The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires (37 page)

“I wasn’t referring to that.” For the first time since they’d met, Victor looked distinctly
uncomfortable. “I . . . er . . . shouldn’t have speculated on the relationship between
your mother and my father. As you said, I didn’t know your family—I had no right to
assume anything. Miss Bonnaud made that very clear.”

Maximilian froze. “Did she?”

“She gave us quite the lecture after you left the infirmary.” He coughed a bit, then
got it under control. “She told us we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for saying
things that served no purpose except to wound you. And she called us both ungrateful.”

“Both?” Maximilian said, surprised.

“Yes. Bonnaud got the worst of it. She thought he behaved badly, in light of what
you
said
you’d do concerning the warrant against him.”

“I meant what I said,” Maximilian retorted. “As soon as I get you settled, I will
see to having the charges against him dropped. I have to find out more about it and
learn who’s the magistrate who swore out the warrant, but we should have time for
that. Since he traveled under an alias, no alarms will be rung at customs. And I’m
sure Lisette and Manton will find a place to keep him hidden in the meantime.”

Though he probably should have spoken with Manton about all that. He’d just been so . . .
angry over the situation. He hadn’t been thinking about Bonnaud’s troubles.

“Tristan couldn’t really blame you if you chose
not
to help him,” Victor clipped out. “He didn’t actually find your brother, did he?”

Maximilian leveled him with a steady glance. “No, but he found a member of my family,
and that is just as valuable to me. I haven’t had much of anyone until now.”

“Neither have I. That’s why I traveled here.” He raked back his disheveled hair. “Although
Miss Bonnaud accused me of coming to England not to find my family, but to punish
them.”

“Is that true?” Maximilian asked.

“Partly, I suppose.” His gaze turned resentful. “My mother died a few months after
Father. She never recovered from the loss of both him and Peter. Even though she’d
been told that he was just the result of some previous liaison of Father’s, she loved
your brother like a son.”

“I’m sure she did,” Maximilian choked out. “But Peter had a mother who missed him
desperately. Who died asking for him. What your father did was . . . unconscionable.”

“Yes, but what your father did in response was cruel, too. How could he have hidden
the fact that Mother and I had family? His investigator gave her a pittance, which
barely covered our debts in Gheel regarding my father’s care. And once Mother died,
I had to use what little was left to bury her.” His voice hardened. “My fine relations
could have shown some Christian charity and at least made sure she was taken care
of, even if they didn’t want to acknowledge me.”

Maximilian stiffened. “I’m sorry. I agree that Father was wrong to do what he did.
Though you can hardly blame him, considering that his son had been kidnapped by your
father.”

“I had nothing to do with that!” Victor said hotly. He reined himself in and added,
“Mother had nothing to do with that. We didn’t even know about it.”

“And I had nothing to do with Father cutting you off. I swear it.”

“Yes, I gathered as much.” With a sullen look, Victor crossed his arms over his chest.
“But Mother
was
my father’s legitimate wife, no matter what you said about her.”

Maximilian winced, remembering his heated words. “Do you have any proof of that?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I knew that would be asked of me, so I brought it with
me.” Reaching into the
satchel they’d placed in the coach with him, he pulled out an old piece of parchment
and handed it over.

Maximilian examined it. Marriage lines, between Elizabeta Franke and Nigel Cale. He
supposed the document could have been forged, but to do that Victor would have needed
to know beforehand how significant it would prove to be, and he hadn’t, according
to what Bonnaud had said.

“Father met Mother while the British Navy was in port in Ostend,” Victor explained.
“She was a Belgian tavern wench, and he got her with child. So he married her.”

Taking the document from Maximilian, he restored it to his satchel. He breathed hard
for a moment before continuing. “Now that I know he was a duke’s son, I realize that’s
nothing short of miraculous, but Mother did always say he loved her. That was the
reason he gave her for retiring from the navy—so he could be done with that life.”

