The Duke of Dark Desires

by Miranda Neville

  A footman entered the box bearing a glass of red wine with His Grace’s compliments. Coming on top of her weakness in the face of her cousin’s presence, the simple act of kindness almost undid her. For nine years she had lived under the care and protection of first Mathieu, then Henri, but she had essentially been alone. The innocent fifteen-year-old had to draw on strength and cunning for which her pampered upbringing had ill prepared her.

  Fortescue House was not her home.

  The Osbourne girls were not her sisters.

  The Duke of Denford was not her love.

  This was a small, happy respite, a reminder of a life she could never have back. And once her task had been accomplished her life of any kind might well be over.

  Fenella led the party back into the box. Seeing the girl look pretty and happy shouldn’t make her want to weep.

  “Are you feeling better, Miss Grey?” she asked.

  Jane wrenched her features into her brightest smile. “Much better, thank you, Fenella.”

  The girls clustered around her while Denford loomed in the doorway, back straight, one hand on the silver handle of his unnecessary cane. His blue eyes gleamed with neither mockery nor desire but genuine concern for her. “Do you wish to go home?”

  “Certainly not. It was nothing but a moment’s headache. The wine has revived me and I wouldn’t dream of missing the rest of the play. I have been admiring the ladies’ dress, as you recommended.”

  “You must tell me which you find most admirable.”

  The girls, newly awakened to the joys of dressing up, wanted to join the game. They examined the opposite tier of boxes, commenting on the gowns of the occupants and laughing a good deal. By the time they reached the red lady’s box, Louis had left. Jane felt the tension drain out of her.

  “That is the most extraordinary costume in the theater tonight,” she said. “Better than anything on the stage. What do you think?”

  Maria gasped. “She is wearing red gloves. Is that quite proper?”

  Laura, nine-year-old magpie that she was, loved them.

  “You wouldn’t wear something like that, would you, Miss Grey?” Fenella asked.

  “She is beautiful, I think,” Jane said, “and it is a striking ensemble, but lacking in subtlety.”

  “If that garment were a weapon,” Denford said, “it would be a club.”

  “Do you know her?” Jane asked, alerted by a trace of bitterness in his voice.

  “We are acquainted though not, I am happy to say, intimately.” Jane felt an irrational relief at the assertion. “Lady Belinda Radcliffe is a notable hostess with a very large house in Grosvenor Square.”

  “Lady . . .” Jane murmured.

  “Did you think her a putain?” he asked. Jane was glad to see the girls look puzzled by the French word for prostitute. “You wouldn’t be far wrong for all her high birth. I have it on good authority that her husband sometimes acts the pander.”

  “Is that him with her?”

  “Yes, that’s Sir Richard Radcliffe, one of the vilest men in England. If there was any justice he would be hanging from the gibbet.”

  “I am surprised to hear you speak so harshly. What has this Radcliffe done?”

  “Nothing I can prove. He remains a pillar of the Foreign Office, but one day, I swear, he will pay.”

  Chapter 10

  Julian had wanted to break through Jane Grey’s controlled surface. He’d anticipated unleashing the passion he was convinced lay beneath the façade. The result would be a glorious end to his current bout of celibacy. When at Drury Lane, through no discernible action on his part, he’d seen the veil slip, her distress had affected him in a more emotional and less earthy manner. He didn’t believe her truly unwell but he could tell she was profoundly upset. An urge to comfort and protect seized him, along with a desire to appoint himself her champion against any threat.

  This unprecedented reaction unsettled him so much that after their return to Hanover Square he let her retire, instead of inviting her to the library for a thorough report on the state of her pupils, followed by brandy and a tumble of skirt and petticoats and golden silk cushions.

  Three days later he returned from a long overdue visit to Denford Castle, dealing with estate affairs. More awaited him. As he removed his topcoat and hat, Blackett followed him through the front door. “I am glad to see you back, Your Grace. I have several urgent letters awaiting your signature.”

