Griffin Stone: Duke Of Decadence (Dangerous Dukes Book 3)

by Carole Mortimer

  Griffin had stood up upon that lady’s entrance. ‘I am sure that must be as much of a pleasant surprise to you as it was to Sir Walter?’

  ‘But of course.’ That hard blue gaze now met his challengingly.

  Griffin placed his clenched fists behind his back as he resisted the urge he felt to reach out and shake the truth from this woman.

  Now that he was here he knew he could not leave here today until he knew whether this woman was Bea’s friend or foe. And to hell with the politeness of manners! He was tired of this tedious social dance. He wished now only for the truth. ‘You had perhaps not expected her to be here at all?’

  Lady Francesca shrugged her elegant shoulders. ‘I am sure Latham is not so strict as to begrudge Beatrix time spent with her new friends.’

  Griffin’s nostrils flared. ‘But you, of all people, must know she was not staying with friends.’ No matter what the situation, whether Francesca Latham believed Bea to have eloped or been kidnapped, she almost certainly knew that Bea had not been visiting friends these past weeks.

  ‘Griffin—’

  ‘Rotherham—’

  ‘Is that not so, madam?’ Griffin ignored both Christian and Aubrey as they rose to their feet in protest at his blunt methods, his gaze now locked in a silent battle with Francesca Latham.

  ‘I am not sure I care for the way in which you are addressing my wife, Rotherham,’ Sir Walter blustered uncomfortably.

  Still Griffin’s gaze remained locked with that hard and mocking one of Francesca Latham’s. ‘Your wife, sir, is either a liar or a traitor—and I for one wish to know which it is!’

  ‘Griffin?’ Bea looked up at him anxiously as he appeared to have forgotten everything the four of them had spoken of this morning, before she had departed for Latham Manor with Christian Seaton. Indeed, Griffin now appeared so coldly angry, as he and her aunt locked gazes, that it seemed the two of them had forgotten they were even in the company of others.

  Implying a past rift much deeper than merely that he did not care for his neighbour’s wife.

  It appeared so to Bea. And she could think of only one reason why such tension might have arisen between two such handsome people. A past love affair that had not ended well.

  The idea of Griffin having been intimately involved with Lady Francesca so sickened Bea that she could raise no further protest regarding the bluntness of his conversation.

  ‘What on earth are you on about, Rotherham?’ Sir Walter was red-faced with anger. ‘You are either foxed or mad. Either way, you will apologise to my wife forthwith.’

  ‘I will neither apologise nor retract my statement,’ Griffin bit out harshly. ‘You will answer the accusation, Lady Francesca. And you will do so now.’

  ‘Remember my grandson, Griffin,’ Lord Maystone cautioned softly.

  ‘I have not forgotten,’ Griffin assured him gruffly. ‘As I have not forgotten the manner in which I found Bea, following her abduction and days of being held prisoner.’ His voice hardened as he continued to look coldly at Lady Latham.

  ‘Abducted? Held prisoner?’ Sir Walter looked totally bewildered. ‘But Beatrix has been staying with friends—is that not so, Francesca?’

  Throughout the whole of this exchange Francesca Latham had remained strangely silent, a contemptuous smile curving her lips as she continued to meet Griffin’s gaze unflinchingly.

  ‘Is that so, Lady Francesca?’ Griffin now snapped scathingly.

  She remained silent for several more long seconds before she gave a weary sigh as she stepped away from her husband and into the centre of the room. ‘Is there any point in my continuing with the farce?’ she finally taunted in a bored voice.

  Griffin’s jaw tightened. ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘Very well.’ She gave a disgusted shake of her head as she turned to look at Bea. ‘So you have been warming Rotherham’s bed for this past week.’

  ‘Do not make this situation any more difficult for yourself than it already is,’ Griffin warned through clenched teeth.

  Hard blue eyes swept over him mockingly. ‘I do not in the least begrudge you the warmth, Rotherham,’ she drawled. ‘Why should I, when I had your wife warming my own bed for so many months before she died?’

