The Danger of Desire (38 page)

“I was not aware of the boy’s identity.” His gaze was back at Meggs, staring hard, trying to urge her to stop this utter madness. “I was trying to do what I could to assist the boy in a profession, as he seemed to have no other ... benefactors.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” The dowager took a fortifying breath, and then as someone pressed a glass of sherry into her hand, a fortifying drink. “But you will send word to have him returned directly.”

“Your Grace.” Hugh could do nothing but bow.

At the same time the current duke spoke, very kindly. “Anne, perhaps it would be best to verify the identity of the children before—”

“Verify away, Charles. Yes, let us please make sure it is all right and tight and all the lawyers happy, though I hate to think it will rob you of the dukedom. But in the meantime, I want that boy home.” She turned to Hugh. “And you will assist me. You, who appear to have been seeing to my grandchildren’s benefit.”

It was hours before Meggs could finally get free of all the tears, and questions, and hand holding. The dowager duchess had not wanted to let her out of her sight, but she had finally been persuaded by Viscountess Balfour to retire and let Meggs do the same.

But instead of going to her own rooms as she ought, Meggs ran to Hugh’s, and went in without even knocking.

He was prowling in front of the fire like a caged animal, staring into its depths with an empty glass in his hand. But he did not in any way look pleased to see her. She thought again of the Bible verse—
I have set my face like flint
.

He wasted no time. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing? This is beyond all—” He bit off the rest of his words, as if they left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I know I shouldn’t be here, but I had to talk to you. I had to explain—”

“How can you possibly explain? I’m not going to assist you in this swindle, Meggs. It was one thing to rob every gentleman at the ball blind, but I can’t allow you to delude the Dowager Duchess of Fenmore, of all things and all people. How long do you think it’s going to last before she finds you out? The duke will certainly see to it, directly, if for no other reason than to preserve his title. What were you thinking to let yourself be taken for the goddamned Duchess of Fenmore’s granddaughter? I won’t even ask how you managed to learn the necessary information. By God, you are without a bloody doubt the stupidest, prime-est filching mort I’ve ever encountered.”

She backed away, away from his wrath. Of all the people, she had not expected this from
him
. “I’m not the one who made the claim.”

“No, but you didn’t refute it. Why, in God’s name? Why?”

It took a very long moment for Meggs to absorb all the cutting hurt and shame of his accusation. He thought still, after everything, she was a liar. Not about little things or lour, but—

She lifted up her wobbling chin and made herself speak firmly. “Because it’s true.”

“God damn it. I told you once, not to even
think
to cozen me, or I’d—”

“It’s true,” she repeated more strongly as if saying it again could convince her it had truly happened. After all this time. “It’s the stupid, God’s honest truth. She’s my grandmother.”

“It can’t be true.”

“But it is.” She subsided onto the bench at the end of his bed. “It’s so very strange. I had convinced myself it would never happen. I told myself every day that there was no hope. But I couldn’t stop it—the hoping. And now—” She looked at him, willing him to understand. “I thought I would be happy. Or at least gleeful. Finally, finally, she’s found us and she’s acknowledged us, and we’re who we’re meant to be. But ... I dunno. I thought I’d feel ... different.”

“How long have you known?”

She picked up her shoulders and let her hands fall against her sides. “Always.”

“Always? Why in the bloody hell didn’t you tell me?” His disbelief was rapidly giving way to anger, the raw power becoming unleashed.

“As if you would have believed me. You didn’t believe anything else.”

He swore, bluntly and fluently, in a way that put the gin men of St. Giles to shame. “And I suppose next you’re going to tell me the Tanner really is the heir of the late duke?”

Her answer was quiet. Because, until this very evening, she had never, ever, not even in her sunniest hour, dared to think it could ever become true. “My father was the second son, and took holy orders, but when his elder brother died, he did not want to leave the church. He didn’t want to take up the title, even though it was his. Timmy was his only son. He is the duke.” An unnerving thought snuck into her brain. “Unless there’s something you know and he’s ...”

