As You Desire (26 page)

He waited and watched Harry bend over the slight, dark woman. He heard the gibbering lilt of Harry’s Arabic words and the monosyllabic replies of the Egyptian. Harry placed the figure in her hand, closing her fingers around it and gesturing. Nodding gravely, she turned and disappeared down the hallway.

Harry reentered the room and, finding Blake still there, sighed heavily. “Blake, go away.”

“I came to Cairo to see you, Harry.”

“Really?” Harry said incuriously. “That’s not the reason my mother gave out.”

“And what was that?”

“She says you’re recovering from a broken heart.” Everything in Harry’s manner betrayed how unlikely he found this explanation. Damn him.

“A broken engagement.”

“Oh?”

Harry’s careless tone infuriated Blake, shredding his determination to act as a gentleman, dimming his nobler resolutions. “Do you know why Lenore DuChamp dissolved our engagement?” He spoke quickly, violently, shocking himself.

“Do I want to know?” Harry mused, still unconcerned.

“Because of you, cousin.”

Harry laughed and Blake’s hand jerked shut into a clenched fist.

“Oh, come, Blake,” Harry said with sharp amusement, “I’ve been blamed for a good many things, and in most cases I’m willing to plead guilty, but I’ve never even
met
Miss DuChamp.”

“You didn’t have to. She’d only needed to hear about you, your defect, to call off our engagement.”

And now, finally, Blake had the savage satisfaction of seeing Harry’s brown skin turn a sickly cast, his eyelids flicker shut as if he’d been struck.

“That’s correct, Harry.” Blake stretched his lips, trying to smile. “I told her about you myself. It was the only decent thing to do. She decamped after the courtesy of a final interview. She expressly told me that she could not face the possibility of bringing an abnormal child into the world. And what with your
inadequacy
, our bloodline was suspect, to say the least.”

“Jesus.”

As soon as he’d said the words, Blake experienced their loss. He’d kept the reason for Lenore’s departure
strictly to himself. He hadn’t even told his grandfather, even when the old man had answered the news of her desertion by disinheriting him.

Harry absorbed the information as if he’d been struck. Even as he watched, Blake witnessed Harry master the pain, somehow become ennobled by it. Blake, for all his months of secret suffering, had not become nobler. He’d become bitter. And he knew it.

Once more he found himself wanting in comparison to Harry. Fury lashed his self-contempt into a white-hot resolve.

No more. Not again. Not ever again would he be found wanting in comparison to his imbecile cousin. He leaned a white-knuckled fist on the desk separating them, forced words through stiff lips. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t be a fool. Of course it matters.”

“No. Not anymore.”

“Does Miss DuChamp realize that we might not even share the same grandfather—”

“No! Besides, a better chatelaine than Lenore exists.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but once spoken, he was glad. His elation outpaced his self-disgust. It wasn’t as if the words weren’t true. He just hadn’t realized before how well suited Desdemona was for the role of his viscountess. He hadn’t said the words out of spite. He hadn’t!

Harry looked as if he’d sustained a heart blow. He swayed ever so slightly … so gratifyingly. “No.”

“Don’t ever presume again,” Blake spat out. “My future and that of
any
woman I contemplate forming
a union with are no concern of yours. None. Don’t dare to presume, don’t dare!”

“You’ll destroy her!” Harry’s words tumbled out, low and throbbing with intensity. “She’s artless and honest and decent. You’ll never forgive her for being better than you are, Blake, for having nobility you can only approximate, and you’ll chip away at her until you’ve destroyed her, until she’s—”

“Shut up!” Blake squeezed his eyes shut.

He would not listen to Harry discuss Desdemona. The thought of their intimacy made his head swim with dark and violent impulses. He hated how casually she touched him, how he followed her with his gaze … “Shut up!” he shouted again to still the flow of images. “You’ve everything! Everything.”

“Everything,” Harry echoed hollowly.

