by Jo Goodman
He sat down in the comfortably worn wing chair situated not far from where Miss Ashby still stood. It was a restful place, this chair, or at least he had always found it so. He caught one leg of a three-legged stool and nudged it closer so he might place his heels upon it. Easing back into the chair, he cocked one eyebrow at his guest and bid her sit.
"I shall stand, if you do not mind," she said, looking around at row after row of books that lined the room.
"I do mind. I want to sit, and it is poor manners for me to be seated in the presence of a lady."
"My gown is still damp. I will ruin—"
"Sit."
She dropped to the upholstered bench on the edge of the Aubusson rug. The blood-red damask covering contrasted sharply with her black gown. She steadied the snifter in her lap with her fingers laced around the stem. Her back remained ramrod-straight as she waited him out.
Her eyes were blue-gray, he saw at last, and there was nothing youthful about them. She might appear to be six-and-ten in every other way, but not in her eyes. They were far older than the age she had given as her own—wise, perhaps, but also weary. The long journey to London could explain some of it, his harsh treatment of her earlier could explain still more, but neither of those things filled the whole of it. He wondered what these eyes had seen.
"Who are you mourning?" he asked, taking in the unrelieved blackness of her attire.
The question surprised her. How could he not know that now? "The duke, of course."
West's slight smile was humorless. "There is no of course about it. Is he your father also? You are another of his by-blows, perhaps. Tell me, must I embrace you as my sister?"
She spoke softly in a carefully modulated voice that was no effort for her. "You mean to be horrid, I think. I was told that you would be, and you are."
"One endeavors not to disappoint."
"I did not say that I was in expectation of your rudeness, merely that I'd been told of it."
West wondered what he might make of that. He sipped from his brandy. "You had formed an opinion of me that was contrary to what you heard of my character?" he asked. "How is that possible when we can scarcely call ourselves acquainted?"
"We have met before."
"Now, there you are in the wrong of it. I have a happy talent for remembering faces and putting names to them. I would know if we had been introduced."
"I did not say there were introductions. Only that we have met."
He studied her face for a long moment. To her credit, she did not look away, but met his gaze directly. West suspected that she had kept her face averted before because she was afraid he would recognize her and have cause to send her away. Now that she had secured entry to his home, she was no longer so fearful that he would do so. He wasn't certain why she thought that was. He could put her back on the street as easily as he could have left her there.
His mouth twisted wryly as he set his brandy on the side table. But he hadn't left her on the street, had he? Like a bedraggled kitten, he had bundled her up and brought her home. He reluctantly concluded her confidence was not entirely misplaced.
"Then you are not my sister," he said at last.
"Not even your half-sister."
"Touche." He tipped his head forward in a modest salute. "We met in town?"
"No."
"Then it wasn't during the Season."
"No." She smiled faintly, amused that what had begun as an interrogation was now a parlor game. He had seventeen questions left.
"You are acquainted with Southerton?"
"No."
"Eastlyn?"
"No."
"Northam?" Before she could say no and tick off another point in her favor, he was inspired to ask a different question. "His wife, then, the former Lady Elizabeth Penrose?"
"No." She subtracted two more questions from him anyway.
West fell silent as he considered a different tack. He was reluctant to pursue their connection if it existed only through his father. It would be difficult to be kindly disposed toward her if she had been somehow enamored of the late duke. Her name meant nothing at all to him, but then he had not spent a great deal of time with the solicitor since learning of his father's passing. In point of fact, he had walked out on Mr. Ridgeway, although not before announcing bluntly that he preferred bastardy to dukedom. West fully expected in the coming days and weeks he would be learning the names of relatives who had never troubled themselves with any thought of him.
He had always been Westphal's bastard to them, as if he'd had no proper name of his own. He was the by-blow, born on the wrong side of the blanket. As a child he had accepted this last information in the most literal sense, assuming his mother had lain on the sun-faded side of a quilt when she gave birth to him. He could not imagine why he was treated so differently because of this oversight. He had finally been moved to ask her about it. It was the only time he could remember her striking him. She had cried afterward, of course, patently horrified by what she had done. There had never been any question that he forgave her, but he had also never forgotten.
There were things that could not be put from one's mind.
West removed his feet from the stool and leaned forward in his chair. His elbows rested on his knees and his fingers formed a steeple beneath his chin. A slight, vertical furrow appeared between his brows as his eyes narrowed. A slim lock of copper hair fell forward over his forehead, but he was too intent upon the pale crown of his guest's own hair to give it notice.
He had seen hair like that before.
"You are Ria," he said.
She marveled that he had won the game.
Chapter 2
"No one has called me Ria for a very long time," she said. "I wasn't certain you would know me by that name or any other. I thought I would have to explain so much more. You recall the occasion of our meeting, then."
