The Duke of Dark Desires

by Miranda Neville

  Sick with worry, Julian gripped his cane. They were supposed to find that letter later and read it as a suicide note.

  Chapter 23

  Heart pumping with exertion and fear, Julian burst out onto the roof of the Maiden’s Keep. As he blinked in the noonday sun, the dark shadow of two forms in close embrace resolved itself into Louis de Falleron with his hands around Jane’s neck. She was struggling in her cousin’s grasp, trying to plunge her knife into his side.

  Grasping his cane, Julian twisted the silver knob and withdrew the slender, tempered steel blade from the shaft.

  Then he stopped cold. Writhing in a perverted simulation of lovemaking, Jane and Louis were precariously balanced on the lowest part of the wall overlooking the river far below. One false move and they would both go over the edge.

  He advanced silently under cover of guttural cries and grunts from the combatants, too absorbed in their struggle to notice him. He laid down his sword because he dared not risk injuring Jane with it. He was about to snatch Jane’s skirts, desperate to hold on to her before she went over the edge, when Falleron succeeded in rolling her onto her back. She croaked feebly and raised her right arm but he removed one hand from her neck and knocked her arm back. The knife went flying into the air and disappeared over the wall.

  Julian dived in, grabbing limbs and skirts and pulling hard in the direction of safety. By a miracle the three of them landed on the ground in a mass of indiscriminate kicking and punching. Louis de Falleron managed to extract himself and retreated to the wall, panting heavily. Julian was interested only in Jane. Sitting on the cold stone floor, he cradled her between his bent knees, caressing her bruised neck, dizzy with relief to feel her pulse race and hear her labored breath.

  “You’re alive,” he murmured. “You’re all right. You haven’t left me.” And other nonsense, hopelessly inadequate to express the depth of his gladness that he had been on time.

  “Louis.” She gulped. “He did it.” Only with painful effort did the words emerge from her throat.

  “I’ve said it before and now it’s proven: The woman is insane.” Falleron had recovered his equanimity. “She lured me up here with a ridiculous story about selling me my own paintings. I agreed to see her because I felt sorry for the poor, mad creature. She attacked me with a knife and I was forced to defend myself.”

  Jane gurgled with rage and tried to spit at her cousin. “He attacked,” she rasped.

  “Why would I wish to kill her?”

  Julian looked over her head. “Why indeed, Falleron? Why would you wish to kill your cousin, the sole survivor of your family tragedy?”

  “She is not my cousin,” he ground out.

  Jane struggled to her feet. “Water.”

  Keeping his arm around her waist and a wary eye on Louis, Julian led her to a shaded section of the wall where a gutter collected rainwater. She scooped up the water, a meager half inch after a few days of dry weather, and swallowed it.

  Shaking off Julian’s support, she faced Louis with clenched fists. “You betrayed us to the Committee of Public Safety. It is your fault they all died.”

  Even with his clothes in disarray from the struggle, the Frenchman maintained his arrogance. “What new madness is this?” he asked with a curl of his lips.

  “I have proof.” Jane’s voice grew stronger. “The morning of the arrest, my father was distraught. I heard him tell Maman that her jewelry was lost. Later, when the guard demanded entry, he said that the man he trusted most had betrayed them. Since I believed it was Mr. Fortescue who denounced us, I assumed he had taken the jewelry. When I first learned that the price of our escape was the pictures, I forgot about the jewels. Last night Lady Belinda Radcliffe dropped her brooch, but even then I did not see the truth. I had other things on my mind.” Her glance flickered to Julian, then settled on Louis again. “Something about milady’s brooch preyed on my mind. It is a butterfly with diamond wings.”

  “Such pins are common.”

  “The body of this one is unusual, striped with jet and yellow diamonds like a wasp. Maman rarely wore it because she thought it ugly. I think if we ask Lady Belinda she will say you gave it to her.”

  “That proves nothing, not even that my cousin’s wife owned such a thing. This woman invented the story.”

