The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires (25 page)

It broke her heart. He looked so lost. “Max, I don’t know why Vidocq is suddenly so
eager to pry into a stranger’s affairs, but—”

“He only wants to protect you.” He gave a choked laugh. “I certainly understand that.”

His surprising defense of Vidocq caught her off guard. “Do you?”

Max looked bleak. “You seem very . . . comfortable together.”

“We are,” she said simply. “He’s like a father to me.”

“I could tell.”

At least he didn’t say it with the jealous edge he’d had last night. She relaxed a
fraction. “He hired Tristan at a time when Maman and I desperately needed the funds.
Then, after Maman died, Vidocq gave me a position as well. So I am very grateful to
him.” After wiping her mouth with the napkin, she rose from the table. “But that does
not mean that I do whatever he says.”

She’d seen enough to know that Max’s pride and
dignity had been bludgeoned rather thoroughly today. If she truly cared about him,
she needed to give him his privacy. No matter what Vidocq said.

In that moment, she made a decision. “Just ignore Vidocq’s demands that you tell me
the ‘truth.’ You may keep your secrets, Max. They are of no concern to me.”

L
ISETTE WAS TIRED
of trying to figure Max out, tired of how it obsessed her. If he wanted to close
himself off from anyone who might care about him, then she would let him.

With that resolve, she left the table and headed out the dining room door. One of
the servants called to her in French from the other end of the hall, “Is everything
all right, miss? Is there anything we can get for you?”

“No, nothing,” she responded. “We won’t require your services any further this afternoon.
We have some work to do at my brother’s lodgings.”

“Very good, miss,” the servant said.

As Lisette hurried down the hall, she heard Max’s chair scrape in the dining room.
Then he was striding after her as she passed through Vidocq’s house and the courtyard
to the other house.

“My secrets are of more concern to you than you realize,” Max clipped out as they
entered Tristan’s rooms.

When she would have kept going through Tristan’s small public area to the study, Max
hurried ahead of her to block her path. “My secrets are the reason I cannot marry
you. That I
will
not marry you.”

He wore that shuttered look that always made her feel as if she should tread softly.
Only this time, she could see the pain behind it.

Suddenly her heart was pounding. It was foolish of her, but no matter what she’d told
herself until now, no matter what she’d told
him
, she wanted very much to be his wife. And the way he kept bringing it up told her
that it was something he’d considered.

Either that, or he was just like Father—playing with her emotions.

She forced her voice to be light. “Don’t tell me you have a secret wife stashed away
somewhere, like the English king with his Mrs. Fitzherbert.”

His dry laugh relieved her. “No, the only secret relation I have may be a brother.
Or not. I no longer know.”

She pounced on that to avoid revisiting his refusal to marry her. She didn’t think
she could bear to hear his reason for it. It must be serious indeed if Vidocq knew
of it. “So do you now think that Tristan might actually have found your brother?”

“It’s possible, I suppose,” he said. “The tale of the fire has always left me with
too many questions. If my uncle was mad, how was he sane enough to go to Gheel to
seek a cure? Or was he put there? And if the authorities jailed him there, as they
sometimes do violent madmen, why aren’t there records of it? The trouble is,
I will never be able to get answers to my questions. The investigator is long dead,
and the reports he gave to my father are gone.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“My father burned them not long before he died.”

That shocked her. “But that . . . that makes no sense! Why would he do such a mad
thing?” She instantly regretted her poor choice of words.

But Max just said flatly, “Probably because he
was
mad.”

A sudden unnamable fear seized her heart. “What do you mean?”

“That’s what Vidocq wanted you to know.” He gave a shuddering breath. “I not only
had a great-uncle who went insane in his later years, but a father who did so as well.
And given such a history, it is likely that I, too, will go mad before I die.”

Mad? He thought he was going to go
mad
? Her blood ran cold. Her poor dear Max!
This
was the secret he’d been keeping from her?

Without waiting for her response, Max turned on his heel and stalked off to Tristan’s
study.

Her mind raced as she used the new information to reexamine everything he’d said and
done in the past few days. But one thing stood out above the rest. “No,” she said
as she hurried after him.

That made him halt, then whirl to face her. “What do you mean,
no
?”

“Just because your father and great-uncle went insane is no reason to believe that
you will, too.”

“God help me, Lisette, you have to listen to—”

“No! I won’t!” Perhaps it was only desperation driving her, but she knew in her heart
that he was making a leap he should not. “Was your grandfather mad? And your great-grandfather?”

He stared bleakly at her. “No, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Of course it does! You’re not like your father, I’m sure of it. You’re the sanest
man I know.”

“For
now
I am. Who knows what I will be in ten or twenty years? It didn’t strike them until
they were older.”

She stared at him, comprehension dawning. “Is this why you don’t let anyone near?
Because you have this awful fear hanging over your head that you will end up insane?”

“Do not patronize me!” he ground out. She flinched, and he softened his tone. “I didn’t
let you close because I didn’t want you to know.” His eyes, so deeply haunted, searched
her face. “For the first time in my life, a woman regarded me without prejudice, without
measuring me by my wealth
or
by the gossip about my family.”

The yearning in his face made her heart ache for him.

