A Duke's Wicked Kiss (Entangled Select) (39 page)

The duchess stared at him in silence, the knuckles in her clasped hands white as her lips. Then she turned on her heel. As she went, she spoke to Suri through clenched teeth. “Go to Lady Marguerite. Now.”

Suri stood in stunned silence for a moment, staring at Edward, at the cold and ruthless glint in his eyes. When she could find no further words, she dashed from the room, out the side door to where she could hear Jeremy and his mother.

“Marguerite!” Suri called, breathless from her run.

“Oh, Suri!” Marguerite ran to meet her with open arms, great sobs tumbling out her throat. Suri clutched her sister and rained kisses on her, smearing tears on both their cheeks.

“You’re here, oh, you’re here.” Suri held on, rocking her sister back and forth. If hugs could break bones, theirs were in great danger of shattering.

“Help me to contain myself,” Marguerite wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders and whispered into Suri’s ear. “Help me to show a bit of joy. There is so very much I must tell you. Jeremy has yet to make mention of his father.”

“Allow him to do so in his own time,” Suri whispered back, her eyes following Jeremy’s movements. “He’s ceased grooming the lamb and watches us. Let’s discuss this in private. No telling how far our words travel in the wind. I am so terribly sorry for your loss.”

“And I am so very sorry for what Rupert has done to you, Suri. Ravenswood says if anyone can rescue your inheritance, Trenton Traehaern will.”

“Shh. Jeremy might hear us.” She gave her sister another quick squeeze, pushed her at arm’s length, and forced a smile. “Why, Marguerite,” she said loudly. “It’s about time you arrived. Jeremy and I have been waiting for you, haven’t we, Jerri? What do you think of the lambs?”

They walked arm in arm to where Jeremy had resumed brushing a lamb’s coat and speaking to the little thing as though doing so was a daily occurrence, rather than a happening over the last couple of hours. Over his head, Suri and Marguerite shot speaking glances at each other.

…

On his way to a quick feast of warm apple tarts and coffee, John crossed his mother’s path along the upper corridor. “Where’s Edward?”

“In the library,” came her quiet, stiff-lipped reply.

The false chord in her voice struck a nerve. He paused to channel his sudden anger. “Is my brother not glad to know I am alive and home?”

The lifting of her chin squared her clenched jaw. “Elated.”

One word, but it was ice breaking into a million tiny shards. Glancing at her tightly clasped hands and knuckles turning white, he regarded her comment in a different light. He lowered his volume to match hers. God forbid some servant should hear what they all well knew. “It’s not even noon. Is he drinking already?”

Her back visibly stiffened and, without moving her head, she whipped severe glances up and down the long, empty corridor. “He’s been up all night with a bottle never far from hand.”

“Good Christ.” John blew out a breath. “I’ll have a word with him. Do you know what sent him off the edge?”

“Ask him, why don’t you? If you recall, one redeeming factor Edward has when he’s in his cups is that he does not hesitate to speak the truth.” She sniffed and lifted her chin even higher. “Crude as his words may be.”

Her lips, now a narrow slit, told John there was more. “And what’s got your nerves tight as violin strings?”

She made to step past him. He put his hand out, blocking her passage. “Mother?”

Her angry eyes glittered. “At the very least, you could have waited to procure a special license and made things legal before you climbed into her bed.” Her cheeks mottled. “It would’ve been the decent thing to do. For all our sakes.”

Shock tore through him, splintering her calculating words. He stared at her while he tried to decipher their meaning. Her words swirled about in his head until they coalesced and a new connotation emerged.

Good God.

The tendons connecting John’s bones tightened. His fists clenched, but he held himself in check—kept his voice from blasting forth in a shout that would surely have echoed throughout both floors. “Don’t tell me Edward fancies himself in love with Suri?”

There went her slow intake of breath again, followed by a stiffening of her back, as if the very air she took in pumped directly into her spine. “I suggest you ask him directly…but he offered to marry her—for you.”

She stepped past him. “As I said, when he drinks he’s not so guarded with his words.”

