The Last Duke (The 1797 Club Book 10)

by Jess Michaels

  “Are you saying that if I had a screaming fit, my friends would not judge me for that?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I think they would understand it. They indulge you if you want to go stand on the terrace away from your own party for half an hour, don’t they? Or have an extra drink after supper to soothe your nerves? Doesn’t that child deserve the same amount of consideration?”

  He scowled as a feeling of shame filled him. Perhaps he had not been patient enough with his sister. And yet Sarah told him he had overstepped his bounds. That she didn’t need him. And it still stung.

  “You may be right,” he said through clenched teeth. “But do not forget yourself, Miss Carlton. You serve at my pleasure.”

  The high color left her cheeks at the threat he immediately regretted making. Then her spine straightened and she met his gaze evenly. “Certainly, Your Grace. How could I, or anyone else for that matter, forget that fact when it is lorded over me with such regularity?”

  With that, she pivoted on her heel and flounced away, leaving Kit to stare after her in frustration and upset and…other feelings. He felt other feelings as he watched her hips twitch off toward his sister.

  He grunted out a sound of displeasure and went back to his blanket. His friends had departed it, gathering on the other blankets or in small groups standing around the area. The only one left was Meg, who still sat on the checkered fabric, her son James sleeping in her arms.

  “Everyone else went off to talk to each other?” Kit asked, trying desperately to keep his tone neutral so his emotional outburst would not be so obvious.

  Meg had been looking off in the distance, but she jerked her attention back to him. “Er, yes. Perhaps that is good, though. I wonder if you and I need to have a discussion.”

  She shifted the eighteen-month-old in her arms, laying him across the folds of the blanket gently before she got up and offered Kit an arm. “Come, let us walk, shall we? James will sleep a while, and I see Simon has his eye on the boy.”

  Kit grunted as he got back to his feet. He did not wish to walk, but there was no polite way to refuse his friend’s wife. He took her arm and they strolled to the edge of the water. It gave them a good view of Sarah and Phoebe as they made their own way around the edge. And he watched. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Hmmm.” He glanced down and found Meg was doing the same, her gaze following the pair with a deep frown on her face.

  Kit tensed. In all the years that had passed since that night of the ball when Sarah had been so rude, Meg had never brought the topic up. Now he felt that moment coming, Meg’s reminder that Sarah had been unpleasant, and he felt irrationally defensive. He had to shake away the odd sensation and breathe deeply to maintain calm.

  “You seem troubled,” Kit said.

  He looked again toward the lake’s edge where Sarah stood with Phoebe. From his sister’s animated arm movements, it seemed she was perhaps working herself back into another tantrum, though Sarah seemed to be handling it well. Just as she had earlier. She was right that it had not been his place to intrude.

  “I am,” Meg said, and her voice interrupted his thoughts. He glanced down to find Meg’s brow wrinkled. “Though I’m not certain how to even broach the subject.”

  He pursed his lips, more certain than ever that the past was about to be thrown in his face. “I think we can be honest with each other—we’ve known each other long enough.”

  She nodded, and some of the tension left her slender frame. “Of course. Adelaide always says that honesty is the best policy. Kit, I heard something last night and I cannot stop thinking about it.”

  He tilted his head. Their gathering of friends could not have troubled Meg. Of course, when he came back into the room from the terrace, he’d seen her standing with Sarah. Was it possible she’d been impertinent all over again?

  He couldn’t picture it, but then again…

  “What did you hear?” he asked carefully.

  “Where to begin? You see, I saw Diana and Sarah talking, so I joined them. They were discussing…you.”

  His eyes went wide. Sarah was talking about him with the wives of his best friends? That could not bode well. “Me?” he repeated. “What could they have to say about me?”

  “I don’t know how their conversation started, but you know Diana. She may be the most insightful of us all…I suppose it is the healer in her. Anyway, she was pressing Sarah about why in the world you would not like her. A subject I have a keen interest in, I admit, as it is not your nature to be so judgmental.”

