The Duke

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “So I have,” Cole confirmed. “But he never gave me his first name.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Morley tugged at his white tie and high collar. “What significance does the man’s first name have to do with the case?”

  “It has everything to do with it.” Cole could no longer stand still, no longer could he be in this house, this room. He needed to act. He needed to follow this mystery through to its end, and he had a good idea where that would be. “When I was in Lady Anstruther’s garden earlier the same night that Lady Broadmore was killed, she mistook me for someone else in the darkness. She called me by his name, his first name.”

  “Oh?” Morley’s light brows crawled up his forehead. “And that name was…”

  Cole had a distinct notion that the clever detective already knew, but he wanted verbal confirmation, and so he gave it to him with all the gravity of the giant stone of dread sinking into his gut.

  “She called me Jeremy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  If Cole had learned anything from his time as a spy, it was this: A secret always wanted to be discovered.

  He didn’t know how long he stood in Imogen’s garden lifting his face to the sky. Long enough for Argent and Millie to help her into bed and stand vigil for a while. He listened to them consult with O’Mara and Rathbone before returning to their own home.

  He evaded their patrol, waiting for his thoughts to coalesce into some semblance of a plan, and then scatter to the cosmos, as random as the placement of the stars.

  As he let a chilly summer breeze tousle his hair, he took deep, centering breaths and thought about how odd he found it that people had always attempted to find meaning in the night sky. To connect the position of the celestial bodies and turn them into what they wanted—what they needed to find when they looked to the stars. A fallen hero. A delineative creature. In many cases, a god or goddess.

  Cole knew the constellations. He could name and identify many of them from several parts of the world. But, in truth, he’d never found what the astronomers and philosophers had. Could never truly identify the huntsman, Orion, in his handful of anemic stars, nor did he see Castor or Pollux in the twin belts of Gemini. They’d been men, legends at best. Perhaps only myths created by ancient bards. Not lines drawn by primeval theologists, immortalized in the eternal beyond. If those mythical men ever lived, then they’d surely died, and they’d gone the way of all creatures.

  From the time he was young, Cole realized he’d not possessed the capacity for romantic fancy. He could not draw the lines he needed to find the miraculous divine in the everyday. He understood truths that many rejected. That perspective most often designated righteousness. That most of the constructs of society were imaginary, invisible, especially to those in Orion’s position. Past the sky, above the moon. If the hunter was real, were he immortalized there in the night sky as his mythology dictated, he could look down and see nothing of what men fought and killed each other over.

  For country borders were merely lines on a map, not on the earth. And currency was little more than an agreed-upon idea, a value assigned to pretty minerals. An economy represented an intricate web of interests, of production and consumption, and seemed to always be destined to eventually collapse.

  Because every society, every civilization, seemed to want to reject one simple and evident truth. That man for all his forward progression was still, in his being, no better than a beast. Driven by primal instincts and powerful, universal hungers. Try as he might to blame his primitive carnality on various and sundry underworld demons throughout the ages, Cole believed that a man’s wicked will was solely his own.

  However, as he’d nursed his rather nihilistic view, buttressing it with dark life experiences, he’d begun to realize he’d overlooked one very important thing in his estimation of mankind …

  Women.

  A creature of a different sort, one fabricated from innumerable paradoxes. Both potent and persecuted. Made of equal parts fear and fairness. Wit and wisdom.

  Of strength and secrets.

  Certainly they had instincts and deviances of their own, but they existed generally above the cruel and bestial egocentricity of their sexual counterparts. They were constructed of kindness, of altruism, of ethics and understandings not normally possessed by men. Especially men like himself.

  Imogen, he predicted, had more secrets than most. Secrets meant to be discovered, ones that would have meaning for them both.

  Cole took one last look around the garden, a place he now thought of as synonymous with Imogen. The place from which she’d first captured his attention, then his lips, and eventually, his heart.

