Maris shook her head in answer. Henry had come up with his cork-brained idea all on his own and had made all the arrangements. She waved away the offered payment.
“Something is not quite right about him. I don’t think he is at all what he pretends to be. But when I met him, I thought to—well, never mind. My need for the position you hired me for is no longer valid.”
His emphasis on the word position brought another blush to Maris’s cheeks. She could feel the heat sweep clear down to the collar of her high-necked gown. She tugged the fabric up another inch.
The man had the effrontery to catch her at it and smile. It was dazzling, like the rest of him. “Needless to say, I’m sorry I ever replied to the advertisement in The London List last fall and put you both to all the trouble. It was a mistake. After I met with your husband, I had a crisis of conscience and realized his scheme wouldn’t suit.”
Maris had not been present for the job interview. Henry had insisted on handling the meeting himself, and she had relented, hoping to delay her mortification. She had not even permitted herself a peek at Captain Durant as he rode up Kelby Hall’s crushed stone drive.
“My husband is dying,” she said bluntly. Thank heavens Captain Durant is stepping into his fawnskin trousers. He doesn’t seem to wear smalls, though.
“I am very sorry to hear that, Lady Kelby. But it doesn’t change my mind. I assure you I will repay every penny now that my luck is turning.”
“We don’t want the money! We want . . . you.” It was far too late to go through the process all over again. It had taken Mr. Ramsey over a year to get even this far. Vaguely worded advertisements. Vaguely worded interviews with the handful of candidates so desperate they had not been bothered by the vagueness.
Henry had been extremely particular. While all cats might be gray in the dark, Lord Kelby did have a care for his wife and the succession. Evidently the two other men Mr. Ramsey had sent him had not compared at all favorably with Captain Durant, for Henry was insistent that no one else would do.
Though Henry might not be so impressed if he knew where Maris had found him. Henry’s London doctor would have to be consulted if Reynold Durant decided to go through with this insanity. She was not going to sacrifice herself to the pox.
“I’m not for sale after all.”
“Everyone has their price, Captain Durant.” She knew she did, and it had been shockingly low. For a roof over her head when her father died and the chance to continue to work on the Kelby Collection, Maris had married a man who was old enough to be her grandfather.
And impotent.
But she had always loved him, ever since she was a little girl. Henry had been kind, caring for her in all the ways he was capable, and they had been happy . . . until two years ago when he became so agitated and determined to cut his wretched nephew out of the earldom. His idea on how to do it had seemed the purest folly. Well, impurest. Henry had been impossible to sway, and Maris had never been the sort of woman who could wield her negligible feminine wiles to change a man’s mind.
Like right at the moment, for example. Durant seemed obdurate.
“I-I am begging you, Captain Durant. You know of our difficulties. I understand Henry confided in you completely, so he must have trusted you. I confess I don’t see why,” Maris said, unable to forgive the man his casual effrontery. “My husband’s nephew is the worst sort of villain. He’s sworn to destroy the scholarly work of my husband’s lifetime. All the books in the library—he’ll damage every one. Crumple every paper. And . . . and he’s a libertine. He’ll turn Kelby Hall into a . . . a place just as vile as this one.”
Durant raised a thick black brow as he buttoned a cufflink. Maris was delighted to see that he continued to dress as she stared over his head at a painting that featured several bodies writhing in presumed ecstasy. Or indigestion. It was impossible to tell which from their facial expressions.
“Is this supposed to persuade me? I have no time for reading, Lady Kelby. It doesn’t matter to me what becomes of Kelby Hall’s library.”
Maris wanted to scream, but losing her temper wouldn’t help. “It matters to my husband. By the terms of the entail, every single thing housed at Kelby Hall must remain on the property to be passed on to the next earl, but it doesn’t specify the condition.” The Kelby earls had been an eccentric lot. And hoarders, too. It was dangerous to navigate the attics for the jumbled collection of boxed antiquities amassed by generations of globe-trotting aristocrats. Henry’s dream was to turn part of the house into a museum, with Maris as its curator. His work would be its centerpiece, but many other centuries’ detritus would be on view as well.
