by Lara Temple
‘Yes, that is the crux of the matter. And are you agreeable, Amelia?’
Kit didn’t wait to hear the outcome of the Duke’s proposal, not even for the pleasure of watching his grandmother rendered speechless. He shut the door and stood for a moment in the hall, until Julian’s voice dragged him out of his stupor.
‘You look as if you have just witnessed a murder, cousin.’
‘No—a proposal.’
Julian’s face was suddenly wiped clean of expression. ‘Congratulations. Who is the unlucky lady?’
‘Our grandmother, you idiot. We cannot speak here. Come into the library. I need a brandy. This family is driving me to drink.’
‘What do you mean, our grandmother?’ Julian demanded as he closed the door behind them.
‘Burford has proposed to her.’
‘Good God! Bless the fellow. Please tell me she accepted.’
‘I rather think she will. What are you doing back so early?’ Kit asked suspiciously.
‘It doesn’t feel early. They stopped for refreshments at Falworth and I realised that I preferred not to spend another two hours evading that little minx Calista. So I got on my horse...sorry, your horse...and rode across the fields back to Carrington. I haven’t had such a good ride in years. Do try and flirt with her a little so she returns her allegiance to you, Cuz.’
‘No, thank you. I’m quite happy having her enthusiasm directed elsewhere.’
‘Yes, you have your own fish to fry, don’t you?’
‘What does that mean?’ Kit paused in the act of pouring two glasses of brandy.
But Julian shrugged, looking a little sullen. ‘Nothing.’ He took one of the glasses and raised it. ‘Here’s to gullible dukes. Cheers.’
‘I don’t think he is in the least bit gullible. Amazingly, he appears to know precisely what deal he is brokering. To each their own.’
‘Well, well... I wonder if Genny planned this too. It does solve quite a few of her problems in one fell swoop.’
‘You seem to credit her with omnipotence,’ Kit snapped.
‘No, merely superior tactical skills.’
‘Yes. That deal is off the table, by the way.’
‘What deal?’
‘Ten thousand pounds if you marry her.’
‘It...it is?’
‘It is. I’m making you another offer. If you accept it, when you leave Carrington Hall with the rest of the guests you don’t come back.’
Julian set down his glass. There was danger on his face, but Kit didn’t care. He was beyond caring about much at the moment. If they wanted him to play head of the household and set them all to rights, he damn well would.
‘Twenty thousand pounds and you will never receive another penny from the estate. Unless, of course, fate favours you and Marcus and someone does away with me. Then you can touch up Marcus for more. You will also stop whatever game it is you are playing with Miss Maitland. While she lives under my roof she is under my protection. No more furtive meetings in town, in theatres—anywhere.’
Julian shoved his fisted hands deep in his pockets.
Kit wished, ardently, that his cousin would take a swing at him. Playing by the rules meant he could hardly attack the man while in his home, but he was so tempted to he could practically taste blood.
‘So...’ Julian drawled. ‘Grandmother offered me ten thousand to wed Genny and you are offering me twenty thousand not to?’
‘I am offering you twenty thousand to go away and stop moaning about being treated unfairly. Burford said Grandfather enjoyed keeping everyone on short strings and he was right. It cost my father his happiness, it drove Charlie into debt and an early grave, and it has turned you into a resentful malcontent. Take the damned Carrington money and do something with it.’
‘So... I can have the money and Genny too?’
Kit’s blow took both of them by surprise.
Julian stumbled back against the door and they stood for a moment, glaring at each other.
Then Julian wiped his mouth, smearing blood on his chin. ‘Damn, I’ve been spoiling for this, Pretty Kitty.’
‘So have I, you petulant brat. Let’s see if you’re more than talk.’
Julian snarled and launched himself at Kit. He had clearly spent a good many hours at Jackson’s boxing salon. He had good science and was quick, blocking the worst of Kit’s blows—at least in the beginning.