  It had taken a long time for him to learn to climb after his injury, but his spelunking expedition to the Americas had been invaluable. Discarding his jacket to the bench they’d shared only days ago, he gripped the trellis with his good hand, and began to ascend.

  The hook on the palm of his prosthesis attached to the harness around his torso did little better than anchor him in place as he made upward progress with his three other limbs. But he managed with almost his previous stealth. Once the second-floor balcony was in reach, he leaped over, catching the entirety of his weight with one hand. He gritted his teeth as the stitches in his shoulder strained and threatened to rip. With a foul curse and a surge of strength, he maneuvered his hook to sink into the wood railing once he steadied himself. Finding purchase with his feet, he vaulted the railing and landed in a soft crouch in the shadows of the balcony.

  The first-floor locks were many and secure. The second-story doors and windows, however, were often protected with nothing better than a hook-latch.

  Depressing the lever inside his prosthesis, Cole thrilled to the metallic slide of the thin blade. Carefully, he fitted it in between the balcony doors, and lifted until it released the latch with a satisfying click.

  That accomplished, he retracted the blade and opened the door, entering her house as a shadow might, without notice.

  He’d done this before, an infinite number of times, but never with his pulse thundering. Never with his mind so occupied.

  Or his heart so vested.

  How could Ginny and Imogen be connected by one young, inexperienced game-maker? Certainly, there was more than one Jeremy in the world, but the coincidence was simply too strong to ignore. A prostitute and a woman who dedicated her life to saving them … it wasn’t much of a leap to assume that they might have known each other.

  Or shared acquaintances at the very least.

  If Imogen’s father had been a longtime client of the Bare Kitten, if he’d owed the establishment a great deal of money, it followed that the remaining family might have some dealings with the former—or current—proprietor, and that she would be ashamed to admit said dealings to society.

  Especially to an admittedly antagonistic duke.

  If it was found out that the countess Anstruther was associated with a Piccadilly pimp, it would be more than a scandal. It would be her undoing.

  The balcony door opened to the master suite, a room he’d expected to be hers. But as Cole crept across the plush carpets to the bedside, he was astonished to find a plump, gray-haired woman prone in slack-jawed slumber.

  Her mother, he realized, as an ache bloomed in his chest. Imogen had relinquished the largest and most comfortable rooms to the woman, most likely taking residence in the countess’s suites, as she would have when Earl Anstruther was still alive.

  It seemed like something she would do, he thought with a reluctant half-smile, sacrifice luxury for those she loved.

  Making his way into the hall, he hesitated, glancing toward what he knew to be the countess’s suites merely steps away.

  He would find Imogen there; her sleep aided by many glasses of champagne. Soft, pliant, and warm. Lord, how his fingers itched to open the door to her room and let the darkness decide what happened next.

  But what he wouldn’t find in her bed was her secrets.

  Th
ey resided in a different room, of that he was certain.

  The day he’d fought the gangsters on her porch, she’d led him down a long hall toward the back stairs. Upon finding a door slightly ajar, she’d quickly pulled it shut, casting him a guilty look.

  He’d known in that moment that the room contained something she hadn’t wanted him to see. At the time, he’d politely pretended not to notice.

  At the time, he’d not known her past was so connected to his own.

  He turned to the stairs, making his way from the second floor to the ground level. Then on flat, noiseless feet he crossed the grand entry and hall to the familiar door. It didn’t surprise him when he found it locked, and he effortlessly picked it, easing the door open on quiet, well-oiled hinges.

  Being in the middle of the house, the room boasted no windows, and the hall outside was lit by little more than moonbeams and the wan glow of a lamp left burning for those who would make a nocturnal meander to the kitchens.

  Cole got an impression of strange, mismatched angles inside the room, much like the skyline of a city from above. He fetched the lantern from the end of the hall and returned, holding the light aloft.

  Paintings?

  He drifted into the large, dark-paneled room, drawn forward by equal parts awe and apprehension. Here was her sanctum, the place where she kept the renderings of her mind and memory.