“No. He is very much alive and well. My good friend Captain Marlowe has the dubious honor of having the Duke of Fenmore as his midshipman on
Defiant.
”

She hadn’t missed the sarcasm in his tone, but her relief overrode it. She sagged back into the bench. “Thank you.”

“Is that all you can say for yourself? My God, Meggs.” He ran his hand through his hair in that recognizable gesture of frustration. “It’s such a mess. If this is true, we’ll have to marry quickly now,” he continued almost as if he were talking to himself, prowling back and forth, making plans for a sea battle and not proposing marriage.

“What do you mean,
if
? Haven’t you been listening?” Now she
was
going to faint, for real. Her heart had broken open, and all the blood was pouring its heat into the rest of her body, raining needles of pain in her chest, making it impossible to breathe.

“No, we must. There’s really no alternative.”

“No.” Oh, dear God. She was so stupid. She had got it all wrong. She had assumed he cared for her, beyond—Just beyond. She had thought he must love her. He had never said so, but she had assumed it from his caring for her, from his bringing her to his mother, from the way he looked at her when no one else was looking. The possessive way a man looks at a woman he wants for his own. “No.” She said it again, and then to get rid of the pain, to share the spite more evenly between them, she added, “My grandmother never need know you fucked me against the wall of your laundry. I do have some discretion, though perhaps not so much as I would have liked.”

That piece of ammunition was answered by livid, icy silence.

“You could be pregnant.” He stated it bluntly, to shock her, his voice devoid of warmth. “You could be carrying my child. Have you thought of that?”

She found it
was
her turn to be shocked. “Well, what a remarkable sense of timing you have, Captain, to bring that topic up for the first time, now. A little late for you to begin to think of that.” She sharpened her sarcasm to a fine, stabbing point. “I didn’t hear you say a word about ‘your child’ weeks ago when you first realized the benefits of sleeping with your employees.”

“Meggs.” His voice was rigidly controlled. “It wasn’t like that, and you know it.”

“It was exactly like that. What was I supposed to do?”

“God damn you to hell. You chose, Meggs. You know you chose.”

Meggs retreated in the face of this uncomfortable truth. The menace in him was impossible to miss.

“Well, it seems I have another choice to make right now.”

She slammed the door behind her so hard it splintered. Just like her heart.

CHAPTER 26

S
he was gone. Just like that. They took her away the next morning, the Fenmore traveling coach wheeling down the drive with a disdainful spray of gravel, just after dawn. In a hurry to leave.

And he was alone, with his thoughts and his good intentions amounting to naught. Alone, the way he had once thought he wanted to be.

At least until his stepfather looked up from reading his newspaper at the breakfast table and said, “I assume you’ll be wanting to use a coach.”

“I hadn’t thought to return to London. I can travel post to go down to Portsmouth, but—”

“No. To Fenmore.” When Hugh didn’t immediately respond, Viscount Balfour clarified his point. “You
will
be going to Fenmore. To make your offer.”

“I hadn’t—”

“Then you should. You will. You will most assuredly spare your mother the indignity of having to tell you to do so. I’ve ordered the coach for you, for one o’clock. I’m sure you won’t want to keep my horses waiting in the cold. The home farm tells me we’re due for more snow.”

Thus, clad in his best uniform, hat and gloves in hand, he found himself waiting upon the Dowager Duchess of Fenmore. He had asked, upon arrival, if he might speak with Miss Evans, but was instead informed by the butler Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Fenmore was expecting him. Hugh ignored the fact that his gut was clenched up tighter than a Turk’s head knot and went to face the dragon in her lair.

“Captain McAlden, Your Grace.” The butler showed him into a cavernous drawing room. His boot heels echoed across the parquet floor. The dowager duchess was alone, seated in a silk-upholstered chair near the blazing hearth. He was glad they kept the place warm. Meggs didn’t like to be cold.

“Captain McAlden. Won’t you come in?”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” Hugh bowed very low over the soft, blue-veined hand that hovered in front of him.

She gestured to the chair across from her and kept to protocol. “To what do I owe the honor, Captain?”

