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Authors: Tamara Lejeune

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BOOK: When You're Desired
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“Not
quite
empty,” he told her, setting a small box on the table beside the sofa.
Celia looked at it uneasily. “What is it? Did that come from the grave?”
“Open it,” he said. “It's perfectly safe,” he added. “No worms or beetles.”
Cautiously, she opened it. “My locket!” she cried, retrieving the heart-shaped gold pendant and chain from the box. “And the locks of hair? Are they still within?”
“You must see for yourself,” he told her. “I have not opened it.”
Slowly, she pried the two halves of the heart apart.
“Well?” he asked.
She could only nod, being too overwhelmed by emotion to speak.
“I'm glad,” he said. “I know how much it means to you. There's more, too. I was able to see Crutchley.”
Hotchkiss brought in the brandy, and paused. “Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”
“No, Hotchkiss. I must speak to Miss Sarah alone. Perhaps you would be good enough to wait for me in my dressing room. I've left Hill in town. I'm afraid you'll have to do the honors.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
Celia had clasped the chain around her neck. “Don't keep me in suspense,” she said, as the butler withdrew. “What did Mr. Crutchley say? Was there a new will?”
“My father did change his will,” said Dorian. “I have it here,” he added, taking out an unprepossessing sheet of paper covered with a heavy scrawl.
She smiled. “Did he leave me something? How kind of him to think of me! I should be very glad to have something to remember him by. I always liked that little picture in the summer breakfast parlor. The one with the cows. I don't suppose he left me that?”
“No. He made but two significant changes to his original will. First, he made me my brother's guardian. When my father died, Simon was still in India, and just a few months shy of his twenty-first birthday. According to the old will, my mother was made his guardian. She was given control over Simon's fortune. She has used that power to keep his inheritance from him ever since.”
Celia stared at him. “What do you mean? How can she keep his fortune from him?”
“The old will gave her the power. The new will stripped her of it.”
“And that is why she burned it?” cried Celia. “How wicked! But, hold a minute! If she burned the will, what is it you have there in your hand?”
“I have in my hand the original, written by my father. I cannot be certain, of course, but I believe it was a copy my mother burned.”
“How awful.”
“I have not told you the rest. Let me do so now. My father also named me
your
guardian, Sally, with the stipulation that I place the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds in trust for you.”
“What!”
“You were to receive your fortune—both principle and compounded interest—on your twenty-first birthday. That, I believe, is why my mother decided to get rid of you.”
Celia stared at him. “Twenty-five
thousand
pounds?” she cried, shocked and horrified.
“Yes, Sally.”
She shook her head. “It's too much,” she protested weakly. “Twenty-five
hundred
pounds would have been too much, let alone twenty-five thousands! No wonder . . . No wonder your mother was furious with me! I'm surprised she didn't k-kill me!”
“There are limits to what even she will do.”
“I don't know what to say! I am so surprised! Your father . . . He seemed so stern. He didn't even want me to come here in the first place.”
“No, not at first,” Dorian admitted.
“I'm sure I don't blame him. I was such a little guttersnipe.”
“Hotchkiss is right: you were the light of the house. My father obviously adored you. He wanted you to have this money, Sally. He wanted you to have a real chance in life.”
“Twenty-five thousand pounds!” Celia shook her head. “It's too much, Dorian. I could not accept even half so much. This is madness!”
“My father was not a madman,” he said quietly.
“No! Of course that is not what I meant,” she said quickly. “But surely you agree it is too much. I am not his daughter, after all.”
“It is not for me to say what is too much or too little. My father had every right to leave his property as he wished. He wrote down his wishes here even before he sent for Crutchley. Crutchley was to have his clerk make a fair copy of the document. You know what my father's handwriting was like.”
She smiled. “He often said it was so bad no one could ever hope to forge it.”
“Indeed. This is no forgery. Crutchley was to return the following day to have the new will properly signed and witnessed. Before he could do that, my father died.”
Celia breathed a sigh of relief. “Then the will is not valid? We have been bothering ourselves over nothing.”
“The will may not be legal,” said Dorian. “But I consider it to be quite binding. My father was ill when he wrote this. He was dying. He knew he was dying, and he made out his will.
This
will. I don't care what the courts may say about it. I know my father's hand. I know without a doubt what he wanted. I am his son and heir. It would be a very strange thing if I did not feel bound to honor his wishes.”
“But, Dorian, if the will is not legally valid—” she began.
“I don't care three straws for the law! My father made his wishes clear, and I shall honor them.”
“But I cannot accept so much money! I'd feel as though I were robbing you of your inheritance, taking advantage of your good nature.”
