by Andrea Kane
Drake decided not to dispute the point by reminding her of the other occasions when he had rescued her from oncoming disasters. “Tell me about your investigation.”
She nodded. “It seemed logical that only someone who was present at Allonshire could have cut that saddle. At the time the thought of any family member or servant doing such a heinous thing seemed impossible.”
Alex’s qualifying phrase, “at the time,” was not lost on Drake. But right now he wanted the answer to a far different question.
“So you decided it was one of the guests?” The light was beginning to dawn in Drake’s mind.
“Yes.”
“So that night at the ball, when I assumed you were flaunting yourself to all those men …”
“I was hoping to learn something … anything.”
Drake felt utterly disgusted with himself and, at the same time, very proud of Alex, proud of her courage and humbled by the depth of her love for him. He had accused her of being unfaithful when, all the time, she had been protecting him.
“Drake?” Her soft voice interrupted his self-chastisement. He stared down at her, the moonlight making her eyes glow a silvery gray. “I don’t blame you. Under the circumstances, I would have assumed the same thing you did.” She grinned. “I acted a bit out of character that night.”
“You have my word that I will never doubt you again,” he told her in a solemn voice.
Alex’s eyes twinkled. “I shall remember that promise when I next offer you advice at the helm, Captain.”
Drake chuckled, contentedly anticipating the numerous turbulent quarrels that would accompany them to sea … and the equally turbulent reconciliations. With sudden clarity he knew that his restless journeys were ended. Any sailing from now on would be with his wife and children. It was time for Allonshire to become a home.
But first there was a mystery to solve.
Carefully he asked, “What did you learn from our guests?”
“That most noblemen are lechers and most noblewomen, whores.”
“An accurate assessment,” Drake retorted dryly. “But not terribly enlightening.” He paused. “What did you mean when you said that ‘at the time’ the thought of a family member or a servant being guilty seemed impossible? Has something happened since to change your mind?”
Alex hesitated. “It seems too horrible even to consider,” she said at last, “but tonight, just before you burst into my room, Sebastian mumbled the oddest thing to me.”
At the mention of his brother’s name Drake’s mouth grew grim, his features tense with anger. “What did he say?”
“When I realized there was no escaping him, I told him that, if he did this unforgivable thing to me, you would kill him.”
“And I would have.” Drake’s voice was steel.
Alex nodded. “I know. But he answered me by saying that I had it backwards, that it was he who would kill…” She swallowed nervously. “He never finished the sentence, because that was when you came to my rescue. I’m sure it didn’t mean anything, Drake,” she added quickly, seeing the flicker of suspicion in Drake’s eyes. “He was foxed at the time.”
Drake was not so sure. But, seeing the worry on Alex’s face, he decided that enough was enough. She was exhausted; it had been an emotionally draining day, and she needed to sleep.
“It’s time to rest, love.” He drew the bedcovers up, tenderly tucking them around Alex’s shoulders. “You look utterly spent.”
“But, Drake,” she protested, voicing the fear that gnawed at her nerves and crept, unbidden, into her mind like some horrid, poisonous insect, “what if he tries to … hurt you again.” She could not even bring herself to say the word “murder.”
Drake kissed her delicately arched eyebrows, smoothing away the worried pucker between them with his lips. “No one is going to harm me,” he assured her, giving Alex the words she needed to hear. “I promise you that. I have far too much to live for to let anything happen.” He saw her visibly relax, and he pressed her head gently to his chest. “The mystery will still be here for us to solve in the morning, sweetheart. But for now you and my child need to rest. So go to sleep.”
Alex nodded, settling herself fully atop Drake, snuggling against him. He was here, he was safe, and he loved her. Alex was whole. “Stay with me,” she whispered, unwilling to relinquish the security his nearness brought her.
Drake rested his chin on her head, lightly stroking her back in slow, soothing motions. “Always,” he promised, wondering how he was going to endure lying beneath her all night without making love to her again. His mind knew that she needed to sleep, but his throbbing body was equally insistent about its own needs, and he didn’t seem able to dissuade it.
