Claiming the Courtesan (30 page)

The woman’s face hardened in abomination while shock thundered through Verity and rendered her speechless. A great lady of the ton apologize to a whore? The idea was unthinkable.

The duchess tried to jerk free but failed. “Damn you, Justin, I will never humble myself to this harlot.”

“You will, madam. Or you will face the consequences.”

“This slut should be cast into the gutter, where she belongs,” she snapped. Traces of her earlier confidence resurfaced. “And don’t threaten me with confinement in an
asylum. That particular bird won’t fly, sir. You’d no more have your own mother committed than you’d swim to Ireland. End this absurd playacting immediately and release me. I’ll go to Norfolk, and you have my word as Duchess of Kylemore that your whore is safe. That is concession enough.”

“Not nearly,” he said in a voice that made Verity wince. He turned to his waiting men, who stood guard over the duchess’s henchmen. “Duncan, is Sir John Firth still the local magistrate?”

“Aye, Your Grace,” a man Verity didn’t know answered.

“Then go to Claverton Hall and inform him I have prisoners for arraignment.”

“Your Grace.” Duncan lowered his pistol and strode toward the trees.

Verity waited in quivering silence as cold sweat slicked her hold on the pistol. Surely the duchess wouldn’t permit her pride to bring disaster upon them all.

But the duchess’s pride was an unpredictable and terrifying force, as Verity had discovered on this lonely road.

Only when Duncan was almost out of earshot did the older woman relent. “No! Damn you to hell, Justin. Stop. I’ll do it.” Her voice was low and uneven as she scowled at her son. “I curse the day my womb gave you life.”

Kylemore bowed ironically toward her and with implacable strength drew her around to face Verity. “Life is full of small disappointments, madam. I assume this vituperative outburst forms an introduction to your apology.” Without looking away from his mother, he called out after Duncan. “Wait a moment.”

The duchess stared over Verity’s head, her face masklike. Her voice was flat with abhorrence. “I ask forgiveness for the injuries I have done you and yours.”

“Perhaps again with sincerity,” Kylemore said silkily.

Verity had had enough. “Kylemore, you don’t need to humiliate her further,” she said through stiff lips. “You’ve won. She isn’t worth your spite. Let her go. Ben needs a doctor.”

Kylemore looked down at the duchess with unalloyed loathing. “I bow to this lady’s wishes. Just remember when you’re sulking at the dowerhouse that only my mistress’s intervention saved you from the madhouse. That thought should sour your existence quite satisfactorily.”

He turned to his men as he released his mother. “Disarm the duchess’s servants, then take them to Oban and find a notary. I want sworn statements about what occurred today. Then escort them to Norfolk. I’ll write to my factor, and he’ll have a guard in place by the time you arrive.”

The duchess inhaled with a long hiss. “No, I won’t bear it!” She fumbled in her skirts, and suddenly, the silver knife glittered in her hand. She launched herself at Kylemore. “You have no right to do this, you misbegotten wretch!”

“Watch out, Kylemore! She’s armed!” Verity cried, automatically raising the pistol.

He jerked beyond his mother’s reach, then stretched out to restrain her. She swiped his hand aside with a sweep of the blade, a fraction away from drawing blood.

“Damn you, madam!” He didn’t shift his gaze from her. “You’ve lost. It’s too late. Do you want to hang indeed?”

“I won’t hang. I’ll go back to the life I’ve always led,” she gasped, her eyes feverish in her pale face.

“Drop the knife, Your Grace,” Verity said in a hard voice. Her earlier fear had evaporated the moment the duchess had threatened the man she loved. “Drop it. Or I swear I’ll shoot. And if you think I don’t know how to use this gun, you’re sadly mistaken. Self-defense counts among the courtesan’s arts.” To prove her statement, she cocked the gun with the smooth assurance her lessons with Eldreth had lent her.

The duchess fixed a contemptuous gaze on Verity. “You
won’t kill me. You know what would happen to you.”