  Kit stared at her, uncertain he could have heard that last part correctly. “What?”

  Meg gave a smile. “You and Sarah are not entirely unalike. When I asked why your relationship was strained, she gave me rather the same blank, confused look as yours right now and mumbled something about a bad moment in the past.”

  Kit swallowed. It seemed Sarah recalled that night and what had transpired between them as keenly as he did. The only person who didn’t was Meg, herself.

  She continued, “Soon after, Sarah excused herself, and I was left with no answers, but a niggling feeling that I ought to know what she was talking about. I racked my brain, trying to recall what it was. I talked to Simon about it, even, and he was just as clueless.”

  “I…see,” Kit said, uncertain if he should jog Meg’s memory or not. To do so risked a threat to Sarah and her treatment by the duchesses. That should not have mattered, perhaps, but it did nonetheless.

  “And then in the middle of the night I was jolted awake,” Meg said. “Bolt upright. I recalled that once upon a very long time ago, Sarah and I had a little…exchange. At a ball at James and Emma’s country home around the time of the mess with Simon and Graham.”

  Kit wasn’t certain whether to be relieved she’d come to this conclusion herself or wish she hadn’t recalled it at all. But there was no denying it now. It was not in his nature to lie. “Yes,” he admitted softly.

  All the color bled from Meg’s cheeks. “Oh, Kit! Please do not tell me that you have disliked Sarah Carlton because of some little encounter you interrupted three years ago.”

  He pressed his lips together. “She was very rude to you, Meg.”

  Meg rolled her eyes. “As I recall, she was also a little tipsy. James never waters down his punch enough. And at the core of her upset was that she was disappointed. She thought she and Simon might have made a connection that I frankly ruined by being desperately in love with the man.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Kit said, throwing his hands up in the air. “She was impolite at the height of your pain. I interrupted. How was I not to think of that after?”

  Meg slapped a hand against her eyes and shook her head slowly. “You idiot.”

  He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me correctly.” She dropped her hand away and stared at him. “Kit! That was a lifetime ago. In the heat of one of the worst moments for me, yes, but clearly in the heat of one of her worst, too.”

  “Meg,” he began, though he had no idea how he would argue his case because the fact was that he knew Meg was correct.

  She waved a hand to silence him. “After that night, Sarah never had a real chance in Society again. Simon must have felt like her last hope. And while I am very glad she did not succeed in her pursuit, I am certainly sorry that it led her to this.”

  “This?” he repeated. “Working for me?”

  “Her mother dead, her fortune gone, her future uncertain,” Meg said gently. “She has been through a great deal in those intervening years. More than enough to pay penance for any rudeness she might have exhibited. Even if she hadn’t, I would never have requested, nor required, that you hold that night over her head for the rest of her life.”

  Kit stared off toward the lake. Sarah and his sister were boarding Phoebe’s insisted-upon boat now. Somehow Sarah had gotten her to laugh, and his heart warmed. But also sank. Meg was taking him to task fo
r a behavior he had convinced himself was earned by Sarah’s actions. A loyalty to his friends had driven him, after all.

  Meg said it was not required.

  To assuage the guilt that followed that realization, he set his jaw. “Whether or not you forgave the young lady,” he said, “that doesn’t change her behavior. I…I was not wrong in believing her to be capable of…bad acts.”

  Meg stared at him, unblinking for a moment, and then she shook her head. “Oh.”

  “Oh?” he repeated, not liking the brightness that had entered her dark eyes. “What does oh mean?”

  “I see it now. How could I have been so blind not to see it before?” she muttered, perhaps more to herself than to Kit.

  He lifted both brows. “Would you like to explain yourself or should I go so you can finish the conversation that has nothing to do with me?”

  “You weren’t angry about what she said to me,” Meg said softly. “You never were.”

  “Of course I was. It was untoward and unacceptable,” he said.

