowly.

“Yes. He met my mother on his Grand Tour. Her wealth and lineage went back centuries, to kings. And so he wanted her.”

“But you were his son,” Hannah protested, appalled. “How could he not want you?”

“Careful, Miss Gregory.” His lips curled scornfully. “You will accuse me of playing upon your sympathies again.”

Hannah flushed. “I did not mean—”

“It is unimportant.” He ran his hands idly over the keys.

His long, tapered fingers easily spanned more than an octave. “I did not know you played,” Hannah said.

“I had a few lessons as a child, but I am not quite in your universe.”

The compliment brought a flush to her cheeks. “Did your mother teach you?” she asked.

He shook his head.
“Her nurse did. But I had barely learned the scales when I was shipped off to my mother’s sister at Sommersby Castle.”

“Were there no instruments in the castle?”

He laughed. “The earls of Sommersby were notorious fighters. The only instruments in Sommersby Castle were those of war. Suffice it to say, they fired a small boy’s imagination more than any clavichord.”

“It sounds rather gruesome.”

‘There is nothing quite so exciting as learning to wield a sword that belonged to Charlemagne. My father was pleased, when at last he came to fetch me, to discover that I could fight with the best of them. It was the only time he took pleasure in my existence.”

His bald assessment took her aback. “I am sorry.”

“Do not be.” He shrugged. “My father did not care a damn about me, nor I him. He simply needed an heir because Lucy’s mother, the wife that at last brought him all the wealth he needed, died without producing one. I was all he had.”

The ice in his gaze made Hannah shiver. “I did not then realize the depths of his dislike,” he continued, a faraway look in his eyes. “I did not think to question my right to the title until
he suggested on his deathbed that he had never married my mother and that he had not been the first to sample her charms—implying, of course, that I might not even be his.”

Hannah blinked. “What?”

His smile held no mirth. “Shocking, is it not? I have spent not a little time trying to disprove his ugly assertion. As far as I can determine, there is no record in all of France of any lawful union between my mother and father.”

“But many records belonging to the aristocrats must have been obliterated during the Terror,” she pointed out.

He shrugged. “Perhaps. One would have thought that my father would have kept a set of documents himself.”

Hannah brightened. “Perhaps they are here.”

“I have looked—not only here, but at Sommersby Castle in the hope that my late aunt might have hidden them away for safekeeping. It they exist, they have vanished. All I found here was a collection of Aunt Eleanor’s sermons, which I have not mustered the endurance to study.”

Hannah shook her head. “How te
rri
ble for you.”

His gaze glittered with unnatural brilliance. “My father granted me a dukedom and then made certain I would take no pleasure in it because of the dilemma he forced on me: Would I renounce the title and all its wealth, in the process branding my poor deceased mother as a whore? Or, since no one else knew my secret, would I simply continue to live a lie? As you can see, I chose the latter. I imagine he knew I would.”

“And that it would make you miserable,” she whispered, horrified at such paternal cruelty.

“I am not miserable, Miss Gregory, just bored. Although lately, less so.” Amid the cynicism, his gaze held a reluctant amusement.

“How can you take so cavalier an attitude to such a thing?” she demanded.

“I imagine it is a bit like your profession. One learns not to notice the degrading part.”

Eyes alit with irony, he gestured to the music. “May I assist you with the pages? I do wish you to excel at tonight’s performance.”

“Charles! We have not seen you for days. I thought you had absented yourself from town.” Lucy quickly returned her attention to the scene in the music room, which she had been watching with great interest from the hall. “Julian and Hannah look so contented there on the piano bench. I do believe I hear love blooming amid the arpeggios.”

“I did not come to discuss Julian’s romantic prospects,” he said tersely.

Lucy shot him a sidelong gaze. “Yes, of course. You are here to visit Julian. I suppose you mean to call him away from Hannah’s side, but I hope you will not. They need time alone together.”

“I did not come to see Julian. I came to see you.”

“Me?” Lucy blinked.

“Is there somewhere we can be private?”

“I do not think there is anyone in the drawing room,” she replied, eyeing him curiously.

