by Sharon Page
She saw pure, harsh pain flit across Greybrooke’s face for a moment, and her heart ached. Madness but even now, when she was at risk, she couldn’t help but feel her heart flutter at how beautiful Greybrooke was.
The Earl of Blackbriar watched the carriage approach, illuminated by the light of the torch. He had dark brown hair and his face was . . . exquisitely beautiful. With his high cheekbones, large eyes, and delicate chin, he looked like a carving of an angel done in marble. Lord Blackbriar was known for scholarly pursuits and his love of poetry. Never once, while she had been collecting the scandals of the ton for her Lady X column, had she found out anything sordid about Lord Blackbriar. Yet Greybrooke insisted the man was a monster.
Blackbriar was considered a bit reclusive. Neither he nor his wife attended ton events. Now she understood why—he had been keeping his wife like a prisoner.
Greybrooke and Blackbriar locked gazes through the glass. The tension grew so great in the carriage, she thought she would scream. “Greybrooke . . . don’t do anything rash.”
“Lecturing again,” Greybrooke said. “I’m afraid I’m too old to listen to governesses.”
The cold distance in his words hurt. But she’d lost him, hadn’t she? He knew she was a liar.
“Not to worry, Miss Winsome,” Caradon said. “I will take charge of Grey. I know this is painful for him, but Grey—” The duke turned to Greybrooke. “I intend to make certain you don’t lose control.”
“Just this once, Cary, I want to lose control.”
The carriage stopped and then rocked slightly as one of the outriding footmen jumped down, opened the door, put down the steps. Greybrooke leapt down. Caradon helped her down the steps as she saw Lord Blackbriar approach. Tears stained Blackbriar’s cheeks; his eyes were rimmed with red. Tall, slender, his shoulders shaking with grief, Caroline’s husband looked devastated.
He bowed, a quick jerk of his body. Greybrooke returned the gesture.
When he spoke, Blackbriar’s voice was deep, haunting—he was renowned for the compelling beauty of his voice when he read his poetry. “In death she is exquisite, Greybrooke,” the earl said gently. “With all her life gone, she glows with more beauty than ever before; she possesses an angel’s serenity, and she looks as if she is now free, soaring in heaven—”
Blackbriar broke off. His face changed. His mouth twisted, his eyes bulged. He’d gone from grieving husband to a man filled with livid fury. “The hell with it,” he snarled. “I thought you would want to see her, you bastard, since you were her lover.”
Helena expected rage. But Greybrooke coolly glared down his nose at Lord Blackbriar. “I do want to see her, but I was Caroline’s friend, nothing more.”
The two men circled each other on the step, like wolves waiting for the advantage. Blackbriar stood three inches shorter than Greybrooke. He had looked slender and bookish; now Helena noticed the wiry muscles bulging under his white shirt.
Blackbriar took a step back. “Come and see her first.”
Helena had lost her parents. She knew that after death there was usually a whirlwind of busyness, of things to be done. “Your house is so quiet, my lord,” she said, softly.
“The servants have been sent to their rooms under orders not to emerge until I ask for them. I did not want anything to be done before Greybrooke came to see the havoc he has wrought.”
“My lord—”
“Quiet. Do not bother to defend Greybrooke to me. Who are you anyway?”
“A lady. A friend,” Greybrooke said. “She was with me when I received the news. She came to prevent me from killing you the moment I set eyes on you.”
It startled her that Greybrooke was being circumspect about her identity. A kind thing to do to a woman who had admitted she’d spied on him.
Blackbriar sneered. How different he looked when he did that. Helena had seen boys who looked like that. They were petulant, self-important, the type who brooded, who plotted elaborate revenge over the smallest slight. She sensed she had the right idea of Blackbriar, and it matched what Greybrooke had told her. He wasn’t a gentle poet at all.
Greybrooke must be in great pain, and she wished there was a way she could take some of the pain from his heart.
The house was large, but the woodwork was dark and oppressive. Greybrooke’s house had the luxurious, decadent beauty of an Italian villa; Winterhaven House was all pastels and white mouldings and elegance. This house looked as if it were intended for death.