“Perhaps I don’t care. You threatened me with torture and rape today, Your Grace. And remember, we have a string of witnesses to swear I merely protect the Duke of Kylemore. I doubt I’ll see the inside of a prison cell.”

The duchess’s stare glowed with malevolence as she trained it upon Verity. “How I wish I’d destroyed you.”

Verity tilted her head in imitation of Kylemore’s ironic salute. “I’m rather glad you didn’t.”

“You uppity bitch! I’ll kill you before you crow over me!”

The woman flung herself toward Verity, the knife raised. Automatically, Verity’s finger tightened on the trigger.

There was a deafening explosion. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air.

The duchess screamed and staggered back into Kylemore’s hold. He held her upright with one arm around her waist while he tugged the knife from her slack fingers.

Ears ringing, Verity let the pistol drop uselessly to her side. “Did…did I injure her?” she asked unsteadily, feeling sick to her stomach.

She’d never before fired a gun in anger, and, however much the duchess deserved to suffer, it was hard to accept that she’d shot a bullet into another human being.

“No, she’s untouched. More’s the pity,” Kylemore bit out after a perfunctory inspection.

“Thank God,” Verity whispered, her dizziness receding.

“You shot at me, you damned guttersnipe,” the duchess said in shock. “You shot at me!”

Kylemore’s unearthly coldness returned as he spoke to the duchess. “Not another word, madam. Your antics are at an end. Now get out of my sight.” He looked up at Duncan, who had rushed in their direction when the gun had gone off. “Escort Her Grace to her carriage and see she stays there.”

Verity expected arguments, threats, protests from the
duchess, but the woman remained silent. Against her son’s tall and dominant leanness, she looked shrunken, as though today’s defeat had leached the venom from her.

But Verity knew this particular snake would strike again if the opportunity arose.

While Duncan marched the duchess away toward the waiting vehicle, Kylemore turned to Verity with concern in his eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked gently.

“Yes,” she said, although her heart still pounded with the nauseating wave of terror that had swept her when she’d thought she’d killed the duchess. She even dredged up an uncertain smile as she passed the gun across to him. “This might be safer with you.”

Kylemore accepted it without comment. “Hamish and I will accompany you and your brother back to Kylemore Castle.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, while exhausted gratitude to the man who had saved her swelled her soul. She turned away to hide a sudden rush of tears. “I must check on my brother.”

She forced herself from trembling immobility and crossed to kneel at Ben’s side. He was stretched out on the luxuriant grass, and a coat was folded beneath his head.

“How is he, Mr. Macleish?” she asked in an unsteady voice. If her brother died because of what had happened today, she’d never forgive herself.

“Oh, he’ll make it. But he’ll be gey sore on the morrow.”

The confidence in his tone reassured even more than his words. Through the gathering dusk, she saw that Hamish had done a marvelous job of bandaging Ben’s wounds. She wondered where he’d found the linen, but she didn’t ask.

In her brother’s bruised face, one blackened eye opened and focused on her in the fading light. “Verity lass,” he said indistinctly through his swollen mouth.

He was awake. She hadn’t been sure he’d regain con
sciousness. She bent her head and started to cry out her overwhelming relief and her bitter guilt in great heaving sobs.

“Oh, lass! Don’t take on so.” Ben’s face contracted with pain as he struggled to reach out to comfort her.

“No, don’t move. I’m just so happy that you’re alive,” she wept, taking his hand carefully so she didn’t hurt his poor, bruised knuckles. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Takes a sight more than those cream puffs to finish Benjamin Ashton. Give over, lass. There’s nowt to cry for.”

“I know,” she said on a gusty sigh that produced more tears. “I don’t know what’s…what’s wrong with me.”

“Hamish, you ride with Ashton in their carriage.” Without her noticing, Kylemore had come to stand beside her. “I’ll take
madame
up with me on Tannasg.”

Dazedly, Verity checked the rapidly darkening road and saw that only the four of them remained. The duchess and her men had gone, as had the rest of Kylemore’s band.

