How to Deceive a Duke (24 page)

Chapter 60

L
ord Wilton’s high sporting curricle made for a windy ride. Meg held tight to her bonnet as they left London behind and set out on the open road.

“Where did you say your estate was, my lord?” she asked. He had no idea how to handle horses. His hands were hard on the reins, and the horses were suffering.

“Oh, it’s not far now. The turn is not more than ten miles ahead.”

“I had no idea that it was you who purchased my father’s horses,” she said, hoping they had not been as mistreated as the cattle that pulled his curricle. Their ears were plastered flat against their manes as he sawed on their mouths.

He snapped the reins against their backs and grinned at her. “Your father’s horses were famous. Pity he didn’t make it known his daughters were so lovely. You could have had your pick of husbands. God knows, Temberlay has had his pick of enough wives. I’m sure you know the stories.”

“Have you raced the Arabian?” Meg said, trying to change the subject.

He ignored her. “There’s an inn ahead. I thought we might stop, take luncheon there.”

She felt her stomach shift uneasily. “I would prefer to go straight through to—Orion, did you say it was called, my lord?”

“Do call me Charles,” he said. “And I will call you Meg. Try to relax and enjoy yourself.” He put his hand on her knee and squeezed. “Tell me, does Temberlay have a pet name for you, something he whispers in bed?”

She gasped and tried to shake his hand off, but his grip was like iron. She dug her nails into his flesh, and he let go.

“Now don’t be like that,” he said. He pulled on the reins and the horses shied, and the curricle swayed. Meg gripped the edge of the seat and held on.

“You should know that Temberlay and I share our wives. Well, at least he had the pleasure of mine. Fathered a child on her, abandoned her, and went off to play soldier.”

She felt her skin chill from more than the breeze. Was Lady Wilton the woman in the library?

“You didn’t know?” he asked. “It’s quite true.”

“Take me back to London,” she commanded.

“Oh, we’ve come too far for that. Another hour or two, and it will be my word against yours that I’ve had the pleasure, so to speak. You may as well enjoy the afternoon. I will feed you well, and do my best to seduce you. Whatever happens, I intend to tell your husband that we—”

Meg grabbed for the reins. “Stop this contraption at once!”

The horses veered over the road in panic.

Wilton cuffed her, making her head ring. “Don’t be a damned fool!” He tugged the horses to a stop by the side of the road, and gripped her shoulders, pulled her close, forced a wet mockery of a kiss on her mouth. She twisted away with a cry of disgust.

“Look, I said I’d
try
to seduce you, but if you don’t cooperate—”

Meg shoved him away, tried to leap off the carriage, but he grabbed her arm painfully. Her fashionable spencer tore with a shriek. He pinned her beneath him, pressing her backward, his hand on her breasts, his mouth against her neck.

She screamed, and he slapped her and laughed.

“Now, now, this isn’t the time to go all missish on me. You’re just like your father, aren’t you? Bold and full of airs until it comes down to being useful.”

She turned her head away from his grip. “What are you talking about?”

“I knew your father rather well. He was a fool!” Surprised, she went limp for an instant, and he shifted. “That’s better.”

She twisted and clouted him in the mouth, a punch, not a ladylike slap, screaming with rage.

“Damn you!” he said as her wedding ring cut into his lip and blood spurted. He grabbed her collar, and tore at her clothes, ripping the buttons away. She gathered breath to scream again as he pushed her backward, forced his knee between her thighs. He clamped his fist in her hair, and pushed his mouth against hers in a hard, sour kiss as he crushed his body against hers, grunting as he tried to raise her skirts.

She shoved him away, left him with a handful of hair. Her shriek of fury and pain made the horses jerk and dance. Wilton lost his balance, slid off the seat. Meg kicked him, and the toe of her boot caught him hard under the chin.

He stared at her in dull surprise as he flew backward over the high edge of the vehicle. The horses bolted, and she grabbed for the reins, pulled them to a stop. She backed up, found the place where Charles Wilton had landed. He wasn’t moving.

She stared down at him for a long moment, trying to pull her clothes together, to still the trembling. She rubbed a hand over her face, felt tears. They were more from anger and shame than injury, though her lip was bleeding, and her jaw hurt. There was a scratch on her shoulder, visible through the hopelessly torn muslin of her gown.

“How dare you?” she began, but he stayed still. Panic gripped her. Had she killed him?

She climbed down and nudged him with her foot, then put a finger against his throat. He was still alive, just unconscious. She turned away and threw up in the ditch.

