“I was fourteen and I was awed by you. You were pure and innocent, and I wanted to touch you, to see if you were real.”
“You didn’t even speak to me.”
“I had a Cockney accent, and when I heard you speak you reminded me of my father, that night I went to visit him. I felt inferior, and I didn’t want you to think of me like that. So I didn’t talk—not that first time, at least. I was content to watch. But then I couldn’t resist, you were such a chatterbox, and I realized how lonely and sad you were, yet how you were content and happy with the staff—and with me. I saw you sewing your dolls clothes and once I saw you in town looking in a toy store window at a fancy gilded bed with blue bed curtains. I wanted to buy it for you, but I knew that I would never be able to afford something like that. It just reinforced what I knew was the truth—I wasn’t good enough for you.
“So, I did my best to make you the bed—I cut myself so many times.” He laughed and shook his head. “It was all I could give you, and when your father took it away, when he called me those names…I was six all over again, chasing after those damn coins. I vowed when I turned away from you that I would find you again, and I would be someone worthy of you.”
The pain of his father’s words echoed in the carriage, and Lucy struggled not to sob. She could see the pain in his face. He didn’t need to comfort her—it was him that needed her comfort.
“To know you treasured it, you can’t believe what that made me feel that day. It made everything worthwhile, every pain, this secret, the horrors of my father, it made it worth it, because I did it for you, Lucy. For a chance to be yours.”
“You did what, Adrian?”
“Took my brother’s place,” he whispered, and the darkness descended once again.
“Tell me, all of it. I need to know, and you need to unburden yourself of this secret.”
“I was working late. The butcher shop was across the street from a notorious bawdy house. The blokes from the West End used to come and cause trouble there, and one night, when I was cleaning the street of animal offal, I heard a commotion. A young aristocrat came out of the house, drunk as a lord.” He grinned and shook his head. “He was a lord. There was a fight, another man came out and the young man engaged him in a fight, despite the fact he was so drunk he couldn’t stand. The other man beat him to a bloody pulp and left him for dead in the gutters. When I went to him, he was barely alive, his face a bloody mess. I searched his clothes for any identification, and that’s when I noticed his ring—it was the ring of the heir to the Duke of Sussex, and as I looked down upon him, I realized he was my brother. I don’t know what possessed me, but I hailed a hackney and drove to my father’s house. He was alone, and the butler let me in. I can still see my father sitting at his desk as I walked in, his heir hung over my back like a sack of flour, his blood running down my clothes.
“‘Good God,’” he said. “‘Are you still alive, after all this time? Ten years?’” His gaze never once strayed to his injured son. ‘Ten years in the stews without a damn farthing, and here you are, alive and hearty—big as an ox.’
“I said nothing. I placed his son on the settee and told the duke what I had seen. His mouth sneered as he looked at his heir.
“‘Waste of a man,’ he said. ‘Effeminate, weak, I cannot believe he sprung from my loins.’
“‘He needs a doctor.’
“‘Does he? I don’t think so, he’s getting exactly what I told him he would get if he continued on in these unnatural ways.’”
Lucy knew not to question what unnatural ways he spoke of.
“You can imagine the duke’s disgust. He was quite willing to allow his son to die on the lounge as he studied me. And then, before I knew it I was ushered to a room and locked inside. I was left there for hours, until he came back for me, and then he snuck me out of the house by way of the servants’ staircase. I was brought to a house—my father’s mistress’s house.”
“Anastasia.”
He nodded. “My father allowed his son, the true Adrian, to die, and he wanted me, his strapping bastard, to play his part. It didn’t matter that my mother was poor, without a drop of blue blood. All that mattered was that I was hearty and I knew how to survive—and fight. He had admitted to worrying over how his son would handle the duties of a Brethren Guardian when he was weak in mind and body.”
“He stole your life from you.”
Shrugging, he smoothed his hand down his pants. “It wasn’t much of one. As kind as the Beechers had been to me, I wasn’t their son. I worked for them and Mrs. Beecher fed me and washed my clothes.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
While she was flitting about Mayfair shopping and going from tea to tea, Adrian had been struggling to survive.
“My father thought it a grand plan, you know. He would see to educating me, to have me take on the role of an heir to an ancient dukedom. But I was an alley rat. Illiterate. Uncouth. I resisted the notion, but my father said that there would have been witnesses to his son’s beating, so he put it about that he was taking his son to convalesce in the north. We were of the same height, the same dark hair. He informed me then of his family’s legacy. How Adrian would never have been able to carry out the duties of a Brethren Guardian, but me, I survived the London rookeries with nothing but his scorn driving me! He was impressed by that. And I wanted to show him.” Lucy saw his fist curl. “I wanted to prove to the bastard that I was better than him, and better than his legitimate son.