One wall sconce burned. Blackbriar had stuck his torch in a holder outside the house; inside he’d picked up a candle. It threw light on the stairs as they mounted them, but it didn’t ward off the sensation of being enveloped by icy blackness. They passed down a corridor of chocolate-brown paneling. Blackbriar stopped before a double door of dark oak, pushed one door open.
“Look at what you’ve done.” His voice was blacker, icier even than his house.
Greybrooke strode in, but when he reached the bed, his head bowed and his shoulders convulsed with grief. Helena stole up behind him. Only Caroline’s head showed. The counterpane was drawn up to her chin, as if to keep her warm. Her pale blond hair flowed around her, like the gilt halo surrounding a Renaissance angel.
“Caro, I’m sorry.” Greybrooke whispered the words, his voice cracking.
Helena couldn’t stand it—she gently touched his forearm. Without even looking at her, Greybrooke removed her hand from his sleeve.
Of course he didn’t want her touch.
“You should be sorry.” Blackbriar came to the bed, and the candlelight illuminated Caroline’s closed eyes and pale cheeks. “While my fingers searched in vain for my wife’s pulse, my gaze fastened upon this. A note, left on the table by her bed with your name written upon it. Not my name—not the name of the husband who cherished her. Instead the note she wrote—her very last words—were for the damned swine who impregnated her. Who destroyed her.”
Blackbriar held out a square of folded paper. Greybrooke was written on it, in shaky script.
“The child was not mine, Blackbriar.”
“Trying to convince me the bastard babe was mine, Greybrooke? Damned pitiable of you. My darling wife admitted it to me—”
“With your hands around her throat.” Gently, Greybrooke drew the gold-embroidered cover back. “With you crushing her windpipe, she would have admitted to anything you asked of her.”
Helena’s hand went to her lips in horror. Greenish-blue bruises ringed Lady Blackbriar’s delicate neck.
Blackbriar showed no expression. “I discovered my wife, the woman I revered and adored, had not been true to me, had betrayed me before providing me with a son. My rage was well justified. No one would deny I had the right to fury because my wife cuckolded me without doing her duty and giving me an heir.”
“No rage was justified. Caroline was a defenseless woman, and you attacked her.”
“She is my wife, my property—mine to chastise as I see fit. She provoked me with her infidelity, after I showed her nothing but love and devotion—”
“You hit her. I’ve seen the bruises.”
“Did you? My wife claimed that I struck her? That was not the truth, Greybrooke. She came home to me with mysterious bruises. I soon realized she had a lover—a lover willing to use his fists on her. To be honest, I thought you were responsible for beating her. She was so weak she continued to go back for more. I was preparing to call you out—to settle this over dueling pistols—when this tragedy happened.” Blackbriar drew up the covers, ran his fingers lovingly along his wife’s lifeless cheek. “It is well known you spent much time with my wife. No one would be surprised to discover the child was yours.”
Helena was stunned. How would Blackbriar speak with such cool detachment? He claimed to love his wife. He should be distraught. He had been angry before, but that rage now seemed forced. If anything he looked . . . satisfied.
With eerie calm, he said, “Perhaps she did not take her own life, Greybrooke. Perhaps you kill
ed her—because you were tired of paying for her blackmail, because you feared what I would do to both of you when I learned you fathered the bastard she was trying to pass off as mine.”
Then Blackbriar smiled with such malicious pleasure, her stomach churned.
Greybrooke’s face hardened. “Are you accusing me of murder?”
“Perhaps I am. I was angry with Caroline, but I quickly realized I loved her so much that I would even forgive her this sin. I told her I would accept the child as mine.”
“Hell, Blackbriar, I doubt that.”
“It is the truth. There’s a note on her escritoire. It is from me. After our argument, I left her very much alive. I stormed off to my study where I reflected, where I realized I still loved her and would always love her. I feared she would not open her door to me, so I sent her a note.”
“Caro was too terrified to ever lock her door to you, you lying bastard.”
