The Duke (3 page)

“A fond thought, I can't deny, seeing his shrouded old bones heaving out of that deep hole I buried him in. But ye can't be blind to the advantages it would bring ye. What do ye say, Percy?”

“Advantages? Mayhap it would bring me a better
chance of wedding an heiress, but it would gain me nothing of anything here. The English duke would still have claim to Penderleigh and the title, would he not?”

“Perhaps, my boy, but ye then would also have full claim to the Robertson name. I haven't liked Davonan's son called the Robertson bastard. It's turned my innards. Come, Percy, don't give me your devil's stare. Ye know that I've never been one to mince matters or deny a truth. Who can know what may happen if ye become legitimized? Well, do ye want it or not?”

Percy thought of the rather squat, myopic Joanna MacDonald, daughter and heiress of a wealthy merchant in Edinburgh. Unless his instincts had grossly misled him—which they hadn't, he was sure of that—she was much enamored of him. Her priggish father wouldn't be able to deny him. He smiled at lady Adella, his full, sensuous lips curving into a boyish grin that had brought many an unheeding female to heel and then to his bed. “Aye, Grandmama, I should very much like to be legitimate. I suspect even my creditors would be properly impressed. I do wonder what would happen to my claim to Penderleigh if my name were secured.”

“Mayhap ye should wonder what would happen were the English duke not to produce an heir?”

“Or if the English duke were to fall ill, say, and not survive?”

Lady Adella regarded her grandson with a malicious eye. “Och, my boy, the English duke is, I believe, a young man, not above twenty-eight years old—too young to depart this world without some outside assistance. As to heirs, the duke may already be wed and have a nursery full of hopeful brats. If not, there's always the hopeful uncle or cousin. There's always an heir somewhere in the woodwork.”

“Acquit me of murderous designs, lady. I have
raised a question of speculative interest, nothing more. It's but a game we're playing. A game you started.”

Lady Adella snorted in disgust. “Aye, and a question our dear Claude's son, Bertrand, would ask were he not so lily-livered. One illegitimate grandson and one disinherited grand nephew. Angus be damned. He was always a fool and stubborn as a donkey leashed to a hay cart. I will tell ye, Percy, if I make ye legitimate and reinherit Claude and Bertrand, the English duke might very well find his soup poisoned even if he doesn't budge from London.”

He still felt the shock of surprise to hear this old woman speak so ruthlessly, with such spite, and the good lord knew he should be used to it by now. “Ye speak nonsense, Grandmama. Angus would never have reinherited Claude and Bertrand. Ye make me legitimate, and I will be the one to have claim after the English duke.”

“It brings bile to your throat to think about Claude and Bertrand, eh, lad? It's nothing more than dust in the wind yer claim would be were I to reinherit Douglass's son.” She shrugged her thin shoulders, all the while watching him closely. “Time will tell, Percy, about yer claim—time and me, of course.”

For a moment Percy gazed at Lady Adella in dumb surprise. Why, the old woman is like a great bloated spider, he thought, weaving her web and taunting me to come into it. Does she want all of us at each other's throats? Rather, he quickly corrected himself, does she want me at their throats? He consciously pulled himself away. For the moment, he hoped that she would make him legitimate.

He rose and clasped Lady Adella's hand.

“I will stay, if ye don't mind, until all this business is straightened out. When I return to Edinburgh, I have a fancy to carry my legitimate name with me.”

“As ye will, Percy,” Lady Adella said. “Tell Crabbe
to have MacPherson fetch here on the morrow, and I shall tell the old buzzard what to do.”

“Aye, Grandmama,” Percy said, and turned to take his leave.

“Percy.”

He turned.

“Brandy will have nothing to do with ye. She's much too much the child yet and doesn't know what use to make of men.”

She saw the suppressed gleam in his eyes as she nodded dismissal, and wondered if he knew how much he was like the grandfather he hated so much.

Alone, Lady Adella parted her lips in a smug grin that showed most of her upper teeth. She knew something of the law, and now that Angus had finally left the world to take up residence with the devil, she fully intended to stir the legal pot to boiling.

Old MacPherson would do her bidding, no fear about that, and the courts would fall in line. The Robertson name still wielded power. She would legitimize Percy and, aye, perhaps even reinherit Claude and Bertrand. As to what the English duke would think about her machinations, she shrugged her meager shoulders. He was, after all, safely stored away in faraway London. She was certain he would stay there.