But Kit was stronger, all those years of sailing and swimming giving him an advantage, and it wasn’t long before he got a blow over Julian’s guard, sending Julian crashing into a delicate table that held a figurine of a mother and baby elephant connected trunk to tail.
The figurine flew up and Kit made a grab for it, but missed. It hit the floor, splitting in two, with the babe’s grey trunk still wrapped about its mother’s tail.
‘Was that expensive?’ Julian asked, his hands on his knees as he drew panting breaths.
‘No, but it was one of the first gifts I ever sent Emily, damn you.’
‘Sorry,’ Julian said, abashed.
‘What the devil do you care?’ Kit snarled, wiping away a trickle of blood from his temple. ‘Do you want the money or don’t you?’
‘Yes, damn you!’ Julian snarled back, all contrition gone. ‘And, for your information, I don’t know what that old witch told you, but she doesn’t know everything.’
‘She said Genny has been to see you in your rooms in London. Do you truly wish to see her ruined?’
‘Blast you—of course not. I told Genny that was a mistake. We usually... Look, this isn’t what you think, but it’s not my place to tell. Why don’t you ask her? You seem to have everyone telling you their business anyway.’
They glared at each other until finally Julian shrugged and glanced down at his bruised knuckles.
‘This wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped.’
‘No,’ Kit agreed, the fight going out of him as well.
Everything seemed to have gone out of him. Like an empty ship’s hold—dark, dank, empty.
‘We’re too old for this.’
‘Speak for yourself, old man.’ Julian’s mouth quirked, then flattened again. ‘It feels wrong, taking money from you.’
‘Well, too bad. It should have been Charlie’s in any case. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll offer the same to Marcus. I don’t need it.’
Julian grinned and winced, gingerly touching his split lip. ‘I’d pay to see Marcus’s face when you make that offer. In fact, I could probably raise a crowd to watch the fight. You have a mean left hook, man. The benefits of life on board a ship, I daresay. I ought to try it.’
‘I would be only too happy to put you on a vessel to the Antipodes, cousin.’
‘No, thank you. I’ll make good use of the funds right here.’ He hesitated. ‘Genny told me years ago that Marcus and I were fools to blame you for Grandfather packing our parents off to India. I have to concede she was probably right. My mother made her own choice when she took advantage of your father’s melancholy, and we shouldn’t have blamed you for crying bloody murder when she slipped into his bedroom that night. But it was easier than admitting one’s mother was an arrant flirt who enjoyed taunting my father with her conquests.’
Kit took a deep breath. ‘Grandfather blamed me as well, so I don’t see why you should have been any different. He told me outright that a true Carrington would have known better than to air family mistakes in public. Another lesson on how you Carringtons were superior to dregs such as my mother and myself.’
Julian winced. ‘Charming fellow. Almost as bad as dear Grandmama. I pity poor Burford. Well, I’d better be off, before I start liking you. I’m definitely not ready to do that.’ He paused by the door. ‘And do remember that although the old she-devil sees much, she understands little. Try not to emulate her, old man.’
&nbs
p; He gave a slight salute and left before Kit could give in to temptation and demand an explanation his cousin was highly unlikely to provide.
Chapter Nineteen
Kit could do with a less honest mirror in his dressing room. His hair was damp and spiky with perspiration, reddish rivulets from the cut on his temple streaked his cheek, and his poor cravat looked as if he’d tied it underwater.
He wondered what his men would have thought, had they witnessed his behaviour these past few weeks. He wished Benja or Rafe were here. Anyone who knew him as a sensible individual. Reliable, detached, unflappable...
He pulled off his shirt and sluiced his face and neck with water from the basin. He had just put on a new shirt when he heard a tapping coming from his study. He debated ignoring it, but then it came again, a little louder, and he strode through to open the door.
‘What—?’ His teeth snapped shut on the word. For a moment his mind went blank as he stared at Genny.
‘Lord Westford? Howich said you might be in your study and I thought... I thought it would be best for us to speak...in private...before everyone returns.’
