Vice (6 page)

She held the figurine up to the light, her fingers tracing the surface. “I dareswear it’s a monstrous expensive piece. I’d not have knocked it over otherwise.” She set the figurine on the table again and stepped swiftly away from the danger zone.

The duke regarded these maneuvers with some astonishment. “Are you in the habit of destroying expensive articles?”

“It’s my cursed clumsiness,” Juliana explained with a sigh, watching the figurine warily to make sure it didn’t decide to tumble again.

Any response her companion might have made was curtailed by the arrival of Mr. Garston in response to the bell.

“Champagne for the lady, Garston,” the duke ordered blandly. “Claret for myself. The forty-three, if you have it.”

“I believe so, Your Grace.” Garston bowed himself out.

Juliana, annoyed that her clumsiness had distracted her at a moment when she’d felt she was regaining some measure of self-possession in this frightful situation, remained silent. The duke seemed perfectly content with that state of affairs. He strolled to a bookshelf and gave great attention to the gilded spines of the volumes it contained until Garston returned with the wine.

“Leave it with me, Garston.” He waved the man away and deftly eased the cork from the neck of the champagne bottle. “I trust this will find favor, ma’am.” He poured a glass and took it to Juliana, still standing motionless by the table.

Juliana had but once tasted champagne, and that on her wedding day. She was accustomed to small beer and the occasional glass of claret. But with the bravado of before, she took the glass and sipped, nodding her approval.

The duke poured a glass of claret for himself, then said gently, “If you would take a seat, ma’am, I might also do so.”

It was such an unlooked-for courtesy in the circumstances that Juliana found herself sitting down without further thought. The duke bowed and took a chair opposite her sofa.

Tarquin took the scent of his wine and examined the still figure. She reminded him of a hart at bay, radiating a kind of desperate courage that nevertheless acknowledged the grim reality of its position. Her eyes met his scrutiny without blinking, the firm chin tilted, the wide, full mouth taut. There was something uncompromising about Juliana Beresford, from the tip of that flaming head of hair to the toes of her long feet. The image of her naked body rose unbidden in his mind. His eyes narrowed as his languid
gaze slid over her, remembering the voluptuous quality of her nudity, the smooth white skin in startling contrast to the glowing hair.

“If you insist upon making this proposition, my lord duke, I wish you would do so.” Juliana spoke suddenly, breaking the intensity of a silence that had been having the strangest effect upon her. Her skin was tingling all over, her nipples pricking against her laced bodice, and she had to fight against the urge to drop her eyes from that languid and yet curiously penetrating gray scrutiny.

“By all means,” he said, taking a sip of his wine. “But I must first ask you a question. Are you still virgin?”

Juliana felt the color drain from her face. She stared at him in disbelief. “What business is that of yours?”

“It’s very much my business,” the duke said evenly. “Whether or not I make this proposition depends upon your answer.”

“I will not answer such a question,” Juliana declared from a realm of outrage beyond anger.

“My dear, you must. If you wish to spare yourself the inconvenience of examination,” he said in the same level tones. “Mistress Dennison will discover the answer for herself, if you will not tell me.”

Juliana shook her head, beyond words.

He rose from his chair and crossed the small space between them. Bending over her, he took her chin between finger and thumb and tilted her face to meet his steady gaze. “Juliana, you told Mistress Dennison that your husband died before your marriage was consummated. Is that the truth?”

“Why would I say it if it wasn’t?” Somehow she still managed to sound unyielding, even as she yielded the answer because she knew she had no choice but to do so.

He held her chin for a long moment as she glared up at him, wishing she had a knife. She imagined plunging it into his chest as he stood so close to her she could smell his skin, and a faint hint of the dried lavender that had been strewn among his fresh-washed linen.

Then he released her with a little nod. “I believe you.”

“Oh, you do me too much honor, sir,” she said, her voice shaking with fury. Springing to her feet, she drove her fist into his belly with all the force she could muster.