“I’d rather stay with Ben,” she said. She couldn’t risk being alone with Kylemore when her resolution to leave him teetered so close to shattering.

Unresisting, she let him help her to her feet. “The hired curricle only takes two, Verity, and someone needs to handle the horses. Your brother will be better off with Hamish until he reaches the castle. I’ll make sure you’re never far away.” His authoritative tone softened as he made the promise in the last sentence.

“As you wish,” she said dully, too weary to argue.

Numbly, she watched Kylemore and Hamish lift Ben into the vehicle. They were careful with their burden, but her brother’s tight expression indicated his pain. The jolting carriage would only worsen his discomfort, but they had no choice if they wished to get him to shelter.

She hurried forward and folded her brother’s hand in hers
again. “I’ll see you at the castle,” she murmured. Then she looked up at Hamish, who had climbed onto the bench beside Ben. “Look after him, Mr. Macleish.”

“Aye, my lady, that I will. One of the lads has gone for the doctor. We’ll have young Mr. Ashton right as rain in no time.” Hamish took the reins and clicked his tongue at the horses.

“He’ll be fine.” Kylemore stepped up to stand at her shoulder as the carriage rolled away. “Don’t worry,
mo gradh.
”

His massive horse loomed behind him. The beast no longer frightened her. Compared to this afternoon’s tribulations, her fear of horses seemed childish, feeble, unimportant.

She wiped her face with shaking fingers. Curse these tears. Soraya had never cried. Verity these days seemed to do little else. “How did you come to be here?”

“I pledged escort to Whitby. I’m a man of my word. I intended to follow at a discreet distance.” Tension darkened his tone, and his gaze was grave and impossibly deep as he stared at her. “Thank God I did. The memory of my mother holding that knife to your lovely face will haunt me forever.”

The reminder of the duchess’s foul threats made her belly roil anew. “After she’d scarred me, she meant to hand me over to her henchmen for their amusement,” she whispered.

Murderous anger flashed in his eyes. “I should have killed the bitch,” he grated out fiercely.

She forced some strength into her tone. “Thankfully your good sense prevailed over your rage.”

His lips turned down in bitter self-derision. “For once.” Some of the intensity drained from his expression. “Come here,
mo leannan
. Your ordeal is over.”

Weak fool that she was, she couldn’t resist. She stepped into his embrace, and the world lit with warmth and safety. The empty years stretching ahead loomed cold and lonely when viewed from the circle of his arms. Because the prospect was so bleak, she forced her intentions into words yet
again. “I’m still leaving you, Kylemore,” she said sadly. “You must make your own life. You must marry and have children.”

“And you’re going to what?” He paused thoughtfully, as if he considered the alternatives available to her. “Take a new protector and forget the wicked duke who kidnapped you?”

How could he be inhuman enough to mock? Leaving him had been the hardest thing she’d ever done, harder by far than turning her back on her upbringing and selling herself to Eldreth. Harder than facing the duchess’s sickening vengeance.

“I’ll never take another lover,” she said brokenly, burying her face in his coat to hide fresh tears.

“No, I don’t think you will,” he said gently. “Hush now. You’re too tired to fight. I’d win too easily. Let’s go home.”

She was too heartsick to protest at the word “home.”

The castle would never be her home. She had no home apart from the man who gently lifted her onto Tannasg’s back.

And that home was forever barred to her.

Kylemore slid into the saddle behind her and wrapped his arms securely around her waist. If only he could hold her safe like this forever. But even as they rode away toward his castle, she knew nothing had changed.

She was still a whore. He was still a duke.

And she still had to leave him.

P
apers littered the satinwood desk in Kylemore’s beautiful library. It was very late, after midnight, and he made a desultory attempt to sift through the correspondence that had banked up in his absence.

But it was impossible to focus on petitioning letters or statements about his investments. He lifted the crystal glass of whisky he’d poured himself, then replaced it, untasted. He’d reached a pitch of bitter hopelessness far beyond the comforting warmth mere liquor could provide.