Alex shifted slightly, trailing her silky hair across Drake’s pounding chest and unknowingly rubbing her lower body against his rigid erection. She then settled herself against him with a sigh, the movement bringing his hardened manhood to rest between her soft, inner thighs.
A low moan escaped Drake’s lips, as he instinctively sought the warm haven in which he longed to be. His mind warred with his body, insisting that only an unfeeling cad would attempt to seduce his half-sleeping, pregnant wife. But, God … she was so warm, so soft, her gently rounded body so lush. Drake gritted his teeth and strove for control.
Alex lifted her head, staring up at Drake with seductive, smoky eyes.
“You disappoint me, your grace,” she said in a husky whisper. “And here I thought this was the one area in which you needed no instruction.”
At her words a slow smile spread across Drake’s handsome face. In one exquisite motion he raised Alex’s hips and lowered her onto his seeking shaft, until he had impaled her completely and was buried deep inside her quivering softness.
“I humbly submit to your learned ministrations, princess,” he managed, and then abandoned himself to his wife’s magic.
Alex slept peacefully in Drake’s arms, the soft rise and fall of her breathing a soothing caress against Drake’s fevered skin. Tenderly he looked down at her, stroked the stray locks of hair from her face. Alex did not even stir. She was too deep in slumber to notice even an invasion of Napoleon’s troops.
Drake’s own body was possessed of a deep, ringing weariness, which tugged at him, insisting that he, too, sleep. But the events of the night weighed heavily upon him.
He and Sebastian were related by blood … but in all ways that mattered, they were neither brothers nor friends. Within Sebastian, Drake had always sensed an inner core of cruelty, of resentment, penetrating so deep that Drake had been unwilling to explore its magnitude. Until now. Now Drake was forced to consider the most abhorrent possibility of all. Was Sebastian’s hatred so strong that he would actually kill his own brother?
There was no concrete evidence, but what alarmed and sickened Drake was that he could not, with certainty, dismiss the questions that bombarded his mind. A man who was capable of raping his brother’s wife was capable of anything, even cold-blooded murder.
A dark feeling of foreboding drove the aftermath of warm lethargy from Drake’s limbs. The questions would continue to plague him until they were answered. He had to know. Now.
Very gently, so as not to disturb her, Drake lifted Alex’s arm from across his chest and disentangled her slender legs from his muscular ones. He rose from the bed and pulled on his breeches, shirt, and boots. Leaving the sole lamp burning in Alex’s bedchamber, Drake left quietly, closing the door behind him. He glanced up and down the dark, deserted hallway, reluctant to leave Alex unattended without knowing Sebastian’s whereabouts. The problem was solved when he spotted a nervous footman standing on the second-floor landing, peering down into the hallway below.
Drake strode toward him. At the echoing sound of Drake’s booted footsteps on the polished floor, the footman jumped.
“Oh, yer grace, ‘tis ye.” He looked relieved, “I was wonderin’ what ye’d be wantin’ me t’ do about dousin’ the lights.”
Drake frowned. “I don�
�t understand the problem. There is no one about. Why would you need to leave the first floor lit?”
The footman shifted from one foot to the other. He was relatively new to Allonshire, and the last thing he wanted was to come between his grace and Lord Sebastian.
“I’m sorry, yer grace, but Lord Sebastian is … usin’ the library.” His pleading look and the accompanying crash from below told Drake that “using the library” in fact meant “destroying the library.”
“Should I be waitin’ fer ’im t’ retire?” the footman continued.
Drake shook his head, feeling sympathy for the uncomfortable servant. “I don’t think that will be necessary.” He paused. “You are new here, are you not?”
Eyes filled with apprehension, the footman nodded. “My name’s Richards, yer grace; I’ve been at Allonshire fer three months.”
Drake studied the anxious little man. “And are you loyal to my family, Richards?”
“Oh, yes, yer grace, I am!” He winced at another crash from beneath them.
