The Duke’s Desire

by Margaret Moore

  “Nancy, I am so glad you are here. I have a very great favor to ask of you,” Galen said, smiling at her with some genuine good humor and not a little forbearance.

  “A favor of me, Your Grace?” she replied dubiously.

  “I should dearly love to have the recipe for the tarts. I know that no one will be able to make them as well as you two, but perhaps my chef in London can achieve a near proximity. Will you be so generous as to let me have it?”

  “It ain’t—isn’t—written down. I keep it here,” she replied, tapping her temple.

  “Perhaps you could write it out at some later date and send it on to me at London? Here is my address.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “Mrs. Davis-Jones, if you would be so good as to pass this to Nancy?”

  Of course, Verity thought as she reached out to take the card, her hand touching his for the briefest of moments. She would have to have Galen’s address if she were to write. Otherwise, she would have to get it from Eloise or Sir Myron, and that would involve more subterfuge and complications. It was much easier to read it on the card and commit it to memory as she handed it to Nancy.

  “Perhaps the duke would appreciate some tarts for his journey? Jocelyn and Nancy made a fresh batch yesterday.”

  “That would be delightful.”

  “They’re even better than the ones you had before,” Jocelyn assured him.

  “Nancy, would you be so good as to get him some?”

  Nancy nodded. “All right. I’ll say my goodbye, then, Your Grace. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Nancy.”

  She nodded briskly once, then exited the room, leaving Galen alone with Verity and Jocelyn.

  He knew it would be better if he left at once. He didn’t doubt that the longer he lingered, the greater the pain would be when he eventually tore himself away. But he had to come one more time to ensure that Verity knew his London address, and because he couldn’t bear the thought of not saying a final farewell to Jocelyn.

  With a woeful smile, he looked down into Jocelyn’s eyes that were so like her mother’s and touched one dark curl that was so like his.

  “I have to go now, Jocelyn,” he said softly. “I have a long day’s journey ahead, made somewhat better by the offer of the tarts.”

  “We never played Indians.”

  “No.”

  She gave him a look as serious and studious as an adult’s. “Why are you really going away?”

  He heard Verity’s sharp intake of breath, but ignored it. “Because I must. Sometimes people must do things they would rather not.”

  “But you’re a duke and rich, too.”

  Before Verity could say anything, Galen answered, “That does not mean I have no obligations, Jocelyn. I would rather stay a little longer, but I simply cannot.”

  Suddenly they heard noises overheard. Galen glanced at Verity and realized she had tensed. “I don’t think that’s a mouse,” he ventured.

  “It’s Uncle Clive and Aunt Fanny,” Jocelyn announced. “They’ve been asleep all morning.”

  “It is not yet ten o’clock,” Verity reminded her. “Your Grace, do you wish to take your leave of them, too?”

  “Sadly, I have overstayed my time as it is,” Galen replied.

  He didn’t want to see the Blackstones again, especially Clive, because he didn’t trust himself not to warn the man to keep away from Verity on pain of death.

  Galen crouched down until he was eye to eye with the daughter he yearned to acknowledge, and to know. “Goodbye, Jocelyn. I hope to hear your war whoop again someday.”

  Her lip started to tremble again. “Goodbye,” she mumbled. Then she ran out of the room. They heard her feet pounding up the stairs and a door banged shut.

  “I’m sorry, Galen,” Verity whispered as he straightened, “but it has to be this way.”

  He sighed heavily and gave her a weary shadow of his smile. “I know.”

  He reached out and took her hand gently. “I only wish—” he began gruffly, as if his words would come out of his throat despite a manly effort to keep silent.

  “Will you…can you…perhaps someday, when she is old enough to understand, will you tell her the truth?”

  Verity nodded slowly.

  “Please do not make me sound too much a rake, if that is not too much to ask.”

  “I shall tell her what a good and unselfish man her natural father was,” Verity vowed.