  Her easel and tools were supported by the far wall with a chaotic sort of organization. The sketch of Achilles was propped next to them, beginning to take real form with the application of a few rough coats of heavy color.

  Dusty coverlets adorned a few of the taller canvases, though just as many were left exposed. Various landscapes transported him to the countryside, and then to a back street of the East End. Others were obvious renderings of places she’d only ever seen in other paintings. Morocco or Marrakesh, the Indies, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, the Alps. All painted with a wistful, yearning hand. It was as though she accepted her ignorance, and created with her brushes her own idea of a destination. Each of those landscapes had a sense of incompletion, of expectancy, as if they waited for her to travel there, to fill in the reality over the fantastical so they could be considered finished.

  She was more talented than he’d realized, Cole thought. What if he took her to these places? Destinations he’d likely already traversed, but instead of his aim being entrapment and espionage, it would be nothing more than enjoyment.

  Perhaps, while he watched her transpose what beauty her gentle eyes found, he’d locate that thing for which he’d been eternally searching.

  Peace. Purpose. Meaning.

  Love?

  Though he knew that no one resided on this floor, Cole moved with the utmost care, with the sense he was on hallowed ground. An expectant stillness permeated the room, a sacred silence that both beckoned and repelled him.

  Setting the lantern down on one of the many trunks scattered about the room, Cole reached for one of the covered canvases with an unsteady hand.

  Secrets were always covered up and, once revealed, could never again find the darkness.

  He hesitated, his fingers tuned to the coarse ridges of oil paint beneath the thin cotton.

  Tell me what you fear. Tell me your secrets and I’ll hold everything together. He’d promised her that a mere few hours ago.

  Must I? she’d replied. Must the past matter so much now that you are back and I am who I am instead of who I was?

  Who had she been? he wondered as his fist tightened on the cover, bunching it into his grip as he ripped it away.

  He didn’t stumble backward, because a man with his reflexes wasn’t prone to such an enervation. Though he did have to admit that being confronted with his own brutal visage found him several paces behind where he’d revealed it.

  Crimson. It once again overtook his entire field of vision, painting everything the color of blood. No, that wasn’t it. Not everything. The color was contained within the canvas before him. Bold. Impenitent.

  Unmistakable.

  A tremor of potent emotion coiled around his bones, the serpentine darkness contracting until he swore the tension of his fist closing and his shoulders bunching created a tight, unnerving sound.

  A crimson room. A single lamp. A naked man.

  Him.

  Not as he was now. Not as large, as scarred, as old, or as broken. But as he was then. There. At that moment he’d stood in that red room years ago both whole and heartbroken. And hungry. Starving for the affection and gentle grace granted in the last place he’d expected to find it.

  Only one woman had seen him as he was depicted in that damnable painting. Eyelids half-closed with inebriated arousal. Features taut with poorly concealed grief. Long muscles tensed with barely controlled lust.

  Ginny.

  Gin-ny. He carefully enunciated the name in his mind as he strained to grasp a drunken image out of a past buried beneath so much brutality and blood. Ginny … Imogen …

  He’d thought it a boozy moniker. Something to do with the back-alley gin peddled by such contemptuous swindlers as Ezio del Toro.

  The memory he’d lost slammed back into him with bone-shattering speed. It climbed into his psyche. It created him, destroyed him, and then built something new from the broken pieces as he stared at the rendering of the past.

  Ginny. His Ginny … had been none other than Imogen Pritchard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  As it turned out, Imogen reacted to excess amounts of alcohol much like her father did. That is to say, rather quickly. She’d also inherited his enviable immunity to the miserable aftereffects so many were struck with after an evening of overindulgence. A blessing, that. And possibly a curse, she supposed. Without the ghastly consequences, inebriation seemed less dangerous, and thereby had the opportunity to become more frequent. Drinking had ultimately been her father’s undoing. She’d have to be mindful of that.

