The tradeoff was bitter, but it was all he had. All he could have.
“You are a true bastard,” Blanden snarled.
Frederica made a sound, as if a sob were trapped in her throat. A knife in his belly, gutting him, would not have hurt more.
Duncan forced a cool smile to his lips, keeping his eyes trained upon the marquess now, lest he falter. “By nature and definition both, my lord. I shall call upon His Grace tomorrow at three o’clock. I trust you will make certain he is prepared to receive me?”
“Go to hell, Kirkwood,” the marquess bit out.
“I will interpret that as acquiescence. There is a discreet rear exit. I will see that Hazlitt escorts you and her ladyship to it, and that your carriage will await you there. Leave this chamber in precisely five minutes and not a moment sooner.” Duncan bowed. “Good evening, my lord. My lady.”
He fled the chamber to the remembrance of her earlier words, echoing in his mind, mocking him. Haunting him.
You could never hurt me, Duncan.
How wrong she had been. How wrong they had both been.
Chapter Fourteen
“What have you done, Frederica?”
She had given herself to a man who had not truly wanted her. That was what she had done. She had fallen in love with a chimera. She had given her heart and her body to him. To a god among men.
And then the god had turned to stone, proving he was a mere mortal after all. Proving he was not at all who she had thought him to be, but that he was instead a heartless sinner.
Had everything between them been a lie? Every word, every touch, every tenderness he had shown her? The pleasure? The things he had done to her…had he even enjoyed it, or had he been so determined to gain the Duke of Amberley’s vowels from her father that he had been willing to endure anything?
Even the shameful attentions of a wanton wallflower.
How mortifying. Her heart was broken, and her pride was more battered than a bonnet lost in the street, trampled by dozens of carriages and horses before it was retrieved. The muscle in question gave a great, painful pang. More like one thousand carriages, she acknowledged.
Her pride would heal. Even a trodden bonnet could be restored to rights by a deft hand. But a broken heart? Those were not mended. She had no doubt hers would never be. He had betrayed her, and it was the most painful wound she had ever received. As a girl, she had broken her finger, and that pain had been nothing like this, the awful knowledge he had manipulated and used her to gain what he wanted.
“How did you know where to find me?” she could not resist asking, even if she feared the response.
“Hazlitt found me and informed me.” Benedict scowled. “It was all plotted beforehand, of that I have nary a doubt.”
Was it?
Duncan had stopped on their way to his chamber, going to Mr. Hazlitt for a hasty, private word. Was that when he had given his instructions? It had to have been. Her heart fell to her feet, and then it fell to the bottom of the deepest pit buried beneath the sea immediately thereafter. It was so far gone, so removed from her body, she would never again be plagued by its disturbing capacity to feel. She was certain of it.
“Frederica? How did you find yourself in such a den of vipers?”
Her brother’s angry voice cut through her despondent musings once more. His words unwittingly reflected Leonora’s cautious denunciations. Mayhap she should have heeded the warnings of her best friend.
She inhaled deeply, weighing her words and her confession both. “With Father gone to the country, I had a rare freedom of motion. Mother is…Mother. She scarcely notices I am her daughter because I am not a fan or a pretty new gewgaw she can acquire. I found your belongings in a trunk, and they fit well enough. I-it seemed providential.”
Dear heavens, how she hated the hitch in her voice. The glaring evidence of the tears she was doing her best to avoid shedding. She would cry, that she knew, and it would be a soul-deep weeping, the ugly, raw sort that would leave her with hiccups, swollen eyes, and a red nose. The sorrow invading her chest like a contagion as they gently swayed through London would not be denied. But neither would she break down in the company of her forbidding brother. She would wait until she was alone and the silence was unbearable, and then she would fill it instead with the bitter sounds of her agony.
“Your discovery of my outgrown, outmoded waistcoats seemed providential?” Benedict thundered. “Damn your foolish hide, Frederica. How did you imagine, even for a moment, that you could enter a gentleman’s club dressed as a man—aping me, no less—and go undetected? One must pass through three locked doors and a forbidding manservant just to gain entrance. If you had been caught at any step…” his words trailed off as he shuddered.