She gazed down at the small square pillow at her feet, Brandy's pillow. Her granddaughter, with the curves and hollows of a woman's body. Lady Adella thwacked her cane in annoyance. Three granddaughters, none of them with any prospects of marriage and even less dowry. Absurd to believe that the unknown English duke, although now the girls' nominal guardian, would freely part with some of his guineas for some unknown Scottish relatives. Even though she admitted to herself that it was an outlandish idea, she
did not relinquish it. Time would tell, and she would be there to help in the telling.

At least Percy would be able to fend for himself once she had seen to legitimizing him. Handsome and carefree he was—exactly as she had been once, many a long year ago. Drat Davonan anyway for not at least giving Percy's mother his name. But then Davonan had always been odd. She remembered how delighted she'd been to hear that Davonan had even lain with a woman. But it hadn't lasted, of course. Not a year later, he'd gone off with a brawny Irishman, leaving her to care for his small, helpless son. She wondered idly, with no pain now, if Davonan had really gone willingly to the guillotine with his French lover, a dissolute
comte
who had deserved to have his worthless head severed from his decadent body. At least Percy had not inherited
that
tendency from his father.

Lady Adella slewed her head about toward the clock. Time to call Old Marta to assist her to dress for dinner. She gave a sudden cackle of laughter. Old Marta indeed. A saucy slut that one had been.

Thank the Lord Angus had never gotten
her
with child.

B
ertrand Robertson was chewing thoughtfully on the end of his quill as he sat hunched over a thick ledger. His only servant, the sharp-eared Fraser, had just told him that Percy had returned. Damned blighter. What the hell did he want this time? Stupid question. Money, of course. Well, there was no money for him, not a bloody
sou,
so let him flatter Lady Adella's beautiful eyebrows and sharp wit. It made no difference. Of course, he wouldn't be surprised if the old woman lied to him and made him all sorts of promises. He wouldn't put anything past her.

He forced himself back to the column of numbers, neatly entered row upon row in the account book. Stark numbers. Very bad numbers, their sums leaving his belly cramping.

Penderleigh had lost ground this year, what with Angus dying bringing his creditors demanding payment, and the black-faced sheep's wool bringing much less than expected at Sterling market. The English duke wasn't going to like it one bit.

He ran ink-stained fingers through the shock of dark red hair that fell habitually over his forehead. A disinherited grand nephew he might be, but old Angus had known his worth and trusted him to eke out every possible groat from the estate. His eyes burned as he
gazed down at the scraggly numbers, little useless numbers, and he felt again a stab of real fear. Angus was dead and now he might very well find both himself and his gouty father tossed unceremoniously off Penderleigh land. How would he be able to convince the man of business the English duke would send that he had tried to force economics, indeed, that the castle and dower house were in a fair way of crumbling about their ears because he'd not allowed funds to make repairs? That was in a fair way to being a good jest. What funds? It hadn't been all that difficult.

He glanced up as Fraser, his step soundless despite his stout body, poked his round face into the small, sunny room and coughed discreetly. Bertrand looked up and nodded.

“Master Bertrand, yer father's just heard tell of Master Percival's a-comin' to the castle. He be in a tither, if ye ken me meanin'.”

“Aye, Fraser, I ken all too well. Tell him I shall join him presently. Tell him not to worry about Percy. Tell him that Percy is the least of our problems. Wait, I'll tell him all that. Don't you worry, Fraser.”

“Och, no matter what ye say, it's still a bad time, wi' Master Percival bein' aboot.” Fraser shook his grizzled head, his enduring smile fading a bit.

“Don't worry, Fraser,” Bertrand said again. “Percival is naught but a buzzing, bothersome fly. It's the English duke, our new master, who will tighten the collars about our necks. It just might be the killing blow. Then all of us will be looking about for a way to feed ourselves. Do you know how to fish, Fraser?”

“A bit. I love abalone, but I can't catch it. Ye're right, Master Bertrand, we would be in a bad way if what ye say comes true. Ye really believe that the dook be like the Black Cumberland?”

Bertrand laughed humorlessly as he rose from his chair. “This isn't seventeen forty-six, Fraser, and the
English duke wasn't born yet. Doubtless, though, he's a proud man and, like all the English, disdainful of the Scots. Ye know, of course, that it's likely he'll dispatch one of his London men here to grub about and accuse us of stealing from him.”