He stirred, groaning, but she didn’t wait. She climbed back into the curricle, and turned the contraption back toward London.

Chapter 61

N
icholas reached the Coach and Angel Inn, but no one had seen Meg or Wilton. A generous bribe still produced no results. A search of stables and private dining rooms also resulted in nothing but threats from the innkeeper and the couples he interrupted.

He rode out of the inn yard, wondering which direction to take. Wilton would want somewhere secluded where Nicholas wouldn’t find them too quickly. There were other villages to the west and north, other inns. He could hardly check them all. Nor could he go back and wait, and simply hope that no harm would come to Meg at Wilton’s hands. He knew Charles better than that.

He shut his eyes. He’d been a spy in Spain, the man they trusted to find what was impossible to find. Orion. Why would he choose that name?

He’d only just begun to study Wilton. Wilton, on the other hand, was an old hand at harming those Nicholas loved. He rubbed a hand over his face. He couldn’t allow his feelings to cloud his judgment.

Orion was a mythical swordsman, and a hunter. Wilton had insisted on swords at the duel with David. He also had an estate east of London that had once been a royal hunting lodge, the place where he’d banished his wife. What better place to take Meg, to let her hear Lady Wilton’s lies for herself? He turned Hannibal east.

I
t was late afternoon when he found her. He was almost two hours from London when he saw a distant plume of dust on the road ahead of him. He pulled Hannibal to a stop and watched it come toward him. It was too fast to be a farm cart, too small to be the mail coach, or a stage.

His gut clenched, half in dread, half in hope. He took the pistol from his belt and laid it across the saddle.

He saw the telltale flag of red hair as the curricle drew closer. She was the vehicle’s only occupant, driving Wilton’s high-strung bays like a warrior queen. He moved Hannibal into the middle of the road and waited for her to reach him.

She pulled the horses to a stop.

His heart climbed into his throat at the sight of her. She’d been through a battle. Her clothes were torn and stained with dust and blood. There was a bruise on her cheek, scratches on her neck. Fear warred with anger in her eyes.

She brushed a long lock of hair out of her eyes with shaking fingers. One of her gloves was gone too.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, bracing for the worst.

She shut her eyes. “No,” she managed the single word with effort.

“Where’s Wilton?” he asked.

She looked at the pistol in his lap. “I left him by the side of the road. He isn’t dead, but he’ll have a dreadful headache when he wakes up.”

“I wouldn’t have been so kind.” He put the pistol away.

Hot blood replaced the pallor in her cheeks. “He told me he had Papa’s horses.”

“You might have let me handle it, Maggie.”

She raised her chin. “I wanted to do it myself.”

“What would you have done to get them back?” he asked harshly. “Would you have allowed Wilton to—” He flicked his eyes over her torn dress.

“Never,” she hissed.

“So what do we do now?” he asked. “You’re a mess. We could go to the nearest inn, and I could send for your mother—”

“No,” she said quickly.

“Then I will take you home.”

“Home?” she asked warily.

“Hartley Place.”

She nodded. It was her home, as his duchess, and yet he read doubt in her eyes. His gut clenched. She had trusted Wilton over him, chosen to believe every word, every lie from him, though she would not trust him.

He dismounted, tied Hannibal to the back of the curricle, and got up beside her. He took off his coat, put it around her shoulders to cover her torn dress. “You have dust on your face, Duchess,” he said, and brushed it away, examining the bruise on her cheek. “You must have fought like a tigress.”

She sagged for a moment, lost inside his coat. “If I’d known—”

“You would have, if you’d asked me.”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“Believe your own eyes, for a start.”

She stared at him. “I see smoke and sugared almonds, conjurer’s tricks. You tell me what you think I want to hear. What do you tell Rose, and L-Lady Wilton?”

“Ah, so Wilton told you I knew his wife, did he? Actually, I’ve never met the lady.” He looked at her cuts and bruises again. “Damn him. If I’d found him with you, if he’d hurt you, I wouldn’t have bothered to call him out.”

“And what about my sister? Do you ‘know’ her? And Angelique Encore, and—all the other women?” She ticked them off on her fingers. “If I keep going, I’ll run out of fingers to name them on.”

He grabbed her left hand, touched her wedding ring. “That’s the only finger that matters, Maggie. “Your sister—” He stopped.
She is the silliest woman I have ever met
hovered on his tongue. Meeting Rose Winters had made him very glad that Meg had taken her sister’s place. He wondered how any man could stand in a room with both sisters and prefer Rose. He could never fall in love with a woman like Rose. “I—” he started, but his tongue glued itself to his tonsils.