Her voice was hardly above a whisper and her warm-toned skin was sallow and leeched of colour, as if she’d been cupped by an over-enthusiastic surgeon. She looked nothing like Managing Miss Maitland.
An unfamiliar shiver of fear was followed swiftly by remorse. He’d truly thought she was shamming, but she looked fragile, almost waxen. ‘You are ill.’
She shook her head and a thick tress of hair slipped from the ribbon that held it back and fell over her cheek. She tucked it behind her ear and winced. His fingers twitched. Surely anyone with a headache would be more comfortable with their hair released from its bondage, spread out...
He quashed that thought. Whether she had a headache or not should make absolutely no difference to the magnitude of her betrayal.
As the silence stretched, her cheeks began to suffuse with colour, but it merely made her look wearier...and more miserable.
He stood in the doorway, damning both of them. If this was another ploy, it was working. The anger he’d been nursing skulked away in shame, ignoring his attempt to grab it by the scruff of the neck and shove it back to the front line.
‘You don’t look recovered yet, Miss Maitland. You should be resting. In your room,’ he added pointedly.
‘It was only a megrim. I am better now.’
‘Well, I’m glad you are better, but I’m in no mood for any more...games.’
She raised her hands, rushing into speech. ‘I won’t stay. I thought you had gone with the others to the wells, but then Susan mentioned you were here and I thought... I thought it best not to wait...to make my apology. I should have done so right away, but... You were right. It was foolish...ch-childish.’
She stumbled over the word, and when she shoved the thick tress of hair behind her ear again he noted her hand was trembling.
He struggled for a moment with common sense and then, with a quick glance up the corridor, he stepped back. The worst that could happen was that he would solve most of Genny’s problems in one fell swoop. And cause quite a few others.
‘We cannot talk like this. Come inside.’
‘I don’t... I think...’
‘Don’t think. Or, if you must, don’t do it in the corridor. That is inviting trouble.’
Her flush deepened but she stepped inside, flattening herself against the wall as he closed the door. He moved away to the other side of the room, leaning back against the writing desk and crossing his arms. She took a deep breath and plunged into speech, her eyes on the carpet as if her tale were woven into the blue and brown geometric design.
‘You are right. About me. I struck a bargain with your grandmother before you even came to Carrington House. It wasn’t... I am not making excuses... Well, yes, I am, but...’
She floundered and glanced at him, but when he kept silent she continued.
‘Since your grandfather died Lady Westford has become obsessed with an heir for the Carrington line. But instead of taking you men to task she has been flaying my sister and Mary, making them feel like...like failures as women, with no regard to their own pain—especially Serena’s.’
She stopped for a moment, rubbing her cheeks as if she’d only just come in from the cold, but she did not look up.
‘My sister lost three children to stillbirth. It shattered her and it shattered Charlie and I think it drove him even more deeply into those foolish ventures. Your grandmother never says so outright, but it is clear she holds Serena accountable for Charlie’s debts and his death. The worst is that poor Serena has come to believe it herself, and it is...it is destroying her. I couldn’t bear it any longer, so I promised Lady Westford I would do everything I could to ensure one of her grandsons married in exchange for Serena’s and Mary’s freedom. If either of you became betrothed, she would pay Charlie’s debts and settle funds on Mary and Serena.’
There was nothing he did not know here. It should not make any difference. But the impotent, wounded anger he’d felt was melting faster than ice in an Egyptian summer. He wanted to keep hold of it, but it was useless in the face of the raw pain in her husky voice. The best he could do was remain silent.
Her eyes flickered up to his and fell again. There was no guile there, no calculation, only a brief, rather desperate appeal for clemency. She looked far younger than her years now—far more like the little Genny Maitland of Spain, held together by nine measures of determination and one measure of cunning.
‘I also told her that if I failed I would marry Julian,’ she burst out, as if determined to make a clean breast of all her sins.