Blackbriar spoke in the soft, magnetic voice he used for reading his poetry. “My letter begs her forgiveness for hurting her in my anger. It gives my promise to raise her baby as my own, and my promise that I would never cast her out. My darling wife had no reason to take her own life. But perhaps she wanted too much from you, Greybrooke. Perhaps she was foolishly in love with you—and we all know how you trample women’s hearts. Perhaps you wanted rid of her—”
“Damn you,” Greybrooke erupted. “You’re the killer here. You drove her to this.”
“There is no proof of that. All my servants will reveal how devoted I was to dearest Caroline.”
“Yes, they would lie for you, Blackbriar. They know you’d destroy them if they did not.”
“What do you propose, Greybrooke? A duel here, in Caroline’s bedroom, with her body lying on the bed? I would be more than delighted to get my satisfaction here and now.”
“You can’t,” Helena said quickly. She had to stop this.
Blackbriar paused, leaned over, and opened a drawer by the bed. He rummaged in it, and what he took out made Helena gasp in horror. Blackbriar pointed a pistol at Greybrooke’s chest. A smirk of triumph lifted his full, handsome lips. “Get the hell out of my house. The next time I see you, I intend it to be when you are dangling from a noose for murder.”
Greybrooke’s fists clenched. She would feel the raw fury emanating from him. Dear heaven, he wouldn’t face down a pistol while unarmed. Or would he?
“Please, we should go,” she pleaded. “There’s nothing to be done.”
“Making him pay for what he did. That still has to be done.”
“You are the villain in this piece, Greybrooke,” Blackbriar stated. “You seduced my wife, you got her with child, you drove her almost mad with fear, you killed her. So easy to introduce the laudanum to her tea and force her to drink every drop. I had no reason to destroy my Caroline, to lose her forever. You did—you had the need to protect your arse.”
His finger toyed around the trigger. Greybrooke did not even flinch. Helena had guessed the duke had been beaten when he’d been young—it explained the scars. It explained why he would have done anything to protect his sisters, if they had been beaten too.
Had his past made him so hard, so tough, he could face down a pistol?
Her legs were weak. She thought she had courage; this was terrifying. She glanced to Caradon, who stood in the doorway. He waited there, but he looked tense, as if waiting for the tipping point where he would leap into action and intervene.
“Please, Greybrooke.” She went to his side, knowing she could not touch him. “You cannot bring Caroline back. Think of your family: your sister ready to give birth, and her children. Think of how devastated they would be if you were killed in a duel.”
Greybrooke dragged his gaze from his foe to her. “You do not play fair, do you?” he muttered. “I can’t walk away. I owe it to Caroline.”
“She would not want you to die. If she can see you now, she is horrified that what she did is leading to the very thing she tried to stop.”
“All right. I won’t engage in a duel while you are standing here to nag at me.”
“The note, Greybrooke.” Motioning with the pistol, the Earl of Blackbriar pointed to Greybrooke’s hand. “Read the note, then leave it on the bed. They are Caroline’s last words, all that remains of her, and I want to keep them.”
Greybrooke unfolded the note. His jaw twitched as he read, then he threw it down beside Caroline’s body. “Planning to shoot me in the back as I turn around?”
“No, all I want is for you to leave,” Blackbriar said. “I’ve lost Caroline, but at least I can take solace in the knowledge that you have too.”
“What did the note say?”
Lines crossed Grey’s forehead. His mouth was a tight slash of pain, his eyes empty and hollow. “She wrote that she couldn’t go on. That she couldn’t hurt other people. She said she had hurt me by letting me deal with the blackmailer—that I might be killed, and she couldn’t live with the guilt. She wrote that the villain threatened to have his partner print the story in a newssheet—”
“A newssheet?” Helena froze. They were walking back to the carriage—Caradon walked behind them, allowing them to speak together privately.
The emptiness left his eyes. Hatred flooded in. “They would have lapped up the scandal, destroying her to sell their penny papers. That was the threat, unless she paid another five thousand pounds. She knew he would keep asking for more. And if the truth was published, it wouldn’t just destroy her, it would ruin the child’s life. She feared no matter what happened the baby would suffer for her sins. She couldn’t bear it.”