  “I hope this won’t take long. Bring them to the library. No, I’ll come to your office. It’s closer.”

  “How was it at Denford?” Blackett asked.

  “As usual,” he said, not an entirely truthful answer. For the first time he had looked at the medieval pile as a residence rather than a drain on his purse. The possibilities of the Long Gallery particularly intrigued him and he had formed an inkling of a plan. First he had to make it to Belgium and back.

  “We used to enjoy the summers there. There was always so much to do for all the cousins.” Julian caught the wistfulness in Blackett’s voice. The old duke had kept open house for the Fortescue family. Julian, however, had been a distant enough cousin to reside outside the charmed circle. He also had the impression his father had disgraced himself. Or perhaps no one had ever thought to tell him that he was welcome.

  “You’ll be there this year,” he said carelessly. “We’ll be going down in a couple of months.” It was absurd to resent poor Blackett, who was as much a victim of capricious laws of inheritance as Julian was the unwitting beneficiary. He was also a competent secretary and, Julian had to admit, his knowledge of Fortescue history and tradition could be useful.

  Blackett’s obvious pleasure touched him. Was he going soft in his old age? Not so. Blackett held the key to cordial relations with the Fortescue family, that was all.

  He signed the last letter with a flourish. “Those reports can wait,” he said. He was too restless to concentrate. Why not step up to the nursery and tell his sisters that they would be spending the summer in Sussex? At Denford there were dogs and cats and horses, which would please the girls, though that wasn’t the reason for his visit. Definitely not. When the girls were pleased, so was their governess. That was all.

  The intensity of his disappointment when he entered the schoolroom warned him that he was in trouble. He found the girls hard at work and no sign of Jane.

  “Where is Miss Grey?” he demanded.

  “She had to go out. She had an appointment.”

  An appointment? What the devil did a governess need with an appointment, unless she was ill? In that case a physician would be summoned to the house. Possibilities ran through his brain. She was looking for a different position. She was a Catholic and had gone to confession. She was being fitted by a corset maker with new undergarments especially for him. None of these ideas, conceived in reverse order of desirability, seemed likely.

  “Where did she go?”

  “She didn’t tell us,” Laura said.

  Someone else was missing. “Where is Fenella?”

  “I don’t know,” Laura said, all innocence. Maria merely shrugged.

  “Fenella!” he shouted.

  Nurse Bride, who was sleeping in the corner, twitched but didn’t wake up; of the new nursery maid there was no sign. “Where is . . .” Damnation, he had no idea of her name. “Where is the nursery maid?”

  “Susan?” Maria said. “She was here a minute ago.”

  Julian went out into the passage, trying to stay calm. It was probably nothing, merely Fenella playing her old tricks. But the girl should not have been allowed to go out alone. “Fenella! Susan!” he roared.

  The maid, a sensible-looking woman who didn’t look as though she’d suffer nonsense, emerged from a closet carrying a pile of clothes. Eyes widening at the unaccustomed sight of the master of the house, she bobbed a curtsey while her burden teetered.

  “Where is Miss Fenella?”

  “She told me she was going with Miss Grey, Your Grace.”

 
; “And did Miss Grey tell you she was taking Miss Fenella?”

  “I didn’t think to ask, sir.”

  He returned to the schoolroom, where the exchange would have been perfectly audible. Laura dipped her pen into the ink pot and began to write with exaggerated attention. Maria appeared engrossed in a book.

  “Where is she? Is she with Miss Grey? I want the truth.” Silence. “I admire your sisterly loyalty, when you aren’t fighting like gamecocks, but this isn’t a game. You need to tell me where Fenella went. Do I have to remind you again that the streets of London are not safe for a young woman alone?”

  Maria cracked first. “She went to see the horses.” He’d kill Fenella for her disobedience but he was also relieved; she was unlikely to encounter much harm in the mews where some of his own servants lurked.

  “My horses?” he said, to make sure.

  “At the Royal Stables.”