  “Well, I suppose that her sharpness with me didn’t help, but that wasn’t what drew you to such a prolonged and uncharacteristic reaction.”

  He shook his head. “You aren’t making sense. What are you talking about?”

  Meg leaned in. “You didn’t like it that Sarah was pursuing Simon.”

  He let out his breath in a huff. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “That’s it,” Meg said. Her tone had gentled and she reached out to squeeze his arm. “You were jealous.”

  “You’re being absurd.” He snatched his arm from her grip and drew back from her, nearly depositing himself into the water to avoid her pointed accusation. The one that didn’t feel as absurd as it should.

  “Kit,” she said, reaching out once more. This time she covered his hand with hers. “Sarah only pursued Simon in desperation, you had to know that. Certainly you must know it now, after watching the terrible consequences to her father’s behavior and her mother’s death play out.”

  He stared at her and then let his gaze flit back to Sarah. She and Phoebe had begun to row out to the lake now. Even from a distance, he could hear Phoebe hooting in pleasure as Sarah slowly worked the paddles.

  Meg was being ridiculous, of course. He had noticed Sarah before that night at the ball when he heard her nasty words. How could one not? She was pretty and accomplished. But he had noticed many a lady over the years. Sarah had never been anything special.

  When he learned she’d been invited to James and Emma’s country party, he hadn’t been disappointed. And he had watched her with Simon, at the party where he and Meg had nearly brought their entire club to its knees with scandal. Had Kit liked seeing her in his handsome friend’s arms?

  It hadn’t mattered. He didn’t recall it mattering, at least not much. Meg was wrong. She was just…wrong.

  He was about to tell her so, too. To set her straight so that this ridiculous notion wouldn’t take root in the group of his friends and make them play matchmaker or worse. Only he didn’t get the chance. Before he could say a word, he heard a sound that turned his blood to ice.

  It was Matthew, and he was screaming. “Don’t let her stand up! She’s rocking the boat! Stop her!”

  Kit pivoted. Out in the middle of the lake, a nightmare scene began to play out in slow motion. Phoebe had risen from her place, off balance in the small boat. As Sarah lunged for her, the entire contraption capsized and both of them disappeared from view.

  Kit yelped out a sound of terror, and then he and Matthew were running. Into the water, swimming toward them. And he could only pray they would not be too late.

  Chapter Six

  Sarah plunged beneath the icy waters of the lake. Despite the warm spring air, the lake was frigid, and it made her body feel even less malleable.

  Everything had happened so fast. One moment she and Phoebe were rowing out together, the next the little girl was on her feet and everything was turning upside down.

  She sputtered as she managed to get herself above water and reached out to catch Phoebe as the child thrashed wildly.

  “No, no! No!” Phoebe cried out as she bobbed under and above the water.

  “Calm…down…” Sarah gasped as she struggled to kick her legs and stay at the surface with her charge.

  Phoebe was too wild and terrified to hear her. She kicked and twisted, trying to stay afloat. She felt desperately heavy in Sarah’s arms as she pushed at the little girl to keep her head above water. Sarah’s own skirts tangled around her legs, cumbersome and limiting her ability to kick and stay above water.

  She dunked down beneath the surface once more, and panic gripped her. They would drown. Oh God, she didn’t want to drown. She gripped Phoebe’s hips and pushed her, holding her as high as she could to give her charge the best chance possible.

  Sarah kicked and surfaced enough to gasp in a breath, but she immediately dropped down again. Phoebe’s legs flailed and her slippered foot caught Sarah in the temple. Pain exploded and was followed by dizzying stars exploding before her eyes. Everything was starting to feel slow, tired, everything hurt as she fought.

  But she couldn’t succumb. She couldn’t. She had to keep the little girl up. She couldn’t let Phoebe drown. She had to stay afloat until rescue came. She’d seen the men running into the water when she last surfaced. They would get here soon and then it would be all right.

