The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires (35 page)

Victor’s voice hardened. “About six months passed, and the man showed up while I was
out working. He talked to Mother. Told her that she was due some money . . . Father’s
inheritance.” He wheezed a moment. “That she’d get it all as long as she agreed to
sign some paper. She couldn’t read English, so she didn’t know what the paper said,
but she signed it. Anything to get us money.”

A muscle ticked in Victor’s jaw. “That was the last time we saw the fellow. And I
never found out what that damned paper said, either.”

It took him a moment, but when the truth dawned on Maximilian, anger roared up in
him. “Damn him. Damn him to hell.”

At the virulence in Maximilian’s voice, Lisette and Bonnaud exchanged glances. But
Victor merely narrowed his gaze. “Who?”

“My bloody father. He knew. He had to have known. That investigator—Father paid the
man to find out what had happened to Peter. If that investigator talked to your mother,
then he knew Uncle had a family. And he had to have told Father. Father just didn’t
want
me
to know.”

“Why the devil not?” Bonnaud asked.

Maximilian’s gaze locked with Lisette’s. “Because Victor would be next in line for
the dukedom.”

Victor gaped at him. “Wait a minute. My father was related to a
duke
?”

“Your father was the youngest son of the sixth Duke of Lyons,” Maximilian said dully.
“And thus brother to the seventh duke and uncle to the eighth.” He paused to stare
at Victor. “He was also great-uncle to the ninth duke. Me.”

“Bloody hell,” Victor muttered. He eyed Maximilian warily. “I’m your heir?”

“Not directly. That’s not how it works. But you and I are presently the only male
descendants of my—
our
—great-grandfather, the sixth Duke of Lyons. If I die without a male heir, you inherit
the dukedom.” Maximilian curled his hands into fists. “And clearly Father despised
the idea of his uncle’s progeny ever having a chance at inheriting the dukedom. Not
after what Uncle Nigel did.”

“That’s why your father burned the records,” Lisette said softly.

A cold chill swept down Maximilian’s spine. “He did it deliberately, because he didn’t
want anyone to ever know of Victor’s existence. I thought it was done in a fit of
madness, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Madness?” Victor said. “
Your
father went mad, too?”

Swallowing hard, Maximilian said, “Afraid so. It’s the family curse.”

Victor’s expression hardened. “Do you happen to know if your father ever had syphilis?”

Maximilian froze. “As a matter of fact, he did. What has that got to do with anything?”

“My father had it, too. One of the physicians at Gheel believed that syphilis can
cause madness later in life, even if you banish the disease early.”

“I’ve noticed that as well,” Dr. Worth put in. “I’ve seen a number of cases of insanity
where the sufferer had contracted syphilis at some point in his life.”

“So the madness might be a result of the disease?” Lisette asked in an excited voice.
“It might have nothing to do with anything but that?”

Maximilian held his breath, a sudden ray of hope opening in his dark future.

“Possibly,” Dr. Worth said. “Look at how ‘mad’ the pneumonia made Victor. It is my
firm belief that disease works on the mind as well as the body. And syphilis is a
virulent disease.”

His blood pounding fiercely through his veins, Maximilian seized Lisette’s hand. She
beamed at him as she clearly grasped the direction of his thoughts.

If the madness had been a result of the syphilis . . . Holy God, he might actually
have a hope of a
life
!

Bonnaud was frowning. “It’s rather an odd coincidence that both the duke’s father
and great-uncle should contract syphilis, don’t you think?”

“Not necessarily,” Maximilian said. “They used to go drinking together.”

“Drinking is a far cry from whoring,” Bonnaud said. “And you’d expect the duke at
least to be more careful about such things.”

Maximilian nodded. “I know—I always thought it was odd myself that Father would have
gone to a whore. He never seemed the type.”

“Perhaps he didn’t get the syphilis from a whore,” Victor said coldly.

“He didn’t have a mistress, either,” Maximilian put in, not sure why it mattered how
Father had gotten syphilis. “He was wild for my mother. Of course, that all happened
before he married her.”

“You know that for a fact?” Victor coughed some, then went on relentlessly. “You know
for certain he got sick
before
he met your mother?”

Something in Victor’s hard tone was beginning to irritate Maximilian. “No, the doctor
told me of it after he went mad. But I’m sure—”

“Because there’s another possibility.” Victor’s gaze bore into Maximilian’s. “Perhaps
my father got it and gave it to a woman that he and your father were both intimate
with.”

“But who would that—” Maximilian tensed as his
father’s final words came to mind.
So I only have the one son, then?

Holy God. Oh bloody, bloody hell.
That
was what Victor was getting at?

“No. The very idea is revolting,” Maximilian said sharply. “It’s impossible.”

Victor scowled at him. “My father always claimed that Peter was his son, even during
his mad ravings, even when he was out of his mind. Peter was
his son.
He never deviated from that, never spoke of a kidnapping, never mentioned a nephew.”

“I don’t give a damn what he spoke of!” Maximilian cried. “He was lying, the damned
bastard! He kidnapped my brother!”

“Why would he do that?” Victor asked. “What reason could he possibly have had to do
such a thing if Peter
wasn’t
his son?”

The question had haunted Maximilian and his parents for years. But this . . . this
was not the answer.

“He was mad,” Maximilian gritted out. “You said so yourself.”

“Don’t get me wrong—Father was an arse, but he didn’t go mad until I was nearly fourteen,
long after he brought Peter home.” Victor struggled for breath. “By the time he lost
his mind, he’d been in the army as an enlisted man for years . . . fighting for his
country and moving us all over the Continent. He was lucid enough to keep hold of
his position as a soldier . . . until the day he . . . tried to strangle Mother. Which
is when we brought him to Gheel.”