“At first I was revolted by the suggestion, by his utter callousness for the loss of his child. But then I began to think. I had seen you, you know—had never forgotten you. I watched you from afar. Sometimes I would walk from St. Giles to Grosvenor Square and wait for a glimpse of you. I began to think of what I could have if I was the Sussex heir. I would be a peer, of your world and appropriate rank. I would be rich, educated, everything I thought you would want in a husband. And it was for that reason, for you—and to show my father that bastards could succeed in his world with nothing—that I became Adrian York, the heir to the dukedom of Sussex. We left London, Ana accompanied us. Everyone believed that my father had finally decided to take his degenerate heir in hand and shake some sense into him. My father educated me in both reading and writing, and literature as well as math, and the ways of the Brethren Guardians. Ana taught me about the ton, and how to behave like a duke. It is my father’s model that I am fashioned after.”
“Adrian, I don’t know what to say…what to call you.”
He looked at her, and from the brim of his hat she could see those beautiful eyes watching her. “Adrian. Gabriel, the boy I was, is gone. I never really knew him, anyway. And what to say? Lucy, say I haven’t turned you away. Say you do not think me less of a man for what I was born into. I’m not a duke—”
“You are, and a rather well-respected one at that.”
“It’s a sham.”
“Adrian, you are everything the word duke conjures up. You have not turned me against you. How could you?”
“Because I’m a bastard.”
“I for one am glad your father kept you. You make an excellent duke, and you’re a wonderful loving brother to Elizabeth.”
“She was already losing her sight, you know. My father kept me up north for months while she stayed in London. When she was due to come up to Yorkshire my father took Ana and I to Europe, on the pretence of giving his son a grand tour—and I did have one—but it was also where I began to learn more of the Brethren Guardians. In all, it took eight months to mold me into the heir. And when I finally met Elizabeth she was blind, and had thought me changed and matured after my tour.”
“Her brother had been a perfect toad to her, hadn’t he?”
“Indeed. She was shocked at the change in her brother. I had never had any family to speak of, and I cannot tell you, Lucy, how much I cared for Elizabeth. She was everything a boy could want in an elder sister. And it was not long before I saw how m
y father utterly ignored her. He was a hard man, cruel and cold. The only reason I was even allowed in his home was to continue the Brethren Guardian duties. He’d made it perfectly clear that I was useless to him otherwise.”
Lucy studied him. “You were branded.”
He nodded. “It’s the way of the Guardians. But I cried out, and my father demanded that I be branded again till I became a man.”
“Cruel, cruel man. You have suffered more than your fair share.”
“I have been given more than most, Lucy, and I shall never take it for granted. There is one thing that I am most thankful for—it led me to you.”
Reaching across the carriage, she grabbed his hand. “Yes, it did. Funny,” she said, smiling. “I distinctly remember telling Isabella at the ball, the night she met Black, that you were too ‘shiny,’ rather like a brilliant and pure archangel—and your name was really Gabriel.”
He laughed. “Imagine my horror when I thought how easy it would be to stroll into the ballroom and claim you—finally. But you thought me cold and passionless. How that hurt, Lucy my love, because my gut had burned for you for so long, and my body—I ached with the want of you, and my heart…it was so full of love for you, that I could not countenance how you could not see it. How you could not want what I could give you.”
She gasped, and felt her eyes begin to water. Raising her gaze from their hands to his face, she whispered, “And is it still, Adrian? Is your heart still full of love?”
He pulled her to him then lowered her onto his lap. “Lucy,” he murmured as he tipped her back and stroked her cheek, “I love you more than life itself. You are the first thing I ever loved—you’ll be the last, too. I never knew kindness until I stood in your kitchen and you tried to make me feel welcome. I never knew what it was to crave another human being. I never knew that love could hurt like the devil until that day when I gave you back that scrap of lace and you declared me cold and unfeeling.”
She tried to talk, but he placed his fingers gently over her lips.
“I never knew ecstasy—or the deepest, truest meaning of the word love—until we made it that night. Do I love you? Yes.” He kissed her damp eyelids. “Yes.” His mouth moved to her cheeks. “A thousand times yes.” Finally his lips brushed over hers. “Forever, and always, nothing could change it. Nothing.”
“Promise me you always will, Adrian.”
“I promise, little love.”
He swooped down to kiss her, but she stopped him with a hand over his chest. “Don’t you want to know how I feel?”
“I already do, I feel it in the way you touch me.”
She smiled. “Do you? Well, then, you don’t need the words.”
“I would die for the words.”
“I love you, Adrian. Not the duke, not the memory of the friend I once had, but the man you are, the man that is right here with me in this carriage—my husband.”
He kissed her, softly, lovingly, and when he pulled away, she looked at his eyes. “The ghosts are gone at last.”
“I’m glad.”
“It feels good to have the secret out. To know it is safe with you, and no one ever need find out. As far as society and Black and Alynwick are concerned, I’m the only duke—the true son of the previous duke.”
“Secrets are dreadful things, aren’t they?”
He nodded. “It’s cleansing, just talking to you. I don’t have to hide anymore. The words come easier now, because I don’t have to worry about mucking up things, or losing my accent and slipping back into my cant. I can just be me. There’re no more secrets, Lucy. Nothing between us. A fresh start, I think.”
