The Duke (33 page)

“Not really.”

Griffon laughed and made the horse rear up on its hind legs. It tossed its head, looking for all the world like some wingless Pegasus, eager to take flight. Hawk smiled in spite of himself as the white stallion crashed back down on all fours, then the lad streaked off astride him, the turf flying behind them. Ah, youth, he thought wryly. Hawk clucked to his horse and followed at an easy canter.

A short while later, they were admitted through the tall gates of the estate where Lucy had lived and died. The gray manor house stood proudly under the sprawling blue sky as they rode up the long straight drive, passing cultured grounds. Hawk looked around in approval. Not a blade of grass was out of place. There was no denying it; the earl of Coldfell and he were men cut from the same cloth. They shared the same values and unfortunately, had loved the same woman.

An image of a woman’s face flashed in Hawk’s mind, not a green-eyed redhead, but a flaxen blonde with eyes the gentle, dreamy shade of bluebells.

Reaching the house, they dismounted from their horses. Hawk turned to his young companion. “Wait where they tell you to wait. Don’t wander off and don’t make any trouble.”

“Yes, Your Grace!” Griffon said with a breathless, eager grin.

Hawk sliced him a nod and marched toward the entrance as the butler opened the door for him. The earl received him in the bright parlor that overlooked the garden and the pond where Lucy had drowned. Above the fireplace mantel was a large portrait of her. Hawk glanced at it in a wave of pain.

Today, by God, he felt his loss doubled. Belinda hadn’t left this world as Lucy had, but he had lost her all the same, and it was worse, possibly, because for a short while, he had felt that Belinda was
his
in a way that Lucy never had been. Little had he known that while he had been losing his heart, she had been making a living.

No doubt she probably expected him to capitulate, offer her carte blanche to stay on as his mistress, but that he would never do. No woman was ever going to make a fool of him. That was the one lesson he had learned from seeing his father slowly unmanned by his mother’s every new fling.

“Your Grace, so good of you to come,” said Coldfell, shuffling toward him in his house slippers, his dark silk banyan robe hanging open over his neat brown waistcoat and trousers.

“My lord,” Hawk greeted him in reply, forcing a taut smile. They shook hands, then Hawk took a seat across from the earl.

Coldfell crossed his legs and rested his interlocked hands on his knee. “Robert, I knew your father and I’ve known you since you were a lad. Now I invited you here today to ask you one simple question: What in heaven’s name are you doing keeping that woman in your house?”

Hawk heaved a breath and dropped his head back against the chair.

“Take a mistress, yes, that is healthy for a man your age. Indeed, I compliment you on your taste, but—”

“I know.”

“Do you? Do you know there is scandal afoot? Your reputation is in peril.”

Hawk picked up his head and stared dully at the earl. “It’s not what it appears. Suffice to say that Miss Hamilton is Dolph’s obsession and I mean to make use of her in that capacity. It’s just a charade.”

“Well, it looked deuced authentic to me,” he huffed. “Be careful with that woman, Robert. You know what she is.”

Hawk didn’t attempt to comment on that. “Rest assured, it will all be over very soon, my lord. Within the next day or two, I expect to deal with your nephew exactly as I promised.”

“Good,” he said in a lower tone. “I want to be there when the time comes. You’ll send for me?”

Hawk nodded.

Coldfell sat back again with a satisfied expression. “Now then. If I may impose upon your patience, it would do my Juliet so much good to see you. She has no society and so few callers,” he said, stiffly rising from his chair.

Hawk held a bland, cordial expression by ingrained politeness alone. “I’m sure it is no imposition.” He resigned himself to endeavor to be gracious despite his newfound aversion to females.

“Good lad,” Coldfell said with a twinkling smile.

