The Duke’s Desire (14 page)

Galen said nothing; nevertheless, he knew this change of manner did not bode well.

His perusal concluded, the man regarded Galen with a smile as he bowed. “Your Grace, I am so pleased you would see me.”

“I was given to understand you have come on an important personal matter,” Galen replied, using the frostiest tone he possessed.

The slyly smiling Blackstone did not answer right away. Instead, he sat down without waiting for an invitation to do so.

“What brings you here?” Galen demanded.

“Business, Your Grace, business. Of a very particular kind.”

Galen didn’t like the man’s tone, either—smug and knowing, unpleasantly intimate. “Oh?”

The man’s catlike smile widened. “It concerns my sister-in-law and her child.”

“I must confess I fail to see why that would bring you to me.”

“You know how much she cares for the child, don’t you, Your Grace?” Blackstone replied. “As much as a parent could care for a child, I believe.”

He spoke in a way that made Galen’s eyes nar
row and his jaw clench. “Yes, I gather she loves her daughter very much. What has that to do with me?”

Blackstone answered his query with another question. “And the child’s father? How much does he care for her?”

Galen felt the cold trickle of sweat down his back. “That is an odd question, Mr. Blackstone. The child’s father is dead.”

Blackstone’s smile grew as wide as it was possible for a smile to be and he leaned back into Galen’s chair as if he were the master here. “Oh, is he?”

“Don’t think to play games with me, Blackstone,” Galen answered, his voice very quiet and very stern.

Blackstone sat up straighter, but that damnable smile didn’t disappear. “I did not come all the way to London to play games, Your Grace. I assure you, my object is very serious. Very serious indeed.”

“What
is
your object?”

“Sit down, Your Grace, and let us discuss my business as men of business should, calmly and rationally.”

“Who do you think you are, to order me?”

Blackstone swallowed hard, but he did not look away. “I think I am a man who knows your
greatest secret, and so your greatest weakness, just as I know my sister-in-law’s.”

Galen struggled not to show any hint of the anger, disgust and dismay roiling through him—or the terrible and familiar feeling of utter helplessness.

But he was not a child anymore.

“Sit down, won’t you, Your Grace?”

“I would rather stand.”

“Very well. I daresay we will come to terms quickly enough.”

“Terms? What terms? For what?”

“My financial terms, for keeping quiet about what I know.”

“Blackmail. I should have guessed,” Galen muttered, his hatred for the man growing with every word Blackstone uttered and every minute he was in his presence.

“An ugly word, but appropriate,” Blackstone acknowledged.

“What is it you think you know?”

“I know that Jocelyn Davis-Jones is your child, not my dear departed brother-in-law’s.”

Galen made a derisive grunt. “That’s preposterous.”

“I have it on the best authority.”

“What authority?” Galen scoffed. “A genie? Some soothsayer? A gypsy, perhaps?”

“Verity told me.”

For an instant, Galen felt as if a rock had struck him in the stomach. Then his lip curled with renewed scorn. “You, sir, are the most outrageous liar I have ever had the misfortune to meet.”

Blackstone didn’t blink an eye. “You know otherwise, for you confirmed it, too, that day in the wood. Such passionate embraces, too.” Blackstone’s smile grew more feral.

Galen’s hands bunched into fists. Was it possible they had been seen and overheard? He remembered the snap of the twig. Gad, he
had
been careless!

“I quite envy you, Your Grace, for that, and most especially the rest ten years ago. Or have there been other assignations I have not been privy to?”

“If there had been, I daresay you are sorry you were not there to spy upon them.”

“Are you going to deny that Jocelyn is your daughter?”

Galen smiled a smile that should have given Blackstone pause. “No.”

“I am glad of that.”

“Why should I? Fathering a bastard is not a crime.”

“But Verity doesn’t want anybody to know, and since I do, how much are you willing to pay to prevent me from sharing what I know?”

“That would depend upon how many others you have already told.”

“I haven’t told anyone—yet. No, not even dear, sweet, lovely Verity.”

She didn’t know. Thank God, she didn’t know.

“As for who I’d tell, Your Grace,” Clive continued, “why, anyone and everyone I met.”

“What proof would you offer? It would be your word against ours.”

“Even without proof, people would believe it. What was her mother but an adulteress? What are you but a lascivious cad? Do you think people require a legal document to believe a rumor?”

Galen could not deny the truth of his assertion.

“Besides, Your Grace, the child does look like you.”

“As you are so good to point out, I have very little reputation to lose, so there is no reason I should pay for your silence.”

“Except for the sake of the people you love.”

