Heiress Without a Cause (10 page)

Ferguson did not intend to turn into his father, but it wasn’t lost on him that the worst of his father’s actions were always related to his title. After all, the man enjoyed spending time in Scotland when his wife was alive. But when the woman died, only a few years after he unexpectedly inherited the dukedom, he had cleared the Scottish tenants, devastating the estate he once loved for the riches it could add to his ancestral English lands.

Ferguson had just inherited the title unexpectedly himself. The last thing he needed was to ruin his heart over a woman like his father had, even if Madeleine made him mad for her.

When he reached Ellie’s salon, he pushed open the door, wanting to thank her for her assistance. She still lounged on her divan, just as he had left her five minutes earlier. But she pressed one of her pillows to her face, and the silent shaking of her shoulders told him that she was sobbing.

He didn’t know what to do, how to comfort the sister who had grown into adulthood without him. He felt the same helplessness as when his mother died, a feeling that had only grown as his father turned colder, until he finally realized their family would never be more than a menagerie of damaged creatures.

That was the day he decided to get himself banished to Scotland so he could escape.

But the cost had been leaving the rest of his siblings behind to fend for themselves. It was a price he was willing to pay at twenty-four, when he was too stubborn to seek a way to stay in London. Now, nearing thirty-five and responsible for them again, he only felt shame.

Ellie noticed him before he could leave. She hurled the pillow at him. “Go away!” she screamed, pulling herself upright and dragging a shawl around her shoulders as though preparing to chase him out.

He crouched next to her divan. “Ellie, I did not mean to hurt you like this.”

She choked back another sob. Her face was splotchy with a redhead’s unmistakable flush, her eyes puffy and rimmed with smudged kohl. He tried to offer her his handkerchief, but she swatted his hand aside and blew her nose into her shawl. It was an ugly, unladylike gesture, a measure of her contempt for him that she would rather ruin her garment than accept his help.

“You should have been here, Ferguson. How could you leave us with him? The twins needed you. I needed you,” she said, her voice breaking on another sob. “And if you had been here, maybe Henry wouldn’t have drunk himself to death and Richard might not have been so unbalanced.”

He withdrew slightly, sitting on the carpeted floor with a hard thud. “I wasn’t any better at dealing with the old man than the rest of you. And our mother’s estate needed me too. If you had come with me when I asked you to, you would have seen how dilapidated it had become with the old man’s neglect...”

“She’s dead, Ferguson, and half the clan emigrated to America before you ever moved there,” Ellie spat out, cutting him off. “Your leaving had nothing to do with that, and everything to do with feeling that saving yourself was more important than staying here with the rest of us and waiting for him to die.”

He couldn’t deny it, couldn’t explain how the last six months he had spent living in his father’s house before achieving his banishment had felt like he was being flayed alive by every disappointed stare. Ellie surely knew that look just as well as he did — and she had stayed in London to endure it.

“Why didn’t you leave?” he asked. “If you didn’t want to come to Scotland, you could have gone to the Folkestone estate after you were widowed, taken the twins in when their mother died.”

“Don’t you dare tell me that I could have behaved differently,” Ellie said, blowing her nose into her shawl again. “Father wanted me to remarry, had started the arrangements before Folkestone was even cold. I merely followed your lead and made myself too notorious to be married off again so easily. Besides, until the current marquess finally decides to show his face in London, there’s no need for me to leave this house.”

“You had best hope he never returns, if you’re spending as much of his money on this house as I wager you are.”

“The trustees have never stopped my spending. I’m sure Nick will know why I’m draining his coffers,” she snapped.

He raised an eyebrow. “Did you know him before you married Folkestone? I thought he left for the Orient before your wedding.”

“If you had bothered to come to my wedding, I would have told you,” she said. “I loved him once — almost eloped with him. But Father found out, and instead of merely forbidding me to run away, he knew he had to make me ineligible. Arranging for me to marry Nick’s titled cousin was his idea of humor.”

Ferguson felt the same cold rage he had always felt around his father. The man was a tyrant, an iron fist in a glove of ice rather than velvet. “So Nick left to avoid seeing you marry his relative?”