“Most of my father's estate was entailed upon me,” Dorian said. “But he was perfectly entitled to dispose of the residue as he saw fit.”
“Residue!” she exclaimed. “You would call twenty-five thousand pounds a residue?”
“Yes, I would,” he said simply. “My own fortune is quite substantial, you know.”
“But what about your brother's fortune?” she said. “He might like having twenty-five thousand pounds. He has far more right to it than I.”
“Simon's fortune has been held in trust for him since the day he was born,” said Dorian. “It comes to him from our grandfather, Lord Kenelm. 'Twas all spelled out in the settlement, when my father married my mother. Your little bequest is a pittance to his.”
“Is it?” she said faintly.
“Simon will get his fortune, and you will get yours. I shall not rest until it is so.”
“I'm sure it was very kind of your father to remember me, Dorian,” she said. “I am truly touched by the gesture, but I am not his flesh and blood. Only trouble can come of this. Your brother won't like it. And your mother—she'll fight you tooth and nail.”
“She cannot stop me,” said Dorian. “Not now. If I wish to settle thirty-five thousand pounds upon my ward—or, indeed, upon a perfect stranger—what has she to say about it?”
“
Thirty
-five thousand!” she exclaimed. “I thought you said
twenty
-five thousand!”
“Yes,” he replied. “I was to place twenty-five thousand pounds in trust for you ten years ago. In the four percents, over ten years, that would amount to at least an additional ten thousand in interest. And then there is the matter of damages.”
“Damages!” she said weakly. “For heaven's sake, Dorian!”
“She took you away from your home, sent you to live with a stranger, forced you into wedlock at the tender age of fifteen! Yes, my dear,” Dorian said grimly, “I'd say you are entitled to damages.”
“No,” Celia said firmly. “I would not take a penny from her—or you.”
“But this is from my father. You have been cheated all these years, and my brother, too! She has kept him dancing to her tune long enough, I think. Do you know she makes him collect his allowance in person? Once a month, like a servant being paid out his wages!”
“How he must hate that.”
“And all along, she knew! She
knew
my father had changed his will. If I had known about this, Simon would have come into his fortune when he came of age. I would have insisted upon it. I shall insist upon it now. I shall meet with my attorneys the very instant we return to London.”
Celia shivered. “She'll fight you, Dorian.”
“I don't care if she does!” he said sharply. “I almost hope she will,” he added coldly, “but somehow I doubt it. She won't want any of this to come to light. She'll never let it go to court, certainly. A widow burning her husband's will before he is cold? Even if it is not a legal document, surely she had no right to burn it. She had no right to keep it from me.”
“She must have known how you would see it—as a mandate from your father.”
“I daresay! Is there any other way to see it?”
“You mean to confront her, then,” Celia said nervously. “I suppose it cannot be avoided now. Will you have to tell her who I am? She tried to destroy me once. She very nearly succeeded.”
“You need not be afraid of her,” he said. “Not anymore. I shall have to confront her about the will, of course, for Simon's sake.”
“I understand.”
“But I shan't have to tell her anything about you,” he added. “When we get back to London, I shall arrange with my attorneys to set up a trust for you. The matter will be kept completely private. My mother need never know anything about it.”
“A trust? Oh, I wish you would not, Dorian. You've given me so much. It wouldn't feel right to take your money, too.”
“It's not my money,” he replied firmly. “Don't you understand? It never was.”
Chapter 17
The following morning, after breakfast, Celia bid farewell to Ashlands. Dorian found her on the landing of the grand staircase, pulling on her gloves. For propriety's sake, the duke had slept in the west wing, leaving the entirety of the east wing, including the Rose Room, to his guest. Celia was both reluctant to leave her childhood home and anxious to get back to London to work on the new play.
“Simon will be pleased,” Dorian said, looking up at the portrait of his brother. It had been painted the year Simon had joined the army, and showed a lean, cocky, fresh-faced cornet, leaning against his horse. The young lord's green eyes looked out on the world with absolute aristocratic arrogance. Life-sized, the portrait hung at the landing on the east wall.
Startled, Celia glanced up and, following the direction of his gaze, smiled briefly. “I expect he
will
be pleased,” she said, “if your mother proves to be as amenable as you say. But if she chooses to fight you—No, he won't be pleased.”
“She will not fight me,” Dorian said with quiet confidence. “It is a fight she cannot win. She cannot prevent Simon from claiming his birthright. If she dares to try, she will lose everything. I will expose her. What do you suppose the other patronesses of the ton might think of her behavior? She'd be ostracized.”
“What has she done, really? She burned a piece of paper, an invalid will.”
“If it was so invalid, why burn it? Why not show it to me? No; she was wrong and she knows it. She will do as I tell her, or she will suffer.”