“You were the only woman who didn’t look at me and wonder, every time I said anything
out of the ordinary, ‘Is it starting? Will he pick up a fork any moment and jab me
with it?’ ”

His voice turned cold. “That’s how society found out about Father. One day at a dinner
with the Duke of Wellington, he imagined he saw some assailant, and he stuck a fork
in the arm of one of Wellington’s fine
guests. After that, there was no hiding the fact that he was losing his mind.” He
steadied a hard gaze on her. “And there was also no hiding the fact that I was likely
to be the same.”

“If that is what people in your fine circles have been telling you, then they are
mad, too,” she said.

“Perhaps,” he gritted out. “But they still watch me, wait for me to show signs of
it. And
I
know, if no one else does, that with two such relations in my family, I am very likely
to inherit it.”

She could see that he really believed it. Fighting back tears, she laid her hand on
his arm, but he shook it off. “Don’t pity me either, damn it!” he growled, anger flaring
in his face.

But this time she wouldn’t let him push her away. “Do not mistake concern for pity.”
She choked down her tears, struggling against the urge to weep for all he’d suffered.
“I am sorry for what you’ve endured, but you won’t convince me that it means you’re
destined for the same fate. I can’t believe it. I
won’t
believe it.”

“That’s the other reason I didn’t tell you about Father. Because I knew you would
ignore the obvious.” He gave a harsh laugh. “The same woman who believes in her brother’s
goodness, even when everything points in the other direction, is certainly not going
to believe that a man who seems perfectly sane right now might not remain so.” He
lowered his voice to an aching murmur. “Especially when it’s a man she cares about.”

Her heart leaped into her throat. “I do care about you. Too much to let you go on
fearing that you might
have such an awful future. Sometimes you just have to ignore your fears.”

“The way you ignore yours?” he clipped out.

She froze. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re so afraid you’ll end up like your mother, left alone with a couple of children
and no means to take care of them. So afraid that men will disappoint you. I don’t
see you ignoring
your
fears, Lisette.”

He was right. She’d been so busy protecting herself against having her heart trampled
by the duke that she hadn’t noticed the tortured man inside the golden castle.

Well, she was certainly noticing now. This was the secret that kept him rigid and
remote and afraid of his own desires, fearing that one little slip would reveal some
lurking madness. It was the secret that made him ache for all he’d lost when his brother
had died, leaving him to inherit the dukedom.

It was also the secret that made him behave kindly at times. Because he knew what
it was like to be covertly mocked. Who would have guessed that she and a duke would
have such an essential thing in common?

“Yes, it’s true,” she managed as she fought back the sympathy she was certain must
show on her face. “I’ve let my fears govern my life far too long. But I begin to think
I cut myself off from a great deal in the process. Perhaps it’s time I stop living
in my mother’s past.”

Clearly that wasn’t the response he’d expected, for he began shaking his head. “You’re
wise to worry about men, and most assuredly about me. I will definitely disappoint
you.”

“At least you never lie to me,” she said. “You aren’t like Father, who used the hope
of a marriage to get Mother into his bed. You never once claimed that we could have
anything beyond your . . . your . . .”

“Wild passion for you that possesses me despite all my attempts to stomp it out?”
His gaze burned into hers. “No. But that doesn’t make this any easier.”

She didn’t
want
to make it easier for him to throw his life away out of some fear that might never
come to pass. “So you mean never to marry?” she asked bluntly. “Or is it just me you
are determined you ‘can’t marry’?”

He squared his shoulders. “Whether I marry depends largely on whether Peter is alive.
If he’s not, I have to provide an heir for the dukedom. There’s no one to inherit,
and I refuse to break up all my property and sell it. I have tenants who depend on
me, thousands of servants at my estates—I cannot let them down by not marrying.”

That confused her. “So you do mean to marry.”

“If Peter isn’t alive, yes. But it will have to be a particular kind of match.”

“And what kind is that?” she managed.

“I watched my mother die slowly inside as my father went mad. She was so destroyed
by it that I swore I’d never put a woman I cared about through that. Nor one who cared
about me.” When she frowned, he added, “But there are women who would gladly forego
a love match for the privilege of being a duchess. Women who care more about their
rank
and station than about affection, whose hearts won’t break when they see their husbands
go mad, as long as they know that their place in society is assured for all time.”

“And you actually think you
want
that sort of woman taking care of you if you should go mad?” she cried. “Some . . .
some grasping harpy who will stand over your bed waiting for you to
die
?”

He paled at her blunt description. “Better that than a weeping half widow, half wife,
living in hell for as long as the madness lasts. For my father, it lasted four years.
Four years,
Lisette. Imagine watching someone you care about forget everything he ever was. To
go from being a man of great position to a joke whispered about in the halls of fine
houses.”

“That doesn’t mean that the answer is to find someone who
doesn’t
care about you.”

“It will take someone like that to agree to my conditions.” Obstinacy made his jaw
go taut. “Any woman I marry must agree to give me over to caretakers once the madness
begins. My mother wasted away trying to care for my father in his final days, which
is why she died only a year later.”

“Perhaps she just missed him,” Lisette said gently. “Married couples often follow
each other into death, especially if they were particularly close.”

“That’s not why,” he bit out. “She died wracked by a foolish guilt. She blamed herself
for his death, because he died after she administered some laudanum to help him sleep.
That was after she spent the years of his
madness carrying him about the Continent seeking a cure, during which I accompanied
her.”

Ah, so that was why he’d traveled so much, why he had a private yacht. “I would have
done the same thing.”

“Exactly!” he ground out. “You would never agree to leave my welfare to others. You
would never wash your hands of me. You’re not that kind of woman.”