The old man led him out into the extensive gardens. Coldfell was scheming for a match between them again, of course, but Hawk was in too dismal a mood even to protest. Lady Juliet had excellent bloodlines, was too meek, sheltered, and sweet tempered ever to give a man any fear of scandal, and could not pass her deafness on to her offspring since it had been brought about by yellow fever, not born into her. Having met the girl before, Hawk had already seen that the child was lovely enough to stir his pity. He could well understand Coldfell’s fear over finding a considerate husband who would honor and protect his fragile young daughter.

Today, however, he found himself only wishing idly that Alfred Hamilton had possessed one jot of the earl’s paternal over protectiveness.

Hawk held his hat in his hand, glancing around at the beautifully designed, sunlit grounds with their man-made ponds and fountains and topiaries. He tensed at the sight of the placid green pond where Lucy had drowned and looked resolutely away.

“By the by, I’ve brought someone for you to meet—a promising young man ambitious for a seat in the Commons. I’d hoped for your opinion of him.”

“I’d be happy to inspect him for the party,” the earl conceded, leading the way as he leaned on his cane with every other step.

“Thank you, sir.” Hawk judged it prudent not to mention that Griffon was no party follower, but a staunch Independent.

“What’s his name?”

“Clive Griffon.”

“Of the Derbyshire Griffons? Good old landed family.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not the heir?”

“Why, yes, he is, as a matter of fact. He’s got excellent prospects.”

“Hmmm.”

They came to the rim of a grove of small espaliered cherry trees, where, through the green lattice of leaves, Hawk beheld the very vision of sweet maidenly innocence.

Kneeling before an elaborately quaint dovecote, Lady Juliet had a white dove sitting on her finger and was gently petting it. She was seventeen years old and enchantingly lovely with rich brown curls, rosy cheeks, and milky skin. She was oblivious to their presence, cooing softly to her birds.

Hawk smiled askance at Coldfell, his heartstrings well tugged in spite of his mood. “I’m not sure we should disturb her. She seems quite absorbed in her pets.”

The earl beamed with doting, fatherly pride. “Nonsense, she’ll be thrilled to see you. You should get to know her better, lonely child that she is. I’ve told her all about you.” Hawk looked askance at Coldfell, wondering what he could possibly have said:
Look, Juliet, here is the nice man who wanted to bed your stepmama.

“Remember—speak slowly to her, then she can read your lips.” Advancing on his cane, Coldfell started into the grove.

Hawk began to follow, but even before they arrived, the air suddenly rang out with a burst of young girl’s laughter.

“What the devil?” Coldfell exclaimed, stopping as he stared into the ring of trees.

Hawk saw, and his heart sank even as his left eyebrow came up wryly. It seemed Lady Juliet had already found herself a companion in addition to her doves. What the cherry trees had previously obscured from their view was Clive Griffon, upside down, standing on his head and waving his legs around to amuse her.

“Whoooaaa!” he yelled as he toppled head over heels to the grass, but he somersaulted and popped up like a clown in front of her, presenting the maiden with a white puff of a dandelion.

“Make a wish,” Griffon said to her, speaking as easily to her as if he’d been out here with the girl for the past half-hour.

She gazed at him, looking lovestruck, then blew on the silky white thistle globe. The bristles flurried, floating away; Juliet’s lips were still pursed to blow when Griffon boldly leaned in to kiss her, but froze as the earl of Coldfell let out a yowl. Hawk’s heart sank.

“That will do, sir!” her father bellowed, stomping toward the young couple with his cane. “Get yourself away from my daughter this instant!”

The meeting did not go well.

A short while later, Hawk and an undaunted Clive Griffon left the garden and went to their horses.

“I’m in love with her.”

“Don’t be an even greater ass than you already are. How could you kiss her, Griffon? Right in front of her father!”

“I can’t help it, it’s what my heart told me to do! Besides, she liked it.”

“How do you know? How could you even talk with her?”

“She spoke worlds with her eyes. I have a favorite cousin who’s deaf. It’s no matter whatsoever if you’re used to it. She’s so beautiful!” Griffon clutched his hat to his heart and walked backwards to his horse, gazing at the house.