“But I was caught,” she pointed out, swallowing down the knot in her throat this reminder produced. “By Mr. Kirkwood. He knew at once I was a female.”
“As would a blind man,” her brother snapped. “Of course Kirkwood saw through your flimsy disguise and, swine that he is, instantly cooked up a plot to gain what he desired most, regardless of the cost.”
Had he? Cold acceptance settled over her, so visceral and shocking her stomach clenched. It would certainly seem he had. She recalled now the missive she had seen upon Duncan’s desk bearing her father’s name. Had he already written to her father with his demands then?
But if he had, why would he have orchestrated what had happened between them this evening? And even if he had done, how could he have been so certain she would not only attend his masque but also ask him to ruin her? Nothing made sense. Not the sweetness of his touch and the beauty of his lovemaking, and certainly not his cold, unflinching countenance afterward as he had laid bare all her secrets without a care.
“He did not…” she paused, struggling to gather her rioting thoughts. “Mr. Kirkwood did not plot anything, Benedict. I had to beg him for future entrée to his club, and even then, he allowed for no more than three additional visits.”
“I am certain one would have sufficed,” her brother clipped, his tone frigid. “If he allowed more, it was merely to obtain additional weaponry in his assault against our family. Weaponry which you amply provided him with this evening, my lady.”
She closed her eyes against the sight of her brother, so icy, detached, and disgusted with her. Perhaps she deserved his disgust, his censure. She had knowingly and willingly ruined herself this evening, and it did not matter if Duncan had deceived and manipulated her to gain the revenge he sought against the man who had fathered him. No one—not a single person in London—would pardon Frederica’s sins. Not even her own flesh and blood. Especially not them, she realized as she opened her eyes once more to study her brother’s grim countenance.
He had already judged her. His disgust for her was palpable, permeating the air of the carriage with a familiar sense of dread. She did not require his approval, but a part of her nevertheless wished for his understanding, if nothing else.
“You may believe what you wish of me, Benedict.” Her agitated fingers, yet ungloved, twisted in her skirts. “But I entered into my sins willingly, knowing exactly what I was doing.”
Benedict paled. “It would have been better if he had ravished you.”
His lack of concern for her wellbeing appalled her, though she knew she ought not to be surprised. She was not cut from the same cloth as her family, and never had that sad truth been more apparent than now. “For whom? Surely you would not wish for your sister to be taken by force.”
Her brother’s dark gaze glittered, his lips compressing. His tone was cruel, lashing. “I would rather my sister be ravished than know she willingly played the whore for Duncan Kirkwood. You are all but betrothed to the earl. How could you have done something so heedless and selfish?”
She flinched beneath his stinging scorn and the knowledge he would have rather her be taken against her will if it meant preserving his own pride. Had he ever cared for her at all? They had never been close as some siblings were,
but neither had she supposed Benedict loathed her as he must.
“I do not wish to marry Lord Willingham,” she said baldly. “He is a cold and unctuous man. If anyone were to ravish me, it would be his lordship and not Mr. Kirkwood.”
Of that, if nothing else, she was certain. Duncan, at least, had been tender and gentle. He had made her body and her heart sing with his reverent touches and kisses. Willingham made bile climb in her throat. His touch was meant to incite fear rather than pleasure, and he enjoyed the knowledge of the hurt he inflicted. She had seen the malice in his eyes. There was no mistaking it.
“You do not know of what you speak,” Benedict said dismissively. “The earl is a gentleman, the legitimate heir to a duchy. Kirkwood is a baseborn bastard with a doxy mother who thinks he can ape his betters and become one. You have allowed your foolishness to distort the manner in which you view him, but allow me to assure you that Duncan Kirkwood is not a gentleman. There is no good in him. He ill uses all the lightskirts at his club. You are no different to him, Frederica. Is that what you would become? Another harlot in dampened skirts, plying her wares for Kirkwood and the lords who line his pockets?”