“Everything! You’ve been named Grandfather’s sole heir.” Blake squared his shoulders and opened his eyes to find Harry regarding him in flat disbelief.

“It was because of Lenore,” he went on, determined to finish this, to prove himself. “Grandfather doted on her and after she left, he was furious with me. He punished me by naming you his heir, knowing how I loved Darkmoor Manor, knowing how much it meant to me and how little it meant to you.”

Harry frowned, skeptical and unconvinced. “And you came to Cairo? Why? To tell me in person, about my … fortune?”

“You bastard.”

“I’m disappointed,” Harry said, his flip tone at odds with his tense posture. “You’ve always been careful to make sure your epithets are accurate. Idiot,
fool, moron. If nothing else, you know I’m legitimate.”

“Don’t you understand? You will own Darkmoor Manor!”

“I understand perfectly,” Harry said, his bright eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “I’ve been named heir to Grandfather’s estate in retaliation for your losing an approved fiancée. Miss DuChamp must have been a buxom girl. Grandfather was always partial to buxom women. No, I understand that part. What I haven’t figured out is why you’ve come all this way to tell me.

“If I were you,” Harry continued, “I’d be out scouring the English countryside for a suitably well-endowed replacement so I could wiggle into the old man’s good graces before he died.”

Jesus. Blake had never considered the possibility that Grandfather could die while he was gone—He looked up. Harry smiled knowingly.

“Damn you.”

“You’re being redundant.”

“I will do everything in my power to regain what is rightfully mine,” Blake said. “But my first responsibility is to Darkmoor, to seeing that it is properly cared for in the interim. That’s why I’m here.”

“Yes?” Sharper interest now.

“It’s falling apart. If something is not done soon, the foundations will give way and the house will slide into the sea.” He watched intently, trying to gauge Harry’s reaction. “I need money to make the necessary repairs. Lots of money.”

“You want me to give you—”

“No,” Blake clipped out, insulted. “No. I asked the bank for a loan but they won’t give me one. They will only lend that sort of money to someone with the collateral to back it—in other words, to Darkmoor’s heir.
You
. That is why I’ve come here. I want you to sign the bank papers.” He reached inside his coat and withdrew a thin packet: the bank’s loan papers and a copy of the will naming Harry Darkmoor’s heir.

Harry took the proffered papers, his smile ripe with grim humor. “You want me to sign papers that will make me responsible for repaying a loan that will be used to restore
my
inheritance after which you will then do your damnedest to do me out of that same inheritance?”

Blake nodded.

“It would seem I come by my brass honestly. Perhaps we’re related after all.” Harry tossed the papers onto the desk.

“If I had any other recourse, I would have taken it. Time is precious. I need the money now.”

“How do I know these are what you say? I’m sure you remember I can’t read. You might be asking me to sign a confession to some heinous crime you’ve committed back in England. You’re not the Ripper, are you, Blake?”

Blake glared at him. “I give you my word as a gentleman they are what I say. If you have any doubts, hire someone to read them for you. I’m sure you must employ someone’s services in that area fairly frequently.”

“True, and of course, I shall do just that. But even
if these are what you say, I don’t see how this would be a practical business move on my part, Blake. I mean, I take all the risks, incur all the debt, and you get all the fun of turning my supposed grandsire against me. A rather despicable role and one I humbly suggest I’m far better suited for.”

Blake stiffened. “I will, of course, accept full responsibility for repaying the loan.”

“Of course.” Harry held all the cards and he knew it.

“Darkmoor means nothing to you.”

“That’s true. But I’m a businessman, Blake. You don’t need to read to be a businessman. You only need to understand the simple concept of profit and loss. And I’m asking myself, what profit I?”

“What do you want?”

“Leave Cairo,” Harry answered harshly.

“You bastard!”

Harry did not smile this time, but met and held Blake’s furious gaze with one of his own, his eyes flat and hard and brilliant. “That’s what I want.”