John watched her march down the hall to her quarters and then he started down the stairs, guilt running rampant. Damn it, she was right—he should have waited until he and Suri were married. The idea of greeting Suri at noon with a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and a
wait until after the wedding
speech ran counter to the vivid and lusty images of last night. Hell, he never would have made it through the night in abstinence, let alone three bloody days.

He paused before the great carved doors he’d entered so many times as a child and again as a young man. This would make only the second time since last night that he’d entered as a duke. How things had changed since he’d left Ravenswood Park for his assignment in India.
James, Laura and the babe—gone.
And God help him, just past these doors sat a duke now removed—a drunk who was supposed to marry his brother’s soon-to-be wife. Could things get more complicated?

Raking his hand through his hair, he turned the latch on one of the double doors and entered. Edward sat before a blazing fire. The chair’s high, leather back was to the door, one booted leg was slung over the chair’s arm. The hand resting on his brother’s knee held a near-empty decanter, ready to slip through loose fingers at any second and crash to the floor.

“Well, Edward, it seems I’ve finally found you.”

“So it would seem.” The hand holding the bottle disappeared behind the chair’s high leather back. “Welcome home, brother.”

John walked to the side of the chair, unease trickling beneath his skin.

Edward lifted the bottle from his lips and offered a sloppy grin. “I’d rise to greet you, but I fear I might not make it straight out at this juncture.” He held the bottle up in toast. “Nonetheless, I salute you.” He took another swig.

John frowned.
Not a slurred word in the lot. How did he always manage such clarity of speech no matter the amount of drink?
“How is this not the homecoming I expected?”

“How is it you were not expected?”

“You are drunk, and it’s not yet noon.”

Edward lifted his hand holding the bottle, one finger pointing to the clock on the mantel, and squinting at it with an eye closed. “Ah, but you have things a bit off, John. You see, while it is indeed near noon and you are just now rising to greet your day, I have come to the end of mine. Shortly, I will see to my bed where I shall sleep the day away.” He tipped the bottle to his lips again. “If I’ve any good fortune.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Edward lost himself in the orange flames licking the air in the fireplace. For a moment, there was only the ticking of the clock and the crackle and hiss of burning wood. “You’re a bloody goddamned spy,” he said. “For the Queen’s Foreign Service, no less.”

Christ!
“Retired. As of last week.” Had Suri given him away? She was the only one besides Traehaern who knew, and Trent would’ve gone to his death before giving John away. “What does that have to do with my return?”

Edward snorted and gave his head a slow, desultory shake. “It all started back at Cambridge, didn’t it? You, James, George Thurston, and Traehaern. No wonder I felt like a mule amongst thoroughbreds all those years. You bastards cooked up a life for yourselves and left me here to manage this…this—” he gave a small wave of his hand— “depository for sheep’s dung and horseshit. Four arrogant asses out to save our country for the queen. How bloody chivalrous.”

He turned his gaze from the fire and onto John. “You left me here to rot.”

John reeled at what he saw. Pain, hot and dark, layered beneath Edward’s rawboned fury. So this was what Edward’s anger was really all about. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I never knew you felt this way.”

Edward held up the bottle as if to study the flames through the cut glass and let out a throaty chuckle. “That’s why I drink.” He flashed John a puckish grin and went back to staring through the bottle. “If I’m pickled, I cannot rot.”

A sudden revelation singed the hairs on the back of John’s neck. He’d matured over these past few years, while Edward had done nothing but plod along a singular path that had turned into a rut. Any deeper, and the rut would soon become a grave. “James and I wanted you with us, but Traehaern said no. He was the one in charge, the one who trained us.”

With a small snort, Edward took a swig of whisky and swiped a hand over his mouth. “The bleating goat. Why was he against me?”

“He wasn’t against you—his decision was a matter of business. You weren’t reliable back then. Reliability can save a man’s life or take it. I learned that in the field the hard way.”

Edward’s gray eyes flicked over John and then glanced away. “You should have told me.”

John didn’t know what to say. While they had all caroused in their foolish youth—whoring, gambling, and drinking until their guts rebelled and heaved out the contents, Edward had never known when to call it quits. But there were other things that had marked him as unreliable. He couldn’t curb his temper in public, nor silence his tongue—two vital requirements in the dark business of spying. But this was hardly the time to fire off reasons like buckshot or there was bound to be broken furniture in the end. “When did you figure all this out?”