Her brother’s venomous diatribe had its intended effect, piercing sensitive parts of her she would have preferred to remain unscathed. Something inside Frederica toppled and fell. The last thread of hope she’d been clinging to snapped as she thought of Tabitha, the lovely golden goddess who had seemed to wear her heart on her sleeve for Duncan. Had he bedded her as well? Was Frederica one in a sea of so many, each with her purpose, used and then set adrift?
But she refused to reveal her doubts or concerns to her brother. This evening had proven to her, beyond a doubt, where his loyalties lay, and they were most assuredly not with her. Indeed, in that moment, ruined, abandoned, and denounced by her own brother, Frederica could not help but feel no one else in all the world was loyal to her.
Not her brother who detested her.
Not Father or Mother who found her a burden they could not wait to rid themselves of.
Not dear Leonora, who would have her conform to society’s strictures.
Not Duncan, who had traded her for the fires of revenge burning bright within him.
No one.
But she still had herself. She had always had herself, and that would suffice. She raised her chin, pinning her brother with a cold stare. “The Earl of Willingham has forced kisses upon me. He has left finger marks upon my arms, along with the promise I shall endure more and learn to enjoy it as his wife. Forgive me, brother, if ruining myself seemed a more preferable option.”
Benedict returned her stare. “I know Willingham, Frederica. He would never ill use a woman. I do not believe he hurt you. He is not capable of it. The earl is a prince among men, and a man I am honored to call friend. You could ask for none better.”
None better? Surely, he was jesting.
Frederica searched her brother’s countenance and his gaze both, and that was when she knew with heart-sinking certainty. Benedict was aware of Willingham’s penchant for cruelty. Nothing she had said surprised him in the least. But he would rather her marry a man who would deliver her physical harm than ruin her reputation with a man who had been born a plain mister.
She inhaled deeply, wishing she could not still smell the lingering scent of Duncan upon her, haunting her like a ghost she could not escape. “None better,” she repeated bitterly. “If that is what you truly believe, then heaven help you.”
“No.” Her brother’s jaw tensed, harsh and angular and angry. “Heaven help you, dear sister. For you shall need it after this night. I fear not even the intervention of a band of angels would aid you.”
She swallowed against a fresh rising tide of bile. It was not a band of angels she wanted as the carriage lumbered homeward, taking her to her fate. It was Duncan Kirkwood’s reassuring embrace. His lips on hers. His hands caressing her body. The worship and reverence in his expression.
His apology returned to her.
I am sorry, angel. So very sorry.
Yes, and so was she. So very, very sorry.
The carriage creaked on, carrying her to her fate.
*
Duncan called upon the Duke of Westlake’s residence at three o’clock in the afternoon. He gave his card to a stone-faced butler and waited in the antechamber, his mind flitting to Frederica. Was she somewhere within the same edifice? And then he shook the unwanted question from his mind, for it did not matter whether or not she was. His ties to her would necessarily be severed after this visit to her darling Papa.
His body went cold, a fine sheen of perspiration breaking out on his brow. He told himself it had nothing to do with the notion of cutting her out of his life forever. He told himself he never again needed to see her midnight hair, her pink lips, her lush hips, the petals of her sex…
Bloody, brimming hellfire. Last night, she had given herself to him. He was not proud of his weakness where she was concerned, a vulnerability that seemed to overrule everything. He swallowed. After today, this whirlwind, tumultuous infatuation would be over.
Because today, he would betray her.
For his mother, he reminded himself sternly. And if all went according to plan, Frederica would never be hurt. Her innocence and her reputation would never be called into question. It was small comfort, but all he had to grasp.
Recalling the final sight of her pale, beautiful face, stricken and etched with naked hurt, made his fists clench at his sides and his jaw clamp down so hard his teeth ached. She had seemed so sad and alone, far from the daring minx who had infiltrated his club and kissed him with abandon.