  She turned to Julian. “Do you think it would be possible to discover if a French émigré such as Louis had been selling a magnificent collection of jewelry, piece by piece, over a number of years?”

  He smiled at her, his clever love. “I imagine that an ingenious investigator would be able to trace such transactions, if he had a good description of the pieces. I know the very man for the job.”

  “What of it?” Louis said. “Perhaps your father entrusted the jewels to me for safekeeping.”

  “Do you know, Falleron?” Julian said. “I think you have issues with consistency. Rather bold of you to claim that Mademoiselle Jeanne is insane when your stories resemble the inventions of a raving lunatic.”

  “But why?” Jane burst out. “Why did Louis betray us and why am I Miss Grey?”

  “Exactement,” Louis said. “At last the madwoman makes sense. There is no reason.”

  “Dear Louis could answer both those questions,” Julian replied, “but I doubt he will, so I shall make the attempt. You became Miss Grey so that the former Dauphin and rightful King Louis XVII could leave the country dressed as your youngest sister, Antoinette. I will hazard a guess that your father confided in Louis, who thought, understandably I am afraid, that it was a foolhardy attempt, likely to end with the arrest of anyone who knew about the plan, himself included, followed by the mass condemnation of the entire family.”

  Jane’s mouth fell open. “Of course!” she said. “Of course Papa would try to save the Dauphin and of course Louis would not, the dirty pig. So he stole the jewels and gave us up instead to save his skin.”

  Julian nodded. “He does appear to have got out of France without trouble, along with a fortune in jewelry if your supposition is correct.”

  “Mon Dieu, what a fairy tale you have all concocted. There is nothing you can prove against me. Nothing.”

  Jane glared at Louis in frustration. “We can prove it, can we not, Julian? Louis won’t get away with this. He admitted he knew I had escaped. He knew about the Jane Grey plan. If he was innocent he could not have known that, could he?”

  “Of course we will,” he said, taking her hand. But he feared he offered her false hope. Without the open cooperation of the Foreign Office, which wasn’t likely to be offered, proof would indeed be hard. He was certain to the depths of his soul that Falleron was the villain Jane claimed; he would always believe her against anyone.

  But what of others? The tale was a fantastical one and Louis could be convincing in his protestations. It would come down to her word against his. If they couldn’t bring Louis to justice, what would Jane do? He was terrified she would kill Louis and he wouldn’t be able to protect her from the legal consequences of the crime.

  “I am a duke,” he said. He was being damnably ducal this morning. “I have power and influence. I will ruin you, Falleron. I will bring you low. I will grind you into the mud as a poisonous insect deserves.”

  “How?” Jane asked.

  That was Jane, always challenging him. Louis, on the other hand seemed convinced. Too convinced. Carelessly Julian had left his unsheathed sword stick leaning against the wall. The blade glinted in the sun and caught his eye just as Louis snatched it up. “I’ll kill you first, Denford, and your putain,” he shouted, and recoiled in preparation for his lunge forward, the blade aimed at Julian’s heart.

  “No!” He had taken his eye off Jane and now she charged in full tilt, ramming her body into Louis and knocking him sideways against the low part of the wall. “You will not kill him, you will not. You have killed too many of the people I love.”

  Taken by surprise, Louis hovered on the narrow parapet until Jane lifted his thighs and sent him over the edge. His
cry faded during the long fall, leaving them silent and stunned under the June sun with the song of a lark high in the blue sky.

  Julian stood beside Jane, who stared down at the riverbank where the body of her cousin was little more than a speck. He took her hand and waited.

  “I did it,” she said. “I killed the man who betrayed my family.” Her eyes were dazed, her voice distant as though not fully comprehending what had occurred. She started to shake and he put an arm around her, silently offering support, comfort, or congratulations. Whatever she needed. And his heart soared at the words she used. She had included him among those she loved.

  “That’s not why I did it,” she continued, her voice filled with wonder. “In the end, after all this time, I killed Louis because I couldn’t let him kill you.”

  “No one has killed anyone.” Windermere’s voice came from the entrance to the tower.