So she had taken two lives. Hers and the baby who had never had a chance to live.
“I’m so sorry,” Helena began.
“You were to seduce me for your spying mission,” Greybrooke said coolly. “Don’t pretend sympathy for me you don’t feel.” He bowed to her. So much hate glittered in his eyes, they gleamed like lanterns. “Caradon will take you home. I finally have the clue I need. I can’t save Caro anymore, but I can at least get vengeance.”
Vengeance? “What do you mean? How?”
“The blackmailer threatened to expose Caro’s secrets in Lady X’s famed column. I am going to the damned newspaper that prints that column.”
“No!” She shouted it without thinking.
He stared at her, his face hard.
“It is the middle of the night. Surely no one is there.”
But Greybrooke knew enough to know that was false. “They work in the night to produce early editions. Someone will be there—someone who can tell me where to find the man that owns the damned thing. He must know the blackmailer.”
“He might not! The blackmailer could have meant he intended to sell the story to the newspaper. Don’t go when you are angry. I’m afraid—afraid you might do something rash.”
“Listen to Miss Winsome, Grey.” Caradon spoke from behind them—he had caught up. “You can’t go around blindly taking revenge. You need to calm down. Take tonight and go home and get some sleep. Don’t take action when you are fired with rage.”
“Being in my damned home will only fire me with more rage,” Grey snarled. “All right, I’ll take my delightful mistress home and sleep there.”
She gaped at him.
Caradon moved away discreetly, leaving them and reaching the carriage.
“You are both correct,” Greybrooke said softly to her. “I am too close to losing control. I’ll go in the morning. And right now, I need to make love to you.”
That stunned her. Then she remembered what he’d said before, to shock her. I never trust the women I fuck.
“I want it simple,” Greybrooke said softly, leaning against one of her soaring bed columns. “But I want it to be what I desire. I want to tie you to the bed, with your arms and legs spread wide. If you say no, I will respect that. I will leave at once. The choice is yours.”
Her heart twisted at the raw agony on his face. She didn’t know what choice to make.
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He came to her, bent and brushed a kiss to her throat, his large hands resting on her shoulders. Oh, when he did this, she could barely think. Not of anything but him, large, powerful, male, so close to her. His scent surrounded her.
Her hands moved awkwardly, wanting to reach up to touch him. But she let them dangle at her sides, while he kissed her throat, the swell of her breast and made her tremble and melt.
With his face against the crook of her neck, he murmured, “I need to make love to you. I think it’s the only way I can face this pain tonight. You have a special way of taking all my attention, so I can think of nothing but you and giving you pleasure.”
“But what about—”
“Don’t speak of it. I need you. Now.”
His warmth flowed to her. His lips on her neck make her ache for him. “My choice is yes.”
“Then lie on the bed, my lovely Miss Winsome.”
It was as if he wanted to push the memory of what she’d done away for tonight because he needed to make love so badly. She let him undress her, down to her stockings. She was used to being naked for him, but it felt strange again with her lies hanging between them. Still, she lay on her bed. With efficient moves, he had her tied to the posts quickly, her arms and legs spread wide—but not uncomfortably so.
“Now to torture you,” he said.
“Goodness, what?”
The duke kissed and licked her nipples, and sucked hard, making her tug against the ropes. He moved lower, teasing her clit mercilessly with his tongue. Heavens, he meant erotic torture.
She’d wanted him, but doubts and fears began to swallow her. What happened after this? Was he still going to throw her out? Then he was inside her, thrusting in his usual teasing, caressing, wonderful way. But she was too nervous to feel anything.
Helena moaned fiercely, moving her hips as though she was in pleasure. She screamed as if having a climax. His eyes glowed at her wails. For once, he climaxed swiftly, surprising her. Moaning, he bucked on top of her. He made an intense, harsh sound of pleasure. He kissed her cheek, a startling kiss filled with tenderness—how could she deserve that? How did you make up for telling lies? How did that ever go away?