His gut clenched as he recalled the torture his mother had planned for Verity that day. The duchess had always been selfish and destructive, but her evil had festered unchecked to reach a peak of viciousness even he hadn’t recognized.

Margaret Kinmurrie was lucky he hadn’t shot her down like a rabid dog.

He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t. The rage and fear that had engulfed him on that lonely stretch of road still pounded like wild thunder through his veins.

What if he’d been too late? His hand tightened, white-knuckled, around the glass.

What if he’d acceded to Verity’s wishes and not followed her at all?

No, he’d never have agreed to that. He’d sworn no harm would come to her. He’d sworn on his black soul.

Yet only hours after leaving his care, she’d faced disfigurement and rape, even death.

He’d never forgive his mother.
Or himself.

It bedeviled him to think the duchess was retiring to the lovely dowerhouse. She’d be perfectly comfortable there, however barbarous she considered her surroundings.

He could draw some satisfaction from contemplating how she would chafe at her quarantine from the centers of power. She could fuck as many strapping footmen as she liked to while away the hours, but nothing would compensate for her loss of influence.

He sighed heavily and let yet another letter begging for his patronage drop unread to the desk. Terrible as the events of the day had been, they weren’t what kept him here, sleepless and suffering.

The dumb misery that gnawed at him tonight stemmed from old heartbreak. Old heartbreak as sharp and fresh as when his mistress had abandoned him in Kensington so many months ago.

At the time, he’d blamed his mad frenzy on pride and lust.

Now he knew better. Verity had inflicted a mortal wound on him that day.

Over the last weeks, he’d foolishly believed that the wound had begun to heal. But his momentary reprieve in the glen had only sharpened his present anguish.

She’d plunged a blade into his heart, withdrawn it, then thrust it in again, deeper and harder.

Dully, he glanced up at the Roman triumph carved around the Adam mantel. Dancing maidens in swirling tunics led a garlanded bull to sacrifice at the delicate little temple in the far right-hand corner.

How keenly he envied the brute beast’s ignorance. How he wished he faced his fate with similar insouciance. But he comprehended every measure of misery awaiting him.

Losing Verity was torment now, but as the long, barren years passed, the pain would weigh heavier and heavier, slowly squeezing the life from him.

She consigned him to a slow, agonizing death with her absence. A fitting punishment for what he’d done to her.

“Damn it all to hell,” he groaned and buried his head in his hands.

He couldn’t live without her.

He
had
to live without her. And he had no idea how he could do it.

“Damn it all to fucking hell.”

In an excess of feeling, he flung his arm out and sent everything on the desk flying. The delicate whisky glass landed with a crack against the marble fireplace and shattered into tinkling shards.

“Your Grace?” Verity hovered in the doorway before him as if his imagination had invoked her.

He lunged to his feet and stared at her in helpless longing. Hungrily, he dwelled on every detail of her. He recognized her rose pink gown from the glen. She’d looped her hair back in a loose knot, revealing the perfect shape of her jaw and neck. Her hands were bandaged, and her slender throat was bruised. On her ashen face, the knife cut stood out as a stark red line. His anger and guilt surged anew at the reminder of what she’d borne because of him.

“Verity?”

Gently, she shut the elaborately carved double doors behind her, but she didn’t venture further into the room. Her hands twined together nervously at her waist.

The gesture pierced him to the marrow. Surely she knew she had no reason to be afraid of him any more.

“I thought you’d be asleep. You’re exhausted.” The struggle for control made his voice flat.

How he sometimes missed the man he’d been. That man would have spirited her away to serve his pleasure without a thought to what was right or what she wanted. That man would take her and keep her and never let her go.

“I’ve been watching over Ben. The doctor says he can travel tomorrow if we go slowly and find appropriate transport.”

“Stay here until he’s recovered.”

Stay here forever.

