The Dastardly Duke (20 page)

Julian nearly stumbled. What was it about dancing with this woman that destroyed his sense of timing? Then he realized what had given him pause, what had nearly knocked him off his feet.

Slowly, the truth began to dawn: the country home, the father’s suicide, the difficult relatives who took her in. That wild story he thought he had invented to give her a respectable past was all of it fact—except that she was not related to Charles, but to the encroaching Lord and Lady Rottenham.

She had not always been a whore.

“Why did you not tell me who you were?” he demanded.

Her eyes flashed. “Tell me, Your Grace: would you have believed me if I had said I was wellborn?”

“No,” he said bluntly.

“Then there was no point in telling you, was there?”

Julian did not reply. His brain filled with questions as he tried to piece together the details of her past. Hannah’s gaze was a careful blank, and Julian sensed she was furious. He was scarcely less so. She had lied to him, after all. It would have been better to have known the truth from the beginning. Perhaps he would not have been so ... cavalier in his attitude toward her, or so disdainful.

He turned to another question that had nagged at him ever since he had overheard Lord Rottenham introduce himself as Hannah’s uncle. “How is it that you ended up in that horrible hospital instead of with your family?”

“I do not consider them my family,” she said fiercely. “They took me in after my father killed himself because I had nowhere else to go. At first we got along—providing I kept out of sight when visitors came. When I lost my hearing they quickly discovered they did not want to be saddled with a deaf girl. My aunt said she despaired of making me respectable. One day she simply turned me out.”

She had not chosen the life of a whore, then. It had been thrust upon her. She had had no other choice.

Julian was silent for a moment. “I suppose your relatives’ remarkable change of heart is owing to the fact that you are one of the season’s successes,” he said dryly. “Reflected glory is better than no glory at all.”

Preoccupied, she made no immediate reply. “I must leave Claridge House,” she said finally. “Lady Huffington and Lucy will be angry at my duplicity—as they should be.”

It was the only sensible course of action, but every fiber of him rebelled at letting Hannah leave. Yet he knew she was right: after his family learned the truth, leaving was the only honorable thing to do.

Honor? Truth? He did not know much about either of those virtues. But looking at her somber gray eyes and the determined set of her chin, Julian had the strangest feeling he was about to learn.

Chapter
Eighteen

T
he residents of Claridge House did not make their way to their respective beds immediately after returning from Lady Melbourne’s ball. Instead, as if in response to an unspoken command, they gathered in the duke’s study.

Hannah did not seat herself as Lucy and Lady Huffington had done. With her hands clasped in front of her, she stood before them and explained that she was not Charles’s cousin after all but had been hired by the duke to keep an eye on Lucy. Finally, she told them that she had come to them from the Lock Hospital.

At first, Lucy appeared shocked. Then she recovered sufficiently to coolly inform Julian that, since he had never concerned himself with her behavior in the past, he need not have gone to such lengths. Lady Huffington sat stiffly in her chair but gave no hint of her thoughts.

Julian merely steepled his hands and studied Hannah over his fingertips. He said not a word.

Charles, on the other hand, looked as if he was burning to speak. Taking in the stony faces around the room, he could contain himself no more.

“Hannah has given you the truth as she believes it,” he told the ladies, “but there are facts to which she was not privy.”

Hannah’s gaze flew to Julian, who merely arched a brow, as if daring Charles to continue. The baronet returned him a scowl.

“There was a wager,” Charles began, slanting a sidelong look at Lucy.

“A wager?” Hannah echoed uncertainly. She had all but forgotten the bet he had vaguely described the night he taught her the new dances. She knew it somehow involved his future with Lucy, but could not imagine what it had to do with her.

Charles looked a challenge at Julian. “Why do you not tell them?”

All eyes shot to Julian, Whose face was an unreadable mask. “Are you quite certain, Charles?”

“I have nothing to lose ” the baronet said grimly.

“Very well. Charles and
I
had a wager.” Julian paused for a heartbeat, then added: “I believe it was Charles’s idea.” Charles glowered at him, then eyed Lucy forlornly.

Julian crossed the room and, with seeming insouciance, leaned against the mantelpiece. “Charles wagered that I could not transform a street wench into a lady for the season.”

Holding Hannah’s gaze, he allowed the words to register among his audience.

Lucy and Lady Huffington stared from Julian to Hannah and back again. Lucy gasped. Lady Huffington put her hand to her chest

“Speechless?” Julian queried, a strange light in his eyes. “Yes, I can see that you are. By your expressions of surprise, I
think
it can be safely said that I won the wager.” He turned to Charles. “You owe me your matched bays, do you not?”