  Nancy appeared in the drawing room door, a cloth bundle in her hand, and Galen raised Verity’s hand to his lips for a kiss. “Goodbye, Mrs. Davis-Jones.”

  “Farewell, Your Grace,” she whispered as she curtsied.

  Then he walked toward Nancy, took the bundle, gave Verity a final, enigmatic glance, and left.

  “Goodbye and good riddance to ’im!” Nancy muttered as she closed the door behind him. “All charm and flattery, that one.”

  Verity opened her mouth, ready to tell Nancy that she was wrong. Quite wrong. There was so much more to him than that.

  And so much more that she wished to learn.

  But he was gone.

  He was gone forever.

  “I don’t see that he was so very handsome,” Nancy muttered as she headed to the kitchen. “What with that hair and them manners, looking at you like he’d like to take a bite out o’ you.”

  Verity reached for her shawl hanging on a peg near the door. “I am going to the woods for a walk, Nancy. I shouldn’t be long.”

  She didn’t wait to hear Nancy’s response.

  She fled to the solitude of the woods.

  A few days later, Galen sat in the library of his Mayfair town house, staring unseeing into the flames in the hearth. Heavy plum-colored velvet draperies covered the windows, so no street noise penetrated the silence. He had not bothered to light any candles. The door was closed, and the servants knew better than to disturb him there.

  Between the draperies, the dark paneling and lack of illumination, the library was as dim as a tomb, and Galen liked it that way.

  He sighed and ran his hand through his unkempt hair. He hadn’t gone out today, and he wasn’t going out tonight. He would rather sit in his library alone.

  He glanced at the letter from Eloise lying open on his desk. It seemed Lady Mary was going to be in London next month.

  He stood abruptly, poured himself a brandy and downed it in a gulp. Gad, he didn’t want to marry her! He didn’t want to marry anybody but Verity. He would never love any woman as he did her.

  He strode to the desk and grabbed Eloise’s letter. With fiendish relish he crumpled it into a little ball and tossed it toward the fireplace. It bounced off the bronze andiron and fell into the flames. Smiling with satisfaction, he watched as the edges caught fire, curled, blackened and disintegrated into ashes.

  Then he sighed. “That was mature,” he muttered sardonically. “And you thought you had become a more sensible man.”

  He so dearly wished he had always been a sensible man! Then he would not be in this hellish exile of his own making. He would have been worthy of Verity’s love from the beginning, and perhaps she wouldn’t have married—

  Such speculation was worthless. The past was the past. He could not undo what he had done, just as she could not. He must try to carry on.

  He picked up the other letter that had been on his desk, written in Buck’s familiar, yet obviously weak, hand.

  There had been a time Galen would never have written to his half brother, not even to inquire how he fared after his illness. Having lost Jocelyn and Verity, however…well, he had written to all three of his brothers when he returned to London.

  Buck had been quite ill with a fever and was slowly recovering. He didn’t know when he would be back in England, and the tone of his shaky writing indicated he really didn’t think Galen cared.

  Buck was wrong. Galen was truly glad to hear that his half brother was doing better and would be coming home. Galen would wait to see him before he went back to Italy, and he would hav
e War and Hunt come for a visit to London, too. If only he could add Verity and Jocelyn to that family gathering!

  “Your Grace?”

  “What it is?” he growled, turning toward the door.

  “I did knock, Your Grace,” a liveried footman stammered as he held out a silver salver bearing a visiting card.

  “I don’t want to see anybody.”

  “He says it’s very important, Your Grace, and was most insistent.”

  “Insistent?” Galen scoffed as he snatched up the card. “Who dares to be insistent to the Duke of Deighton?”

  He frowned as he read the name in the flickering light of the hearth fire: Clive Blackstone.

  He had absolutely no desire to see or talk to the obsequious Clive Blackstone. The man was probably going to ask him to invest in his mills again, something Galen would never do. “Tell him I am not at home.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace,” the footman replied, blanching under Galen’s angry glare. “He said if you refused to see him, I was to say it was about an extremely important personal matter…about a widow, Your Grace.”