  Suddenly Phoebe’s weight was lifted away from her. Someone had come. She couldn’t see who through the dark, dirty water. But she felt the waves hit her as a stronger swimmer drew the child away. Relief filled her, but also fear. She was sinking. Deeper and deeper. She struggled to swim back to the surface, but her lungs burned from lack of air and her skirts felt like weights drawing her to the floor of the lake.

  Drawing her to the end of her life.

  She sucked in without meaning to and felt water enter her lungs. It was like someone had plopped down on her chest.

  There was nothing left to do—she was just too weak. Everything grew dark, the pain began to fade, and she slipped into the cold, wet nothingness at the bottom of the lake.

  Kit swam as hard as he could, but he was three body lengths behind Matthew. He saw his friend, who had his own experience with such a terrible scene, moving in the thrashing swirl of Phoebe and Sarah’s bodies.

  “I have her!” Matthew shouted as he began to swim back toward Kit. “I have Phoebe.”

  Kit could see his pale, terrified sister clinging to his friend, shaking like a leaf. Relief jolted through him. She was alive. She was breathing.

  “Sarah?” he gasped out.

  “Still under the water!” Matthew shouted, and began to swim back toward the shore where the others were coming into the water to help. “I’ll come back.”

  But Kit knew that would be too late. Sarah was under the water. She would die. He dove into the murky blackness, but there was nothing to see when the water had been so churned up by the struggle.

  Panic gripped him and he reached out in the water for her, praying with all his might that he would touch her. Prayers left unanswered. She was nowhere, nowhere to be found. He surfaced, sucking in a deep breath, and then dove again, deeper this time. God, he had to find her. He had to find her—he couldn’t lose her like this.

  He swung his arms wildly and was about to come up for air again when he felt his hand bump something. Something soft, fleshy. He jolted and grabbed on. It was Sarah’s arm.

  He pulled, dragging her against him. He slid his arm beneath her armpits, hating that she was limp, not helping him at all. He pulled her to the surface and looked at her as she flopped against his chest like a lifeless doll. She was blue. Not breathing.

  “Oh God,” he gasped as he began to swim.

  He dragged her toward Simon and Graham, who were coming toward him in the waist-deep water closer to shore. When he reached them, Graham grabbed for Sarah, hauling her onto the shore as Simon tugged K
it to safety.

  He flopped down next to her in the dirt. She did not stir. She didn’t move.

  “Oh God,” he whispered again as he realized she was dead. A pain that cut down to his very soul filled every part of him at that horrible realization. Sarah was dead and he would never get to apologize for how he’d treated her over the years. He’d never get to touch her. Coax that smile from her. Keep her safe.

  The duchesses were weeping. Matthew was on his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks as Isabel held him, her own sobs wracking her. They had lost someone they both loved to a drowning many years ago. Now that would be something he shared with his friends. A terrible new club born of this awful, unceasing heartbreak.

  His bleary gaze shifted, seeking out his sister. He found her with Graham’s wife Adelaide. She had wrapped Phoebe in one of the picnic blankets, and she turned the sobbing, exhausted little girl away so she wouldn’t see her lifeless governess lying on the shore, lost to them all.

  “No,” he moaned as he reached out to touch Sarah’s cheek.

  “Get out of the way.” Lucas was pushing his way through the crowd of their friends. He dropped down beside Sarah’s body and waved Kit off. He stared as Lucas leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers.

  Kit jerked his face toward Diana, but she didn’t seem to be troubled or surprised by this…was it a kiss? What was the point now?

  “Come on, sweetheart, work with me,” Lucas grunted as he lifted his mouth from Sarah’s. He jerked his face into the crowd. “Diana!”

  She didn’t hesitate, but shoved Kit aside none too gently. He got to his feet and stared along with the others as she began to gently press Sarah’s chest. Lucas put his mouth back on Sarah’s, and it was then that Kit realized his friend wasn’t kissing her. He was breathing into her.