The Dissolute Duke

‘The problem is, Duke, Lucinda is facing certain ruin and you do not seem to be taking your part in her downfall seriously.’

Taylen had had enough.

‘Ruin is a strong word, Lord Taris.’

‘As strong as retribution.’

Asher Wellingham’s hand hit the table and Tay stood. Even with his arm in a bandage he could give the three of them a good run for their money. The art of gentlemanly fighting had been a lesson missing from his life, the tough school of displacement and abuse honing the rudiments of the craft instead. Hell, he had been beaten enough himself to understand exactly the best places to hit back.

‘We will kill you for this, Alderworth, I swear that we will.’ Cristo spoke now, the sound of each word carefully enunciated.

‘And in doing so you may well crucify your sister. Better to let the matter rest, laugh it off and kick any suggestions of misbehaviour back in the face of those who swear them true.’

‘As you are apt to do?’

‘English society still holds to ridiculously strict rules of conduct, though free speech is finding its way into the minds of men who would do better to believe in it.’

‘Men like you?’ Taris stood. His reported lack of sight was not apparent as he stepped towards the window, though Tay saw the oldest brother watch him carefully.

Care.

The word reverberated inside him. This was what this was all about, after all: care of each other, care of a family name, care in protecting their only sister’s reputation from the ignominy of being linked with his.

Protection was something he himself had never had. Not from his parents. Not from his grandmother. And particularly not from his uncle. It had always been him against a world that hadn’t taken the time to make sure that a small child was cherished. The man he had become was the result of such negligence, though here in the salon of a family that watched each other’s backs the thought was disheartening.

He made his way around a generous sofa. ‘I have an errand to attend to, gentlemen, and I find I have the need of some fresh air. If you will excuse me.’

‘What do you make of him?’

Asher asked the question a few moments later as Cristo crossed to the cabinet to pull out a bottle of fine French brandy.

‘He’s hiding something.’ Taris accepted a drink from his brother. ‘For some reason he is trying to make us believe there was only necessity in our sister’s foolish midnight tryst in the carriage with him and that she was never at Alderworth.’

Cristo swore. ‘But why would he do that?’

‘Even a reprobate must have his limits of depravity, I suppose. Lucinda’s innocence may well be his.’ Taris drank deeply of the brandy before continuing. ‘He studies the philosophy of the new consciousness, which is interesting, the tenets of free speech being mooted in the Americas. Unusual reading for a man who purports to be interested in nothing more than sexual mayhem and societal anarchy.’

‘I don’t trust him.’ Asher upended his glass.

‘Well, we can’t hit a man wrapped in bandages.’ Cristo smiled.

‘Then we wait until they are removed.’ There was no humour at all in the voice of Asher Wellingham, Duke of Carisbrook.

Lucinda wheeled herself to the breakfast table, her muscles straining against the task and her heart pounding with the effort. It had been almost two weeks since the accident and the feeling that the doctor had sworn she would recover was finally coming back, though she had been left with a weakness that felt exhausting and a strange and haunting melancholy. Now she could walk for short distances without falling over, the shaking she had been plagued by diminishing as she grew steadily in strength. The wheelchair was, however, still her main mode of getting about.

Posy had spent much of the past week at the town house, her horror at all that had happened to Lucy threading every sentence.

‘I should never have taken you to Alderworth, Luce. It is all my fault this happened to you and now … now I don’t know how to make it better.’ Large tears had fallen down her cheeks before tracing wet runnels on the pink silk of her bodice.

‘You did not force me to go, Posy. I remember that much.’

‘But while I was safely locked away in our bedroom, you were …’

‘Let’s not allocate any more blame. What is done is done and at least I am regaining movement and energy.’

It had taken Lucinda a good few days to convince her friend that she held no malice or blame, Posy’s numerous tears a wearying and frustrating constant.

Asher was sitting in the dining room, reading The Times just as he usually did each morning, and he folded the paper in half and looked closer as something caught his interest.

‘It says here that the Earl of Halsey has suffered a broken nose, a black eye and twenty stitches in his cheek. The assault happened in broad daylight four days ago in an altercation outside the livery stables in Davies Mews right here in Mayfair. There were no witnesses.’

His glance strayed to Lucinda’s to see how she might react. The whole family had tiptoed around her since the unfortunate happening as though she might break into pieces at any unwanted reminder of scandal and she was tired of it. Consequently she did nothing more than smile back at her oldest brother and shrug her shoulders.

‘Footpads are becoming increasingly confident, then.’ Emerald took up the conversation as she buttered her bread. ‘Though perhaps they do us a favour, for isn’t he the man who has constantly insisted Lucinda was underdressed at the Alderworth fiasco? Without his voice, all of this could have been so much easier to deal with.’

Lucinda knew Richard Allenby, of course. He had always been well mannered and rather sweet, truth be told, so she had no idea why he should be maligning her now and in such a fashion. Yet a shadow lingered there in the very back of her mind, some nebulous and half-formed thing trying to escape from the darkness. Wiping her mouth with the napkin, she sat back, the food suddenly dry in her mouth and difficult to swallow.

‘You look like you have seen a ghost, Lucy.’

‘What exactly was it that the Earl of Halsey said of me?’

‘He has been spreading the rumour that you may have been intimate with Alderworth at his home. He says he saw you in the corridors on the first floor of the place, searching for the host’s bedchamber.’

Her brother’s tone had that streak of exasperation she so often heard when speaking of her escapades, though in this case Lucinda could well understand it.

‘Intimate?’ The shock of such a blatant falsehood was horrifying. ‘Why would he tell such a lie? Surely people could not believe him?’ Wriggling her foot against the metal bar of the wheelchair, she checked for any further movement. Over the past few days the tingling had gone from her knees to her feet as the numbness receded.

‘Unfortunately they are beginning to.’ Asher’s voice no longer held any measure of care.

‘What does Alderworth say?’

‘Nothing and that is the great problem. If he denied everything categorically and strode into society the same way he strode into Wellingham House, people might cease to believe Richard Allenby. But instead the man has disappeared to the country, leaving chaos behind him.’

‘Alderworth came here? To the town house?’ Lucinda frowned. There was something about him that was familiar, some part of him that she remembered from…before. ‘What did he want?’

‘Put bluntly, he wanted to be rid of any blame as far as your reputation was concerned. He made that point very plain.’ Asher put his paper down and watched her closely. ‘The man is a charlatan, but he is also clever. The slight whiff of an alliance with us might be profitable to him.’

‘Alliance?’ Lucinda’s mouth felt suddenly dry.

‘A ruined reputation requires measures that may be stringent and far from temporary.’

‘You mean a betrothal?’ Horror had Lucinda’s words whispered. Low. She had heard all the stories of the wicked Duke. Everybody had. He was a man who lived by his own rules and threw the caution most others followed to the wind.

As her heartbeat quickened, memory fought against haze and won. Dropping the teacup she was holding, she stood, liquid spilling across the pristine whiteness of an antique damask tablecloth, the brown stain widening through the embossed stitching even as she watched.

The naked form of Taylen Ellesmere came through the fog, unfolding from a rumpled bed, each long and graceful line etched in candlelight, the red wine in a decanter beside him almost gone. She knew the feel of his skin, undeniably, for they had been joined together pressed in lust, his velvet-green eyes close as he had leaned down and kissed her. No simple chaste kiss, either, but one with a smouldering and virtue-taking force.

Shock kept her still, as she looked directly at her oldest brother.