  It was the roar of an empty stomach that drove her out of bed before the sun touched the horizon. She decided to nurse her hunger—and a lingering sense of chagrin—in the kitchen over some scraps of cold chicken, apple slices, and warm, frothy milk.

  She eschewed her wrapper as the summer’s night was nigh to balmy and the white nightgown Millie had selected for her was layered with lace, cotton, and silk. She was plenty warm, almost too warm, as she padded on bare feet over the luxuriously carpeted halls of the Anstruther manse. Perhaps the champagne had a little something to do with that as well.

  She’d have to apologize to Christopher and Millie, she thought with a wince. They’d been so lovely. So circumspect and gentle as they’d taken her home, and Argent had given them privacy as Millie had helped her undress and tucked her in. What dear friends they were.

  She’d have to make certain that Argent didn’t nurse his anger toward Cole. He hadn’t taken advantage of her, though he had seduced her. Just like he’d seduced her three long years ago and her traitorous body had desired the pleasure his clever fingers had produced ever since.

  An insistent yawn interrupted her progress down the grand stairs, and she made up for lost time by hurrying the rest of the way on her toes. Driven by a remembrance of some fudge she’d procured in the not-too-distant past, Imogen rushed across the foyer and through the great room lit only by a few skylights.

  Golden lamplight beckoned her down the long hall toward the back stairs, and she followed it past the study, the library, and—

  Oh bugger.

  The lamp usually left burning dimly in the hall no longer maintained its perch. The glow she’d followed came from inside the room.

  Her room. The dark, windowless place she’d used as storage for her paintings.

  Fear licked at her spine with a sharp, dreadful tongue. A stranger was inside her house. Someone who’d picked the lock to that singular room, to which she possessed the only key. Not even the housekeeper could get in there to dust, as Cheever had disapprovingly mentioned too many times.

  So who? Mr. O�
��Mara? Or the dusky, dangerous-looking Rathbone? Didn’t seem likely.

  The murderer, perhaps? Barton? A stealthy criminal who’d left so many bodies, so many women, strangled in his villainous wake?

  What would he want with her paintings?

  Now was not the time to find out. Spinning on her bare heel, she lifted the hem of her pale nightgown and made to run away on silent toes. She’d go to the guardians Morley had appointed for her. They’d know what to do. Then she’d check on Isobel, just to make certain her sister was all right.

  Three steps. She made it three measly steps before a large, frightening shadow blocked the glow of the lantern and cast the hall into darkness.

  “It will do you no good to run.”

  The dispassionate words froze Imogen to the marble floor. She didn’t have to turn around. She knew his face already. Had memorized every inch of him like a beloved poem. The meter counted by the figures used to measure his impossible height. The prose selected from the lyrical beauty of arrogant angles and brutal lines. The structure as sound as the thick bones and sinew that crafted him into something more epic than even Dante could devise.

  Imogen used immeasurable, incremental movements to face him. Thinking absurdly that Dante had used the very words in his Inferno to describe the duke in the doorway.

  Savage, rough, and stern. The wrath emanating from him did, indeed, make her veins and pulses tremble.

  He knew. He’d found the painting.

  “Cole, I—”

  He moved like a shadow, taking her in his clutches before she could pluck a thought from the miasma of panic and arrange it into a semblance of diction. His grip was punishing as he dragged her into the room and shoved her in front of the canvas.

  “What the bloody hell is this?” He gestured wildly toward his own likeness. “Tell me who you are!”

  With a numb sort of detachment, Imogen studied her own painting and thought about who she wasn’t. She’d never been a poet, for example. But she’d tried to convey in her rendering the emotion he’d elicited in her. The elegiac effect of his disappearance. The euphoria she’d experienced upon his return. The eager longing that overtook her body whenever she gave in to nostalgia. The multitude of perils the exposure of this very evidence posed to her entire existence.