“Good God!” This, from Lady Huffington, who eyed the two men in appalled horror.

Lucy’s expression was one of utter revulsion. “How awful!”

Dazed, Hannah sank into the nearest chair. “I do not believe it,” she murmured. She had known that the duke and Charles thought her beneath them, but she had also assumed that they saw her as a person of worth, however small. ’Else why would they have recruited her to help Lucy?

How naive she had been! It had been merely a game, an absurd wager between men so depraved that they had nothing better to do than toy with people’s lives. To them, she was only an object of ridicule, the pawn in their little bet.

It was too much to absorb.

A hand touched her shoulder. Charles stood before her, his eyes filled with remorse. “I am sorry, Hannah. I have no excuse to offer, save the demented state of a desperate man. I was certain Julian could not succeed—that must sound terribly insulting, I know, but there it is.”

“If he lost, you see,” he continued, “then he was to allow
me to...”
He shot a desperate look at Lucy. ‘To elope with his sister,” he finished resolutely.

“What!” Lucy jumped out of her chair. “How could you contemplate such a thing?” she sputtered.

Charles shook his head. “It was unforgivable. Please accept my deepest apologies, Lady Lucille.” Bowing formally, he turned and abruptly strode from the room.

Hannah rose. She could not stay another night in this house where the duke had made her a laughingstock, where her very presence must offend the ladies. “I must see to my packing. If you will excuse me—”

“No,” Lucy protested. “Where would you go?”

“To my aunt and uncle’s,” Hannah answered. “For a few days, anyway. I do not expect they will wish me to remain once they know the truth.”

Lady Huffington stood, though she found it necessary to lean heavily on the arm of the chair. “You may say you have been with me in Yorkshire since last they saw you.
I
do not plan to inform them otherwise, nor will anyone else here.”

Her ste
rn
gaze moved from Lucy to the duke, daring them to disagree. Satisfied at what she saw in their eyes, the countess turned to Hannah. “Tomorrow we will send a message around to Lady Rottenham informing her that you will accept their invitation to come and stay for a while. I
imagine
they will leap at the opportunity.”

Hannah knew very well that her aunt and uncle had extended no such invitation, but she also knew that as long as they believed her under the sponsorship of Lady Huffington, they would be delighted to have her. She could not
imagine
why the countess was being so charitable, but she curtsied deeply and murmured her thanks. Then she fled, half stumbling up the grand staircase to the solitude of her room.

An hour later, her door was flung open. Lucy stood at the threshold, her clear blue eyes searching Hannah’s. Hannah could barely bring herself to meet her gaze.

Lucy gave her a surprisingly gentle smile as she strode into the room. “Please do not think I blame you,” she said, pressing something into her hand. “It is those horrid men who are responsible for all of this.”

Hannah looked down to discover herself in possession of a sheaf of banknotes. “What is this?”

“I know you did it to escape that dreadful place. You must have been desperate for money. I want you to have this. It is a thousand pounds—not much, but all I have on hand at the moment.”

Hannah recoiled.
A thousand pounds? Not much?
It was the world. “I cannot. I have lied to you. I am not deserving of such kindness.”

“You deserve your independence.” Lucy’s determined gaze burned into Hannah’s. “If things do not work out with Lord and Lady Rottenham, I do not want you to have to return to that hospital—or to be dependent on Julian,” she added with a knowing gaze.

“Julian?”

Lucy sighed. “If he has not already offered to make you his mistress, I am sure he will soon. It is just the sort of thing he would do.”

Hannah flushed. Lucy crossed her arms and began to pace the room with growing agitation.

“...
told him what I
think
of his high-handed
ways ...
unforgivably insulting ... demeaning ... both of
us...”
She halted, belatedly remembering that Hannah could not possibly catch her words. “I told him that he wronged you terribly.”

Hannah had to know. “What did he say?”

“Very little, as you might expect.” Lucy made an expression of disgust. “But that is neither here nor there. What is important is that you use this money to keep you safe from men like Julian who would wager over your virtue and treat you as an object of disdain.”

“My
virtue
?” Hannah wondered whether she had understood correctly, or whether Lucy was simply caught up in another of her fanciful notions. “You know where I was. The Lock Hospital is a place for—”

“For diseased prostitutes,” Lucy finished. “You will not persuade me that you are anything like
t
hose women, Hannah.”

Hannah put her head into her hands. “What does it matter what I am?” she said, unable to stop a tear from betraying her. “Whore or virgin, it is all the same to men like your brother.”

