Never Deceive a Duke (3 page)

“I don’t give two shites what the College of Arms determines,” said Gareth. “I want—”

“Gareth, your language!” Xanthia gently chided. “Now do sit down and explain all this to me. Is your last name really Ventnor? Did someone really murder your uncle?”

Just then, another dark-haired gentleman came breezing into the room, this one dressed with an almost dandyish elegance. He carried something enormous and shiny before him. “Good morning, my dears!” he sang.

His patience already tried, Gareth wheeled around. “What the devil’s good about it?”

Xanthia ignored him. “Heavens, Mr. Kemble,” she said, rising. “What have you there?”

“Another of his overpriced trifles, no doubt.” Gareth loomed over him.

Mr. Kemble drew the object protectively away. “It’s a Tang Dynasty amphora,” he snipped. “Don’t touch it, you philistine!”

“What is it for?” Xanthia looked disoriented.

“It is the accent piece for the marble window pedestal.” Mr. Kemble waltzed across the room and delicately positioned it. “There! Perfect. I now pronounce you Fully Decorated.” He spun around. “Now, pardon my intrusion. Where were we? Mr. Lloyd has offed his uncle, has he? I am not surprised.”

“I misspoke,” said Xanthia. “It was a cousin, perhaps?” Swiftly, she introduced Kemble to the solicitor.

“And I haven’t ‘offed’ anyone,” snapped Gareth.

“Actually, we looked into that,” said the solicitor dryly. “Mr. Lloyd has the perfect alibi. He was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at the time.”

Xanthia seemed oblivious to the sarcasm. “And the most shocking thing, Mr. Kemble!” She laid a hand on his coat sleeve. “Gareth is going to be a duke!”

“Oh, good God, Zee!” Gareth felt his blood begin to boil. “Just hush,
please
.”

“I am perfectly serious,” she said, still addressing Kemble. “Gareth has a secret duke in his family.”

“Yes, well, don’t we all.” Mr. Kemble smiled tightly. “Which one is yours?”

“Warnley,” said Xanthia swiftly.

“Warne
ham,
” corrected the solicitor.

“Neither of them,” said Gareth grimly. “Cavendish here is going to have to shake this family tree until another monkey falls out.”

Mr. Kemble lifted his hands. “Well, I cannot help you with this one, old fellow,” he said to Gareth. “
C’est la vie, non?
Now, my dears, I really must run. I wouldn’t have barged in at all—but the mention of a murder was too delicious to ignore. I’ll get the gory bits later.”

“Thank you again for the lovely decorating, Mr. Kemble,” said Xanthia.

The dapper gentleman paused to snatch Xanthia’s hand, and bowed over it. “I shall wait to kiss this until tomorrow on the portico of St. George’s, my dear,” he said, “when I may properly call you the Marchioness of Nash.”

At that, the solicitor seemed to sit a little straighter in his chair. “I beg your pardon,” he said as Mr. Kemble vanished. “Do I gather that congratulations are in order?”

Xanthia blushed. “I am to be married in the morning.”

Just then, another shadow appeared at the door. Gareth looked up in frustration. “I do beg your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Bakely. “We’ve just had a rider up from Woolwich. The
Margaret Jane
has been spotted coming up the Blackwall Reach.”

Xanthia pressed her hand to her chest. “Oh, thank God!”

“About bloody time,” said Gareth, shoving back his chair with a sharp scrape.

“Do you wish her to put into the West India Docks, sir?” Bakely pressed. “Or shall she come upriver?”

“She’s to put in,” said Gareth urgently. “And send round for my gig. You and I will go down and see how bad things are.”

Xanthia, too, had risen. “I apologize, Mr. Cavendish,” she said. “As intriguing as your story is—and I confess, I am indeed agog—we must see to the
Margaret Jane
at once. She’s been three months at port in Bridgetown, and lost a third of her crew to typhus. We are gravely concerned, as I am sure you can understand?”

“You are not going down there, Zee.” Gareth’s voice was stern. He was already drawing on his driving coat, oblivious to anything but the duty before him.