West still had the stripes across his back and backside to keep the memory fresh. He did not tell her that. "I remember it well enough." There was little inflection in his voice to indicate any emotion. He picked up the brandy snifter and got to his feet "Will you have another?" he asked, pointing to her glass.
"No."
He nodded curtly and retraced his steps to the drinks cabinet, where he refilled his glass, allowing himself considerably more this time than last. He was willing to risk a sore head in the morning for the pleasant numbness of liquor now. He did not return to his chair immediately but stood where he was, considering what he would do next.
"You are much changed," he said at last. It was an absurd thing to say. Of course she was changed. A score of years had passed.
"As are you."
He shrugged. "How did you find me?"
"I inquired of Mr. Ridgeway. He gave me your address."
"As solicitors go, the man has a loose tongue."
"I pressed him rather urgently."
West had little difficulty imagining that, though by what means she had done so was a mystery. She was a thorough beauty with her sunshine hair and fine, perfectly symmetrical features. The blue-gray eyes were perhaps a bit too grave, but their color was splendid and the lashes that framed them were dark and long. She had not fluttered them once in his direction, yet West wondered if Mr. Ridgeway's experience had been different.
Ria was in no way comfortable as the subject of West's unwavering observation. She thought he had had sufficient fill of her in the carriage, then again in front of the fire. His repeated assessments were unnerving, though she hoped she gave no indication of it. It was not her wish to appear spineless.
She was more cautious in her study of him, confining herself to glances when she was certain he would not catch her out. It was not easy to accomplish as he rarely turned his attention from her. She wondered if he had not entirely absolved her of intending to do him harm.
It was not in her nature to harm anything. She would trip over her own feet rather than step on another creature, no matter how repellent the thing was. She had once
allowed a great, hairy attic spider to crawl up her bare leg until she could flick it away rather than squash it with the book in her hand.
West would not know that about her, she realized. There was no reason that he should. To her knowledge he had not put his eyes on her in twenty years. It was astonishing that he had divined her identity after so much time had passed.
"How did you know me when I stepped out of the club?" he asked her.
Ria felt a wash of heat in her cheeks that could not be explained by the proximity of the fire. She dissembled. "I heard the footman call you Your Grace."
"Paladin was also at the club this evening."
She had no idea who Paladin was, except that he must also be a duke and therefore addressed in the same manner as Westphal. Her silence did her in.
"Then it wasn't Ridgeway who described me," West mused aloud.
Ria chided herself for not offering up that most simple explanation. She just hadn't thought of it. The truth was that while he had not been aware of her for two decades past, it could not be said that she was in ignorance of him. She did not tell him this, however. Instead she said, "Mr. Dunlop gave me a sign." Ria watched West mull this over. As a lie it was a good one, she realized, for he was prepared to believe he might be betrayed for some coin. It also explained her earlier dissembling as an attempt to protect the footman from retaliation. When West grunted softly she knew he had taken the bait and swallowed it whole.
How could she tell him that she had grown up asking after him? Although she was discouraged from doing so by those around her, it merely made her more curious... and more careful. On visits to Ambermede when her parents were still alive, there were always trips to the village, and in the village there were always those who were willing to talk about the duke's bastard. She'd heard about his wild ways and his fiery temper, compliments of his upbringing and his red hair, they'd said. She knew he had been sent to Hambrick Hall so that he would not cross paths with his half-brother Tenley at Eton. He had distinguished himself at cricket and rowing, but perhaps more so as a brawler. When she was yet in the schoolroom, he had gone to Cambridge and studied mathematics. The villagers allowed that he was recklessly handsome but still no better than he ought to be. They were suspicious of his successes, and not a little envious of them, telling wild tales of smuggling French brandy and debauchery on the Continent.
She had seen a portrait of him once and wondered immediately how he had been coerced into sitting for it. Ria amended that thought: he had not actually been sitting. As a young man, West had posed standing beside a great black stallion. The artist had been skillful enough to capture insouciance in every line of West's lithe frame, from the shoulder resting negligently against his mount's flank to the leg making a casual cross of the other at the ankle. There was carelessness also in the shape of his mouth, in the smile that revealed a profoundly wry appreciation for the vagaries of life. That particular placement of his lips carved a deep dimple in one cheek and merely hinted at one in the other.
It was the eyes, though, that had riveted her attention. There was humor suggested in the dark green depths, but there was something else that was not so easily defined—and it made her shiver.
Ria had glimpsed it this evening, just moments before he had spoken her name aloud, and she wished she had been looking elsewhere. It was a glance that pinned her back and made her heartbeat trip. Anger was insufficient to describe it. Rage was rather more than it was. This was temper on a short tether, the desire to do harm and damn-the-consequences, masked by humor and a careless smile.
It made her less afraid for herself than it did for him.