  Galen’s throat went dry. “Ask him to join me here.”

  After the footman left, he tried to compose himself. He told himself it was natural that Blackstone would refer to Verity. She had been to school with his cousin.

  Clive Blackstone strolled into the library. Gone was the humble, fawning manner he had possessed in Jefford. Now the fellow boldly ignored Galen and let his gaze insolently rove over the multitude of richly bound volumes on the wall, the carpet and the fine cherry wood and leather furniture, as if he were an auctioneer Galen had summoned to sell off every piece.

  Galen said nothing; nevertheless, he knew this change of manner did not bode well.

  His perusal concluded, the man regarded Galen with a smile as he bowed. “Your Grace, I am so pleased you would see me.”

  “I was given to understand you have come on an important personal matter,” Galen replied, using the frostiest tone he possessed.

  The slyly smiling Blackstone did not answer right away. Instead, he sat down without waiting for an invitation to do so.

  “What brings you here?” Galen demanded.

  “Business, Your Grace, business. Of a very particular kind.”

  Galen didn’t like the man’s tone, either—smug and knowing, unpleasantly intimate. “Oh?”

  The man’s catlike smile widened. “It concerns my sister-in-law and her child.”

  “I must confess I fail to see why that would bring you to me.”

  “You know how much she cares for the child, don’t you, Your Grace?” Blackstone replied. “As much as a parent could care for a child, I believe.”

  He spoke in a way that made Galen’s eyes narrow and his jaw clench. “Yes, I gather she loves her daughter very much. What has that to do with me?”

  Blackstone answered his query with another question. “And the child’s father? How much does he care for her?”

  Galen felt the cold trickle of sweat down his back. “That is an odd question, Mr. Blackstone. The child’s father is dead.”

  Blackstone’s smile grew as wide as it was possible for a smile to be and he leaned back into Galen’s chair as if he were the master here. “Oh, is he?”

  “Don’t think to play games with me, Blackstone,” Galen answered, his voice very quiet and very stern.

  Blackstone sat up straighter, but that damnable smile didn’t disappear. “I did not come all the way to London to play games, Your Grace. I assure you, my object is very serious. Very serious indeed.”

  “What is your object?”

  “Sit down, Your Grace, and let us discuss my business as men of business should, calmly and rationally.”

  “Who do you think you are, to order me?”

  Blackstone swallowed hard, but he did not look away. “I think I am a man who knows your greatest secret, and so your greatest weakness, just as I know my sister-in-law’s.”

  Galen struggled not to show any hint of the anger, disgust and dismay roiling through him—or the terrible and familiar feeling of utter helplessness.

  But he was not a child anymore.

  “Sit down, won’t you, Your Grace?”

  “I would rather stand.”

  “Very well. I daresay we will come to terms quickly enough.”

  “Terms? What terms? For what?”

  “My financial terms, for keeping quiet about what I know.”

  “Blackmail. I should have guessed,” Galen muttered, his hatred for the man growing with every word Blackstone uttered and every minute he was in his presence.

  “An ugly word, but appropriate,” Blackstone acknowledged.

  “What is it you think you know?”

  “I know that Jocelyn Davis-Jones is your child, not my dear departed brother-in-law’s.”

  Galen made a derisive grunt. “That’s preposterous.”

  “I have it on the best authority.”

  “What authority?” Galen scoffed. “A genie? Some soothsayer? A gypsy, perhaps?”

  “Verity told me.”

  For an instant, Galen felt as if a rock had struck him in the stomach. Then his lip curled with renewed scorn. “You, sir, are the most outrageous liar I have ever had the misfortune to meet.”

  Blackstone didn’t blink an eye. “You know otherwise, for you confirmed it, too, that day in the wood. Such passionate embraces, too.” Blackstone’s smile grew more feral.

  Galen’s hands bunched into fists. Was it possible they had been seen and overheard? He remembered the snap of the twig. Gad, he had been careless!