His anger fired again, in a visceral resistance as old as childhood. He managed to ride that out in silence too—which was just as well, for she continued.
‘I didn’t mean it, of course.’
‘Why suggest it if you didn’t mean it?’
‘I wanted her to feel there was always something to fall back on.’
‘Would he have agreed?’
‘Not unless there was some serious monetary—’ She broke off at his expression. ‘It isn’t that he is mercenary...merely...’ She stalled again.
‘Merely that he needs the funds,’ he completed dryly.
She sighed. ‘He has his reasons. And I had mine. Which brings me to my other admission.’
God, he didn’t know if he could take any more admissions.
‘This.’ She held out a copy of her grandfather’s book. ‘It isn’t truly my grandfather’s, though he had a hand in it. I had trouble sleeping for years after my parents died, so every night, after Serena fell asleep, my grandfather would tell me about battles.’
‘Battles as bedtime stories?’
‘He didn’t know any other tales. We would read from his books together and wonder what went through the mind of a Trojan soldier who woke from his sleep to shouts that the Greeks had penetrated the impenetrable city. How he must have felt when only the evening before he’d celebrated victory after years and years of suffering under siege.’
She paused, her eyes searching his.
‘When Grandfather died, and I came to live with Serena, I began writing the stories down. One day Julian found one and read it. After I had torn strips off him for reading other people’s private writing, he convinced me to send it to an acquaintance of his at the London Magazine. They asked for more. So Julian oversaw the correspondence and we split the proceeds. At some point Julian suggested compiling them into a book, and this is the first of them. There are two others, and I am working on a fourth at the moment—which is why I took those books from the library. No one else knows of it—not even Serena and Mary—so I would appreciate you not...’
She shrugged and held out the book. He had to force himself to move and take it. Strange that this revelation affected him more than her deal with the devil.
/>
The book felt heavier than when he’d taken it from her table yesterday. He brushed his hand over the cover. The binding was marbled, the words A Soldier’s Tales and Maitland engraved on the spine. He opened it and looked again at the frontispiece.
A Soldier’s Tales or
A Collection of Tales of Historic Battles
as Told by a Common Soldier
By Gen. Maitland
He’d naturally presumed it was General Maitland. Here too Genevieve Maitland had hidden herself in plain sight.
Then his eyes caught the publisher’s name at the bottom of the page—and the year. As far as coincidences went, this was...strange.
Genny noted the placing of his finger and took it as a question.
‘Julian and I didn’t know any publishers, but Mary had once mentioned your grandfather’s name, and that he had a bookbinding shop in Cheapside. So when I was in London I asked a hackney driver to take me there. He was a lovely man, your grandfather. He arranged matters with a printer and oversaw those bindings personally. This is the very first copy he printed for me. I would like you to have it.’
Her voice was becoming choppy again.
His own insides were far choppier.
‘Did he know you were connected to the Carringtons?’ His voice was harsher than he’d meant, and her now empty hands were clasped together so tightly her knuckles gleamed a pale yellow.
‘I didn’t tell him. I didn’t want him to feel obligated in any way. But, you see, he recognised my name, or rather Grandpapa’s name, from your letters. When he asked me if I was any relation I realised there was little point in subterfuge. He was so proud of you... I enjoyed my visits with him—he was like a version of my own grandfather, only with a sense of humour and...and easier in his skin.’
She smiled, her gaze now inward, and it took him a great effort not to move towards her. Then she focused, and the hesitation returned, and her hands resumed twisting into each other.
‘I had hoped to earn enough to settle Charlie’s debts and set up house for Serena and Mary. But I’m afraid I shall likely never earn enough merely with my books, and every year Serena remains... I am not making excuses... Well, I am. In any case, I owe you an apology. You were right about me. Sometimes I think I’m older than anyone here, and sometimes I feel like I’m still the same as when Grandfather came to fetch us when our parents died. I cannot seem to find the in between.’