Drink in hand, West returned to his chair. Instead of sitting, he hitched his hip on the arm and balanced himself with easy grace. She had been woolgathering, he noted, and wondered at the direction of her thoughts. She was not entirely comfortable in his presence—which he counted as a good thing—but neither had she made any noises about leaving him. He wished there were less trust and more wariness in her manner. What the devil did she want with him?
"So you induced Dunlop to betray me," he said consideringly. "Dare I hope it cost you thirty pieces of silver?"
"Not nearly so much as that."
"I was bought rather cheaply, then."
"I'm afraid so."
He nodded and sipped his brandy again. "To what purpose? You still have not explained yourself. You have made a rather long journey to arrive at just this end. Surely I am owed your reason for it."
"I require your help."
His smile was sardonic. "I am not so deep in my cups that I could not surmise that myself. The more salient point is, how much."
"A great deal, I should think."
"A hundred pounds? A thousand? You will have to name your figure." He observed that she was much struck by this. Her mouth parted and formed a perfect O.
"More than a thousand?" he asked. "Is it to be some blackmail scheme, then? You will be sadly out of it there. The wags have always been willing to say the worst of me, and there have never been any serious repercussions, save that I am not always invited to the best affairs. That, by the way, has always seemed a good thing to me."
Ria stared at him in fascination, her jaw having snapped shut when he mentioned blackmail. "You really are a most peculiar gentleman," she said at last. She added quickly, "I hope you are not offended by my plain speaking. I mean no offense."
He gave a short bark of laughter, genuinely amused. "You will have to expand your vocabulary considerably if you ever mean to give me offense, though you've made a good start by calling me a gentleman."
"Oh, but I didn't mean—" Ria stopped because she realized he was having fun with her. It was disconcerting, the way he could blow hot and cold, sometimes both at once. She raised her glass and swallowed a mouthful of brandy. Perhaps considerably more libation than she had consumed was required for full comprehension.
"I am not in need of funds," she told him, "as long as there is no interruption in my allowance. I can depend on you, can I not, to quickly take care of the matters Mr. Ridgeway puts before you concerning me?"
West found that his balance on the arm of the wing chair was suddenly precarious. Not taking his eyes from her, he carefully lowered himself onto the cushion. "Why would Mr. Ridgeway put what concerns you in front of me? And what do you mean about an allowance?"
"Surely you understand that you will control my allowance?"
"I surely do not."
"But it is one of the responsibilities of guardianship."
West did not like where this was going. If he could turn back the clock, he would once more be standing at the curb outside the club. On this occasion he would time his step onto the street differently. He would count himself fortunate indeed to be flattened by the approaching carriage and again by the hack.
"Then you must apply to your guardian," he said.
"That is what I am doing."
Even though he knew what was coming, it was not possible to brace himself for the blow. It was every bit as sharp as a jab to the ribs. He had traded punches in the ring at Gentleman Jackson's salon and not had the wind so cleanly knocked out of him. "You are mistaken," he told her bluntly.
"You are welcome to think so." Under her breath, she said "But I am not."
"I heard that."
She made a slight, apologetic smile.
"You are four-and-twenty," he said.
"Yes."
"In what society is that not considered past the age of majority?"
Ria tempered the urge to smile more deeply. His frustration—or was it fear?—was palpable. "Your father had rather strict notions of what should be required for my independence. It was determined that I was incautious in my judgments, though I do not think many concessions were made for the fact that I was yet a child when my parents died."
"How old?"
"I was just shy of my tenth birthday."
"You were orphaned at once?"
"Yes. Cholera, I am told. My
parents were in India. My father was assigned to the regiments in Delhi and my mother was with him. It had already been arranged for me to join them when word arrived of the epidemic. Not long after that, a second missive came informing us that they had died."
West thought Ria made this recitation with some effort to detach herself from it. He understood and appreciated what it cost her to do so. "Us?" he asked, prompting her gently to continue. "Who is us?"
"My great-grandfather. I was living with him when word came. His late wife was your father's mother's sister."
It was precisely this sort of revelation that made his head hurt. "The duke's aunt, you mean."
"Yes."
"You might have simply said so."
Ria regarded him from under the raised sweep of her perfectly arched brows. "I thought I did," she said. "Shall I draw the tree for you? Connect the—"
He held up one hand, palm out. "Pray, do not elaborate on that theme. We are family, then."
"Cousins."
"Distant," he said.
"To be sure."
West leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and pressed the crystal curve of his snifter against his forehead. While it had seemed warm in the cup of his hands, it was cool against his brow. He lowered the glass slowly and opened his eyes. Ria was still watching him intently, and he suspected she knew most of what was in his mind. He'd made no attempt to temper his reaction to her words.
"Why did you not remain with your great-grandfather?" he asked at length. "You were already in his care."