“Then the cousin died, leaving me a widow and Nick the heir. But Nick has never returned.”

“Ellie,” he said.

“Don’t say anything,” she said, her anger flooding back. “You should have been here, and there is nothing you can do to change the fact you weren’t. I will help Lady Madeleine — but for her sake, not yours. Unless you promise that you will stay in London and be the head this family needs, I do not want to see you again.”

He thought of his plan, of his desire to go back to Scotland and leave the English properties in the hands of his stewards. “I cannot say anything yet, Ellie. Once the twins are married...”

“So you intend to get rid of them through marriage? I never thought I would see the day, but you are becoming our father after all.”

The words cut into him like a lash. He rose stiffly to his feet, not willing to acknowledge the truth behind the insult. “I will not turn into him, but I won’t sacrifice my life for his estate either. I need time — and I think we all need time — to understand what to do.”

“Don’t kill yourself like Richard did,” she said nastily. “At least he took Father with him. Your death would just be selfish.”

He bowed. “I will endeavor not to disappoint you again. Now, if you will excuse me, I shall continue my metamorphosis into our evil father by going off and sacrificing a goat.”

Her lips quirked at their old joke about the duke’s satanic ways. He was glad to see the glimmer of a smile before she curled back into herself on the divan. His hand hovered above her hair, wishing they could say goodbye properly — but he had not said goodbye when he went to Scotland. She clearly did not want to hear it now.

So he left, ambling down the stairs so he didn’t feel quite like he was fleeing. He had to find a way to make things right with Ellie — with all of his family — but that was not something he could achieve in a day.

First, though, he had to decide whether to truly be the duke. Every instinct screamed for him to return to Scotland, take up the life he had built for himself rather than the life that his inheritance thrust upon him. Every moment he stayed in London felt like he was being bound more tightly to his title — and if he was already using the old duke’s favorite tactic of marrying people off to control them, how badly might he behave if he became the duke in earnest?

But returning to his old life would not make things any better for his siblings — and it wasn’t enough to offer a woman like Madeleine.

He cursed as Ellie’s indecently handsome butler showed him out the door to his waiting carriage. He couldn’t think of what to offer Madeleine because he couldn’t offer her anything — he needed to focus on getting her through the month with her reputation and virtue intact. Then, he would find husbands, or barring that, a better chaperone than Sophronia for his sisters, and go back to Scotland where he belonged.

And he needed to stop thinking of Madeleine as though she was already his, before the temptation to keep her overwhelmed his tenuous ability to be a gentleman.

The next afternoon was Friday, and as usual, Prudence called on Madeleine and Amelia while their mothers shopped. It was an arrangement they made several years earlier, after all three girls mutinied and demanded one afternoon a week when they might be free of the usual house calls and shopping excursions to Bond Street.

Lady Harcastle had declared that Prudence was wasting all her other chances to make a decent match, so she might as well lose her Friday afternoons as well. Aunt Augusta was more tactful, but she felt the same. Either way, the girls had won — and their little club was born. They dubbed themselves the “Muses of Mayfair,” and each week, they shared a bit of their recent work: Amelia read from her novel in progress, Prudence shared bits of her latest historical treatise, and Madeleine recited a monologue.

As the years progressed, though, the meetings paled for Madeleine. Amelia published several novels under a male pseudonym with increasingly large sales. Prudence wrote to a variety of historians, again as a male — and they had all laughed uproariously when she started corresponding with Alex, who never guessed that many of those letters were composed in one of his own sitting rooms.

Madeleine, though, could rarely act, and she could only suggest charades at house parties so many times before people declined. It was with Prudence and Amelia’s encouragement that Madeleine finally sought out Madame Legrand and a real stage.

But this Friday, Madeleine didn’t want to discuss the latest developments with her friends. How could she tell them she had expanded her repertoire and become Ferguson’s mistress? It was hard enough lying to Aunt Augusta at breakfast about why she had “confined herself to her room” the night before, when she had promised to attend the Locktons’ ball.