Fraser's intelligent, close-set brown eyes, as round as his face, narrowed, but he remained silent. He said finally, “Not a blithering thing we can do aboot it now, master. Ye'd best go on to yer father's room. I canna be sure, but my ears tell me he's a-pokin' his stick on the floor. I'll hae some tea brewin' fer ye an' bring it.”

Bertrand left the book room with a lagging step. As he mounted the decrepit stairs to the upper floor of the dower house and his father's stuffy bedchamber, he continued to ponder his problems, and with each step he became more depressed.

“Well, don't just stand there, Bertie, come in, come in. By the time it takes Fraser to fetch ye, I am near to forgetting what I wanted. Come in, boy, come in. So what can ye tell me? Have we more money now than we did in the morning?”

“How are ye feeling, Father? Ye're looking well. No, we haven't a groat more. This afternoon looks just as bad as this morning did.” Bertrand crossed the bare floor to where his father, Claude, sat wrapped from head to toe in a heavy tartan blanket next to a roaring peat fire. The room was surely hotter than the fires of Hades. Bertrand wiped his brow. In another ten minutes he'd want to dip his head in a bowl of cold water. In another twenty minutes he'd have a headache that would send him to the cliffs to stare over the sea and gather himself back together again in the stiff cool breezes. His father was a trial. He couldn't seem to remember when his father hadn't been a trial.

“Ye have eyes in yer head, Bertie. Look ye. My foot's the size of a bloated, rotting dung heap, no
thanks to ye. And it's cold in this bloody room. Ye're to speak to Fraser, tell him that the cold pains me something terrible. We need more peat. Have him fetch more peat.”

“I'll speak to Fraser, Father.” Bertrand sat back in the chair, which smelled of long ago clothes and pipes, and waited patiently for his father to get to the point. He prayed what his father wanted would be said before his headache arrived in full force.

“Move yer head a bit to the left, Bertie, ye're blocking out my sunlight. Not that I like sunlight all that much, but it warms my bones, and the good Lord knows that bones need to be kept warm or they'll buckle and that's the end to a man.”

Bertrand shifted himself in the cracked leather wing chair across from his father. He ran his hand over his forehead, for the blast of heat from the fireplace was already making him sweat. The headache was coming soon. A man shouldn't have headaches, but what could he do? He hated this bloody room that was like a furnace.

Claude said, “Ye know, of course, that Percy is come back. The vulture swooping to gnaw the bones afore old Angus is worm-picked in his grave.”

Bertrand sighed. “Father, it makes no difference what Percy does. There's naught but bones for him to gnaw, so much the worse for us. Ye may believe me that Percy is the least of our worries.”

Claude yelled, “Don't ye treat me like a dim-witted chirper, my fine young man. Did ye know that Adella plans to legitimize yer fine bastard cousin?”

“That's ridiculous, Father. I'll thank ye not to weave tales like that. Whoever told ye such a buffoonish story? It's bloody nonsense, nothing more, just nonsense. Forget about it.” Bertrand realized that his hands were fisted around the arms of the chair. Damn, he forced himself to relax. He flexed his hands.

His father hunched himself forward. A momentary spasm of pain deepened the myriad wrinkles in his cheeks.

“Crabbe told me, Master Prim an' Prissy.” He enjoyed the whitening of his son's face. “Crabbe is a good man—minds others' business and keeps his ears to the ground. He's owed me for years, but that's another story. Ye know what that means, don't ye, lad?”

He'd kill the old woman, he'd kill her. Bertrand shrugged and managed a show of indifference. “It simply means that my esteemed great aunt is growing more eccentric.”

“Ha! She's as mean as that pug she used to shove in all our faces.”

“You mean the one that pissed on your feet, Father?”

“That's the one, the little bitch. Lady Adella is that crazy and she gets crazier as each day passes. She's mean-spirited and petty and a bloody witch. Have I covered it all?”

So that's where you got it, Bertrand thought, but he didn't say it aloud, just shrugged. “Well, she's entitled, since she's older than death. And, aye, you covered it well.

“Did I tell you that when Angus was near the end, he tried to pay me to kill her so she'd be dead before he was? I told him he didn't have any money. He told me I should want to do it for free since she was such a harpy. I'm forced to say that I laughed, Father. I was afraid that he was going to breathe his last right then, but he didn't, of course. He did hang on longer than I thought he would.”