Galen had been thinking matrimony a noose; now, he was caught in an even more terrible trap, because Blackstone had found the one reason Galen would do what every particle of his being rebelled against. For Verity and Jocelyn’s sake, he would do anything, even to putting himself in this loathsome man’s power.

But not yet. Not until he was sure there was no other way. “Even if you destroy Verity’s reputation, what profit would there be in that for you? Daniel Davis-Jones’s will should still be legal and
binding, so there would be no financial gain for you.”

“Legal and binding under those circumstances? Perhaps. Or perhaps it will take years for the lawyers to sort it out. And perhaps the sudden death of the betrayed husband will be reconsidered.”

“He died of pneumonia.”

Clive’s grin was the most evil thing Galen had ever laid eyes on. “Oh, did he?”

“You know that as well as I. The doctor saw nothing suspicious.”

“A jury of twelve good men and true might believe that a woman who had acted so disgracefully might be capable of anything.

“Besides, even if she is not guilty of any crime, the papers will enjoy the trial, I’m sure. A juicy bit for their readers, and with a duke in the story, too. Shall we try it, do you think?”

“You wouldn’t dare. I could hire the best lawyers in England to defend her.”

“Of course you could,” Blackstone replied with a patronizing sneer that twisted into another mocking grin. “But in the meantime, my dear duke, think of the scandal. Verity will. You know her aversion to scandal, for the child’s sake. I merely thought I would give you the chance to be her white knight. Rather a new role for the Duke of Deighton, eh?” He chuckled softly. “However, if
you will not pay me to keep quiet,
she
will. Somehow.”

With a growl of rage, Galen lunged for the man, hauled him out of the chair by the collar and worried him like a terrier. “If you so much as lay one hand on her, I’ll kill you, by God!”

C
live struggled in Galen’s grasp. “Do you want to add murderer to your reputation?” he gasped.

Galen let go, throwing the man back so he hit the shelves, sending down a cascade of books. Clive covered his head with his arms and cowered, while Galen tried to calm his ragged breathing.

There was a knock at the door. “Your Grace?” a footman inquired tentatively. “Is anything the matter?”

“Some books fell. Nothing serious,” he replied as he continued to glare at Clive Blackstone, who stumbled to his feet and rubbed his throat.

“That wasn’t wise,” he whispered hoarsely.

His mouth hard, Galen glared at Blackstone. Every impulse within him urged him to tell this wretch to go to hell—but he could not.

Just as Verity had never been able to.

Galen had never admired her more than he did
now, when he realized how strong she was to deal with this odious creature, and still maintain such spirit and determination. “How much will it cost to send you and your wife from the country?”

“From the country?” Clive asked as he straightened his disheveled clothing.

“You heard me. How much will it cost me to get you out of England and keep you out of it?”

“I have my mills to think of—”

“I’ll buy them.
How much?
”

The man’s eyes gleamed greedily as he took a moment to consider. “Thirty thousand pounds.”

Galen’s chest tightened. He was wealthy, to be sure, but not in ready cash. This would totally deplete his bank account. But haggle with this man for Verity’s security he would not.

“Very well.” Galen strode to the desk. “I shall give you half now and deliver the other half to you personally aboard ship just before you sail.”

He quickly wrote the necessary notes. “I have explained to my banker that I am going into the cotton business.”

How he would later explain this temporary acquisition to Jasper he didn’t know, and he didn’t care. The most important thing was to protect Verity and Jocelyn.

His lip curling with scorn, he held out the papers as if they were diseased and the man accepting them leprous. “Don’t even think of talking to Ver
ity before you go. I hardly need remind you that I have an acquaintance in Jefford, and I can always find out from Sir Myron if she has had visitors. Now get out of my sight.”

Blackstone slowly perused the papers, then folded them and put them in his frock coat. “A pleasure doing business with you, Your Grace. Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed the alternative—”

Galen took a step toward him. “Never forget, Blackstone, that you are dealing with a duke, and one who has spent more time than he cares to remember with the lowlife of London. If you force my hand, if you so much as write to her, I swear you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

Blackstone paled, then turned and scurried from the room like the rat he was.

After he had gone, Galen paced across the carpet, his gaze intensely fastened on the fabric beneath his feet, as if he were a weaver examining every thread.

In truth, he saw nothing. All his mind focused on was Blackstone and the threat he presented not to Galen, but to Verity and Jocelyn.

Would Blackstone stay away from them? To be sure, he had been frightened by Galen’s threat, but later, would his arrogant belief in the power of the secret he possessed make him bold?

Galen could believe it would, especially if Verity was the prize.

Yet thirty thousand pounds—surely that would be sufficient impetus to do as Galen ordered.