  Julian and Jane turned around. “When did you arrive, Damian?”

  “I drove in and found the place in turmoil and your sisters full of a story about Mademoiselle de Falleron and her cousin. I didn’t wait to sort it out because I thought you might need my help.”

  “You would have been useful five minutes earlier. As it was we attended to matters.”

  “The unfortunate accident, you mean. I witnessed the whole thing. The Marquis de Falleron finally realized that he had maligned his cousin. When he heard the terrible tale of his family’s arrest, he was overcome with grief and tumbled off the tower. You know, Denford, it’s extremely irresponsible of your predecessors to allow this dangerously low wall. I expect you to do something about it to prevent future tragedies.”

  “I quite agree, Windermere. We can’t risk the children taking a tumble.” He tightened his hold on the woman next to him and hoped that some of those children would be theirs.

  Chapter 24

  While Julian and Lord Windermere saw to the retrieval of Louis’s body, Jane retreated to her room, drained of all emotion. The realization of Louis’s guilt and the fulfillment of her revenge should have caused her to exult, but all she felt was a strange void inside her. She closed her mind to any thought of Denford, of whether Julian could fill the emptiness in her heart or leave her in solitude forever. Since she wasn’t sure which alternative frightened her more, she lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling, refusing to contemplate the future.

  There were three people in the house who wouldn’t leave her alone. Tenacious as a pack of endearing terriers, the Osbourne girls invaded her privacy again. Given the choice between being interrogated by her former pupils and joining the ladies of the house party for a luncheon, she chose the latter.

  A distraction from the subject of the Falleron family was provided by the arrival of Oliver Bream’s parents, followed by the surprising announcement of Miss Cazalet’s betrothal to Bream.

  Lord Cazalet appeared to be making the best of things since he had failed to win a duke for his daughter. “My future son-in-law is a painter of great talent, as my daughter recognized. I can say nothing official, but I believe there may be a royal commission in his future.”

  The happy couple stood beside them, Henrietta looking triumphant and Oliver dazed as though he couldn’t believe his good fortune. Jane wondered if he were really in love for the last time; she’d been too wrapped in her own concerns to notice the transfer of his fickle affections from Lady Belinda. Yet there was something in the way he looked at his betrothed that gave her hope. She also had a feeling Henrietta was strong-minded enough to see off any new candidates for Oliver’s admiration.

  Oliver’s father spoke next and Jane learned that he was a gentleman and a titled one too. “I never thought,” Sir Walter Bream said, “that my youngest son would make anything of himself as a painter. Seemed a foolish occupation for a gentleman. But when we read in the newspaper that he was staying at the castle painting the duke’s sisters, Lady Bream and I decided to make the fifteen-mile journey to call on him. I’m proud of the boy.”

  Standing in the cluster of ladies surrounding the engaged couple, Jane looked up to find Denford’s dark presence framed in the doorway. Her heart shifted with excitement and fear. Across the width of the large saloon his eyes found her, conveying a message that sent her into a panic. When Lord Cazalet approached him she escaped through the door at the other end of the room.

  Jane managed to dodge him for a couple of hours until, with a sense of inevitability, she saw the shorn head over the wall and waited for Julian to stride into the knot garden where she had been hiding.

  “Why have you been avoiding me?”

  She couldn’t admit that faced with the prospect of happiness, she was terrified. Terrified that none of it was true and she would wake up one morning in Mathieu’s bed. Or terrified that it would be Julian’s bed but she would be just as unhappy.

  “I’ve been busy,” she said. “I’ve been making the acquaintance of your not-quite-Fortescue cousins. They are quite aimable.”

  “I’m glad to hear it since I doubt we’ll be able to prevent them visiting Denford regularly now that I’ve raised the portcullis to them.”

  “And then,” she continued, ignoring that we, “I was talking to Miss Cazalet. I always knew she was the most delightful young woman, very intelligent. She would have been a perfect wife for you if she hadn’t preferred Oliver. Did you know Oliver’s father was a baronet? It’s a kind of chevalier that we don’t have in France.”