“So smuggle out some papers.”
“It’s not just papers. There are priceless artifacts. By law, Henry’s nephew can’t sell them, but he’s threatened to simply drop them into the lake. They’d still be on the property, wouldn’t they?” she asked bitterly. “David knows just how to hurt Henry. My husband spent years in Tuscany at excavation sites. He is the foremost expert on Etruscan civilization in England.”
“A worthy endeavor, I’m sure, Lady Kelby. But the Etruscans, like the Romans and the Greeks, are dead, thank the gods. As a schoolboy, I always found classical studies to be quite gruesome. Rape and swans and swallowing one’s wife. Daughters bursting out of one’s head. Rubbish, really. Why should I—or anyone else living—care?”
The Kelby Collection had been of paramount importance Maris’s whole life. Her father had been the earl’s secretary and general factotum. She’d accompanied the two men on their digs as soon as she was old enough to be useful, and was an expert on Etruria. Since her husband’s eyesight was failing, it was she who did the translating, she who prepared the papers for his lectures and publications.
What she’d been unable to do was provide him with a son.
It was probably too late anyway. She was thirty-four, and had pulled out a wiry white hair from her dull brown curls just that morning.
“Look, it seems to me you can box up whatever’s so valuable and hide it somewhere. How’s this nephew to know? He’s no expert, is he?”
“David knows everything. And it’s more than what I’ve just said.” Maris hadn’t planned on revealing the worst of it . . . and she wouldn’t. Even Henry did not know what she had done five years ago. She had been a fool for all her pride and intelligence, and paid with her guilt every single day when she looked into her husband’s proud wrinkled face.
But she could see she wasn’t firing up Durant intellectually. He’d even bragged that he was virtually illiterate.
Why was Henry so set on Durant? Henry was a brilliant man, if a bit single-minded. He’d be risking turning Kelby Hall over to a son of this ignorant rakehell.
Though any child conceived might not even be a son. Henry’s longed-for heir with his first wife had been a daughter. Poor Jane. Poor dead Jane.
“My husband believes his nephew David was responsible for the death of his daughter.”
Ah, that stopped the man from thrusting an arm into the ghastly waistcoat. “Why hasn’t he told the authorities?”
“It’s complicated.” The truth was that Jane took her own life, but David might as well have stitched the stones into her hem. Jane had been his victim as much as Maris, but at least she still lived.
“You begin to interest me, Lady Kelby. So what you are saying is this mad scheme is really a noble cause. I’m meant to prevent a murderer from inheriting.”
“Exactly.”
“Why don’t you just hire someone to murder the murderer? Not me, mind you. I’m done with killing for a living. Hire a proper assassin. Surely there’s some other male Kelby waiting to be unearthed somewhere like one of those Etruscan artifacts you’re so keen on.”
“My husband’s family seemed to collect things rather than children. There is no one but David. The title and estate would revert to the Crown.”
“Would that be so awful? Surely some provision has been made for you.”
“I’m not worried about myself.” Oh, untrue.
David was ever edging into the perimeter of her life. Maris was not entirely certain she could protect herself from him should anything happen to Henry. She wouldn’t be safe in the dower house alone, that was for sure. She’d not been safe from his attentions at Kelby Hall five years ago. She had lived in the enormous Elizabethan house since she was a little girl. She would miss it, but she would have to go someplace farther away when David was earl.
Unless she had a baby to care for. But what if she and the child still were not safe?
“You look pale, Lady Kelby. Why don’t you sit down?”
She could hardly sit on the bed after what had just transpired on it, and his jacket and neckcloth were still folded on the only chair in the room. She lifted her chin in false bravado. “I am perfectly well, Captain Durant.”
“You don’t look it.” He swept his clothes to the floor and pushed the chair at her. “Here. Sit.”