“Ye never told me that before, damn yer eyes, Bertie, not that it makes one whit of difference. But a son is supposed to tell his father everything, do ye hear me? Everything. Did he really try to get you to kill the old bitch? Aye, I know ye never lie, Bertie,
more's the pity. But that was then and this is now. Take off yer blinders, Bertie. Yer cousin will now be next in line to Penderleigh if the English duke doesn't yet have heirs. Ye must know what that means.”

Claude achieved the result he'd perversely desired. His calm, reasonable son—he'd finally pushed him over the edge. Bertrand said between gritted teeth, his voice heavy with age-old bitterness, “That bloody bastard. He's taken so much money already from Penderleigh for his own frivolous amusements in Edinburgh. Damn him and damn Lady Adella, it's not just. Maybe I should have strangled the old witch, damn her eyes. Old Angus was right. The world would be a better place without her and her damned machinations.”

Claude leaned back with a crooked grin and tapped his fingertips together. “It's good to see that ye've got red blood in yer veins, Bertie. Sometimes I've wondered if yer mother didn't play me false.”

Bertrand just stared at his father, baffled at the way he thought, the way he reasoned, the casual cruelty that came out of his mouth.

“And just what would ye say if I told ye Lady Adella also intends to reverse my father's disinheritance?”

For an instant Bertrand's eyes blazed as brightly as his father's. Penderleigh. God, how he loved every crumbling, damp turret, every damp stone that had been soaked for centuries with the heavy air from the North Sea. He'd give his soul for Penderleigh. Hell, he'd already given a good portion of it. Aye, he'd already given everything he could, and it wasn't enough. Ah, but if his father were reinherited, perhaps someday he, Bertrand Douglass Robertson, would be the Earl of Penderleigh. He, Bertrand Robertson, would be the master. He would do what pleased him. He wouldn't have to play games with that old witch.
Aye, all the pleasure as well as the responsibility would be his. The joy of it took his breath away.

Painfully he brought himself back to the grim present, to hear his father say, “Nay, Lady Adella is a deep old witch, and she'll play and keep us both dangling in the wind and laugh as she does it. For the first time I don't want the old woman to die. I'm glad Angus couldn't convince ye to kill her. If she does die before she sees that we're reinherited, then it's all over for us, Bertie, all over. I think it highly likely, though, that she will do it. If she lifts dishonor off one Robertson head, she might as well lift it from ours as well. Surely she values us more than she does that blackguard Percy.”

God, sometimes it hurt to be logical, to be practical, but Bertrand managed to say in his even, calm voice, “One can't make plans with suppositions, Father. Even if she were to reinherit us, it's likely not to gain us a thing. The English duke is bound to have heirs.”

“Ye talk like a man who's a miser with his optimism, Bertie. First we must lift the curse of our disinheritance, then we shall see.” The old man gave him a near-toothless smile. Odd that Lady Adella had more teeth than Claude, who was twenty-five years her junior.

“Ye know as well as I do that she loves her games and her tricks. She's just stirring the pot like MacBeth's witches. I don't want you to dream about something that won't ever happen, Father.”

“Mayhap ye're right, and it is foolish to trust her. But there is heavy guilt upon her soul. Methinks she must make amends afore she dies. I would not doubt that she helped old Angus to his eternal reward, for she could do naught about either us or Percy as long as the old bastard lived.”

Now his father was accusing his own aunt of murder? “
Her
guilt, ye say, Father? Will ye not tell me
now why our line was severed? Why did Great-grandfather disinherit Grandfather Douglass?” Bertrand realized he was holding his breath and forced himself to exhale slowly, very slowly. He'd wondered for so very long, wondered and wondered, but his father had always told him it was none of his business, and usually added, “Ye nosy little blighter.”

Claude stared for the longest time into the roaring fire. “Nay, boy, I can't tell ye. Mayhap afore I die ye will know the truth of the matter.”

“I asked her once, ye know,” Bertrand said, sitting forward, his hands crossed between his knees.

“Ye do sometimes surprise me, Bertie. What did Adella say to that?”

“She threw her cane at me and screamed for me to get out. I was afraid she was going to croak on the spot, but naturally, she didn't.”

“Perhaps,” Claude said slowly, staring at his son now, “jest perhaps ye haven't yer mother's spun-cotton brain. Ye've shown spirit, Bertie. Now, fetch me that damned smiling Fraser. I believe we shall dine tonight at the castle. There's much to learn here. I don't want to leave that sod Percy alone with my aunt. Ye never know what Lady Adella will say or do if ye're not around to stick yer oar in.”