  His forefinger to her lips cut off her babbling. “Hush, Jane. May I sit with you? We don’t have to talk but I am sorely in need of your company.”

  “I’d rather walk.” It was safer to keep moving.

  The path along the river was lovely in the June late afternoon, the warm air a silken caress. With a parasol borrowed from Miss Cazalet, Jane went hatless. Perhaps the soft breeze riffling through her hair cooled her overheated brain, or maybe it was the idyllic pastoral scene. The edge of panic that had gripped her heart since they descended from the tower that morning loosened its hold. True to his promise, Julian said not a word, merely keeping pace, hands behind his back. His dark figure at her side became a comfort, familiar and beloved, instead of a threat to her peace. He was right; she had been avoiding him, and after twenty minutes of silent communion she couldn’t even be sure why.

  “C’est incroyable, this affair of Oliver and Henrietta,” she said, picking up where they had stopped. “And Lord Cazalet has given his consent.”

  “A bit of luck the Breams arriving this morning or he might have had an apoplexy. I knew Oliver was from a good family but that is all. He never talks much about himself. His art, yes.”

  “And his ideas about art. And his stomach.”

  “Miss Cazalet will be the making of him.”

  “That is her intention.”

  She told him about Henrietta’s plans for Oliver’s future. He told her the Radcliffes had ordered their carriage without saying good-bye to their host while he was busy with the coroner, reporting Louis de Falleron’s “accident.” The man had swallowed Lord Windermere’s account without demur and the inquest should be only a formality.

  It was like being back in the library at the London house, trading news of their day’s activities. Though today she avoided mention of his sisters. All they could talk about was how much they wanted her to marry Julian. Neither did she report that everyone else in the castle assumed they would wed, though not with the same enthusiasm. Lady Ashfield was barely civil.

  A pang of longing for those evenings assaulted her. From today’s perspective they seemed like simple times when an enjoyable flirtation hadn’t interfered with her life’s goal. Now her heart was in knots and her brain made of cotton wool. They’d almost reached the farthest end of the river walk when the discourse turned personal.

  “You’re very beautiful today, Jane. You always are, but it’s a pleasure to see you in such fine gowns as you wore last night, and now. I don’t miss your governess attire.”

  She countered the caress of
his voice with a remark perversely designed to wound. “Henri liked his mistress to be well dressed. It flattered his importance, you understand.”

  “It would be unreasonable to be upset because your clothes were the gift of another man. He is the other side of the English Channel and I am here. I would like to give you gowns and much more besides, but not because it flatters my importance.”

  “Your importance is such, Monsieur le Duc, that it needs no flattery.”

  “As always, you like pretending to misunderstand me. Last night I said I wanted to marry you and shower you with luxury, and I do. But not from a sense of debt. Any sense of obligation is a tiny drop of water in the vast ocean of my love.” He stopped abruptly and took her hands in his. His blue eyes dazzled her, with their beauty and with their heat. “I adore you. I never knew what love was, but I recognize the joyful weight in my heart and the abject terror that you will leave me. Damnation, this is hard to talk about.”

  He was doing very well, judging by the eddies of sensation in her chest. Joy and terror afflicted her too, but her terror wasn’t the same. She still didn’t know if she was more frightened to live with him or without him.

  “Will you marry me, Jane? Will you stay with me forever as my wife and my love?”

  “It is not correct for a duke to marry such as I am,” she said.

  “I’m not offering as a duke, but as a man. Your blood is almost certainly more noble than mine, and if you insist on having this argument I’ll remind you that you are the daughter of a marquis.”

  “But I have not lived as one. Ma mère would say it shocked the conventions for a duke to wed a woman of mauvaise réputation.”

  “Goodness, you’ve become dreadfully French. You must always do as you please, but I’d just as soon you went back to being an English governess from an exotic island. While I am sure your mother was an admirable woman in every way, could you bring yourself to ignore her precepts in this one small matter?” He brought her hands to his lips, one after the other. “That was a smile, just a little one. I made you smile.”