Xanthia’s hand returned instinctively to her belly. “No, I suppose I oughtn’t.” She smiled at Mr. Cavendish, and with grave reluctance, he, too, rose.

“But what am I to do with the ducal papers?” he asked.

Intent on collecting his things, Gareth said nothing.

“Just leave them on Mr. Lloyd’s desk,” Xanthia suggested. “I am sure he will review them later.”

Mr. Cavendish looked irritated. “But we have a number of pressing issues,” he protested. “His Grace’s attention is direly needed.”

Xanthia smiled gently. “Do not despair, sir,” she murmured. “Gareth will do his duty. He always has. And I have every confidence he shall handle whatever problems you set before him with his usual cool competence.”

The solicitor paid her scant heed. “Sir,” he said to the back of Gareth’s head, “this really cannot be put off.”

Gareth snatched a ledger from the bookshelf. “I’ll be back in an hour or two,” he said to Xanthia. “I shall give Captain Barrett your regards.”

“Wait, Your Grace!” said the solicitor a little plaintively now. “You are expected at Selsdon Court immediately. Really, sir! The duchess awaits.”

“The
duchess
?” said Xanthia.

Cavendish ignored her. “Everything has been left hanging, sir,” the solicitor insisted. “It really cannot wait any longer.”

“It will bloody well have to,” said Gareth, without looking at them. “Indeed, it can hang ’til Kingdom Come, so far as I care.”

“Really, sir! This is unconscionable!”

“Blood does not make a man, Cavendish,” Gareth snapped. “Indeed, it is more often his undoing.” He thundered down the stairs behind Bakely without another word.

Xanthia ushered the solicitor to the door. He looked down at her, his brows drawn sharply together. “I really cannot comprehend this,” he murmured. “He is the duke. Surely he realizes his good fortune? He is now a peer of the realm—one of England’s wealthiest, in fact.”

“Gareth possesses a self-confidence which can sometimes seem abrasive, Mr. Cavendish,” she answered. “He is a self-made man—and yet money means very little to him.”

Both concepts were clearly beyond Cavendish’s grasp. After a few more murmured platitudes, Xanthia at last got the solicitor out the door. At the top of the steps, however, a question struck her. “Mr. Cavendish,” she said, “might I ask, who is believed to have wished the duke dead? Are there…suspects? Any hope of an arrest?”

The solicitor shook his head. “As with most powerful men, the Duke had enemies,” he admitted. “As to suspects, the rumormongers have regrettably targeted his widow.”

Xanthia felt her eyes widen. “Good Lord! Poor woman—if, indeed, she is innocent?”

“I believe that she is,” said the solicitor. “And the coroner believed it. Moreover, the duchess is from a powerful family. No one dares accuse her too loudly—not without evidence.”

“Still, in English society, the mere whisper of scandal…” Xanthia felt suddenly chilled, and shook her head. “The duchess must be ruined.”

“Very near it, I daresay,” said Cavendish sadly.

The solicitor went down the steps, his fine leather satchel in hand, looking a good deal wearier than he had upon his arrival. Xanthia’s head seemed to be spinning. Quietly, she closed the office door and set her forehead to the cool, well-polished wood.

What on earth had just happened? What had Gareth Lloyd been hiding all these years? Something a little more serious than a miserable childhood, apparently. But Gareth a
duke
?

Then she jerked her head up. Her brother Kieran might know the truth. Abruptly, she crossed the room, rang the bell, and began to haphazardly stuff the contents of her desktop into her bulging leather satchel.

“Send for my carriage,” she said to the young clerk who cracked open the door. “I am going to take luncheon with Lord Rothewell.”

G
abriel held tight to his grandfather’s hand, terrified by the spinning carriage wheels and flashing hooves. Everyone was rushing. Shouting. Dashing into traffic—
meshuggenehs,
his grandmother would have called them.

“Zayde,
I…I want to go home.”

His grandfather looked down, smiling. “What, you don’t like this place, Gabriel? You should.”

“Why? It is too busy.”

“It is busy,” agreed his grandfather, “because this is the City. This is where the money gets made. Someday you, too, will work here. Perhaps you shall be a merchant banker, eh? Or a broker? Would you like that, Gabriel?”