Celia was still looking up at Simon's portrait. “He will be rich then. Good.”
“He will be very rich. I'll say this for my mother: she has husbanded his accounts well.”
“I'm glad. He was such a bold, beautiful boy,” Celia murmured. “I wish I could have known him then. But he has not aged well, I am bound to say. His face has gone all mean and craggy. His mouth is cold and hard, rather like his heart.”
Dorian chuckled. “It is as well he never saw
you
in those days, Sally. No pretty girl was safe from him. He was the terror of the housemaids.”
“You mean he wasn't faithful to the master's daughter at Eton? Shocking!”
“When the scandal broke, there was talk of marriage, as I recall. Well, they were a goodish sort of family, but in the end, my father decided they were not worthy of the honor.”
Celia flashed a look of surprise. “Did he love her, do you suppose?”
“Simon? Oh, I shouldn't think so,” Dorian replied. “He seemed more upset at the prospect of leaving Ashlands than Eton. He told me once there was nothing at Eton he would ever regret. Shall we, my dear?” he added, offering her his arm.
“I can well understand not wanting to leave Ashlands,” Celia said, as he led her down the stairs. “It
is
the most beautiful place in all the world.”
“You need not leave if you don't wish, Sally,” he told her seriously. “You can stay forever, if you like. It is your home.”
Celia sighed. “I should like nothing better than to stay, but no! No, I must go back. I can't let everyone down. The new play is in a shambles. Something will have to be done about Belinda. Don't tempt me!”
“But I mean it,” he said. “You are welcome to stay here forever. Let someone else worry about the play, and Belinda, and all the rest of it. Let me look after you.”
“Dorian, you are very kind. But . . . I have no place here. I must go back.”
Suddenly he seized her hands. “Marry me, Sally! Then you would have a place. You would be mistress here. All this would be yours—ours. We would grow old here together. You would be Duchess of Berkshire.”
“Good heavens,” she murmured, very much taken aback. “My dear sir, this is too much all at once. First, you insist on making me an heiress—now you would make me a duchess. Mistress of Ashlands! If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a devil sent to tempt me!”
She gave a shaky laugh.
“Then you are tempted, at least?”
“Of course I am tempted! I'm only human. But, Dorian, you must know that I cannot marry you,” she added quickly, pulling her hands away. “I'm in love with your
house
, not you. I don't love you, not as you deserve. Not as a wife should love her husband.”
“But—”
She shook her head firmly. “I am sorry to be so blunt, but you have caught me in surprise. I hardly know what to say. I should be thanking you for the honor of your proposals. Indeed, I am grateful—”
“Never mind all that,” he said. “I have been thinking of asking you, ever since we dined together at Grillon's Hotel. Ever since I learned of the terrible wrong that had been done to you. I want to make it right.”
“Then you do not love me?” she said.
“My dear, of course I do,” he protested.
“But not, I think, as a husband should love his wife,” she said. “My dear Dorian, if the master's daughter at Eton was not good enough for Lord Simon, how could I ever hope to merit his elder brother? Sally Hartley, a duchess? Don't be silly. You cannot marry an actress.”
“It is not unheard of. The Duke of Bolton married an actress. The Earl of Derby married Miss Farren. Why, only ten years ago, Lord Craven married Miss Brunton.”
She only laughed. “And you seek to flatter these gentlemen by imitation? You forget, sir, they were all violently in love with their ladies. There can be no other possible excuse for such unequal marriages.”
Dorian sighed. “But you must admit it would be an excellent revenge,” he said. “You would take the place of the one who wronged you.”
“An excellent reason to marry!” she said lightly. “I shall need a better one to put my head in the noose again. Please, let us say no more about it.”
“I would not by any means distress you.”
“I am not distressed,” she said, taking his arm. “It was very kind of you to ask me. I wish I did love you. Then it would all be so easy.”
“I'm generally thought to be quite a catch.”
She laughed. “But I was brought up to think of you almost as an uncle.”
He winced. “Uncle!”
“It was your brother I loved,” she said, as he led her down the stairs to the grand hall.
“Simon? You didn't even know him,” he protested.
She laughed. “And that explains how I was able to love him! No, it was his portrait I loved. When I met the original I was cured of my childish affliction. But in those days, I used to gaze up at his portrait, my pulse racing, my heart on fire—”
“It's the regimentals,” said Dorian. “You girls cannot help yourselves.”
“Yes. The effect of regimentals on the female pulse is well documented,” she agreed. “But it was a little more than that. I used to read his letters out to your father in the evenings—”
“All three of his letters!” Dorian said dryly.