Drake nodded, satisfied that Richards would do nicely. “Good. I want you to do something very important for me, Richards.”
The eager servant stood up straighten “Anythin’, yer grace.”
Drake pointed in the direction of Alex’s room. “At the end of the hall is her grace’s bedchamber. The duchess is exhausted, and I want nothing and no one to disturb her sleep.” He gritted his teeth as the sound of splintering glass pierced the quiet of the slumbering house. “I want you to stand guard outside her door, Richards. Under no circumstances are you to venture one step away. I will go down and see to the situation in the library.” He almost smiled at the look of utter relief on Richards’s face. “I repeat: do not budge from her grace’s door until I return. Should there be any problem, you have my permission to shout for me at the top of your lungs. Is that understood?”
Richards nodded emphatically. “Yes, yer grace. I understand.”
“Good. You may go now.” Even as Drake’s words left his mouth, the footman was hurrying down the hall, obviously proud of the responsibility entrusted to him by the duke himself.
Convinced of Alex’s safety, Drake took the steps two at a time, heading purposefully through the dimly lit lower level of the manor and flinging open the library door.
An utterly disoriented, thoroughly intoxicated Sebastian turned glazed eyes in Drake’s direction. The blood had been washed from his face, but his lips and nose were swollen and limp strands of hair hung down over his flushed face. In his hand was an antique vase that he had been about to hurl against the bookshelves. A considerable amount of broken glass was already strewn across the exquisite Oriental carpet, and chairs had been heaved about and now lay on their sides.
Drake stepped into the room and slammed the door behind him. Scathing emerald eyes raked the pathetic human being who was his brother.
“Put it down, Sebastian.”
Sebastian paused, lowering the vase to his side. “Why, your grace,” he mocked, weaving unsteadily in his attempt to regain his balance. “What brings you down here?” He lifted his other hand, which clutched a bottle of claret, bringing it to his lips and swallowing. Pointedly he added, “I would’ve thought you’d be comforting your little wife. S’matter, brother? She tire you out already?”
Drake fought the violent surge that rose inside him at Sebastian’s taunting, baiting words. “You sicken me.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t sicken your wife,” he sneered back. “Does it bother you that your duchess wants me more than she wants you?”
Anger exploded in Drake’s skull. He stalked across the room, tore the bottle out of Sebastian’s hand, and slammed it down on the table.
“I want you away from Allonshire by dawn,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “You are no longer welcome in my house, now or ever.”
At Drake’s words all the mocking amusement left Sebastian’s face, replaced with a hatred as sinister as evil itself.
“Your house?” he snarled, his teeth barred with rage. “Your house? But for some cursed fate, this would have been my house.” His unnaturally bright gaze moved restlessly about the massive room. “Allonshire and everything in it should have been mine. You never wanted it, never gave a damn about everything that would someday be yours.” He stared back at Drake, but his glassy eyes were unseeing. “I was the one who wanted it … all of it. And I would have had it—the title, the land, the wealth, all of it—if you had died, as the missive reported. But, damn you, brother, you came back. After all that time, and when I was so close to having it all, you came back.” Malice was etched in every line of his flushed face. “Why couldn’t you be dead?” he spat out. “Why?”
Drake stared at Sebastian’s wild, half-crazed expression and, in that moment, he had his answer. Sebastian’s hatred was more than enough to provoke him to murder.
“You have a sick, diseased mind.” With great effort, Drake kept himself from pounding Sebastian. “I want you out of my house and out of my sight.”
“One day Allonshire will be mine,” Sebastian shot back.
The ominous threat pushed Drake beyond any semblance of control. “That day will never come, brother. Never.” Drake bit out each word. “Regardless of any ill fate that might befall me, you will never inherit my title or my land. Do you know why, you miserable bastard? Because the next heir to Allonshire is growing inside my wife’s womb.” Sebastian’s head shot up, but Drake was beyond stopping, beyond rational thought. “That’s right, Sebastian. Alexandria is with child. And, with the tendency toward producing male offspring in our family, I have no doubt that it will be a son. So hate me with all your heart, and wish me dead and in hell. No amount of hatred can change Allonshire’s future!”