“I wanted to inform you, I have sent communications directly, by express to Portsmouth, and also to the Admiralty, both to your grandson personally and to his commander, Captain Marlowe. I expect we will both hear from them within the fortnight. I also directed Captain Marlowe to inform you, here at Fenmore, of his landing at the earliest possible moment.”

“Thank you. Your assistance is much appreciated.” She had followed his wandering eyes to the door. “But, I think also, you wished to see my granddaughter?”

“Yes, ma’am. I came to see Miss Evans, that is, ask after her Ladyship’s welfare. I imagine it was quite a shock to the young lady to find herself reunited with you after all of these years, and so swiftly removed to a new home.”

“Yes, I daresay it was. I know it was for me. And it appears I have you to thank for this unexpected blessing in my life. You have my profound thanks for bringing my darling Trinity Margurite back to me. And dear young Timothy as well, of course, who can now be restored to his rightful place as duke. But I never knew him as a young child. He was a baby when my son ... died so tragically.” She drew herself together visibly, touching the ropes of pearls about her neck for reassurance. “Do you know our sad saga, Captain?”

His mother had told him the outlines of the remarkable story, and he could fill in some of the tale from what Meggs had told him. But it would be impolitic as well as imprudent to dwell on Meggs’s prior life in London. “Very little, Your Grace. Only that your son and his wife passed away suddenly, and the children were orphaned and lost to you all these years.”

“Yes, that is true. There is, however, much more to the story, but suffice it to say that Trinity’s father, my son Arthur John, and his father, the late duke, were estranged. Arthur took orders in the church as second sons often do. All was as it should be until his older brother died. Arthur became the heir, but he did not want to give up his vocation. He and his father clashed. It wouldn’t do, you see, for a duke’s heir to be a country rector. So the late duke cut him off and cast him from our lives, until such time as he could be brought to see the importance of his place—what he owed his family and his honor, as well as to his conscience. But that never happened. The years carried on by. He had married and had two children on his little income from his livings. I was made to pretend he and his family did not exist. But of course they did, and of course I did what I could under the circumstances to give whatever small assistance I might. Mostly from a distance and secretly.” She sighed and dabbed at her eyes. “So many years lost.”

Hugh looked away, out the windows into the snowy fields, and waited for the duchess to recover herself. A rector’s daughter. He should have known. All those Bible references—
Lot’s wife, gone all pillar of salt
.
I can number all my bones
. And what was the one at the gin shop?
Both the innocent and the wicked he destroys.

“Oh, she was a little brown wren of a girl, with the brightest eyes, all long braids and long legs.” The duchess made a drawn-out gesture with her hands at the memory. “And she’s never lost that look, or those bright eyes, else I never would have recognized her. They were gone by the time I got there, you see, Arthur and Margaret. A fever. And the children gone as well. Sent off alone on the public stage, to me, in London. I must have passed them on the road, never knowing. And then, they never could be found. Swallowed into the gaping maw that is London. When I think—”

The dowager closed her eyes against her thoughts. She appeared small and frail, but she pulled her composure back together to continue. “But that is past history. I needs be far more concerned with more recent occurrences. She has been with you for some time, she tells me? Under your protection?”

Hugh answered with as little information as possible. “Yes, Your Grace, she was in residence with my mother, Viscountess Balfour, at her husband’s house in Berkley Square and now at Balfour Manor, but she had only recently come into Society.”

“That, Captain McAlden, is what my granddaughter tells me is called a very great bouncer. I won’t trifle with you, Captain. My granddaughter has been frank with me—exceedingly frank—about where she has been and what she has been doing for the past eight years.”

There was that knot in his gut, cinching tighter. “I see.”

“Do you? Then I hope that you will be able to shed some further light upon how she came under your
protection,
shall we call it? She said you took her off the streets, and employed her as part of your household in Chelsea, before you took her to your mother.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Hugh concurred, careful not to assume Meggs had told her grandmother anything more than the barest of facts, despite the old lady’s claims to exceeding frankness.