“He was not a very prolific correspondent,” she allowed. “I used to imagine I was with him in India, riding elephants with maharajahs, and shooting at tigers. Naturally, I was disappointed when I met him in the flesh. I expected too much of him, I suppose.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“Where did I meet Lord Simon? The Green Room, of course. He was making love to all the girls after the play. When he met me, he naturally swore they meant nothing to him. I was the only woman in the world. ‘Do you always make love to girls who mean nothing to you?' I asked him. And he said, ‘Naturally, I prefer the other kind, but one meets them so seldom. They might as well be rare as comets.'”
“Oh, that is crass!” Dorian said, shaking his head. “Even for my brother. How could he say such a thing to you? I suppose you gave him the tongue-lashing he deserved?”
“Among other things,” she said, hiding a smile.
They went out to the chaise waiting on the gravel drive. It was the hired chaise that had carried them from London, but two of Dorian's footmen now stood behind the cab. Hotchkiss presented Celia with a huge bouquet of bluebells from the meadow.
“From all of us, Miss Sarah,” he said, indicating the rest of the staff, who had come to see them off.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the flowers from him. “Thank you, everyone! You've been most kind.”
And, from force of habit, the actress curtsied. “Thank you! Thank you all so much!”
“Come, Sally!” said the duke, with a touch of exasperation.
 
 
“Well, my dear! What are you going to do now that you are rich?” Dorian asked her on the journey back to London.
“I don't know. I haven't had time to think about it, have I?”
“You'll leave the stage, of course?”
A frown passed over her face. “Must I?”
“I place no condition upon your inheritance,” he told her quickly. “Your fortune is yours, whatever you decide to do. My father did not forbid you the stage, after all. He would not have thought it necessary.”
“He would never have approved of the way I live,” Celia said gloomily.
“He would never have permitted it! Perhaps,” Dorian added, “you will think about what my father would have wanted for you when you make up your mind.”
“Of course I shall think of him,” she said, “but I can't quit now. I play Miss Hardcastle tonight! There will be a riot in London if I don't appear as advertised!” she added, half joking. “At least, I
hope
there would be a riot! Oh God! What if they merely yawn? It's mortifying to think I might not be missed.”
“I am sure you would be missed, my dear.”
“Not tonight, I won't be. Of course I must go on. And we begin a new play on Thursday. I can't just leave. What would they do without me?”
“It's up to you, of course, but don't you think that it would be rather selfish of you to stay?”
“Selfish! You have no idea.”
“But surely they can find someone to replace you. The world is full of actresses.”
“You think me so easily replaced?” she asked, nettled.
“No, of course not. But you are rich now, my dear,” he told her. “You don't need to earn your living. Let someone else have a chance. For some of these girls, it could mean the difference between life and death. It could mean the difference between an honest living and the poverty and misery of the streets.”
Celia at once thought of Eliza London and girls like her. “You are right,” she said. “There must be a hundred girls ready to take my place. I shall miss the theatre more than the theatre misses me. But what shall I do without it? I feel lost already.”
She drew a deep breath. “I certainly have got a lot to think about, don't I?”
“Yes, my dear.”
“What am I going to tell people? How am I to explain the fact that I am suddenly so rich that I can quit the theatre without a backward glance?”
He shrugged. “Someone died and left you a fortune. You need say nothing more.”
“Uncle Cuthbert,” Celia said decisively. “My poor, dear old uncle Cuthbert! Who would have thought the old man had so much money? And he left it all to me! But then I
am
his only living relation. What did he die of? Brain fever, of course. People are always dying of brain fever in Antigua, aren't they?”
“Is that where he is from? Antigua?”
“I think so. Isn't that where rich uncles usually come from?”
 
 
It was with mixed feelings that Celia met Miss Julia Vane that afternoon. Not only had the new actress turned up for Monday's rehearsal with deplorable punctuality, but in Celia's absence, she gamely had stepped into the role of Viola. Celia found her onstage with Belinda. Rourke and some of the rest of the cast were watching from the pit.
“Hello, everyone! Sorry I'm late. What have I missed?” Celia asked, stepping onto the stage with a smile that fooled absolutely no one. “I see you've been muddling through without me,” she added, glancing over the new girl coldly.
Rourke made the introductions. Miss Vane simpered and smiled and curtsied as if Celia were the queen of England. “This
is
an honor, Miss St. Lys.” She gushed like a schoolgirl, though her polished accent was that of a gentlewoman. “Possibly the greatest honor of my life. You are the reason I became an actress.”
“Oh dear,” Celia murmured coolly. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Miss Vane laughed lightly.
“I see you have taken my place, Miss Vane,” Celia remarked. “I wouldn't want to get in the way. Shall I leave you all to it, then?”
BOOK: When You're Desired
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