A thin smile appeared on Edward’s lips. “I went through your things, is what I did. While you were…ah…otherwise engaged last night. Rather sloppy for a spy, leaving papers where wandering eyes might fall upon them.”

He ransacked my belongings?
John did not move while he warred with the anger boiling his blood. “The only papers you could have found were in the false bottom of my carpetbag.”
Do not knock the chair over with him in it.
“Perhaps Traehaern misjudged your abilities, after all.”

“How did you find my betrothed last night, brother?”

It took a minute for the accusing words to sink in. “For Christ’s sake, stop it, Edward.”

Edward angled his head to the side and looked at John. “I’d rather you stop. Bedding my future wife, that is.”

Christ, he wanted to knock the bottle out of Edward’s hand. Instead, John shoved his fingers through his hair. “Damn it, Edward, Suri is no longer your betrothed. You know she only agreed to wed you because she thought I was dead and she had no place to go.”

Edward set his elbow on the chair’s arm and rested his head in his hand. He raised a brow. “Indeed. However, I don’t think she found me entirely disagreeable all these months.”

“What are you getting at?”

He shrugged. “Ask her, why don’t you?”

Trepidation cast a net beneath John’s skin. “Are you accusing her of improper behavior?”

Edward snorted. “I am not accusing her of anything, I am merely stating facts.” The look he gave John said the queen’s knight was checked and he was about to run the board. “Did she tell you we share a bed every night?”

A cold chill ran through John’s heated anger, cracking like ice in his ears. “Then why were you not in it last night?”

“You beat me to it.”

Jesus Christ!
“You can’t be serious.”

Edward lifted a brow. “Do I sense a bit of shocked denial there, old boy? If you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask her yourself? Better yet, if you’re such a bloody good spy, why haven’t you been able to ferret things out on your own?”

“You’re a goddamn liar.”

“Tell me, what reason would I have to lie? We thought you dead and buried.” He took a quick sip of whisky. “No, wait, we’re speaking of India, so you wouldn’t have been buried, you’d have been burned to a crisp.”

John stepped forward, fists clenched.

Edward lifted his fingers. “Hear me out before you strike. Suri had no home and her brother had disowned her. She was destitute. She came to me bearing the ring you gave her, which indicated I was to see after her. What would you have done had the situation been reversed, and you needed a wife if you were to carry on as
lord
of the manor? If you found her attractive and more than willing to be consoled, would you have taken her to your bed? Would you also have been willing to make things right by her?”

As John stood staring at his brother, his mother’s words echoed through his mind.
One redeeming factor Edward has when he’s in his cups is that he does not hesitate to speak the truth.
God help him, he knew this about Edward. His brother had always conducted himself that way. Why would he choose to lie now? A familiar sinking feeling started somewhere at the back of his throat and spread through him like a rabid pestilence, infecting him with a strange calm that bore little resemblance to the violent storm brewing beneath.
Suri wasn’t like Lady Elizabeth. She couldn’t be. A shudder ran through him. If this was true, Suri would be worse. This was his brother.

Edward’s glittering eyes studied him. “Do yourself a favor, John. Look Miss Thurston in the eye and ask her one question and one question only, ‘Has Edward ever been in your bed?’”

“You arrogant ass.”

“Ask her. And if you know her as well as you think you do, then you will know she is lying should she deliver you a denial.” He lifted a brow and tipped the bottle to John in salute, his voice shifting to a low, soft challenge. “Perhaps you will forgive her. After all, she thought you deceased.”

John gritted his teeth and strode out the door, dead calm giving way to fury. He found Marguerite sitting on a stool outside the sheep’s pen. “Where’s your sister?”

Marguerite stood, concern etching her face. “With the horses.”

He didn’t bother responding. Eyes searching the landscape, he pounded his way to the stables where he found Suri, leaning against the whitewashed rear wall, watching a young colt dance around its mother. She turned. A wistful smile broadened and lit up her face at the sight of him. But as he approached, her smile wavered and then turned to one of puzzlement.