  Bea felt the colour leave her cheeks even as she saw Griffin stumble back a step.

  His own face became deathly pale as he now stared at Francesca Latham in horror. ‘You are “darling Frank”?’

  She bared her teeth in a humourless smile. ‘So Felicity liked to refer to me as, yes.’

  ‘The two of you were lovers?’

  ‘For many months.’ Francesca Latham nodded with satisfaction.

  ‘Francesca!’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet, Walter,’ his wife snapped dismissively as she gave him a contemptuous glance. ‘We have not shared a bed for years, and now you know the reason why. I have always preferred my own sex,’ she continued conversationally. ‘Of course, Felicity did become a tad over-possessive and demanding, forcing me to end our association, but whoever would have thought the little ninny would have drowned herself for love of me? Quite tedious, I do assure you.’ She gave an irritated shake of her head.

  Bea had not been able to take her eyes off Griffin since her aunt had announced her past intimate relationship with his late wife.

  Or to wonder if, as Seaton had implied yesterday, she had been mistaken in believing that the happiness Griffin had known in his marriage was the reason he had never remarried. He might have loved his wife, certainly, but he also seemed to have known that his wife’s love had not belonged to him.

  ‘But we digress,’ Lady Francesca continued pleasantly. ‘I take it the two other gentlemen here also wish to see justice done? As I thought.’ She nodded at the silence that greeted her question. ‘What happens next? Am I to be dragged away in shackles and tortured until I tell you everything I know?’

  Griffin roused himself from the shock of hearing the truth of Felicity’s betrayal, of their marriage bed and of him. Of learning that his wife’s lover, Frank, had not been a man at all, but a woman. Francesca Latham, in truth.

  At the same time as he could not help but feel a certain lightening of his heart at learning it had not been him in particular whom Felicity had found so physically repellent. That her sexual preference would have made her feel disgust at the idea of a physical relationship with any man.

  That her suicide, by drowning herself in the lake at Stonehurst Park, had not been as a way of escaping him and their marriage, but because the woman she loved had rejected her.

  Strange to experience such a sense of euphoria in the midst of such chaos. And yet that was exactly how Griffin now felt. As if a heavy weight of guilt and self-loathing had been lifted from his shoulders.

  As if that truth had now freed him to try to win Bea’s heart for himself.

  Were it not for the existence of Michael, of course.

  ‘Was that not what you did to Bea?’ Griffin now accused hardly. ‘Are you not the one responsible for beating Bea, with the help of your associate Jacob Harker?’

  ‘What is he talking about, Francesca?’ Sir Walter seemed to have deflated into being a shell of himself in the past few minutes, his rosy cheeks now a sickly shade of grey.

  ‘Do not tax your brain about it, Latham,’ his wife dismissed mockingly. ‘You would be far better to attend to your horses and your hounds.’

  Latham attempted to rouse himself. ‘You will answer me, madam. Who is this man Harker? What have you done that Rotherham now accuses you of being a traitor? It is something to do with that worthless half brother of yours, is it not?’ He puffed angrily. ‘I always knew he would be nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Be silent, Latham!’ His wife turned on him angrily, cheeks flushed. ‘You are not fit to so much as speak my brother’s name.’

&
nbsp; ‘Half brother,’ Sir Walter rallied defiantly. ‘Sir Rupert Colville is only your half brother. A weak, lily-livered anarchist bent on bringing down the Crown.’

  ‘I said be quiet!’ Lady Francesca flew at him, hands raised, fingers bent into talons, her face an ugly mask.

  Christian was closest to the couple, managing to grasp Francesca Latham about her waist and pull her back before she could reach her husband with those talons. Once she was in his grasp, he secured her more tightly by pulling her arms down and also holding them captive within his grasp as he stood behind her.

  Bea had found herself unable to move or speak as the horror of this scene was played out before her.

  The revelations about Griffin’s wife and Francesca Latham.