“That may have been the truth. The war was halted at that point. Perhaps that was
why he visited England—to set up a place for you and your mother. As a retired naval
captain, he could have had a comfortable life here, assuming . . .” Maximilian mused
a moment. “To reinstate himself in English society with a lowborn foreign wife, he
would have needed Father and Mother to accept her into the family. Perhaps he mentioned
to Father what sort of woman he’d married and Father refused to help him. So Uncle
Nigel kidnapped Peter out of spite.”

Or perhaps Father refused to help him because he knew of Uncle Nigel’s affair with
Mother.

The errant thought made him stiffen. That was
not
what had happened, damn it!

“Perhaps,” Victor said, obviously now wary of saying anything on the subject.

Maximilian should drop it, since it gave them both so much pain. But he couldn’t let
it go. Not understanding why Peter had been taken had always gnawed at him, and he
had to get to the bottom of it. “So after your father brought Peter back to Belgium,
he enlisted in the British army. Right?”

Victor nodded. “He said he had to do his part for his country once the war was back
on. Mother asked why he didn’t return to the navy, but he gave her some reason he
couldn’t.”

“Well, he couldn’t go back to the navy because my family would have found him. And
he couldn’t very well have been an officer anymore—he might have run into someone
who knew him. He had to stay low. If he intended to remain in the military, he had
no choice but to enlist.”

“He always said that fighting was all he knew how to do. So I suppose being in the
army was the next best thing to being in the navy. And since he took all three of
us with him to his postings, it was better than when he was at sea.”

“Did Peter . . .” Maximilian swallowed. “Could he remember his family from before?
Or what happened when he was taken?”

“If he did, he never told me. You have to realize, I wasn’t yet four when he was brought
home. I don’t even remember it. To me, he was always just . . . my big brother.” His
voice grew choked. “Why do you think I kept his handkerchief all these years? Because
it was his.”

“I had just turned four myself when he was taken, so I don’t remember him at all.”
Maximilian felt the unfairness of it like a punch to the gut. He had all sorts of
Peter’s things at Marsbury House, but they meant nothing to him. “Tell me about my
brother. What was he like?”

On the long journey from the dock to Mayfair, Victor regaled him with stories about
Peter. It was bittersweet for Maximilian, hearing about his brother secondhand, but
at least it kept his mind off of Victor’s speculations earlier.

Not to mention keeping his mind off Lisette.

They had already entered Mayfair and Victor had fallen silent, staring out the window
at the grandeur they were passing, when he suddenly said, in a halting voice, “So
your father went mad, too.”

Maximilian tensed. “Rather spectacularly, yes.”

“That’s a good way to put it. It nearly killed my mother to watch it.”

A lump caught in Maximilian’s throat. “Mine too.”

It dawned on him that not only had he found family now, but he’d found family who
understood what he’d suffered. That meant a great deal. It meant that perhaps he’d
also found a friend.

Depending on what his new cousin thought of him, that is. “You said earlier that I
was a damned fool. You never said why.”

Victor turned a direct gaze on him. “I don’t know Miss Bonnaud very well, only what
Tristan has told me about her, but I can tell she cares deeply for you. She defended
you vigorously, even after what you’d said. And she seems like a woman who would stick
with a man through thick and thin. Yet you left her there.”

His heart lurched in his chest. So she did still care. She
didn’t
think the worst of him.

And yet . . . “I offered her marriage. She refused.”

“Then you didn’t offer it right.”

Maximilian released a shuddering breath. “Actually, last night I had gotten her to
agree to marry me, but this morning she reneged.”

“After what you said in the infirmary.”

He nodded. He couldn’t think of it now without loathing. “She told me that we both
knew it was for the best if we parted ways. Which means
she
thinks it for the best that we part ways.”

And perhaps it was. Being married to Lisette would mean opening his heart to the knife,
tearing down his walls, giving up his precisely ordered existence to a woman who always
spoke her mind. If they dined with the king, she would probably inform His Majesty
that he could use more exercise.