Amelia would not let her keep secrets, though. As soon as Prudence arrived and they were all ensconced in the small back sitting room that overlooked the Staunton gardens, the inquisition began.

“Where were you last night?” Amelia demanded. “I know you weren’t in your room before we left the house, and when I returned after two, your door was locked.”

Madeleine had heard someone try the handle as she tossed away another sleepless night, but she had not wanted company. “It took longer to leave the theatre than I expected.”

“Nonsense,” Amelia said. “We have timed that route exactly. When I left for the ball, you were already over an hour late. And since Josephine was here to make your excuses to Aunt Augusta, you were somewhere without an escort.”

Madeleine couldn’t say anything without incriminating herself further. “What were you thinking?” Amelia continued, starting to pace. “London isn’t safe for any of us alone at night. And the danger is not merely our reputations — any number of things could happen in Mayfair, let alone in Seven Dials. Highwaymen, procuresses, white slavers from the Barbary Coast...”

Madeleine sighed as she watched her cousin pace the room. Amelia always paced when she was agitated, or just thinking things through. Since this was the room she wrote in, there was a well-worn path for her in the carpet.

“Isn’t the Barbary Coast a bit far from Mayfair?” Madeleine asked.

“Yes. They would never be suspected,” Amelia said triumphantly. Madeleine sighed again. Amelia would be easier to reason with if she didn’t occasionally lapse into thinking that the events of her Gothic novels could happen to them.

“Madeleine would never be so careless,” Prudence said soothingly, assuming her usual role of peacemaker. “The logical answer is that she was not alone.”

Amelia stopped pacing to stare at Madeleine. “Then if Josephine was not with you, who escorted you home?”

Madeleine looked at both of them. They were her dearest friends and she trusted them completely — but they would not be pleased with her next words. “Pierre brought me home after retrieving me from the duke of Rothwell.”

Prudence gasped. Amelia’s jaw dropped. They could not have been more surprised if Madeleine claimed she was rescued by Shakespeare’s ghost. As much as Madeleine had not wanted to tell them, this reaction was worth it.

Finally, Amelia pulled herself back into some semblance of order. “Why on earth did you take Rothwell, of all people, into your confidence? The man is a scoundrel, and we know just how unstable his family is!”

Madeleine held up her hands. “I had no choice. Ferguson came back after the play was over and discovered me.”

“Oh, so he’s Ferguson now?” Prudence teased. “I do hope he hasn’t taken unwanted liberties.”

Madeleine flushed.

Prudence laughed delightedly. “So he has taken unwanted liberties! Or were they not so unwanted after all?”

“Prudence!” Amelia gasped.

Madeleine frowned at her cousin. “Why are you so upset about this, Mellie? I thought you would react like Prudence did. Weren’t you the one who always thought we needed to embrace new experiences to improve our art?”

It was Amelia’s turn to flush. “I may have said that, but I never expected you to dally with a duke. You, who wouldn’t even kiss the dancing master when I dared you.”

“You didn’t precisely enjoy kissing the dancing master, did you?” Madeleine retorted.

Prudence dissolved into giggles, quickly smothering her laughter after a glare from Amelia. Madeleine would have laughed too, but Amelia turned back to her with an unusually hard look in her eyes. In that moment, Madeleine saw what Amelia would be if she decided to marry one of her suitors. As she aged, and with the right husband, she could rival any of the most fearsome hostesses in the ton.

“Perhaps it would be helpful if I explained everything,” Madeleine said, knowing that Amelia wouldn’t stop questioning until she did.

Amelia sank onto the settee next to Prudence. They both looked at her, Amelia with angry concern, Prudence with expectant amusement.

She didn’t want to start, but she somehow managed to stumble into the story. As uncomfortable as it made her, she told them everything: the earl of Westbrook’s offer, the men in the alleyway, her introduction to the marchioness of Folkestone, and the help Ellie had provided with her wardrobe.

But when she needed to tell them about Ferguson’s plan for keeping her safe, her voice faltered.

Amelia noticed when Madeleine broke off abruptly. “What are you not telling us?”