The Duke of Dark Desires

by Miranda Neville

  And she must never, would never, use the key.

  Mr. Blackett, Jane had discovered, didn’t live at Fortescue House. After breakfast, putting Maria in charge of making the girls study French verbs, she sought him out in his office on the ground floor. After half an hour discussing furnishings and the hiring of nursery maids, they were on the best of terms.

  “How, precisely, are you related to His Grace?” she asked, settling in for what she hoped would be a revealing chat about the Fortescue family.

  Blackett, who tended to be anxious, relaxed a little, resting his elbow on the desk and rubbing his forehead thoughtfully. There was no family resemblance between him and the duke that Jane could detect. “I’m not sure exactly what degree of cousinhood we share. I am the grandson of one of the daughters of the fourth Duke of Denford. He is descended from the third.”

  “Which number is he?”

  “The seventh. The sixth duke was killed in a fall on the hunting field within months of inheriting.”

  “And there were no closer heirs than the current duke?”

  “Several, but none alive.” Blackett was warming to his subject. “It’s remarkable how unfortunate the members of the family have been. The fourth duke had three sons and each of them had sons, yet none survived. The third duke had ten children in all. I can’t remember offhand how many of them were sons. At least a couple of the lines died out. His Grace’s great-grandfather was one of the younger ones. There were several potential heirs descended from the third duke but Julian Fortescue, as His Grace was then, was the first in line.” Jane’s head was awhirl. There were so many Fortescues who were dead, and the ones that remained were very distantly related to any recent dukes. “This must be very dull for you,” Blackett said. “Not to mention bewildering.”

  “Oh no! Very interesting,” she said. “But I am confused. Do you perhaps have a . . . chart . . . I could study?” She wasn’t sure of the English term for an arbre généalogique.

  Blackett poked at the papers on his desk, as though expecting to find such a thing there. “A family tree? There may be one here but I doubt it. The family archives are kept in the muniment room at Denford Castle.”

  “I would like to see it if you should come across such a thing. Did you know many of these unfortunates who died? You were close cousins to some, I think.”

  “Despite the duke’s poor health, we were all welcome at Denford Castle and used to spend weeks there, especially in the summer.”

  “What were they like? All families have their eccentrics, yes? You must have some wonderful stories.”

  “My grandmother Lady Sophia Fortescue invented the powdered wig for ladies.”

  Jane found this totally improbable, but all families have their legends that exaggerate or invent history. Why, her own grandmère claimed to have been a secret granddaughter of Louis XIV. According to Jane’s mother, this would only have been possible if the grandmother in question had bedded the aged grand monarque when she was ten years old. Personally Jane thought it much more amusing to have been responsible for a famous hairstyle. However, her quest did not require knowledge of the enterprising Lady Sophia. Blackett proved willing to ramble on, mostly about the less numerous and also less entertaining male Fortescues.

  Occasionally she’d put in a question, hoping to steer him in a helpful direction. “Many Englishmen travel abroad, I think.”

  “They used to, before the French plunged Europe into war.”

  Jane seized the opening. “Ah, the dreadful Revolution. Was anyone in Paris at that time? It must have been terrible! All those poor aristocrats slaughtered by the mob.”

  “There was a John Fortescue who spent much of his time wandering around Europe.” He coughed discreetly. “Very fond of the ladies, if you know what I mean.”

  “What kind of age man?”

  “He was one of my mother’s cousins. If he’d lived he’d be about forty-five or fifty now.”

  “What did he look like?” Jane held her breath, waiting to hear if this Mr. John Fortescue could have been the man she saw.

  “On the tall side, otherwise quite ordinary-looking. He was stabbed to death by a jealous husband in Copenhagen in ’94.”

  “Any others?”

  “There’s Charles. He’s another descendant of the third duke. He’s the current heir, until Denford marries and has a son. I’ve never met him but I remember my mother saying he spent a lot of time abroad.” He coughed significantly. “A bit of a black sheep, you know. Of course we used to think that about Julian, but not now. Picture of respectability.”

  Mr. Blackett was, in her opinion, deluding himself on that count. Or merely displaying discretion and loyalty toward the new head of the family. Now she knew that Denford had not been born to his position, she understood his unorthodox approach to life. A man accustomed to occupying the highest levels of nobility, her father, for example, would never brook impertinence from a servant, even one he wanted to bed. Especially one he wanted to bed.

  The Duke of Denford did not belong to the breed that exercised droit du seigneur on unwilling servants. Only willing ones. She pictured the key to his room, resting safely in the drawer of her writing desk.

  But the current duke didn’t concern her, not in the present context, anyway. He was too young to be the Mr. Fortescue. In John and Charles she had two promising candidates who merited investigation.

  At nine o’clock Jane presented herself at the door of the library. He was there. To calm her anticipating heart, she applied logic and her knowledge of men to remind herself of the moves Denford was making on the chessboard of their relationship. Last night he’d missed their meeting to intrigue her. Avoiding her a second time would look like indifference, and the Duke of Denford was not indifferent to Jane Grey. He intended to have her and he would not cease to press her until he did. Her gambit was to resist for as long as she remained at Fortescue House. However difficult that might be, with the progress she’d made with Blackett, it shouldn’t be too much longer.