“I am not one of your recruits to be ordered about.” Nevertheless, she sank gratefully into the chair. The day was proving to be too much.
Or not enough.
“No, you are as haughty as a queen. I reckon you’d be the one giving the orders. ‘Explore the New World, Walter. Write me a play, Will. Kill my heir.’ That would be Mary, Queen of Scots, not David.”
“I am not Elizabeth, sir,” Maris said, irritated and somewhat surprised by his knowledge.
“The Virgin Queen,” Durant mused. “You have a virginal look about you still, Lady Kelby. Lord Kelby was an ancient old bird even when you married, was he not?”
Maris’s spine turned rigid. She was, unfortunately, no virgin. “You overstep yourself, Captain Durant. I can see it was pointless to waste my precious time and money to find you. A man like you has no sense of honor or accountability. I cannot even believe I am conversing with you in your current state. You are . . . you are . . . words simply fail.”
Durant’s lips quirked, unruffled by her insults. “Why talk when there are so many other things we might do?”
He was teasing her, but she was horrified nonetheless. “Here? Are you mad? Dream on, you degenerate! If you were the very last man in the kingdom, I would not permit you to put a hand on me in this revolting room!”
“And yet I somehow want to. In fact, I cannot think of anything that would please me more. Please us both.” He stalked across the carpet like some kind of feral cat.
Maris scrambled up from her chair and backed into the wall, an instrument of torture prodding her in the back. She stuck a hand behind her, her gloves slipping on the smooth leather whip. She could not get purchase to grab it from its hook and hammer it down on Durant’s dark head in time before she felt his warm breath on her cheek.
“Just one little taste, I think. To see what I’ll be missing,” he murmured, before his lips came down on hers.
Chapter 2
Reyn Durant was a dog. A right bastard, even if his rackety parents had been married. His behavior thus far had been outrageous. He knew it, but how was he supposed to have recognized the very proper Countess of Kelby? She was the last person in the world he expected to see at the Reining Monarchs Society.
It was not uncommon for an interested party to wander into a discipline session, and the unpredictability of the place had amused him for a time. However, once she’d identified herself, he should have insisted she leave immediately, then crawled into the bed to shock her further if she wouldn’t. Or draped himself in a fringed curtain. At the very least, hollered for Fisher.
He’d done none of those things. He’d flaunted himself like an actor on a stage in his vain attempt to drive her away. And instead of firmly refusing her offer and leading her to the door, he was pressed against her, the quivers of indignation unbelievably tempting.
Damn it, the woman needed kissing in the worst way. Reyn had been in enough scrapes with uncertain outcomes to have learned to always seize the moment, so he touched her lips intending to teach her a lesson and scare her away for her own good.
And was rewarded for his trouble by a sharp knee to his groin.
Fortunately his reflexes were excellent and he avoided the worst of it. The least of it was still painful. He took a deep breath and steadied himself against the wall.
He was an idiot. He should be putting yards between himself and Lady Kelby, but her struggle against him only intensified his desire to master her.
He wasn’t sure why. Despite her finding him in such a compromising position, he did not naturally need to subdue a woman. The Reining Monarchs Society was simply one of those ports in a storm for him, an amusement, nothing more. He had no intention of going through with the unamusing proposition and attempt to impregnate a woman who obviously held him in contempt. A plain, shriveled-up bluestocking to boot.
No, that was wrong. Perhaps she wasn’t so plain now that her color was high and her brown eyes sparked in anger. Up close, he saw her eyelashes were long and batting like butterflies trapped against glass. Beneath her ugly gray dress she was lushly curved, and if she hadn’t partially unmanned him, he might have appreciated her figure more.
She was handsome enough, but totally unsuited for what her husband had in mind. If she couldn’t bear his kiss, how could she endure the rest?