“I can’t believe you entertain
notions
about Desdemona Carlisle. You can’t honestly want to force that lovely girl to live here, like some Arab tramp, with
you
for the rest of her life? She’s extraordinary, gifted. You must have some natural affection for her. Want what is best for her.”

“That’s
what I want,” Harry repeated, breathing hard. “I’ll sign the papers when you board the boat.”

Blake snatched his hat up from the table. “I won’t be blackmailed.”

H
arry paced restlessly around the cluttered library until he caught sight of the packet of papers Blake had left with him. He picked up the thin packet and unfolded them. Letters spilled in unrecognizable patterns across the sheet, meaningless and provocative. He tossed them back down.

It had been nearly two days since he’d offered to sign those damned mortgage papers in return for Blake’s vacating Egypt. Two days since he’d offered Darkmoor Manor in exchange for Dizzy.

Since then Blake had avoided him. Blake hadn’t, however, avoided Dizzy. He spent more time here than at his blasted hotel. She allowed it. She was “at home” whenever he called.

For the hundredth time, Harry cursed himself for acting so rashly. All he’d needed to do was sign the bloody papers and within a few days Blake would have been hightailing it back to Jolly Old, making lists of repairs to the family manse. Now bloody
Blake would stay until bloody doomsday proving how noble and sincere his aristocratic sentiments were.

Bully for bloody Blake.

Harry rammed his shoulder against the frame of the door leading out into the small walled garden behind the house. His lip curled at the blameless poppies nodding in the early-spring sunlight outside.

If Dizzy found out he’d tried to blackmail Blake into leaving Cairo, she’d have his head. But when Blake had presented him with a chance to be rid of him, he’d fallen on it. He should have: realized how Blake would react to extortion. Blake’s righteous outrage should have been pitifully easy to anticipate. The man was a walking cliché.

Luckily, Blake’s intrepid discretion was just as easily assumed. He wouldn’t tell Dizzy about Harry’s attempted coercion. His gentleman’s code would never allow it. Not that Harry gave a damn. He simply wanted Blake gone.

Leaving Dizzy to him.

His beloved
.

Even now, he could hear the murmur of Dizzy’s and Blake’s voices from the sitting room. Though he strained his ears, all he could discern of their conversation was the tone: intimate and maddening.

He raked his hair back from his temples and returned to the library and the book he’d been perusing. Carefully he paged through the dog-eared book, treating it as if it were fragile vellum instead of the cheap foolscap novels of this type were generally
printed on. He’d spent the morning skimming the illustrations of this and the other books he’d found tucked along the uppermost ledge of the bookcase.

They had striking similarities. They all featured an insipid-looking, open-mouthed girl and a rock-jawed man with a constipated expression. On the last page of each book was an inevitable picture of the pair, their arms entwined as they strolled toward some moss-mantled manor on a distant hill.

Harry closed the book.

Darkmoor was no pink-and-pastel fairy castle, but it was a manor.

And he could have had it; Darkmoor and, by transference, respect—or at least the qualified approval that came with the ownership of such ghastly rubble piles. He could return to England and, with his financial acumen, make the right investments, cannily parlay his money into wealth. He could force society to acknowledge his success if not his worthiness.

He would never make a name for himself as an Egyptologist. He would never find success in the fascinating field he’d devoted the last decade to studying. But he
could
have a measure of respect, and that was what he’d always wanted. Or imagined he’d wanted.

Because he’d heard Blake’s disclosure and felt not one whit of triumph, of hope, of eagerness. Because it meant
nothing
, nothing at all, except that he would have been able to offer Dizzy at least part of the fairy tale.

Would have been.

Unfortunately, owning Darkmoor would not stop the sidelong pitying glances of some damned curate’s wife, the condolences whispered to Dizzy behind his back, the assessing gleam in too-interested masculine eyes as they softly queried, “Why would a woman like that marry the likes of
him?
”