Gabriel was confused. “I…I think I’m to be an English gentleman,
Zayde.”

“Oy vey!”
His grandfather swept Gabriel up into his arms. “What nonsense those women have taught you. Blood does not make a man. A man is nothing if he does not work.”

And then they were dashing across the street together, a part of the madding, teeming throng.

The Duchess of Warneham had slipped away to Selsdon’s rose garden for an hour of solitude when Mr. Cavendish arrived the following afternoon. She carried a basket on her arm, but after an hour of aimless wandering had cut but one stem, which she still carried in her hand.

She was thinking again. Thinking of the children, though she had been told time and again she must not. That it did no good to dwell on the past. But here, beyond the constraining walls of the house, her mother’s heart could bleed in peace. She had surrendered much. She would not surrender this, her grief.

The late summer sun was hot, with the threat of a shower heavy in the air, but the duchess was scarcely aware. Indeed, she did not hear her husband’s solicitor approach until he was halfway along the garden path. She looked up to see him waiting a respectable distance away, wilted rose petals skirling about his feet in the breeze.

“Good afternoon, Cavendish,” she said quietly. “Your return to London was brief.”

“Your Grace.” The solicitor hastened forward and sketched an elegant bow. “I’ve just this instant arrived.”

“Welcome back to Selsdon,” she said mechanically. “Have you dined?”

“Yes, Your Grace, in Croydon,” he said. “Have you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Have you dined, ma’am?” he pressed. “Remember that Dr. Osborne says you must eat.”

“Yes, of course,” she murmured. “I…I shall take a little something shortly, perhaps. Pray tell me what you found in London.”

Cavendish looked vaguely uncomfortable. “As I promised, ma’am, I went straight to Neville Shipping,” he said. “But I am not sure what I achieved.”

“You found him?” she asked. “This man who works for the shipping company?”

Cavendish nodded. “Yes. I found him.”

“And?—”

Cavendish exhaled sharply. “It was Gabriel Ventnor, I am quite sure,” he admitted. “The man is the very image of his late father. The height. The golden eyes and hair. I am certain we have the right man.”

The duchess remained impassive. “So it is done, then. When shall we expect him?”

Cavendish hesitated. “I am not at all sure, ma’am,” he confessed. “He seemed…disinterested in our news.”

“Disinterested,” the duchess echoed hollowly.

The solicitor gave an embarrassed cough. “I fear he is not just some sort of dockhand or shipping clerk after all,” he explained. “He is an owner. He looked…well, rather prosperous, actually. And intractable.”

Her smile was wan. “Hardly the impoverished orphan you expected.”

“No.” Cavendish’s voice was sour. “And I am not perfectly sure he comprehends his good fortune in inheriting the title. I am not even certain if or when he will deign to return to Selsdon Court, ma’am. He would make me no answer.”

Nor did the duchess. Instead, she looked down at the rose, which she still clutched. The petals were bloodred against her skin. Bloodred. Deathly white. Like flesh when all the life was leached out—and yet she still lived. For a long moment, she studied it, wondering at fate’s twisted path. Thinking of death, and all that it wrought. All that it so indelibly altered.

What did it matter if the man came or not? What would change? What could his power and his pride possibly do to her that would make her life more unbearable than it already was? The days ticked by in silent oblivion, as they had these past four years. Or perhaps it was five. She was not sure. She no longer counted.

Gabriel Ventnor
. He held her fate, or so they all believed, in his hands. But he did not. He was nothing. He could neither wound her nor torment her, for she no longer flinched at earthly pain.

“Your Grace?”

She looked up to see Cavendish peering at her intently. She realized she had lost her train of thought. “I—I beg your pardon, Cavendish. What were you saying?”

The solicitor frowned, stepped hesitantly nearer, and forced her fingers from the stem. “Your Grace, you have cut yourself again,” he chided. He plucked two thorns from her palm, one of them quite deep, and blood beaded from her flesh. “Ball your fist tight about this,” he ordered, pressing a handkerchief to the wound.

“It is just blood, Cavendish,” she murmured.