He snapped the reins, and the curricle moved forward. In the short weeks of their marriage, he’d come to admire his wife as much as he desired her. He had never loved a woman before. If this was what it felt like, it was damned unpleasant. He’d rather take a bullet.

She sat up straight as they entered London, the perfect duchess, out for a drive with nothing amiss, ignoring the curious eyes that followed them through Mayfair. Torn gowns might have been the new fashion, worn with poise and grace, but her knuckles were white as she clenched her hands in her lap.

“If I’m the Devil Duke, surely you will now be forever known as the Disheveled Duchess,” he murmured.

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“A bath, perhaps, a glass of brandy, a meal. And then—” He’d tell her, or try to, what he felt.

He felt panic creep up his spine. What if she didn’t feel the same?

They’d reached Hartley Place and Gardiner was rushing down the steps at the sight of her. “Your Grace!” he cried, ruffled for once.

“I’m all right, Gardiner. Just a fall.” She let him help her out of the curricle.

Gardiner was issuing orders to summon her maid, to send for the doctor, and to fetch hot water.

Nicholas’s staff loved her as much as he did. She was in good hands. He willed her to look back at him as they bore her up the steps, but she didn’t. He climbed down and untied Hannibal, and handed the reins to a waiting groom. “See Hannibal is rubbed down,” he said. He went into the library to write a note to Hector to let him know Meg was safe.

Chapter 62

M
eg hid in the bath until her fingers pruned, cursing her foolishness. She hadn’t thought she was so gullible. She had wanted to prove to him that she didn’t need him.

But she did.

He had been there, on the road, a hero on a white horse, his eyes filled with concern, and she had wanted to fall into his arms and cry, let him comfort her.

But she was the strong one. There had been no one to cosset her when her father died, or when Rose ran away. She was the brave one, forever calm, in control.

She didn’t feel in control now. She didn’t want to believe what Charles Wilton had told her, but she’d seen the woman in the library, heard her speak of her child and Nicholas’s generosity. She’d seen the evasive look in Hector’s eyes when she asked him what her husband had been up to.

She loved him. The pain she felt went beyond jealousy or fear of the dowager. She would not trick him, or beg him. She had lived with the crumbs of her father’s affection while he lavished his attention on her sisters. It was never enough.

Tomorrow, after she’d slept, and she could say it without crying, she would set him free, retire to Wycliffe, let him live the life he wished. She would comfort and protect her family as best she could.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She had a scratch on her shoulder, a bruise on her cheek, a cut on her lip, but the worst hurts were on the inside, the pain of a broken heart, the sting of her own stupidity.

His coat still lay on the bed, and she crossed and picked it up, held it to her face, breathed in the familiar scent of him. Now, more than ever, she had to be brave.

N
icholas stared down at the envelope on the desk, addressed to British army headquarters in Brussels. It should have gone out with the post, but it had somehow been forgotten. He crossed to the bell, intending to get Gardiner to send it now, but he hesitated.

His time in Spain was the last time anything had made sense. He was a respected officer, trusted by his fellow officers and men. He was only “devil” to the enemy.

As a boy, he had learned that tales of his misbehavior made his brother smile. Granddame kept her favorite grandson on a short, tight leash of dull duty and discipline. David lived through Nicholas. The stories of his misadventures made David smile, and it gave Nicholas perverse pleasure that Granddame hated every scandalous, shocking, naughty thing he did. But she held up his sins to David like a corpse in a gibbet, a warning that he must never, ever stray from ducal perfection. Nicholas had never bothered to tell either of them that the tales about him were only half true at best.

He got even further out of the habit of explaining himself in the army. His missions had been secret.

And now, with Meg, he had no idea where to begin. Should he admit that he was in love with her? How could she love him if she believed him guilty of every sin he was accused of? How long before she sought the comfort of a man like Stephen Ives, or worse, someone like Wilton?

He couldn’t bear that.

She turned to flame every time he touched her, but desire burned out eventually. Lust alone did not make a relationship. And love . . . unreciprocated, it was the worst agony on earth. Revenge too had proven a hollow victory. It brought nothing back. It simply destroyed more lives.

Meg would make a wonderful mother. She protected her family like a tigress, wouldn’t let any harm come to them. He could give her that at least, or try.

He tossed the letter into the fireplace and wrote another.