But how many times had he heard of tales of blackmailers who took a sum of money, then asked for more and more? How long might the thirty thousand pounds content Blackstone? How long before he asked for more money, or went to Verity to demand…

Maybe not long at all. Maybe he would risk going to her as soon as he was out of London, trusting in Verity’s determination to avoid scandal to keep such a visit a secret, too.

He should go to Verity at once and warn her.

What if he were wrong? What if Blackstone did take the money and do as he commanded? Warning Verity would only upset her, and for nothing.

That revelation might even frighten her so much she would flee with Jocelyn to someplace where he might never find them again. Under those circumstances, she probably wouldn’t dare to write him.

He would be totally alone in the world, more so than ever before, because he would know what he had lost.

Galen sank to his knees. He felt so helpless, so utterly unsure of what he should do or where he should go.

“Oh, God, tell me what to do,” he whispered.
“I want them to be safe, but I don’t want to be alone.”

Then he raised his head, a resolute expression on his face.

Galen Bromney, Duke of Deighton, who had run away and hid from his troubles for ten years, knew exactly what he had to do.

He had to warn Verity. He had to tell her Clive knew their secret and that he might try to use that knowledge against her.

And if that meant that Verity and Jocelyn disappeared so that he couldn’t even hear of them from time to time, if that meant Verity would never write to him, he would have to risk that.

He would have her free of Clive Blackstone, no matter what the cost to him.

Blowing a loose bit of hair from her eyes, Verity briskly wrung out the rag, then again fell to scrubbing the hall near the door to the parlor. She didn’t mind the sweat pouring down her back from her exertions, or the pain in her knees from kneeling on the hard wooden floor. Ever since Galen had left Jefford, she had cleaned and scrubbed and tidied as if her life depended upon a spotless house.

In a way, she supposed it did, because cleaning kept her busy and her mind occupied, and by nightfall, she was so tired, she fell into a dreamless, exhausted sleep.

Otherwise, she would lie awake thinking about Galen, and what might have been.

At the unexpected sound of a carriage, she stopped scrubbing and stood as quickly as her sore knees would let her. She wasn’t expecting any visitors.

She took a few steps into the parlor and looked out the window.

Wearing what was obviously a new coat and hat, Clive sat alone in a curricle driven by the innkeeper’s lad.

She turned away. Clive’s business must be prospering. Perhaps he had come to gloat, or offer her another chance to invest. She wouldn’t, of course, even if he arrived in the Prince Regent’s barouche drawn by the finest matched pair in England. How she wished she could make him understand that!

Yet whatever his reason, if he came without Fanny, she wished Nancy and Jocelyn were there. Unfortunately, Nancy was at the village visiting some friends, and Jocelyn was at school.

Hoping that Nancy would return sooner rather than later, she removed her apron, rolled down her sleeves and shoved the errant lock of hair back into place again. She glanced at her red, wrinkled and damp hands, then wiped them on the apron before she answered the door when she heard Clive’s familiar rap.

“Clive, you’ve come back,” she said with very little enthusiasm.

He smiled, exposing his crooked yellow teeth. Then he ran an incredibly insolent gaze over her, a horrible lascivious gleam in his eyes.

A shiver of dread ran down Verity’s spine as she looked past him to see the curricle going down the drive. She struggled against a nearly overwhelming impulse to call the boy back—but to do so would tell Clive he could intimidate her, and that she did not want.

“Good morning, sister. May I come in?”

Verity didn’t immediately vacate the doorway. “Where is Fanny? Not ill, I hope?”

“No, she’s at home.”

Verity caught the scent of wine and surreptitiously wrinkled her nose. He wasn’t drunk, though. Far from it. He seemed more energetic than ever before.

“Have you no baggage?” she replied as she turned slightly.

It was not much of an invitation to enter, but that didn’t seem to trouble Clive in the least as he strolled past her.

“No, I don’t intend to stay long.”

“Oh.” Relief flooded through her, only to be replaced by annoyance as Clive sauntered into the parlor with his usual proprietary air. Near the
hearth, he turned toward her, and again she saw that chilling, lustful look in his eyes.

“Why have you come, Clive?”

“Why, to visit.” He smiled, only this time, his smile was different, too.

She had always hated him and dreaded his visits, but never before had she felt so frightened of him, or what he might do. “For how long?”

“Whatever is the matter, dear sister?”

She straightened her shoulders. “I think you should leave, Clive.”

His eyes narrowed with suspicion as he crossed his short arms. “Why, what makes you so cross today?”

She didn’t answer.

“Come, sister, sit down.”

