Hugo raised his head from the letter. But he hadn’t finished, and some penchant for punishment forced him to continue: Your letter only underscored my own failings. After all, as your wife, it is my duty to stroke you. Is it not?”
It was all Hugo could do not to leave for New Shaling on the spot.
THE HOUSE WAS BUSTLING in preparation for the duke’s return. Hugo couldn’t find it in him to care about much of anything. He could scarcely make himself bother over even the basics of the accounts; he didn’t want to think of the future.
It was Clermont’s fault—all of it. These last months had robbed him of his certainty. And what he’d taken from Serena…
Hugo shook his head. It didn’t matter. He had only a few months to go. If he could stomach that, he’d win his wager, collect his money, and never see the man again.
He heard the carriage arrive below. All the other servants must have gone down to greet their master; Hugo stayed up in the office, sorting through bills and payments, reports from estates. It seemed rather ironic that even though Hugo had almost stopped exerting himself, everything prospered. Ships had come in ahead of schedule, bearing cargo that was vastly more valuable than what had been paid on the other end. The price of wheat was rising; wool was doing even better.
It was as if the entire universe was rewarding him. If this luck held up once Hugo started investing his own money, he’d be a wealthy man by the age of forty. He’d have servants and his own estate. He would beat back that dark, dismal voice inside of him by the sheer dint of his accomplishment. Perhaps in ten years, he might make another visit to New Shaling, and see if he could rekindle...
No. No. He couldn’t think that way.
It took hours for the duke to recover from his journey—eating and cleansing himself, or whatever it was that dukes did after retrieving their errant wives. Hugo sat in his office, waiting for the duke to show his face. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to confront him about his lies, or if he hoped the man kept away, so he didn’t have to look at him.
Eventually, the man wandered into Hugo’s office.
The Duke of Clermont hadn’t changed. He was still a big, solid mass of a man. He hadn’t grown any fatter; his eyes weren’t any narrower. And yet Hugo’s first thought was that the man seemed a hundred times more swinish.
“I see the governess is gone,” he said cheerily. “And the duchess is back, and in a few months, assuming all is well, I’ll have another payment from the trust.”
“Yes,” Hugo said tersely. “Good.”
But the duke was in a voluble mood today. “What do you think I should buy, first thing?” he mused. “Horses? Or a mistress?”
He couldn’t believe the man was still talking that way—not after all he’d been through.
“I have a better idea,” Hugo heard himself say. “You could go on a journey.”
“A journey? Now, there’s a capital idea for escaping my wife. Brighton, perhaps? Or France?”
“None of those,” Hugo said. “I was thinking that you could go to hell.”
He didn’t curse. He didn’t. And yet he could not make himself regret those words. A fierce sense of rightness beat in his chest, alongside his awakening heart.
His pronouncement was met with flat silence. Clermont cocked his head in disbelief, and then slowly—ever so slowly—shook it. “I’m not—I’m rather certain”—he spluttered—“I don’t believe you should address me in that fashion.”
Hugo stood. He wasn’t taller than the duke, but still the other man took a step back.
“You told me that you wanted me to take care of an employment matter. An employment matter. Do you have any idea what I might have done to her?”
“Oh, come now, Marshall. You’re not going and getting a conscience on me, are you?” Clermont pouted. “It’s so inconvenient, and I’ve had to listen to Her Grace harping on and on for the last three weeks about this and that and morals and love. My head is sick of nodding to the tune of nonsense. I have had nothing but lectures for days and days now. Is it never going to end?”
Hugo gritted his teeth. If he wanted those five hundred pounds, he had to work with this man for the next few months. He had to.
He clenched his hands and stood, turning away.
That sense of his own worthlessness had wormed its way under his skin until he believed it. In his mind’s eye, he saw the silhouette of his father looming over him. He felt the solid weight of the broom smashing into his ribs.
You’ll never make anything of yourself, you useless bloody bastard.
“There,” Clermont was saying behind him, “I’m the better person. I’ll forgive you for that unkind remark, and you’ll forgive me for my little falsehood—and we’ll be even, won’t we?”
He’d never been able to get those words out of his head; his mother’s intervention had driven them deep into his flesh, buried them where he couldn’t touch them.
You’ll never amount to anything.
And because of that, he was…what, going to walk away from the woman he loved?
No.
All the logic in the world could not stand up to one fact: He simply could not stomach Clermont’s presence any longer.
“We’re not even,” he said in a surprisingly calm voice. He turned back around.
Clermont was watching him with those ice-blue eyes of his—clear, and yet all too confused.
“We are not anywhere near even. Tell me what you did to her—admit it aloud, you coward.”
Clermont licked his lips in confusion. “She wanted it.”
Hugo reached out and grabbed the other man by the collar.
“The truth, Clermont.”
“She was a hot little—”
He hit the man in the stomach. He didn’t bother to pull the punch, and Clermont, who had likely never been struck before in his life, went green. There was a time for subtlety. There was a time to hold back his anger. But right now, he couldn’t see the point of it.
“The truth, Clermont, or next time, I’ll rip your stones out with my bare hands.”