He doubled over with a gasp of pain, but as she turned to run, he grabbed her and held on even as he fought for breath.

Juliana struggled to free her wrist from a grip like steel. She raised a leg to kick him, but he swung sideways so her foot met only his thigh.

“Be still!” he gasped through clenched teeth. “Hell and the devil, girl!” He jerked her wrist hard and finally she stopped fighting.

Slowly Tarquin straightened up as the pain receded and he could breathe again. “Hair as hot as the fires of hell goes with the devil’s own temper, I suppose,” he said, and to Juliana’s astonishment his mouth quirked in a rueful smile, although he still held her wrist tightly. “I must bear that in mind in future.”

“What do you want of me?” Juliana demanded. An overwhelming sense of helplessness began to eat away at her, challenging bravado; and even as she tried to fight it, she recognized the futility of the struggle.

“Quite simply, child, I wish you to marry my cousin, Viscount Edgecombe.” He released her wrist as he said this and calmly straightened his coat and the disordered lace ruffles at his cuffs.

“You want me to do
what?”

“I believe you heard me.” He strolled away from her to refill his wineglass. “More champagne, perhaps?”

Juliana shook her head. She’d barely touched what was in her glass. “I don’t understand.”

The duke turned back to face her. He sipped his wine reflectively. “I need a wife for my cousin, Lucien. A wife who will bear a child, an heir to the Edgecombe estate and tide.

“The present heir is, to put it kindly, somewhat slow-witted. Oh, he’s a nice enough soul but could no more pull
Edgecombe out of the mire into which Lucien has plunged it than he could read a page of Livy. Lucien is dismembering Edgecombe. I intend to put a stop to that. And I intend to ensure that his heir is my ward.”

He smiled, but it had none of the pleasant quality of his earlier smiles. “I shall thus have twenty-one years to put Edgecombe back together again … to repair the damage Lucien has done—as much as anything, I believe, to spite me.

“Why can’t your cousin find his own wife?” she asked, staring incredulously.

“Well, I suspect he might find it difficult,” the duke said, turning his signet ring on his finger with a considering air. “Lucien is not a pleasant man. No ordinary female of the right breeding would choose to wed him.”

Juliana wondered if she was going mad. At the very least she had clearly stumbled among lunatics. Vicious, twisted lunatics.

“You … you want a
brood mare!”
she exclaimed. “You would blackmail me into yielding my body as a vehicle for your cousin’s progeny, because no self-respecting woman would take on the job! You’re … you’re treating me like a bitch to be put to a stud.”

Tarquin frowned. “Your choice of words is a trifle inelegant, my dear. I’m offering a marriage that comes with a tide and what remains of a substantial fortune. My cousin doesn’t have long to live, hence the urgency of the matter. However, I’m certain you’ll be released from his admittedly undesirable company within a twelvemonth. I’ll ensure, of course, that you’re well looked after in your widowhood. And, of course, not a word of your unfortunate history will be passed on.”

He sipped his wine. When she still gazed at him, dumbstruck, he continued: “Your secret will be buried with me and the Dennisons. No one will ever connect Lady Edgecombe with Juliana … whoever-you-were.” His hand moved through the air in a careless gesture. “You will be safe, prosperous, and set up for life.”

Juliana drained her champagne glass. Then she threw the glass into the fireplace. Her face was bloodless, her eyes jade stones, her voice low and bitter as aloes. “And to gain such safety … such rewards … I must simply bear the child of an undesirable invalid with one foot in the—”

“Ah, no, not precisely.” The duke held up one hand, arresting her in midsentence. “You will not bear Lucien’s child, my dear Juliana. You will bear mine.”

I
cannot imagine how we can help you, Sir George.” Sir Brian Forsett offered his guest a chilly smile. “Juliana ceased to be our responsibility as soon as she passed into the legal control of her husband. Your father’s unfortunate death leaves his widow her own mistress, in the absence of any instructions to the contrary in Sir John’s will.”