  “I quite envy you, Your Grace, for that, and most especially the rest ten years ago. Or have there been other assignations I have not been privy to?”

  “If there had been, I daresay you are sorry you were not there to spy upon them.”

  “Are you going to deny that Jocelyn is your daughter?”

  Galen smiled a smile that should have given Blackstone pause. “No.”

  “I am glad of that.”

  “Why should I? Fathering a bastard is not a crime.”

  “But Verity doesn’t want anybody to know, and since I do, how much are you willing to pay to prevent me from sharing what I know?”

  “That would depend upon how many others you have already told.”

  “I haven’t told anyone—yet. No, not even dear, sweet, lovely Verity.”

  She didn’t know. Thank God, she didn’t know.

  “As for who I’d tell, Your Grace,” Clive continued, “why, anyone and everyone I met.”

  “What proof would you offer? It would be your word against ours.”

  “Even without proof, people would believe it. What was her mother but an adulteress? What are you but a lascivious cad? Do you think people require a legal document to believe a rumor?”

  Galen could not deny the truth of his assertion.

  “Besides, Your Grace, the child does look like you.”

  “As you are so good to point out, I have very little reputation to lose, so there is no reason I should pay for your silence.”

  “Except for the sake of the people you love.”

  Galen had been thinking matrimony a noose; now, he was caught in an even more terrible trap, because Blackstone had found the one reason Galen would do what every particle of his being rebelled against. For Verity and Jocelyn’s sake, he would do anything, even to putting himself in this loathsome man’s power.

  But not yet. Not until he was sure there was no other way. “Even if you destroy Verity’s reputation, what profit would there be in that for you? Daniel Davis-Jones’s will should still be legal and binding, so there would be no financial gain for you.”

  “Legal and binding under those circumstances? Perhaps. Or perhaps it will take years for the lawyers to sort it out. And perhaps the sudden death of the betrayed husband will be reconsidered.”

  “He died of pneumonia.”

  Clive’s grin was the most evil thing Galen had ever
laid eyes on. “Oh, did he?”

  “You know that as well as I. The doctor saw nothing suspicious.”

  “A jury of twelve good men and true might believe that a woman who had acted so disgracefully might be capable of anything.

  “Besides, even if she is not guilty of any crime, the papers will enjoy the trial, I’m sure. A juicy bit for their readers, and with a duke in the story, too. Shall we try it, do you think?”

  “You wouldn’t dare. I could hire the best lawyers in England to defend her.”

  “Of course you could,” Blackstone replied with a patronizing sneer that twisted into another mocking grin. “But in the meantime, my dear duke, think of the scandal. Verity will. You know her aversion to scandal, for the child’s sake. I merely thought I would give you the chance to be her white knight. Rather a new role for the Duke of Deighton, eh?” He chuckled softly. “However, if you will not pay me to keep quiet, she will. Somehow.”

  With a growl of rage, Galen lunged for the man, hauled him out of the chair by the collar and worried him like a terrier. “If you so much as lay one hand on her, I’ll kill you, by God!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  C live struggled in Galen’s grasp. “Do you want to add murderer to your reputation?” he gasped.

  Galen let go, throwing the man back so he hit the shelves, sending down a cascade of books. Clive covered his head with his arms and cowered, while Galen tried to calm his ragged breathing.

  There was a knock at the door. “Your Grace?” a footman inquired tentatively. “Is anything the matter?”

  “Some books fell. Nothing serious,” he replied as he continued to glare at Clive Blackstone, who stumbled to his feet and rubbed his throat.

  “That wasn’t wise,” he whispered hoarsely.

  His mouth hard, Galen glared at Blackstone. Every impulse within him urged him to tell this wretch to go to hell—but he could not.

  Just as Verity had never been able to.

  Galen had never admired her more than he did now, when he realized how strong she was to deal with this odious creature, and still maintain such spirit and determination. “How much will it cost to send you and your wife from the country?”