He laid the rose in her empty basket. “Come, Your Grace, we must go back into the house now,” he said, taking her gently by the arm.

“My roses,” she protested. “I should like to finish.”

Cavendish did not relent. “Ma’am, it has begun to rain,” he said, leading her toward the terrace. “Actually, it has been raining for some moments now.”

The duchess looked up to see that spatter was indeed bouncing off the garden wall. The sleeves of her gown were already damp, another earthly discomfort beneath her notice.

“Do you wish to make yourself ill again, ma’am?” Cavendish pressed. “What good would that serve?”

“None, I suppose.” The words came out throaty and tremulous.

“Indeed, it will but make Nellie’s life more difficult,” said Cavendish, “for she will have the inconvenience of nursing you.”

The duchess halted abruptly on the garden path. “Yes, Cavendish, you are quite right,” she said, looking at him directly now. “And as I have always said, I should hate—above all things—to be an inconvenience. To anyone.”

In Berkeley Square the following afternoon, Baron Rothewell toed off his fine leather slippers and poured himself enough brandy to put a lesser man under the table. Damned if he didn’t need a drink. The day had thus far been a misery—though his sister, thank God, had not noticed it.

Zee’s wedding day.
He had often thought never to see it. Other times, he had thought perhaps she might make a marriage of convenience, and of friendship, to Gareth Lloyd. But the day had come, and it had not been enough that Rothewell had had to watch his sister drive away from Berkeley Square with a man who was all but a perfect stranger to him—and a damned dangerous-looking stranger at that. No, Gareth had had to watch it, too.

Xanthia’s bridegroom, the Marquess of Nash, had taken the news of Gareth Lloyd’s societal elevation with his usual cool grace and had introduced him to all their wedding guests as “a dear family friend, the Duke of Warneham.” He had not meant ill by it, but Rothewell felt for Gareth, poor devil. Nash’s plain speaking would surely set society’s tongues a’wagging.

Just then his study door opened, and Gareth came in. “There you are, old fellow,” said Rothewell. “I was just wondering what went with you.”

“I’ve been belowstairs, helping Trammel carry the extra chairs.”

“A duke helping the butler move furniture,” mused Rothewell. “Why am I not surprised?”

“A man is nothing if he does not work,” Gareth remarked.

“Ugh!” grunted Rothewell. “Perish the thought. Will you join me in a brandy?”

Gareth flung himself into one of Rothewell’s wide leather armchairs. “No, it’s too early in the day for me,” he answered, then hesitated. “But not, perhaps, for the Duke of Warneham?”

Laughter rumbled deep in Rothewell’s chest. “You are one and the same now, old friend.”

“Then yes, damn you, give me a tot,” Gareth grumbled. “I think we both deserve one for having survived this day.”

“Well, now you outrank him,” said Rothewell, returning to the sideboard. “The Marquess of Nash, I mean. You take precedence, Gareth, over your competition. I find that rich.”

“Oh, I quit competing years ago.” Gareth’s tone was suddenly grim. “And we celebrated a marriage this morning, you will recall.”

“Yes, only too well.” Pensively, Rothewell swirled the brandy in the glass, then handed it to his guest. “You have lost the object of your youthful infatuation, Gareth, but I…well, I do not deceive myself. I have lost a sister. You think it not at all the same, I do not doubt. But when you have been left alone as the three of us were—Luke, Zee, and I—with no one else to depend upon, you forge a bond which is not easily explained.”

Gareth was quiet for a moment. “Luke is gone, but you have never been without Xanthia, have you?”

Rothewell shook his head. “Indeed, I remember the very day she was born.” His voice caught a little on the last word. “Ah, but enough maudlin sentiment for one day. What is it to be for you, Gareth? Must I set about dragging you off to do your duty?”

“You refer to the dukedom, I collect.” Gareth’s voice was emotionless. “No, I promised Zee I would be at Neville Shipping every day until her return. I won’t leave you in the lurch.”

“I never imagined you would,” murmured Rothewell. “Since the day my brother hired you as his errand boy, you have been the one we all depended upon. It was for that reason—and to keep the competition from stealing you, of course—that we entered into this joint ownership venture.”