  The knowledge that it had in all possibility been Francesca Latham herself who had administered Bea’s beatings during her week of captivity. Hence the reason she had never spoken in Bea’s presence?

  As the events of that weekend she had spent with her aunt at the home of Sir Rupert Colville now came back to her. ‘You were completely mistaken in your suspicions towards me at your half brother’s home, madam.’ She got up to stand in front of Francesca Latham. ‘At the time I did not understand any of the conversation I overheard between you and Sir Rupert. How could I, when I did not know then that an eight-year-old boy had been cruelly taken from his parents and was being used as blackmail against his influential grandfather?’ She gave a shake of her head before turning to Aubrey Maystone. ‘My Lord, I think you will find your grandson is being held prisoner at Sir Rupert Colville’s home in Worcestershire.’

  ‘Why, you little—’

  ‘Have a care, madam!’ Christian warned through gritted teeth as his prisoner would have made a lunge for Bea. ‘You have seriously wronged two gentlemen who are close friends of mine, and you have caused great distress and pain to a lady wholly undeserving of such treatment. As such I will have no compunction in taking steps to silence you if you should give me reason to do so.’

  ‘Do as you wish with me.’ Francesca tossed her head unconcernedly. ‘You may cut off the head of the snake but two more will grow in my place!’

  ‘I do not believe for one moment that you are the head of this particular snake,’ Griffin scorned. ‘Nor your milksop brother, either. Neither of you is intelligent enough,’ he added with hard derision. ‘And I believe we will leave it to the Crown to decide whether or not to cut off both your heads.’

  All the colour now drained from Francesca’s cheeks. ‘How can you remain loyal to such a man as the Prince Regent? A man who overindulges himself in every way possible, spending money he does not have on things he does not need, and to the detriment of his own people.’

  ‘Oh, please, spare us your warped idea of patriotism!’ Maystone dismissed. ‘Also be assured, madam, that if my grandson is not returned to me unharmed, then I shall personally recommend the hardest sentence imaginable to the Prince Regent, for your crimes against both him personally and to England,’ he added grimly.

  Hatred now gleamed in those cold blue eyes. ‘My brother should have disposed of the boy when I advised him to.’

  ‘You will be quiet, madam!’ Bea was shaking with anger at this woman’s added cruelty, when Lord Maystone had already suffered so much during these past weeks of uncertainty as to whether his grandson still lived. ‘Your grandson is unharmed, Lord Maystone,’ she reassured him gently.

  He blinked his uncertainty. ‘You are sure?’

  She nodded. ‘I realise now that I was abducted and beaten because it was he that Lady Francesca and her brother spoke of that day I overheard the two of them talking together. Sir Rupert Colville was adamant that he would care for the boy as if he were his own. At the time I thought he spoke of an orphaned ward or nephew. Having recently been orphaned myself, my heart ached for the little boy. For the loneliness he must feel. I had no idea of the truth of the conversation I had overheard.’ She gave a bewildered shake of her head.

  ‘Michael truly is unharmed?’ There was such hope in Lord Maystone’s voice.

  Bea gave a puzzled frown as she heard Griffin draw his breath in sharply before she answered the older man gently. ‘I truly believe that Sir Rupert Colville will have ensured Michael has remained unharmed, yes. Sir Rupert is not a man who enjoys physical violence.’

  ‘Unlike you, madam, who enjoys nothing more than beating those who are more helpless than yourself.’ Griffin’s eyes glittered with anger as he looked contemptuously down his nose at Francesca. ‘Where is Harker now?’

  Francesca now seemed less defiant than she had a few moments ago. ‘I presume he is in his hovel of a cottage, where I was forced to stay hidden during the week of Beatrix’s imprisonment.’

  Griffin’s eyes widened. ‘Harker lives in a cottage on my own estate?’

  ‘His name is not Harker but Harcourt, and he is nephew to your own housekeeper,’ Lady Francesca taunted.

  Which explained, Griffin realised, why none in the area had reported seeing anyone suspicious or unknown to them. But did that also mean that Mrs Harcourt—?