“Yes,” she purred, “with my very own fallen angel.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THERE REALLY WAS nothing more revolting than Alynwick whispering to a lady, Elizabeth thought—and a married one at that. Something was going on with him. He’d been a constant presence at her side for weeks now since Sussex and Lucy had left for their honeymoon. She was coming to know him, his moods and his brooding presence in her salon. Tonight they were at the opera, and he’d taken her for a refreshment then promptly abandoned her to speak—no, whisper—with this other woman.
“You haven’t been to see me,” she heard the woman say in pouting tones. “I’m heartbroken, my lord.”
Alynwick’s reply was a mumble, intentional no doubt, for he knew Lizzy’s hearing was far more acute.
“Darling, you must come by the club.”
Lizzy’s ears perked up at that. What the devil was Alynwick up to? she wondered. Her brother should be informed. There was no telling what he might cause. And there was no denying that the marquis had been acting strangely—even for him.
There was a shuffling of bodies, followed by a demure little purr, and Lizzy was tempted to dump the contents of her punch glass over Alynwick’s head.
When he came back to stand beside her, she was positively fuming. “Take me home.”
“We just arrived.”
“I don’t give a damn, take me home.”
He heard the intake of her breath. “Lizzy, calm yourself.”
“I will do no such thing, my lord. How dare you make a mockery of me like this, talking to that…that woman.”
“That woman,” he hissed in her ear, “is Guardian business, and I need her cooperation.”
“I don’t care what you’re getting from her, take me home.”
“I think you do care what I’m getting, and perhaps giving,” he whispered huskily in her ear.
Pinching her lips together, she turned, sought to find a way out of this hell that was forming around her, but he was there, quickly latching on to her arm. “Where the hell are you going?”
“To the carriage. This was a mistake. I should have known better than to have trusted you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a rake, and a bloody heartless one at that.”
“When I agreed to allow you to help in this Brethren investigation, I assumed you were a brave enough girl for the task.”
“Brave, yes, idiot, no. You brought me here to flaunt your latest conquest in my face. She has nothing to do with Brethren Guardian business, and everything to do with slaking your lust.”
They were outside now, and Lizzy felt a measure of relief as the cool air kissed her cheeks.
“I am through discussing this with you. Call for the carriage, if you please.”
“As your ladyship demands,” he said in mocking tones. “Waste of a bloody night.”
“I couldn’t agree more. We discovered nothing but the fact that your mistress misses you in her bed. Hardly a startling revelation.”
“Oh? Do you miss me in yours, Beth?”
She would not answer that. She couldn’t. “Perhaps in your fantasies, Iain,” she grunted.
“Isn’t that the truth?” he grumbled as he helped her up into the carriage and slammed the door. They were off, and the silence in the cab was overbearing. She couldn’t stand it, the way her mind kept drifting back to that woman, and her voice.
“I will check the locks and windows before leaving you,” he said as his foot slid across the floor of the carriage, coming to rest between her legs. “My gut is on the alert tonight. Something is in the air.”
“Yes, I smell it, too. It’s called unfettered debauchery.”
She could hear the grin in his voice. “Are you offering, Beth, because I would, of course, be more than happy to accept such an offer from you. You’ve turned into such a plump armful that I couldn’t resist.”
“Go to hell,” she snapped, hating how he made her lose her cool elegance.
“Already been, my dear. The service was not up to my standards.”
She ignored him after that.
When they exited the carriage, she barely waited for his assistance. When Hastings opened the door, Maggie was there waiting for her, and she took her companion’s hand, anxious to be away from him.
“Well, how was your evening?”
&n
bsp; “Insipid. Uninspired and downright intolerable.”
“Oh, dear,” Maggie whispered as she steered them to her chamber door. “As bad as all that?”
“And then some. Maggie,” she said. “Fetch the writing box. I have a letter to write to my brother, and it needs to be posted first thing on the morrow.”
The sound of the writing implements on the desk told her that Maggie was preparing for her dictation.
“Dear brother, something of alarming import has come to my attention. I need you to return to London posthaste, for Alynwick, that horrid man, is bent on destroying the Brethren.”
There, she thought. That should get her brother’s attention.
LUCY WAS LEARNING what it was like to be a duchess—and a wife. The Yorkshire weather had cleared up enough that Adrian had taken her into the village and introduced her to the tenants. She had admired babies, visited the ill and took notes on the needs of the village. Her husband was genuinely well-liked and respected, and she couldn’t have been happier.
The vicar and his wife came over for tea, and some of the surrounding gentry came to call and to offer their congratulations. But for the most part, their days and nights were spent together, quietly—touring the grounds, or the house. Adrian was a patient tutor, helping her to remember names, and what rooms were used for entertaining for tea, or for reading.
“I don’t like to be such a stickler about such things, Lucy. I don’t really give a damn if you serve luncheon in the front room, or the back room. It’s for Lizzy’s sake, you see. She’s so damn insistent on being independent, but when things change, she trips, and could hurt herself.”
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. By the by, has she written to you? What did she say about our puppies?”
He had frowned then, and murmured that he had not yet had a letter from her, and he was worried.
“Perhaps Maggie has been ill and has not been able to write it for her,” she had suggested. Adrian had nodded, but he remained quiet the rest of the evening.
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