Victor glanced away, his face darkening, and Maximilian felt a moment’s sympathy for
the man who’d shared his own hell. But his sympathy vanished when he remembered what
the man was trying to claim about Mother.

“You’re wrong,” Maximilian hissed. “My mother was a saint, I tell you. She would never
have had an affair with her husband’s uncle. Even the thought of it is appalling!”

Lisette put a hand on his arm. “You said she was wracked with guilt. Is it possible
that you mistook the source of her guilt? If she knew that she had given your father
syphilis after being with his uncle—”

“No!” He snatched his arm free of her. “No! It
isn’t possible
! You won’t convince me otherwise!” He stared at her, swamped by betrayal. “And how
could you for one moment believe what my cousin is saying? The cousin I never even
met until today! I told you what my mother suffered, what she endured. How dare you
take
his
side?”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side, Max,” she said softly. “I’m just saying that it’s one
solution that makes sense.”

“You think so, do you?” He gazed about at them, at the pitying looks on their faces,
and every inch of him recoiled. “Just because your mothers were whores doesn’t mean
that mine was, too, damn it!”

The room fell eerily silent.

When Lisette’s face turned to ash, Maximilian could have ripped out his tongue. He
reached for her but she brushed his hand away.

“I’m sorry, Lisette. I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did.” She went to stand by her brother with a look of such pain that it
cut him to the heart. “We will always be beneath you, won’t we?”

Bonnaud put his arm about her protectively as he shot Maximilian a steely glance.
“I told you, dear heart. He’s a duke. He’s not like us.”

Hearing that her damned brother had obviously been warning her against him spiked
Maximilian’s temper higher. “You’re right, Bonnaud.” He stared the man down. “I’m
not
like you. I don’t speak ill of a man behind his back while at the same time currying
his favor.” He shifted his gaze to Victor. “And I don’t make vile accusations about
people I don’t know. I don’t—”

He choked off anything else he might have said, aware that he was out of control.
Very, very out of control. Turning on his heel, he clipped out, “To hell with this.
I must see to the quarantine officers. They’ll be coming aboard any minute.”

And before he could shatter completely, he strode for the door.

But he hadn’t yet reached it when a small voice asked, “What about me, Your Grace?
What cruel thing have
I
done to you?”

His heart twisted in his chest to hear the hurt in Lisette’s voice.

You made me fall in love with you.

He choked back the words. He wasn’t that much of a fool. He’d given up enough to her
already. He’d deviated from his plans, offered marriage . . . and for
what? So she could look at him as some . . . pathetic, misguided fool who couldn’t
see that his family was a decadent cesspool of humanity?

“You did nothing, Lisette,” he managed to say. “You have always behaved above reproach.
Now I must go.”

And with that, he escaped the infirmary.

A
S SOON AS
Maximilian walked out, Lisette pulled away from Tristan, headed for the door.

“You are
not
going after that arse, I hope,” Tristan said as he grabbed her by the arm.

She halted to glare at him. “He’s not an arse.”

The doctor said, “I should go help His Grace with the quarantine officers. They’ll
need to speak to me.” And he hurried out the door.

As soon as he was gone, Tristan snapped, “He called our mother a
whore
.”

“And my mother, too,” Victor cut in. “I don’t know about your mother, but mine was
legitimately married to my father. She might have been a tavern maid, but that didn’t
make her a whore.”

“Stop saying that word!” Lisette cried, wrapping her arms about her waist in a futile
attempt to contain her pain. She’d finally shared herself with Max, body and soul,
and even told him she loved him, and he’d knifed her in the heart.

How could he? He had always seemed to sympathize, always seemed to understand about
Maman.

Unbidden, she saw again the betrayal on Max’s face when she’d agreed with Victor’s
opinion of the kidnapping.

My God. That is why he said it.
Max had only done what anyone would do when cornered—he’d struck back hard. And they
had cornered him in the worst way. No doubt he’d felt abandoned all over again . . .
by his mother, by his father and uncle, and this time, by her. It wasn’t fair of him
and it wasn’t right, but she could understand it.

Leveling a bleak glance on both her brother and Victor, she said, “Do you realize
what you’ve both done? And for no reason, either, except to hurt him. None of what
you pointed out really matters—it’s all in the past. Yet you both felt compelled to
tell Max that his mother, whom he has worshipped all his life, might have had an affair
with his great-uncle. That the man might have sired a child on her. That his sainted
mother might even have caused his father’s madness.”

She swallowed hard as everything hit her at once. “And now he realizes that his entire
life has been a lie. That everything he thought about his past was a lie, that every
story ever told him by his parents about his brother’s kidnapping was a lie. That
his father even lied about his having a cousin. And Max abhors being lied to more
than anything.”

She tipped up her chin. “So how did you expect him to react? To thank you for unveiling
the blackness
beneath his family’s lies? Did you expect him
not
to draw back in horror and strike at us all? Wouldn’t you?”

Tristan’s frown softened a fraction. “Well, when you put it like that . . .”

“And he was right about you, too, Tristan. You returned to England wanting something
from him. Then, the minute he didn’t handle all your speculations with great aplomb,
you turned on him by insinuating that you and I had been talking about him behind
his back. Which has been done to him over and over all his life. He hates it.”

She turned to Victor. “As for you, sir, why did you even come here? Was it really
to find your family? Or was it just so you could punish them for abandoning you?”

Victor glared at her. “Considering how they cut us out of their lives completely,
I think I had the right to punish them.”

“Well, you certainly found a good way to do it,” she said smoothly. “And now the man
who had nothing whatsoever to do with your abandonment is up on deck using all his
influence to have the quarantine lifted so
you
can convalesce somewhere more comfortable than the bowels of a ship. He really is
a terrible man, isn’t he?”