But she was already shaking her head. The pure lines of her face set with determination. “Kylemore, I must leave. Nothing has changed between us.”

“No, nothing has changed.” The saddest words in the language. He wanted to argue, object, insist she wait, but any reprieve merely postponed the inevitable. “Take one of my carriages so you travel in comfort.”

She bent her head in acknowledgment. “Thank you.”

Surprised at her ready agreement, he watched as she edged closer to the light. The brightness illuminated marks of weariness and unhappiness under her translucent eyes.

It slashed him to the heart to see her looking so defeated. His gaze focused on her cheek, where tendrils of hair escaped her simple hairstyle.

“Does your face hurt?” he asked in concern. “Christ! I should have been there to stop anything happening to you.”

She smiled with an edge of irony. For a moment, Soraya’s knowing, sophisticated ghost hovered. Then she was gone.

“Given what you prevented, I think I can manage to forgive you. It’s only a scratch. It could have been much worse.”

She drifted across to the wall to trail her hand along the alabaster top of a side table. When she raised her eyes, they were somber. She’d been pale when she’d entered the room; now every trace of color had drained from her face, leaving her white as new parchment.

“I’ve come to say good-bye,” she said softly but implacably.

In a heartbeat, he circled the desk to reach for her. Then he remembered he no longer had the right to touch her.

“Oh,
mo leannan,
” he said gruffly, although he knew it would achieve nothing. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to.” Then, with visible effort, she added, “It’s over and I must go. Heaven bless you, Your Grace.”

His heart laden with despair, he watched her turn to leave. She straightened her back, as if she prepared to face an invincible foe.

It was an act of lonely gallantry. It was an act of breathtaking grace. As she walked away, he had no difficulty remembering that this woman had once held the glittering world in thrall.

In the flickering candlelight, he saw that her control wasn’t as complete as she wanted him to think. The hand she extended to the latch shook as if she had a fever.

“Coward,” he said softly but quite clearly behind her.

For a moment, he thought she hadn’t heard.

Then she bent her head, revealing the vulnerable nape under the thickly piled hair. His throat closed with grief as he waited for her to push the door open and leave.

This was a last desperate gamble to keep her. He held no expectations he’d succeed.

“What did you call me?” she asked unsteadily.

He leaned back and braced himself on the desktop with his
hands. “I called you a coward,” he said relentlessly. “My God, you were braver at fifteen.”

“At fifteen, I had no choice,” she choked out, still without facing him.

“Yes, you did. There’s always a choice. And from that choice, you had the courage and the cleverness to create something marvelous. From chapel-going rustic to Europe’s most famous courtesan? I’m awestruck.”

Her elegant shoulders tensed under his attack, but mercifully, she didn’t flee.

“I told you why I do this. It’s for your sake,” she said in a low voice.

“Rubbish. You’re doing this because you’re afraid.” His tone lost some of its harshness. “Do you love me, Verity?”

She whirled around at the question. If he hadn’t been fighting for his very life, he’d have relented then. Untold suffering was etched deep on her lovely face.

“That’s not fair,” she protested in a trembling voice.

No, it wasn’t fair. But if he had to, he’d play dirty to win his prize. He’d do anything if it meant she stayed.

In truth, when he looked into her eyes, he already had the answer to his question.

But he continued remorselessly. “You’ve given me so much—your body, your trust, your comfort, your absolution, so many of your secrets. Yet that’s something you’ve never said.”

Arms outstretched against the inlaid marquetry, she pressed back into the door. In her flowing pink dress, she looked like a trapped butterfly. He stifled another wave of compassion.

“You’ve never said you love me either,” she challenged.

He shrugged.

“I love you,” he said.

It emerged with a naturalness even he hadn’t expected.

For a moment, her gray eyes blazed with light as they
rested on him. Had so simple—and so momentous—an act as confessing his love finally won this battle for him?

But of course, it wasn’t that straightforward.

She shook her head and glanced away. “Love isn’t enough.”

“It’s a damned lot. Do you love me, Verity?”