  The thought made her a little sad. She was becoming fond of the girls, not least because they brought back the family life she had lost. On the other hand, her vengeful task would be easier without the distraction of Denford’s pursuit.

  If only the sight of him, his lithe, black body pacing moodily about the room, didn’t have such an effect. She swallowed convulsively and gathered her wits.

  “Your Grace.” She curtseyed demurely.

  “Come in, Jane.”

  “You don’t have my permission to call me Jane,” she said, tilting her chin.

  “As your employer and your superior I may call you whatever I want.”

  “No, Your Grace, you may not. I demand you address me with respect, as I address you.”

  His eyes gleamed as blue as the summer sea viewed from her father’s Normandy château. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll dismiss you?”

  “No.”

  He enjoyed that. “Why not?”

  “Because you’re hoping to seduce me.”

  “I’m so glad we understand each other. I see it as a promising step.”

  “I regret to inform you that I am not to be seduced.”

  “Then why are you flirting with me again?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to retort that a Frenchwoman always flirts with an attractive gentleman. She’d been taught to do so along with her lessons in music and deportment. Or she could tell him that she was twenty-four years old and healthy and accustomed to having a man in her life and her bed. But none of these true things could be confessed to her employer. “I am merely humoring you, Your Grace. By the way, I haven’t thanked you for sending me the key to my room. It was thoughtful.”

  “It’s the key to my room and I look forward to the day that you use it.”

  “That day will never come.”

  He turned aside, shaking his head in mock disgust. “In that case, why should I keep you on?”

  “Because you need me to look after your sisters. A
nd I amuse you.”

  “And because I live in hope.” Again he settled the full power of his gaze on her and she could scarcely stand.

  “Are we going to the theater?” His matter-of-fact tone belied the meaning of the question.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “You’d better let me know soon. Boxes to see Mrs. Siddons aren’t to be had without difficulty.”

  “I trust your ingenuity, Your Grace.”

  “For the love of God, Jane, stop Your Gracing me. Call me Julian.”

  “Certainly not. It would be most improper.”

  “How many times must I remind you that I’m an improper man.” Beautiful as a leopard, he sauntered toward her. “And I have every hope that you are an improper woman. In fact I know you are. Underneath that drab exterior there’s a siren waiting to come out.”

  She tilted her chin as high as it would go. “You will wait until the world ends to find out.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, and she very much feared he was right. “However, clearly this evening we are not going to proceed straight to the activity I, for one, would prefer. Sit down, let me pour you some brandy, and tell me what you did today.”

  How funny. Those were the very words with which she would greet Henri when he came home from a hard day untangling red tape and conspiring to advance in the bureaucracy. After dinner, cooked by the maid Henri was proud to be able to afford, she’d seduce him and they’d go to bed. Denford would like that, but it wasn’t going to happen. Too bad Jane desired the duke ten times more than she ever had her adoring French lover. And proving that she was in a very bad way, she was touched by the solicitous way he settled her in a comfortable chair beside the fire and brought her a drink. Across the room the golden divan mocked the scene of domesticity.

  “So,” he said, settling across the hearth from her and warming his glass of brandy between his well-shaped hands. “Did my sisters make vast strides in their acquisition of useless feminine accomplishments?”

  “Not useless,” she said, averting her eyes from the mouth emitting those basso profundo tones. “Today we worked on our French.”

  “Now that we are at peace with France once more, all the English will pour across the Channel to buy new clothes and inflict their execrable accents on the natives.”

  Jane bit back a comment that no foreigner would ever speak French well enough to satisfy the denizens of Paris. “Your French is quite good,” she said instead.

  “Not as good as yours. Clearly Saint Lucia is the place to go to acquire the accent of Tours.”

  “Just because I was on an island, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t well educated. You are lucky to have found such an excellent governess.” She changed the subject before he could start nosing out her past. “I spoke to Mr. Blackett today about the furniture in the nursery. He was very helpful.”

  “He is ever obliging.”

  “He told me stories about the Fortescue family. Very amusing.”

  “Really? I had no idea. Clearly there’s more to be had from Blackett apart from his competent, if lackluster, performance as a secretary. He has never amused me much.”

  “Ask about his grandmother and powdered wigs. We talked about France too. Or rather about Fortescues who enjoyed travel.” She glanced over at the Vaugondy globe. “I wish I could see the great cities of Europe. I suppose you have visited them all.”

  He nodded. “Not all but many. I traveled a fair amount myself, in my distant youth.”

  “And now you are so old?”

  “Old in experience.”

  “Did you go to Paris?”

  “Several times. I even witnessed the fall of the Bastille. I was sixteen years old and thought it the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world. The heady wine of liberty.”

  “It started well, perhaps.” She didn’t want to talk about the progress of events in France, afraid that she would display emotions beyond a horror that might be felt by an Englishwoman living halfway around the world. But having established that Denford had been in Paris in 1789, she wanted to know about the period closer to her family’s betrayal. “It is sad how many innocents lost their lives later. Did you see the Terror?”