Hawk glanced in the direction of his stare just in time to see a crestfallen Juliet blow Griffon a kiss from an upper window. Griffon caught her kiss with an exclamation of joy, then laughed aloud. Hawk scowled, more from annoyance than from any thought of jealousy over his possible future bride. At the moment, he was quite content to remain a bachelor for the rest of his days. He thumped his beaver hat onto his head and swung up into the saddle.

“I shall marry her, Hawkscliffe. She’s the one.”

“Oh, you are the most absurd creature I ever met,” he muttered as they turned back out on the road, riding at a trot toward Knightsbridge.

“Somebody’s got to marry her, haven’t they? I don’t care that she’s deaf. She’s wondrous....”

On and on he raved, until Hawk couldn’t take it anymore.

“Griffon, I have decided to give you the seat,” he interrupted impatiently.

The young man gasped. “Your Grace?”

“Miss Hamilton thinks I should give you a chance. Now, do shut up before you make me change my mind.”

Dolph Breckinridge returned from his club to his bachelor lodgings in Curzon Street to find a small letter waiting for him. Seeing Hawkscliffe’s ducal seal, he tore it open quickly and read the imperious summons with a sneer.

It was about bloody time.

Still, he was not about to dance to Hawkscliffe’s tune. He took out a pen and paper and quickly scribbled his reply:

The White Swan does not suit me. I am known there and this matter concerns no one but ourselves and her. Head toward Hampstead Heath. Take Chalk Farm Road to Haverstock Hill. A mile past the intersection with Adelaide, on your right you will see a thatched-roof cottage set back from the road. I will meet you there. Nine tomorrow night is acceptable, giving leave for the added distance. Bring Miss Hamilton.

D.B.

That night, surrounded by suitors, glittering with jewels, Bel sat in her two-hundred-fifty-pound-per-season opera box at the Royal Theater in the Haymarket, staring at the stage in a state of utter misery.

Now that she had wrecked things with Hawkscliffe and had broken the prime rule of courtesanhood to boot, she figured she might as well start looking for a new protector. Harriette had advised her to be always keeping her eye out for the next rich lover to be snared. Perhaps it was time she started taking her mentor’s advice.

She couldn’t believe she had slapped him. Did he really think she only wanted his money? Despair filled her to know that the only remedy for the damage she had done to the bond between them was to tell him the truth.

She had been lavishly enjoying his lovemaking, participating with an eagerness that made her blush now, but how could she ever explain the deep-seated terrors that the simple clanking of silverware had triggered in her? To make amends would mean having to tell him about the warden and she could not bear for him to know her shame. Robert had seen the horrid man with his own eyes. What if he thought she had invited it somehow? What if he thought it had been her ploy to lure the warden in the hopes of gaining some special privileges for her incarcerated father? She could not bear to trust him with her pain only to have him shame her worse by misconstruing the facts.

After all, he saw her as a whore, a woman who used her body to get what she wanted. And so she was. But she hadn’t been then.

He would never understand.

Stealing a furtive glance at the faces of the men around her in the darkened theater box, she had no conception of how she was possibly going to get any further with them if she could not allow the man she adored to make love to her. She was unsexed, impotent—frigid.

When she returned to Knight House after the opera she stepped down from her
vis-à-vis
with William’s assistance and steeled herself, walking up to the entrance. She wondered what Hawkscliffe thought about her going out alone at night, or if he had even noticed she was gone.

With a heavy sigh she picked up her skirts in one hand and started up the grand curving staircase, resigned to going to bed without having seen him all day. She slid her other hand along the smooth banister, her reticule dangling off her forearm. She was halfway up the steps when she heard the slow, heavy click of his boot heels echoing on the polished marble floor below, then his deep, cultured baritone reached her.

“One moment, Miss Hamilton, if you please.”