The duke whimpered. “I was so bored, and she was the closest thing to a woman around. What would it hurt?”
Hugo struck him again.
“What was that for? I’m telling the truth, now!”
“That wasn’t for what you said. It was for what you did.” Hugo let the man go, but only long enough to grab a piece of paper and a pen and set it in front of him. “I want you to admit that on paper.”
“On paper? But—”
“On paper,” Hugo said. “I want you to write on paper that you forced her to it, and that in reparation for your crime, you agree that you will send your son to Eton—or sponsor your daughter for a Season.”
“But—”
“Do it,” Hugo said, with every ounce of menace he could muster. “And stop sniveling about it, you worthless buffoon. Think for one second about what I know about you—what I could do to you. You more than anyone know what I’m capable of. This lets you off rather easily. If you keep your end of the bargain, the paper need never be made public. If you don’t…”
He could see the duke making his sordid calculation. If the duchess found out… There were, after all, forty thousand pounds on the line. Perhaps, Hugo imagined the duke thinking with his typical cowardice, he might keep the whole thing quiet long enough to fool his wife and guarantee himself funds for years to come.
With a nod, the other man reached for the paper and wrote his confession. When he was done, Hugo sanded it carefully and folded it in half.
“If you think that I’ll honor our wager after this...” the duke threatened.
Hugo walked to the door. “I have no doubts about that,” he said frostily. “But then, you’ll have no need to honor the wager.”
“Why would that be?”
Hugo gave him one last wolfish smile and brandished the paper. “Because you’d have to be in funds for me to win. I promised I wouldn’t make this paper public. I didn’t promise n
ot to show Her Grace. I think you’ve lied to quite enough women.”
Fear shot into the duke’s eyes. “Oh, God. Wait. Marshall!”
But Hugo was already through the door.
Chapter Eleven
IN THE END, HUGO COULDN’T bring himself to go directly to New Shaling. It added almost a week to his journey, but first he went north to the place of his birth and tracked down the parish records.
His father had passed away almost a decade ago, but Hugo didn’t bother to find where he had been laid. Better to let him pass out of memory. He’d let the man linger on too long as it was.
He visited the park where he’d buried his jar. But fifteen years later, there was nothing to be found—only shards of glass and tree roots. Fitting.
Instead, he tracked down an unmarked stone outside a tiny church and pulled the weeds off his mother’s grave. She’d had the right of it, all those years ago. You buried the dead and cared for the living.
As for the living… Three of his sisters had survived to adulthood. Of those, two had left for America; the third had simply disappeared. Out of sixteen children, Hugo was the only one who remained. All these years, he’d hefted his ambition like a heavy burden. He’d been wrong. He had been given a tremendous gift, one that he didn’t plan to squander. Even though the trees had lost all their leaves and frost was beginning to nip at the fields, it felt like spring had come.
The coach that took him to Cambridge was advertised as swift, but it seemed to dawdle endlessly along the way. A cart took him the rest of the way to Serena’s land.
The farm was small—scarcely two acres in size. He’d seen the maps and the markings when he’d helped Serena finalize the lease, but this was the first time that Hugo had seen the property in person. He stood back on the road a ways, wondering about his welcome. There was a single field off to the side, planted for now with winter wheat. But he could sketch in the improvements that she’d talked about building—a shed, where she might isolate and extract the essence of lavender, a coop with a gaggle of chickens, and a kitchen-garden, over by that patch of weeds just behind the house.
As he watched, the door opened, and she walked swiftly out to the well that stood on the right side of the property. He could see her pregnancy now—it was all too obvious in the way that she moved, in the slight curve of her stomach. He caught his breath.
God, he’d missed her.
She tossed the bucket in the well and then began to draw it up. She was wearing a sky-blue shawl—a familiar sky-blue shawl. The ends flapped in the breeze.
Hugo found himself crossing the road slowly, coming up behind her. “Nice shawl,” he remarked.
She let out a little shriek and dropped the chain; a splash sounded, as the bucket plummeted to the bottom of the well.
“Good Lord,” she said. “Hugo. Whatever are you doing here?”
He met her eyes. “What do you think?”
“I...I think...”
“I’m here to horrify you,” he said. And then, because he couldn’t bear it any longer, he reached out and pulled her to him. She was warm and soft in his arms, and she smelled so deliciously right. He could have inhaled her scent for hours.
“Hugo—”
He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to answer any questions. He didn’t know who he was or what he wanted or what dreams would come to fill his heart. He only knew that if he couldn’t have her, nothing would ever be right again. And so he kissed her. He tasted her, sweet and steady against him, put his hand in the small of her back and drew her toward him.
She kissed him back.
“I love you,” he said. The truth took root inside him. For the first time in years, the dark words of his past receded.
“But, Hugo…”
He set his fingers over her lips. “Let me do this,” he said. “I thought I had to prove myself with money and accomplishments. But those will always ring hollow. They will never be enough. I want to be somebody. Let me be your husband. Let me be the father of your child—of all your children. I got more satisfaction from striking Clermont than I did from any success I found in business.”