Gareth’s smile was muted. “Shackled me with golden chains, eh?”

“Bloody well right.” The baron swallowed another sip of brandy, his muscular throat working up and down like a well-oiled machine. “And now you mean to uphold your end of the bargain. I respect that. However, whilst your share of Neville Shipping has left you quite wealthy, it can hardly compare to the wealth you have apparently inherited.”

“What is your point?” Gareth’s words came out more sharply than he’d intended.

“Perhaps you are watching the wrong pot boil.” Rothewell had begun to roam restlessly about the room with his glass in hand. “Far be it from me to lecture a man on duty and responsibility, but I strongly suggest you go down to—to—what was it called again?”

“Selsdon Court.”

“Ah, yes, Selsdon Court,” Rothewell echoed. “How very grand it sounds.”

“It is. Obscenely so.”

“Well, obscene or not, it is yours now. Perhaps you ought to go attend to it. It is not far, is it?”

Gareth lifted one shoulder. “Half a day’s drive, perhaps,” he said. “Or one can take the Croydon Canal down from Deptford.”

“Half a day?” said Rothewell incredulously. “That is nothing. Go attend to the matters which are pressing, and pay your condolences to the black widow—those are Zee’s words, by the way, not mine.”

Gareth grunted. “The duchess is a coldhearted bitch, all right,” he said. “But a murderess? I rather doubt it. She would not risk being ruined in the eyes of society.”

Rothewell looked at him strangely. “What is she like?”

Gareth cut his gaze away. “Supremely haughty,” he murmured. “But not overtly cruel. She had her husband for that.”

“I wonder if she has been left a wealthy widow?”

“There is no doubt,” said Gareth. “Warneham was disgustingly rich. Her family would have seen to generous settlements.”

“And yet she awaits you?” murmured Rothewell. “Perhaps you are expected to make some decision with regard to her future?”

That thought had not occurred to Gareth. For an instant, he let himself wallow in the fantasy of throwing her out into the cold to starve—or worse. But he could take no pleasure in it—indeed, he could scarce imagine it. And surely the choice would not be his?

“You are considering it?” asked Rothewell.

Gareth did not answer. He hardly knew. In all the dreadful days which had followed his exile from Selsdon Court, he had never once wished to return. Oh, at first he had wished for many things which were not to have been. Things children, in their naïveté, longed for. A kind touch. A warm hearth. A
home
. But he had found instead the very opposite. He had been pitched headlong into the bowels of hell. His childhood longing had boiled down to a man’s pure, unadulterated hatred. And now that he might go back to Selsdon Court—now that he might be master of them all—he wished to return even less. What a trick fate had played him this time.

Rothewell cleared his throat, returning Gareth to the present. “Luke never said much about your past,” he admitted. “Simply that you were an orphan from a good family who had fallen on hard times.”

Hard times.
Luke Neville had always been a master of understatement. “It was pure luck which brought me to Barbados,” Gareth admitted. “And by God’s grace, I met your brother.”

Rothewell actually smiled. “I recall he caught you bolting from the dockyard with a gang of scurvy sailors on your heels.”

Gareth glanced away. “He snatched me up by the coat collar, thinking me some sort of pickpocket,” he answered. “Luke was a brave man.”

Rothewell hesitated. “Yes. Very brave indeed.”

“And I…good Lord, I must have looked like a drowned rat.”

“You were skin and bone when he brought you home,” Rothewell agreed. “It was hard to believe you were what—thirteen years old?”

“Barely that,” said Gareth. “I owed Luke my life for saving me from those bastards.”

Again, Rothewell smiled, but it was tight and humorless. “Well, their loss was our gain,” he said. “But when Luke said ‘of good family’ he rather understated the matter.”

“I never precisely told him,” Gareth admitted. “About Warneham, I mean. I said only that my father was a gentleman—an army major who fell at Roliça—and that my mother was dead.”

Rothewell sat down on the corner of his massive desk and pensively regarded Gareth. “Luke knew what it was to be orphaned young,” he said simply. “We have been pleased to account you as—well, as almost a member of our family, Gareth. But now a higher duty calls.”