When that thought made Maximilian smile, he shook his head. Might as well admit it—he
would give his right arm to see her speak her mind to King George.
He would stand there with a glass of champagne in his hand, cheering her on and enjoying
every minute. Then he would take her home and make love to her until the sun came
up.

Images filled his mind—Lisette lying in bed in her frilly bedchamber, Lisette slipping
off that nightdress . . . Lisette comforting him last night as he fell apart.

His pulse quickened in spite of everything. Being married to Lisette would also mean
passion and light and love. It would mean the end of his solitary nights and lonely
days. It would mean children.

For the first time since he’d met her, he thought about having children with her.
Children who would banish the curse on his family line by growing up healthy and strong
and beautiful . . . like their mother. Children who would populate the long-dead nursery,
who would pick flowers in the massive gardens at Marsbury House and float miniature
ships in the pond and—

“Damn it, she was wrong,” Maximilian bit out. “It is
not
for the best that we part. Not for either of us.”

Victor cast him a hard stare. “Did you tell
her
that?”

Maximilian thought back to the conversation, how he’d stood there protecting his heart
and his dignity. How he’d walked away just as she’d finished telling her brother she
had nothing to reproach him for.

Coward
.

“No,” he said, regret hitting him like a blow to the chest.

“Ah.” Victor lifted an eyebrow. “Do you love her?”

“Yes.” Funny how he didn’t even have to think about it. He knew it bone-deep, just
as he knew that marriage to Lisette would be wonderful.

“Did you tell her
that
?”

He groaned. He really had botched their parting, hadn’t he? “No.”

Victor snorted. “Well, there’s where you went wrong, cousin. I don’t know much about
women, but I do know that telling a woman you love her—assuming that she loves you
too—is the only way to gain her. Because if she believes you love her, she’ll follow
you to the ends of the earth.” He shook his head. “Women are irrational like that.”

“Not Lisette. She’s perfectly rational.”

Then again, when he first met her she’d had some fool idea about wanting to become
one of Dom’s agents. And it had been her idea for him to masquerade as a “regular
person.” She’d been the one to throw herself into his bed full-bore because she couldn’t
bear that he intended to spend his life in a “cold and loveless marriage.”

Come to think of it, the woman wasn’t rational at all. Or at least not when it came
to him. So perhaps he did still have a chance with her.

If not for one thing.

“I called her mother a whore.” He choked down bile. “I really hurt her. And she didn’t
deserve that.”

“If she loves you, she’ll find a way to forgive you. As long as you make it clear
that you’re truly sorry.” Victor turned pensive. “No, that’s not enough. My father
used to throw my mother’s low birth up at her
whenever they argued, and then apologize after. It used to infuriate me.” He gave
Max a long look. “You have to apologize
and
never do it again.”

“Trust me, I have no intention of repeating my mistake.”

They were pulling up in front of his palatial London town house now, but Victor merely
cast it a quick glance before returning his gaze to Maximilian. “And speaking of calling
people’s mothers ‘whores,’ I’m sorry about what I said, too. I didn’t mean to sully
your mother’s memory.”

“Apology accepted,” Maximilian said tersely.

“I wasn’t just being cruel, though. I really did think that an affair between your
mother and my father explained a great deal.” When Maximilian glared at him, he said
quickly, “But obviously I was wrong.”

“Obviously,” Maximilian said as the carriage halted.

Nonetheless, long after he’d introduced Victor to the staff as his cousin and had
got him situated and had greeted the doctor, Victor’s words lingered in his mind.

Maximilian hated to admit it, but it
did
explain a great deal. It explained those strange words of Father’s near the end.
And the fact that Father had contracted syphilis despite never having been the whoring
type.

It even explained Mother’s guilt, which he had never understood. Not that an affair
would have given her reason to blame herself for the madness—she wouldn’t have thought
there was any connection between syphilis and madness.

But it might have been as Lisette had hinted—Mother’s guilt over the affair and the
resultant abduction had made her fiercely determined to make up for those things by
nursing Father devotedly in his final days.