  “Why do you ask?” There was an odd note in his voice. Had she given herself away?

  She tried to speak with nothing but indifferent curiosity. “I was talking about it with Mr. Blackett and he thought one of your cousins might have been there. John or Charles Fortescue. I wondered if perhaps you had seen either of them in Paris.”

  Denford grimaced. “I don’t know why you find my very dull relations of interest. Let me see. John is dead or else he’d be duke. I met him a few times. Come to think of it, I ran into him in Berlin once.” He stood up and walked over to a flat glass-topped case. “Come here and see him for yourself. The fourth duke had miniatures done of all his grandchildren, including John. He didn’t hire a very good painter or someone would have pilfered them from the house. They are a remarkably unprepossessing group.”

  Excitement rose in her gorge, then abated as fast. The young man in the gold-framed oval could be the man she’d glimpsed. It might equally well not be. The face meant nothing to her, and why should it? She’d never had a good look at Mr. Fortescue. “What about Charles?” she asked, as she pretended to peruse the other miniatures.

  “I know Charles better, but he isn’t here. Like me he was from a more distant branch of the Fortescues. He’s ten years older than I but his grandfather was younger than mine. Otherwise he would be duke. The accidents of birth are quite remarkable.”

  “Where have you run into him? St. Petersburg? Vienna? Constantinople?”

  “I’ve never been to Constantinople, so not there. Last I heard he was living in Naples, though with the arrival of the French he may have fled to Turkey for all I know. I did see him in Paris in 1793. He was picking up bargains from terrified aristocrats desperate for cash.”

  Her heart thudded and her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “He remained in Paris?” It had been in November of that year that the Fallerons had been betrayed. Then her stomach turned over when she realized that Denford might have been there too. Was she wrong to have excluded him from the list of possibilities? If his knowledge of art had been as great then as it was now, he could have gained her father’s respect and confidence despite his youth. There was nothing the late marquis preferred to talk about.

  Denford said nothing, his face inscrutable. “I left France in May,” he said. “Before things got out of hand.”

  “You never went back to France?” She had to ask.

  “Only a fool or a madman would return to Paris later that year,” he said.

  “Is your cousin Charles a fool?”

  “I never asked him how long he stayed. I didn’t see him until a couple of years later, when he was back in London for a stretch.”

  Her excitement that she had most likely identified her villain was tempered by fear that he might be out of her reach. “You should know where your heir is,” she said. “Suppose something happened to you.”

  “If something happened to me I would be dead and in no position to care. I’ll let the Fortescues worry about it.” He gave a brief crack of unamused laughter. “If there’s anyone in the world they disapprove of more than me, it’s Charles. I’d love to see him lay his hands on their precious dukedom. Unfortunately that’s by definition an ambition I can never achieve.”

  Having been brought up by a man who took his position very seriously, Jane could not condone such levity. “You should feel responsible for the future of your estates.”

  “My dear, my very dear Jane. Surely you’ve seen enough of me to realize I have no sense of responsibility whatsoever. I am an entirely selfish man.”

  Chapter 7

  Now that she had a name and some personal details, Jane resumed her search with fresh optimism.

  Three months earlier, on her arrival in London, she had taken rooms in the City of London,
an address she’d mistakenly believed to be fashionable, like the Ile de la Cité in Paris, site of the Hôtel Falleron. Soon after realizing that she’d need help finding one man in a city of over a million, she’d consulted Mr. Russell, a solicitor with an office near her lodging.

  She had spun a tale about tracking down a Mr. Fortescue, a long-lost family friend. Mr. Russell swallowed the story whole, including the odd fact that she didn’t know this man’s Christian name. He was quite prepared to track down every Fortescue in England, and charge her a goodly sum for his pains. With some regret, Jane turned down the offer on the grounds of expense. Such a service would cost much of the money she had saved over the years and would need for her escape to America when her revenge was complete. More importantly, Russell very reasonably suggested that he should write to these Fortescues, inquiring if they had been acquainted with a clergyman named Grey and his family. She couldn’t very well explain that far from wishing for a happy resumption of this invented friendship, she intended to kill the man.

  The morning after her discovery, slipping away after breakfast, she returned to his office, where Mr. Russell promised to make discreet inquiries and tell her when he’d found Charles Fortescue.

  “Please do not contact him for me,” she said. “I want it to be a surprise.”

  Since her lack of progress finding Mr. Fortescue had weighed heavily on her conscience, she left the task in the hands of Russell and his hired investigator with a lighter heart. Now, for a week or two at least, she could forget her savage, sacred mission and concentrate on her duties as governess. She worried a little at having left the Misses Osbourne in the inebriated care of Nurse Bride that morning. Fenella had been less defiant with her, but she didn’t fool herself that the girl was incapable of taking advantage of her governess’s absence. As her hackney turned into St. George’s Street her suspicion was confirmed in a surprising way. Beneath the massive Corinthian portico of St. George’s Church, she detected the eldest Miss Osbourne in close conversation with a young man.