“And it leaves you, sir, holding her jointure in trust for her,” snapped Sir George Ridge. He was in his late twenties, a corpulent, red-faced man, with hands like ham hocks. The son of his father, physically if not in character, he was the despair of his tailors, who recognized that all their skill and all their client’s coin would never make an elegant figure of him.

“That is so,” Sir Brian said in his customarily austere tones.

When he offered no expansion, his choleric guest began to pace the library from window to desk, muttering to himself, dabbing with his handkerchief at the rolls of sweating flesh oozing over his stock. “But it’s iniquitous that it should be so,” he stated finally. “Your ward has murdered my father. She runs away, and you still hold her jointure—a substantial part of my inheritance, I tell you, sir—in trust for her. I say again, sir, she is a murderess!”

“That, if I might say so, is a matter for the court,” Sir Brian said, his nose twitching slightly with distaste. The warmth of the summer afternoon was having a malodorous effect on his visitor.

“I tell you again, sir, she is a murderess!” Sir George repeated, his nostrils flaring. “I saw the mark on my father’s back. If she was not responsible for his death, why would she run away?”

Sir Brian shrugged his thin shoulders. “My dear sir, Juliana has always been a mystery. But until she is found, there is nothing we can do to alter the current situation.”

“A murderess cannot inherit her victim’s estate.” Sir George slammed a fist on the desk, and his host drew back with a well-bred frown.

“Her children can, however,” he reminded the angry young man. “She may be with child, sir. Her husband died in such circumstances as to imply that …” He paused, took a pinch of snuff, and concluded delicately, “As to imply that the marriage had been consummated.”

His visitor stared in dismay. Such a thought had clearly never entered his mind. “It couldn’t be.” But his voice lacked conviction.

“Why not?” gently inquired his host. “You, after all, are proof that your father was not impotent. Of course, we may never know about Juliana. One would have to find her first.”

“And if we don’t find her, then it will take seven years to have her declared legally dead. Seven years when you will hold her jointure in trust and I will be unable to lay hands on half my land.”

Sir Brian merely raised an eyebrow. He’d negotiated his ward’s marriage settlement with the cold, calculated pleasure of a man who was never bested in a business deal. Bluff and kindly Sir John Ridge, heading into his dotage utterly infatuated with the sixteen-year-old Juliana, hadn’t stood a chance against the needle wits of his acquisitive opponent. Juliana’s benefit had been a mere sideline for Sir Brian in
the general pleasures of running rings around the slow-witted and obsessed Ridge.

“Well, how are we to find her?” Sir George flung himself onto a sofa, scowling fiercely.

“I suggest we leave that to the constables,” Sir Brian stated.

“And just how much do you think that lazy gaggle of poxed curs will bestir themselves?”

Sir Brian shrugged again. “If you have a better idea …”

“Oh, indeed I do!” Sir George sprang to his feet with an oath. “I’ll go after the damned girl myself. And I’ll bring her back to face the magistrates if it’s the last thing I do.”

“I commend your resolution, sir.” Sir Brian rose and moved toward the door, gently encouraging his guest’s departure. “Do, I beg you, keep me informed of your progress.”

Sir George glared at him. There was only form politeness in Sir Brian Forsett’s tone. The longer Juliana remained at large and in hiding, the longer Forsett would have to manage her jointure as he chose. It didn’t take much imagination to understand that he would prove expert at diverting revenues from the trust into his own pocket.

“Oh, Sir George … pray accept my condolences…. Such a terrible tragedy.” The crisp tones of Lady Amelia Forsett preceded the lady as she entered the library through the open terrace doors.

A tall woman of haughty demeanor, she sketched a curtsy. George, intimidated despite his anger, bowed low in return. Lady Forsett’s clear pale-blue eyes assessed him and seemed to find him wanting. A chilly smile touched the corners of her mouth. “I trust I haven’t interrupted your business with my husband.”