Without a word, Charles took her hand and pulled her into the adjacent room. Then he took a deep breath. “I wish to apologize for my actions of the other night.”

“The other night?” She toyed with the knots in the fringe of her shawl. “I do not know what you mean
...”

“The kiss, by Jove,” he said in exasperation. “I kissed you out on the terrace—or do you not recall?”

“Of course I recall,” she said indignantly. “You need not shout.”

Charles sighed heavily. “I am sorry—” he began.

“Do not apologize,” she said quickly. “I am not one of those silly girls who does not recognize a joke. I know you were just trying to put me in my place, just like you used to pull my braids when I would show off years ago. It is what I deserved for prattling on about how many dances I had danced. My vanity was showing, even though I did not mean—”

‘There. I knew it,” he said morosely. “You thought I was joking.”

“But of course,” she replied brightly. “Why else would you do such a thing?”

Charles gritted his teeth. ‘Tell me, Lucy: Was there something funny about my kiss? Did it greatly amuse you? Did it
feel
like a joke?”

Lucy furrowed her brow. “I do not know,” she said slowly. “I have little experience along those lines. Lord Haversham kissed me once in the Lady Evelyn’s maze, and the Marquess of Devonshire bestowed a rather wet kiss on me during Lord Peterson’s scavenger hunt. Then there was the occasion of Lady Jersey’s masquerade, when I stumbled into a darkened pantry on the way to the ladies’ retiring room and some gentleman followed me inside so that he could kiss me anonymously in the darkness. Now that I think on it, I never discovered who he was.”

Her recitation brought a look of appalled horror to Charles’s face. “You are quite free with your kisses, it would seem.”

“Oh, no,” she assured him. “I have never kissed anyone
back,
you see. Well, perhaps that gentleman in the pantry. There was something rather exciting about not knowing who it was kissing me. I am afraid I got
carried
away.”

“I stand in awe of your vast experience.”

Lucy frowned. “I do not like your tone. Are you accusing me of loose behavior? It was nothing, really—only a few kisses.”

“As mine was nothing.”

She stared at him. “Pray, what did you wish it to be?”

“Anything but an occasion for giggling.”

“I do not understand.”

Charles put his hands on her shoulders. “Sometimes I wish to shake you until all of the foolishness is gone. Have I not asked you to marry me three times?”

“Yes, but—”

“But I was only joking, I suppose. Being kind or polite.” His voice bore a dangerous edge. “Or did you think I was after your fortune?”

“Oh, no!” Lucy protested, horrified. “You would never do that. You are a dear friend.”

“The precise root of the problem, as I see it,” Charles muttered.

Lucy frowned. “But I should never wish to lose your friendship.”

“It is Julian and I who are friends, Lucy.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I have always been the pesky little sister underfoot. I did not think you minded. All those times you helped me learn to fish and to ride, when Julian was holed up in his study learning the business of the estate. Do you remember the time you helped me bury Peaches?”

Charles frowned. “That yappy little dog?”

“She was my pet,” Lucy replied indignantly. “I thought you cared about her as much as I did. Otherwise, why would you bother to help me with her funeral?”

“I cared about
you,
Lucy. Not that damned dog.” He touched her chin, tilting it upward so that she must look into his eyes and see the message there.

“Oh.” Lucy blinked, flushing. “Then you were never truly my friend?” Her voice cracked, and Charles suddenly realized how lonely her childhood must have been without a mother and father. And how important a friendship with her brother’s friend must have been. His expression softened.

“I have always been your friend, Lucy,” he said gently. “But I have always wanted to be more.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek. “I am afraid, Charles.”

“Of what?”

“Of what ‘more’ you speak of. Of venturing beyond the boundaries of friendship and discovering that I cannot go back and reclaim what was left behind.”

“You are thinking too much, Lucy.”

“You see?” She shook her head. “That is the difficulty with us. Love should not involve so much thinking and talking. It should be right from the outset. It should sweep one away and make thinking quite impossible. That is what I want.”

“And you do not think you could come to view me in such a light?”