  ‘The old dragon has no idea of Jacob’s political views, if that is what you are now thinking,’ the blonde-haired traitor dismissed mockingly. ‘Not that any of this matters now.’ She took in everyone present in the room with one sweeping glance. ‘You may rescue Maystone’s grandson, arrest Jacob, Rupert and myself, do with us what you will. But, as I have stated, there are plenty of others who will happily take our place in securing Napoleon’s freedom.’

  ‘There are even more of us who will ensure they do not succeed,’ Christian assured her grimly.

  And no doubt Griffin would have to be one of them, he accepted heavily.

  But once Maystone’s grandson, Michael, was freed and returned to his family, once the Corsican was safely away from England and secured in exile, then he might discharge his duties to the Crown once and for all, and return to his estate in Lancashire.

  Return to Bea.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ten days later

  ‘His Grace, the Duke of Rotherham, is here to see you, My Lady,’ Shaw announced from the doorway of the drawing room in Latham Manor.

  Bea’s heart leapt in her chest at the news that Griffin was back in Lancashire, and she tensed as she looked up from the book she had been reading, as she sat in the window seat enjoying the last of the day’s sunlight. ‘You are sure the Duke is here to see me and not Sir Walter?’

  Bea had not seen Griffin since Lady Francesca and her associate, Jacob Harcourt, had been placed in custody, and he had set off immediately for Worcestershire with Christian Seaton and Lord Maystone, their intention to liberate the latter’s grandson from the home of Lady Francesca’s half brother.

  But not before it had been discussed and decided that Bea should remain here with her real guardian, Sir Walter, while the other gentlemen were gone. She would far rather have accompanied them on their rescue mission, but had accepted that she would only have slowed them down, and no doubt have been in the way too.

  Plus someone had to remain and offer some comfort to Sir Walter. The poor man was devastated, both by the revelations of his wife’s affair with Griffin’s wife, and by Lady Francesca’s treasonous actions, and her subsequent arrest. Bea felt that she might at least be of some help to him by remaining here.

  That had indeed proved to be the case, the two of them spending much time together as Sir Walter adjusted and accepted that his wife now faced many charges, including kidnapping and treason.

  But he was a pragmatic man, and, having also learnt of his wife’s sexual relations with another woman, seemed to have hardened his heart to her fate. Indeed, he was currently out riding his new hunter, having resumed his normal activities several days ago.

  They had received word from Griffin after the rescue of Michael, Lord Mayst
one’s grandson, had been as successful as they had hoped. Sir Rupert Colville was also now in custody, and the other three gentlemen had been on their way to London to reunite the little boy with his parents.

  Bea had resigned herself to not seeing Griffin again now that he was returned to London.

  ‘His Grace asked for you specifically, My Lady,’ the butler now assured her.

  ‘Then you may show him in, Shaw.’ Bea nodded.

  She turned to quickly check her appearance in the mirror, her mouth having gone dry at thoughts of seeing Griffin again.

  At thoughts of the heartache of the two of them meeting and greeting each other as if they were polite strangers.

  When that was the last thing they were.

  Or ever could be, as far as Bea was concerned.

  Her heart almost jumped completely out of her chest as Griffin strode purposefully into the room, not pausing at the doorway but heading straight over to where Bea still stood near the window.

  He looked so dark and handsome in his perfectly tailored black superfine, worn with a grey waistcoat and grey pantaloons, his black Hessians gleaming.

  So dearly beloved.

  ‘Your Grace.’ Bea affected a curtsy, head bent so that Griffin should not see the tears of happiness glistening in her eyes just at the sight of him.

  ‘Bea?’ Griffin gave a dark frown as he reached out to place a hand beneath the softness of her chin and raise her face so that he might better see her expression.

  These past ten days had been both very successful and equally frustrating.

  Maystone’s grandson was reunited with his ecstatic family.

  Several more of the conspirators to liberate Bonaparte were also now in custody.

  The Corsican was well on his way to his remote place of exile.