Reyn had been damn near his wit’s end when he responded to the oddly-worded advertisement in The London List. The owner of the newspaper, Mr. Ramsey, had been evasive, but had vetted him thoroughly, asking him so many questions Reyn felt like he was sitting for all those exams he’d so spectacularly failed at school. That strange fellow Ramsey knew more about him than his own mother had. Whatever Reyn had said had pleased him, and the newspaperman had arranged for him to meet with the old earl two months ago. Reyn couldn’t believe his luck at the money that was dangled before him just to go to Kelby Hall.
The travel expenses—and what was promised if he had a satisfactory interview—were much too generous. Reyn had known from the first that something was off, but his sister Virginia needed his help, and he needed money to help her. His efforts had come late, but at least her days were being spent in what little comfort he could provide. He’d hired a nurse and leased a cottage with clean air outside Richmond. He’d given her a dog, because Ginny had always wanted one from the time he could remember. Their parents had never set down roots anywhere long enough to acquire one. An animal was an expense, something Anthony and Corinne Durant could ill afford after their excesses at the tables.
Reyn was really no different. He’d lived everywhere and nowhere, deserting his responsibilities to his sister as he marched through Europe and Canada. But he still had some scruples. He’d never, ever been serious about following through with the Earl of Kelby once he learned what the old man wanted.
The worst that could be said about him was that he’d borrowed money under false pretenses. So what if he’d reneged. The earl could never prosecute him for its return. The scandal would kill the old fellow outright and turn society against his shivering countess.
Reyn would pay the earl back somehow. He’d had a run of good luck in the hells lately as if he was being rewarded for his bad behavior. His parents would have been envious if they still lived.
Something had happened to him since he’d sold out, something he didn’t care to examine too closely in the light of day. Whatever it was—boredom? despair?—had made him reckless. He’d always been a restless soul, unable to stick to anything but soldiering for very long. But the war was over, had been for ages. The dull routine of peace had brought him no comfort. In fact, it had driven him slightly mad. All he’d done the past year since he’d been posted to London was parade in uniform like a wind-up doll for the king’s pleasure. The army was no place for him, anymore.
Civilian life had not been much better. He’d even bought a quarter-year subscription to the Reining Monarchs Society to see what all the fuss was about. But he still didn’t know. When granted absolute power over another human being, he sti
ll felt powerless. He told himself that denying the earl’s dying request was actually a good thing. He was not the wastrel decent people thought he was. He’d once had character. Perhaps he’d regain it again.
“Get off me!”
Lady Kelby didn’t shout. No one would come to her aid, anyway. Shouting was de rigueur at the Reining Monarchs. That was part of the fun.
“I am not precisely on you, Lady Kelby. You’d know it if I was, and I wager you’d not object. Isn’t that why you are here?”
She was tall for a woman, but somehow ducked under the arm that pinned her to the wall. Her hat was tipped at a crazed angle which made her look much less starchy, but no less angry. Damn but he wished he had succeeded in kissing her. There didn’t seem to be much hope of that now.
“You are d-disgusting! I cannot for the life of me imagine why my husband thought you might be s-satisfactory.”
Reyn wasn’t quite sure either. He was nobody in particular, not titled, not educated, not accomplished. His father had been a cousin to a bankrupt marquess, and his mother was the youngest daughter of a disgraced viscountess who’d run off with her dresser. It was amazing to think his old granny had been a follower of Sappho, but he remembered her and her companion Grace as being very kind the few times he’d met them.
Scandal and sloth had been bred into Reyn from the earliest age, and he’d been thrown out of more schools than he could count. Both his parents had been good-looking, and he had no complaints when he caught his reflection in the mirror. Perhaps the earl had chosen him as he might choose a thoroughbred to cover a mare. Reyn was showy and spirited, and came from good bloodlines even if no one had won prize money in a race lately.
He picked up his neckcloth from the carpet and began to strangle himself with it. “I have no idea, Lady Kelby. Did you not discuss this whole affair with him?”
“I told you he hasn’t been well,” she snapped. “He’s so worried I cannot believe he is clear-headed, else he never would have selected you.”
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