  Hell and damnation! “That’s all the way to Charing Cross. When did she leave and did she go alone?”

  By now Laura seemed frightened, as well she should. “She went out about an hour ago, just after Miss Grey left. She gave Jemmy part of her pin money to show her the way.”

  Jemmy, the stable lad, was about to have his neck wrung. Julian strode out of the house, swinging his cane. Electing to walk, faster in the traffic-clogged streets, he kept a weather eye out for Fenella, praying she was on her way home safe and sound. The stables, situated in the King’s Mews, were open to the public and full of royal servants, who would surely protect a genteel-looking girl. But there were some rough alleys along the route, and the space in front of the stables, one of London’s largest open spaces, was usually packed with all sorts of hawkers, loungers, pickpockets, and other riffraff.

  As he tore down to Piccadilly toward Leicester Square, it wasn’t casual thieves that made him terrified for Fenella’s safety. Whoever had been after the Falleron collection a year ago—most likely Sir Richard Radcliffe—had tried to use Julian’s affection for Cynthia Windermere to obtain the pictures. Now, by publicly parading his sisters at the theater, he’d offered his enemy a new group of hostages. Radcliffe must have seen them at Drury Lane. Julian also hadn’t forgotten the young man he’d spotted hanging around Fortescue House. He could be a spy for Radcliffe, awaiting the opportunity to snatch one of the girls. With cold anger gripping his chest, Julian increased his pace.

  And where, in the name of God, was Jane Grey, who had been engaged to look after his sisters?

  Reaching Charing Cross, Julian shouldered his way through the throng, ignoring the importunities of a man hawking matches and a girl with a basket of violets. Closer to the arched entrance to the stable yard, the crowd thinned.

  “Have you seen a young lady and a boy recently?” he asked a servant in the king’s livery who appeared to be on guard duty. “She is thirteen years old. I’m afraid I cannot tell you how she is dressed.”

  “We don’t allow a young person to visit the stables without proper escort or introduction.”

  An odd answer since Julian hadn’t asked if Fenella had applied for entrance. He was about to go ducal on the fellow when it occurred to him that it would be better if news of Fenella’s escapade didn’t leak out. Instead he reached into his pocket for a coin. “I am the young lady’s brother.”

  “Congratulations, sir. You come from a generous family.”

  Deducing that Fenella, a young lady of enterprise, had bribed her way into the stables, Julian forked over half a crown. “Had you seen such a pair, would they still be inside?”

  “I can’t be certain, mind you, but they could have left a few minutes ago. That way.” The guard pointed in the direction of Whitehall, not the route home. Damnation! What was the girl up to now?

  Back into the crowd he surged. “Blimey, it’s the devil ’imself,” cried an alarmed costermonger. Others felt the same way and the crowd parted like the Red Sea to reveal Miss Fenella Osbourne being mauled by a very large man. She was giving a good account of herself, wriggling like an eel to escape his meaty grasp on her upper arms while kicking at his ankles. Jemmy the stable boy, who had not been chosen for his size, flailed at the assailant’s back with his small fists. The pair of them might as well have been stingless gnats. The giant, protected from identification by a wide-brimmed hat worn low over his forehead and a long coat that disguised his other garments, though not his girth and muscles, was untroubled by the counterattacks, or by passersby, who hesitated to intervene against such a fearsome brute.

  Julian had no illusions that his pugilistic skills would match this fellow’s strength. He gripped his cane and struck the man smartly at the side of one knee and then the other. He would have aimed higher for a more sensitive spot but Fenella was in the way.

  “Jemmy, find the Watch,” he ordered the boy, who was momentarily turned to stone by the arrival of his master. “You! Let her go.”

  Either Julian looked sufficiently menacing or the man preferred not to fight. Either way, it wasn’t necessary to use his weapon in a crowded place. Fenella’s attacker threw her at Julian and, in the time it took the latter to regain his balance, dodged behind a pieman’s cart, and streaked at impressive speed into one of the dark side streets around the mews. With little chance of catching the miscreant, Julian told the stable lad not to bother with the authorities and turned his wrath on his sister, her bonnet awry and pelisse missing half its buttons, who glared at him as though he was the villain.