Gently, Lucy pulled her hands away, forcing Hannah to look at her. “I have been thinking about that.” Her expression was thought
ful
. “Did you notice how Julian offered no apology tonight?”

“What of it?” Hannah accepted the handkerchief Lucy offered. “It is his way.”

“He is insufferably arrogant,” Lucy conceded cheerfully. “But all the while I was upbraiding him after you left, he sat there with a stoic expression, not even bothering to defend himself. It was almost as if I was but echoing his own thoughts. He would never have tolerated my tirade otherwise.” The duke reproaching himself? The notion was laughable. Hannah suspected that Lucy did not know her brother as well as she thought. She could not know, for example, how their father had nearly destroyed his only son. Julian’s dark mood tonight doubtless had less to do with Hannah than with his own painful dilemma. Hannah decided to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Charles seemed most contrite,” she offered, watching Lucy closely.

Lucy flounced angrily into a char. “That wretched man! All the while I thought he was my friend, he was plotting to ruin my reputation!”

“He was plotting to
marry
you,” Hannah corrected gently. “Perhaps he thought that the only way to get you to take him seriously was to make off with you.”

Bewilderment swept Lucy’s lovely features. “But I was beginning to take him seriously—I think. And anyway, what kind of man would wager the reputation of a woman he claimed to love? What kind of man would subject a woman to such ridicule?”

Hannah sighed, thinking not of Charles’s apologetic features, but about the duke’s dark, enigmatic eyes—which had displayed not a shred of contrition as they held hers.

“I do not know.”

“Oh, Hannah! I shall miss you so!” Lucy rose and threw her arms around Hannah.

“And I shall miss you,” Hannah replied sincerely.

But it was Julian’s brooding gaze that haunted her dreams all night long.

“Charles and Lucy are truly estranged,” the countess said in a mournful tone. “Julian ought to be horsewhipped for agreeing to such a shameful wager. As for
Hannah...”
Her voice trailed off, and she gave a great sigh.

“You do not blame her.” It was a statement, not a question.

“She did not even know of the wager. Doubtless she needed the money he was to pay her—she cannot have had any of her own. She did not say so, but it is clear that Lord and Lady Rottenham severed relations with her after she became deaf. They did not want the burden of her.”

Higgins frowned. “That seems rather heartless.”

“They are shallow, encroaching people,” the countess declared. Her gaze took on a faraway look and she bowed her head. “I am scarcely any better, Higgins,” she said softly, her mind lost in past sorrows.

“Now,
madam...”

“Do you not see the parallels?” the countess demanded fiercely. “From the moment of my daughter’s birth it was clear that she
was ...
defective. I allowed no one outside of Leon, the doctors, and you to know of her existence. My behavior was despicable—just like Hannah’s horrid relatives.”

“You did not turn your daughter out,” he observed quietly.

“No,” Lady Huffington agreed. “But I locked her away in
that
institution.” She put her head in her hands. “God help me. I was ashamed of her, when I should have been ashamed of myself.”

Higgins placed a cup of bracing Darjeeling in front of her. “You thought it was for her own good.”

“So the doctors said, but I was never truly persuaded of that. That is why I finally brought her away from that place.”

Her watery blue gaze met his. “I treasured those few months we had together at home. She played like an angel, Higgins. She could not speak, or laugh, or cry, but when she played the clavichord, none of that was necessary. I thought that it would be all right—that, given time, we could be like any mother and daughter.”

“It was beyond her, madam,” he said softly. “Her music was a beautiful gift, but it was her only gift.”

The countess bowed her head. “It should have been enough for me, but it was not. When she was killed with Leon in that horrible carriage accident, I actually thanked God—” Her voice broke on a sob.

“It is a heavy burden to carry all this time, madam,” Hi
ggins
said gently. “Perhaps you can begin to let it go a little?”

Lady Huffington dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief he proffered. “When I look at Hannah, I see it all over again. She, too, is ... different.”

“Defective?”

The countess stilled. “No. She is simply Hannah.” Her voice cracked. “Why, Higgins? Why did my blindness prevent me from seeing Gwendolyn the same way—as simply my daughter? Why did I view her as one of nature’s horrid mistakes?” Higgins’s hand hovered helplessly above his employer’s trembling shoulders but did not touch them.

“Do you not see?” She shook her head.
“I
was the defective one for not being able to accept my own daughter.”

“You have now,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” She clutched the handkerchief in a tight ball. “Yes, I suppose so.”

For a long moment, the countess was lost in thought. “Poor Hannah,” she said finally. “On her own these last few years. Heaven knows what atrocities she has had to face.”