She pulled back from him. “You struck Clermont?”
“Twice. And—that reminds me—I blackmailed him into promising to send your child to Eton.” Hugo tightened his grip around her. “I’ve never pretended to be a good man, you know. It’s just that…I’m yours.” He leaned his head against hers.
Her breath was warm against his face. “Did you hit him hard?”
“I’m afraid I did.”
“That’s my Hugo.” There was a grim satisfaction in her voice. “I love you, you know. If you hadn’t come, as soon as winter set in and the ground became too hard to work, I’d planned to come for you.”
“Well, I’m glad I came to my senses,” Hugo said. “You shouldn’t have traveled, not in your condition. Yet curiosity impels me to inquire. What did you plan to do, once you arrived?”
“Allow me to demonstrate.” She lifted her face to his, traced the line of his jaw with her fingers. “This.” She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “And this.” She kissed the other corner. “And…” She took his mouth full on, her lips soft against his, tasting of all the things he’d most wanted.
“I’d do that,” she whispered, “until you were forced to admit you loved me.”
“I love you.”
“Well, that’s no fun.” She kissed him again. “Now what excuse do I have?”
He drew in a shuddering breath and pulled her closer. “You could make me say it again,” he whispered. “Make me say it always. Make me say it so often that you never have cause to doubt. I love you.”
Aftermaths & Beginnings
Eton, not quite twelve years later.
“‘PEACE SHALL GO SLEEP with Turks and infidels, and in this seat of peace tumultuous wars shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound…’”
Robert Blaisdell, the Marquess of Waring and also the eleven-year-old heir to the Duke of Clermont, looked up from his seat at the window. Sebastian Malheur, his cousin, paused in the midst of reading his lesson in Shakespeare aloud.
The other boy frowned at his book. “What does tumultuous mean?”
What flashed through Robert’s head was not a definition, but a series of noises: the sound of china crashing against a wall; his father’s shouts, the words rendered indistinct through the walls, but the intent still clear. Tumultuous meant the slam of a door and the quiet sound of his mother’s sobs. But most of all, it was the long silence that followed: the servants not daring to draw attention to themselves by speaking, and Robert, holding his breath, hoping that maybe if he was very quiet and very good, it might not happen again.
“Tumultuous,” he said, “means broken to bits.”
Sebastian wrinkled his nose. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can a war be broken into pieces?”
Robert was saved from answering by a shout in the yard below, and then a great clamor. The other boys who were studying in this upstairs library—all four of them—were only too happy to leave their books and press their noses to the windows that overlooked the fracas.
A crowd was forming on the green below: a mix of boys of all ages gathering in a circle around one child. While Robert watched, an older boy grabbed the child by the collar; another hit him.
“Someone should stop that,” Sebastian said next to him.
Someone was going to have to be Robert. He usually did put a stop to these rows; it was what a knight-errant would do. And while Robert would never admit it to the other boys, he still fancied himself one.
“Who is it?” Sebastian added, peering down at the crowd. “Is he new?”
“Yes. He’s a first form lag,” someone else said. “A Colleger.”
“Ah,” one of the older boys said. “A scholarship student. No wonder. Who are his parents?”
“Some kind of farmers. Or soap-makers.”
A derisive noise came at that. But Robert brushed his han
ds and stood up. Knights protected the weak, after all.
“Even worse,” the older boy was saying. “Davenant asked the boy who his father was, and he said, ‘Hugo Marshall.’ When Davenant said he’d never heard of him, the little lag said, ‘It doesn’t matter; he’s a better man than your sire, anyway.”
Robert froze.
Sebastian hadn’t moved from the window, but the other boy snorted. “He’s got stones, that’s for sure. Not so clear on the brains, unfortunately.”
Robert’s own brain fogged over. He set his fingertips against the glass and peered down once more. “Who did you say his father was again?”
“Hugo Marshall.”
Robert had heard that name before. He had heard it a few years ago, after another awful round of arguments ended in vicious separation. That time, it had been his mother who had left the house in a slamming of doors and a pointed ordering of carriages; his father had stayed morosely behind in the study.
Robert had tiptoed into the room, and, gathering up all his courage, he’d spoken. “Father, why is Mother always sad?”
Sad wasn’t the right word, but at the time he hadn’t yet learned tumultuous.
His father had tipped back his glass of spirits and stared at the ceiling. “It’s Hugo Marshall’s fault,” he’d said after a while. “It’s all Hugo Marshall’s fault.”
Robert hadn’t known what to make of that. What he’d finally ventured was: “Is Hugo Marshall a villain?”
“Yes,” his father had said with a bitter laugh. “He’s a villain. A knave. A cur. A right bloody bastard.”
That right bloody bastard had a son, and at the moment, that son was surrounded by other boys. In the upstairs room, his friends all turned to Robert. The library seemed too small, the air too hot.
“Never say you know who this Hugo Marshall is,” the older boy said.
“I have no idea.” It was the first time in a very long time that Robert had told a lie. “I’ve never heard of him,” he added swiftly, hoping the burn of his cheeks wouldn’t give him away.
Seductive Starts Page 10