  “How often have you been told,” he asked, speaking low to keep his anger under control, “not to wander around London by yourself.”

  “I wasn’t alone. I was with Jemmy.”

  “A small boy is no protection, as you just learned. You could have been abducted by that man and subjected to fearful abominations.”

  From her expression Fenella had no idea what abominations he meant, which was as it should be, but she at least seemed shaken. Then she recovered. “He wasn’t a nice man, but most likely all he wanted was my purse and I only have a shilling left.”

  “Did he demand money?”

  “He didn’t have time before you arrived.”

  A minute or two later and he might have been sure that the incident was no more than a robbery. Or he might have lost Fenella. That Radcliffe and his minions had once more threatened someone dear to him was infuriating. His sisters had been a damn nuisance from the start, and now he had to worry about their safety too. Somehow they’d become more than an unwelcome responsibility, a realization that both pleased and alarmed him.

  “Why weren’t you going straight home?” He glared at her and she responded in kind.

  “I promised Jemmy I’d buy him a pie.” The stubborn look was Fenella at her plainest and most irritating, but all Julian wanted to do was hold her and convince himself she was truly unharmed. “Miss Grey said I could spend my pocket money however I wished.”

  “Miss Grey should have watched you better and you should not have taken advantage of her absence.”

  “I wanted to see the king’s horses.”

  Julian wanted to tear his hair out. “Why in the name of heaven didn’t you ask her? Or me? It’s an unexceptional outing that could have been arranged without trouble.”

  “She said she would take me today, then she changed her mind. She had to go out instead.”

  Miss Jane Grey, desirable or not, was supposed to be in charge of his sisters, and she had better have an explanation for her absence. Taking Fenella by the shoulder, he turned her firmly in the direction of Mayfair. “Let us go home. I will speak to Miss Grey about a suitable punishment.”

  “In that case it’s a good thing I saw the horses today.”

  He was hard put not to smile at her audacity. Not for the first time, she reminded him of himself.

  “Do you know what, Julian?” Fenella said, tucking her hand into his arm. “I’m glad you came to find me. I was a little frightened by that man. Just a little, mind you.”

  Patting her hand briefly, and contradic
ting the message of the small caress with a frown, he marched onward in silence, Fenella tripping along beside him. An hour later she had been consigned to the nursery with orders that she was to have only bread and milk for supper. Julian stood by the window in the library, looking out at the square and waiting for Jane Grey.

  He had been careless. Long suspecting that the house was being watched, when his sisters joined the household he should have realized they might be endangered. Whom in his household did he trust? Almost every servant in the place was new, although doubtless subjected to Blackett’s meticulous examination of both their persons and references. The one employee not subject to his secretary’s conscientious checking was the governess.

  He already knew that Jane Grey was not who, or at least what, she claimed. Since confirming his memory that the ostrich was found only in Africa, he’d begun to doubt she’d ever set foot on Saint Lucia, let alone spent her whole life there. He also remembered a woman hovering around the house the day his sisters had arrived. It could have been she. He hadn’t seen her since Jane arrived in answer to his advertisement. Instead there was that young man, loitering in the square at this very moment, staring at the upper floors. Itching to get his hands on someone with some answers, Julian was about to go down and confront the fellow when a familiar gray cloak approached. Jane Grey had returned and was speaking to the man. Her accomplice.

  Julian felt as though he’d been plunged into icy water. She’d played him for a fool all the time, and a fool he was to have set aside all the inconsistencies in her stories, each one small but adding up to a damning whole. They appeared to be arguing, the partners in crime, and then she gestured him away and he took off. No need for him to be there when the spy who had infiltrated Fortescue House was in residence. Jane crossed the street and disappeared from sight as she descended the steps to the servants’ entrance.