At last, the butler returned, inviting Duncan to follow his lead. Down a hall, past two doors, stopping at the third. A fine thing it was, to be welcomed, albeit reluctantly, in the home of a duke. Whilst he was good friends with the Duke of Whitley, not even Cris had invited Duncan to sup at his table. The butler stood at the threshold, announcing Duncan as if he were the bearer of an august title rather than plain old Mr. Duncan Kirkwood.
He entered the spacious chamber. The door closed with a barely audible click.
Westlake stood, tall, gray-haired, and forbidding. He bore an aura of one who did not appreciate levity, his brows low over his eyes, mouth a thin, tight line of disapproval.
“Kirkwood.” He did not bow.
Duncan did, determined to exact his revenge in the most gentlemanly fashion possible. He had no doubt the duke expected him to be a crude, filthy-tongued scoundrel. And though he felt like the lowliest of creatures for the sins he was about to commit against Lady Frederica, he would not be cowed by her father.
His actions had been necessary, he reminded himself, both for the lady and for himself. He had provided the means by which she could avoid a hateful union, and she was the means by which he would finally have his retribution against the soulless bastard who had sired him.
With great effort, he kept his expression carefully composed. “Your Grace. I trust Lord Blanden alerted you of the necessity of this meeting,” he said with a coolness he did not feel.
“Indeed, my son has regretfully informed me of your egregious conduct.” His lips curled. “I ought to call you out, you ignorant puppy.”
He did not flinch, for he had prepared himself for any outcome, and there was not a word Westlake could utter or an action he could take that would surprise Duncan. “Then do so, Your Grace.”
“You know I shall not in an effort to salvage what I may of Lady Frederica’s reputation.” The duke’s tone was frigid, his disgust for Duncan palpable.
In that moment, he could not blame him, though he harbored a disgust all his own for a father who would force his daughter to wed any scoundrel with a title so he could be rid of her. But he had come for a purpose, and it was not to berate the Duke of Westlake. It was to get what he had wanted. To hold in his hand the power to lay Amberley low.
If he closed his eyes, he could still see the bruises on his mother’s throat, her
dead eyes. Yes, he knew what he must do.
“I am prepared to ruin her.” He issued the threat with great difficulty.
Westlake’s expression pinched. “How much for your silence?”
He did not hesitate, for he had envisioned this confrontation, too. Had practiced what he would say, had known what he would ask for. He was a gambler at heart, and he excelled at bluffing. “Ten thousand pounds and the Duke of Amberley’s debts.”
“You are mad,” Westlake snapped. “That is a fortune and you know it, Kirkwood.”
Indeed, it was, which was why it was also his initial offer. He remained calm, raising a brow. “One would think a father would pay a fortune to maintain his daughter’s reputation.”
“A fortune hunter would think so.” Westlake pinned him with an assessing green stare, and though his eyes were the same deep hue as Frederica’s, they were cold and hard. “Is that not what you are, Kirkwood? A duke’s bastard who has somehow wagered his way into fleecing the finer portion of London?”
“I am a man who has forged his own path in the world,” he said calmly, though inside he seethed. He was accustomed to lords looking down their supercilious noses at him. More than accustomed to men who believed in their superiority by the mere virtue of their birth and no other reason. But that did not mean he accepted it or tolerated it well.
“How many other peers’ daughters have you ruined, Kirkwood, in your quest for revenge?” Westlake dared to ask.
Duncan’s fists clenched, but he took great care to keep his face devoid of any emotion. “None, Your Grace. But then, no other daughters have repeatedly forced their way into my club, dressed as gentlemen, without the knowledge of their families.”
He could not resist the last jibe, though after it left his lips, he instantly regretted it, for it would likely only make her father even angrier with Frederica than he already was. Duncan cursed himself for his rashness, his quick temper, his fool tongue. The last thing he wished to do was cause her any hurt or any more trouble.
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