Sebastian just stared at him for a moment. Then an insane, primitive roar erupted from his chest. The delicate vase in his hand shattered from the force of his grasp, splintering into bits, spattering droplets of his blood on the carpet.
“No!” he screamed, shaking with the force of his rage. “It’s impossible! You’ve always taken everything that should have been mine, but not this! Not this … not after all my planning!”
“Planning?” Drake’s voice was suddenly deadly quiet. “What planning, Sebastian?”
His brother’s expression was that of a madman. “I was so blasted close. Why did you live? It was so easy until then. He was weak and pathetic … always was. Even Mother was too much for him. He was so damned trusting. Never even suspected.”
An icy wave of foreboding swept through Drake. “Never suspected what, Sebastian? What was it that Father never suspected?”
Sebastian gave a wild, crazed laugh. “All those men. You knew about them, didn’t you? And he thought she was the epitome of virtue. What a fool! She laughed at him, you know. And I don’t blame her! It was just as easy for me.”
The surprising knowledge that Sebastian also had known about their mother’s affairs was insignificant at the moment. Drake teetered on the bitter edge of discovery.
“Even the timing was perfect,” Sebastian continued as if he were alone in the room. “The grieving father withering away over the death of his beloved elder son. Who would suspect he was being poisoned? And then it would have been mine. All of it.” He turned his unfocused stare to his throbbing hand, watching small rivulets of blood trickle along his wrist.
“God …” Drake breathed, pain and rage uniting into a knot of explosive emotion in his chest. “You black-hearted bastard, you killed our father. You murdered him in cold blood … for a title?” He stared at the evil man before him, a man he had never really known at all.
A self-satisfied smirk played upon Sebastian’s lips as he turned back to his brother. “Neither of you deserved the title. He was too weak; you have no use for it. Only I am worthy of being the Duke of Allonshire. Only I.”
Drake walked over until he met Sebastian’s drunken gaze.
“Tomorrow,” he said in a lethal whisper. “At dawn. With pistols. T
o the death, brother:”
Sebastian’s watery eyes widened. “Are you calling me out, your grace?” He laughed. “I accept. It will be my pleasure to see you dead at my feet, Drake. Then it will all be mine.” He walked around Drake and staggered toward the door. When he reached it, he turned, a hateful gleam in his eyes. “Alexandria’s luscious body can be no more than a few months along. After I kill you, I can easily encourage her to wed me and then claim the child as mine. I will greatly enjoy possessing everything that was yours, not only your worldly goods but your exquisite wife and your unborn heir as well.”
Drake lunged at him with a wild growl, but Sebastian had anticipated the move and was gone long before his brother could reach him. Drake tore after him, murder in his heart. But, halfway down the hall, he got hold of himself. No, he thought, as the front door closed behind Sebastian’s retreating figure. Not this way. Killing Sebastian now would be too easy, too painless for the miserable bastard who had killed their father and coveted Drake’s wife and his world. Justice would be done, but in a most apt way.
Taking deep, calming breaths, Drake walked slowly up the steps and down the hall. They were all safe tonight. Sebastian would not return before dawn.
Richards saw Drake approaching and hurried to meet him.
“Yer grace? Are ye all right?”
Drake forced himself to focus on the concerned face of the footman. He nodded.
“Fine, Richards.” He glanced at Alex’s closed door. “Her grace?”
“The duchess ‘as not been disturbed, yer grace.”
“Thank you, Richards. I have one other favor to ask of you and then you may retire for the night.”
“Anythin’, yer grace,” the proud servant replied.
“Awaken Smitty and inform him that I need to speak with him at once.”
Richards blinked. “Now, yer grace?”
Drake nodded curtly, well aware of the lateness of the hour. “Yes, Richards. Now.”
“Very good, yer grace.” The firmness of the duke’s tone told Richards all he needed to know. In the blink of an eye he was gone.