She made a helpless gesture that tore at his heart, but he reminded himself he must be pitiless. For both their sakes.

“You must know I do,” she admitted sadly.

Until a moment ago, he’d never been sure.

She loves me, she loves me,
his heart chanted in a paean of elation. Surely now he couldn’t lose her.

He fought to hide his burgeoning triumph. He hadn’t won yet. “I know you’re hellish ready to sacrifice yourself for the people you love. But in this particular case, you’re misguided.”

He took a deep breath and struggled to summon the words that would persuade her to stay. “And if you must sacrifice yourself, do that by marrying me. I’m not an easy man. You’ll earn your martyr’s crown before you’re done. Don’t condemn both of us to an eternity of unhappiness just because you’re too stiff-necked to face society’s censure.”

“You make me sound so petty,” she countered furiously. “But I know how highly you value your prestige. And you’ve always had Lucifer’s own pride. You speak lightly of what you’d forfeit if you married me. But society’s censure is crueler than you imagine. You’ve never had to suffer ostracism. I have.”

“I can live with gossip and innuendo. I can’t live without you,” he said heavily.

What she said about his vanity and shallow worldliness was true. Or had been once.

But compared to the prospect of losing this one precious woman, nothing else mattered an ash in hell.

Her face contracted with turmoil. “You’re like the Devil.”
As she turned away, she sounded like she wasn’t far from crying. “You speak seduction and tempt me to what I know is wrong.”

He despised himself for hurting her this way, but he had to persevere in his ruthlessness or they were both lost.

“Marry me, become my duchess. What does anyone else matter? We can set up home in the Highlands far away from rumor and the world’s disapproval. We’ll create a life that’s rich and fulfilled and useful. And based on love.”

The eyes she leveled on him were dark and so tormented that his soul twisted in guilty agony. “Stop it, Kylemore. You’re a duke. You owe an obligation to your title.”

He frowned in sudden anger. All his life, his title had been a curse and a burden. Now it promised to deprive him of the only thing he’d ever wanted.

“What about my duty to myself? What about your duty?” he asked fiercely.

He drew himself upright and chanced a step in her direction. His voice became deep and sure as his brief rage receded in the face of her distress. “You’ve redeemed me, Verity. You’ve made me a better man, created honor where there was none.”

“There was always honor,” she whispered as tears flooded her beautiful eyes, making them shine dazzling silver.

“If there was, only you could have found it. You can’t leave the task half done.” He spread his hands in appeal. “Don’t exile me to become the wicked Duke of Kylemore again. Now you’ve started the process, it’s your Christian duty to finish dragging me into the light.”

“Stop this,” she protested brokenly. “It’s cruel. You know only an illicit arrangement is possible between us. And I can’t be your mistress after you wed, Kylemore. I’ve committed many sins, but I won’t commit that one.”

“If I don’t marry you, I will never marry,” he said quietly. “There are no more Kinmurries after me. The title dies when I do.”

“Please don’t say that,” she begged, flinching away. “You must have an heir to take his rightful place in the world. Even if we wed and by a miracle I fall pregnant, our children will never be accepted.”

“Our children will be beautiful, like their mother. And strong enough to fight their own way. You can’t blame them for your obstinacy.”

Last time he’d mentioned a baby, she’d been so certain she could never conceive. She sounded less certain now, he noted. Unconsciously, her hand drifted to her midriff, as though she already carried his child.

Perhaps she did.

He fought the primitive urges that thought aroused and strove to maintain his reasonable tone. Bullying and brute strength would never sway her. He’d only win her consent when she acknowledged that neither of them had the power or the right to deny what love demanded.

“Anyway, I’m sure I’m barren,” she said bitterly.

“If that’s true, then it will just be the mad duke and his exquisite wife alone in their Highland eyrie.” He took another step toward her. She might run, but he doubted it. “You say society will scoff. I believe you’re wrong. All the men, at least, in the ton will envy my good fortune.”