“I would prefer you to leave, Clive,” Verity replied through clenched teeth.

He didn’t move, except to smile more, and another shiver of dread trembled along her backbone. “And I think you should be nice to me, or you will be sorry.”

He started to come closer, slithering almost, like a snake with legs. “I know the truth, you see, my dear Verity.”

“What truth?” she demanded as she backed away. Her heart pounded in her chest and the throbbing of her blood sounded in her ears.

He knew! How else to explain his change in
manner, his newfound confidence and bold arrogance?

But
how?

“You really shouldn’t have been so indiscreet as to discuss such a subject in the wood, where any passerby might hear that Jocelyn is not poor Daniel’s child.”

She couldn’t breathe as her mind flew back to her meeting in the wood with Galen. She had heard nothing, but she had been thinking about Galen and her own troubles. Somebody could have been in the wood, watching and listening.

It would be like Clive to spy.

“Really, though, I must confess myself amazed that you were able to keep the secret so long,” he murmured as he came closer still. “You know the kind of scandalous cad the duke has always been. Men like that love to brag about their conquests, even more than the conquest itself sometimes. Lucky for you he has been out of the country.

“Not that I would fault the duke for wanting to brag about having you, my dear,” he continued in a horrible low and husky voice. “I will be tempted to shout about it from the rooftops when it is my turn.”

At that statement, it was as if every insult she had ever borne, every subtle slight, every disgusting proposition and sly hint, had been distilled into one sentence uttered by a man she loathed.

“Get out,” Verity ordered as she pointed to the door, her hand trembling not with fear or shame, but from pure, righteous anger.

How dare he look at her as he did? How dare he presume that she would ever let him touch her with his disgusting hands?

She was no longer alone in the world, and helpless.

Clive had forgotten, as she did not, that she need not stand alone against those who would hurt her, or her child, anymore.

Because now she had Galen.

“Get out of my house,” she commanded imperiously.

Clive’s eyes narrowed and his hands balled into fists. “Still the proud one, eh, Verity? So queenly, ordering me from here. This should have been
my
house. Everything you have should have been mine. Why else do you think I married that fool Fanny? For her looks?”

“Whatever you think
should
have been, this is my house, and you will leave it immediately.”

“Where’s Nancy?” he demanded. Then he smiled his damnable smug smile. “Here? I think not, or she would have already shown herself.”

Verity’s mouth went dry.

“So, we are alone. And your house is so charmingly out of the way. I daresay you could scream and scream and nobody would hear you.”

Verity turned and lunged for the door, but he caught her about the waist and dragged her back into the room. “Oh, I don’t think so, my dear. I don’t think you want to leave just yet.”

She struggled to break free, but he was stronger than she expected.

“I can see how distressing this must be for you, to realize I know all about you and the handsome duke. Very distressing indeed, given your family’s already scandalous reputation.”

“Take your hands off me!”

He pulled her back toward the sofa. “When I’ve finally gotten them on you, and when you must understand that you should let them stay there, given what I know, if you want me to keep your secret?”

“What about Fanny?”

“She doesn’t know. Your secret is safe with me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I assure you, my beauty, that it is—for the present. I know what I know, and I know you well enough to be certain you will do whatever I say to buy my continued silence.”

“You are disgusting!”

“I’ll tell everybody,” he vowed as he tugged her around to face him, his wine-soaked breath hot on her face. “Everybody will find out that Jocelyn
is a bastard, the bastard daughter of a bastard mother.”

“Have you considered what the Duke of Deighton will do if you harm us in
any
way?” Verity demanded breathlessly. “You heard
him
in the woods, too. She is blood of his blood. Do you think a man like that will sit idly by while his child is threatened—or his child’s mother?”

“He doesn’t care about anybody but himself.”

Clive had not seen Galen’s face when she had asked him to leave them alone. He had not witnessed Galen’s heart breaking before his very eyes. “Touch a hair on Jocelyn’s head or force yourself upon me, and he’ll see you hang!”

Her words finally seemed to penetrate his understanding. Then that horrible smile returned. “Rape? Really, my dear sister-in-law, you mistake my purpose. I shan’t take you against your will. You will give yourself to me.”

“You must be mad!”

“Without scruples, perhaps, but not mad,” he replied, his eyes darkening with lust. “Give me what I desire and I will keep your secret,” he muttered as he bent his head to kiss her.

She spit in his face.

He raised his hand and struck her hard. “You ungrateful whore!” he snarled. “Who do you think you are? You’re nothing but a harlot who found a fool to make a supposedly honest woman of you.
You should be
glad
I am willing to keep your secret, at any price!”