What I Did For a Duke Read online

He wanted her blessing?

  Blessing, her arse.

  The pain was a late arrival—the numbness had to finish its turn with her first—but it was nasty. She wanted to buckle, lie on her side and gasp like an eviscerated fish. She held her breath against it, but her mouth parted. She cared naught for living in the moment, but apparently her body was sensible. It wanted to breathe.

  And when she did, she breathed in wood smoke.

  She gagged. She never wanted to smell wood smoke again. It was the smell of heartbreak.

  Harry, her . . . her . . . . murderer . . . was fussing idly with one of the silver buttons on his coat, but peering at her intently. And for the first time since she’d known him, she couldn’t read his thoughts.

  “Will you . . . will you be happy for me, Genevieve?”

  Was he peering at her as intently as she thought? Perhaps it was just that shock had turned the world convex. He looked almost distorted, preserved under glass, already untouchable and forever out of reach.

  “Happy,” she parroted after a moment. She had trouble with the Ps. Her lips were rubbery and incompetent. But somehow she got the corners of her mouth up. Because when one was happy, one smiled.

  This response seemed to satisfy him. He turned slowly away from her and thrust his hands deep into his pockets, hunching his shoulders self-consciously, and then sighed, looking back toward the house, perhaps pondering the wonderment of impending matrimony.

  “And once Millicent and I are wed, should I be so fortunate as to be accepted by her, we shall all of course continue to be such great friends. There will be parties and picnics and children and—”

  That’s when Genevieve spun on her heel abruptly.

  She didn’t precisely run. She wanted to. Still, she made good time for a woman with legs of lead. The distance back to the house stretched like taffy. Her eyes were burning, burning, and she wasn’t certain whether it was anguish or blazing fury or some nasty combination that was causing it. I’ll never reach it. I’ll never outrace this feeling, because it’ll be everywhere I go from now on, Harry on my heels, yammering on about his future without me.

  Up ahead a tiny human figure was walking toward them. A moment later she realized it was her sister, Olivia. And for one wildly disorienting second she recalled that one’s loved ones purportedly greet the freshly dead at the gates of Heaven. Perhaps when one’s heart is irrevocably broken one is welcomed into the Land of the Heartbroken by others who share the condition.

  Although Olivia, of course, stoutly denied her heart was anything other than sound and unaffected by the disappearance of Lyon Redmond.

  Harry was talking, though she could barely hear him through the cyclone of misery in her heart and mind.

  “I don’t know quite when I’ll propose. But I expect I’ll know when the right moment arises. Definitely during the days of the house party. I can’t think of a lovelier place to do it than Eversea House, surrounded by friends.”

  He might as well have been speaking a different language.

  Who was he? How could he? How could he contemplate a life without her?

  Funny how his obliviousness had lost its charm.

  Her anguish wrestled with fury and shock, and the result was silence. It was her defense and her punishment and her refuge and her revenge, always. Quiet Genevieve Eversea.

  Olivia called out to them.

  “Oh, excellent, Genevieve, Harry. I thought I would find the two of you early birds out walking. I have the most extraordinary news. Mother sent me to tell you and to fetch you back to the house straightaway. No one has died,” she hastened to clarify.

  Just me, Genevieve thought violently.

  Oh, but Harry was eager to hear. “Well, let’s have it then, Olivia!”

  “Wait until you hear who Papa has invited to the house party.”

  And wouldn’t you know, behind them that leaf at last came down, spiraling like a graceful suicide.

  “You climbed out the window bare arsed? Down a tree?”

  Ian had found an excellent audience in his brother Colin. He couldn’t keep the story to himself any longer, and in the comfort of the Pig & Thistle in Pennyroyal Green it seemed safe to tell it.

  “I could only find my shirt. Flapping from the tree. Tore it when I attempted to free it and wore it home like a damned skirt, tied ’round my waist. Found one boot by stumbling over it. My pistol was in the other one! Would be a bloody miracle if it didn’t fire through the toe. I want it back! Practically part of me, that boot, and I miss it like a limb. Lost skin from my shin climbing down that damn tree naked. Nearly unmanned myself. Limped for miles in the dark.”

  He refrained from describing the splinter he’d acquired in an unmentionable place during his exit, as that splinter would become as ubiquitous in Eversea lore as the bloody song about Colin that was still, to this day, sung in pubs and musicales all over England. They would never, never let him forget it.

  “In one boot.” Colin marveled over this.

  “In one boot.”

  Here in the safe warmth and noise of the Pig & Thistle the tables were crowded, the fire was leaping, a group, including Jonathan Redmond, was clustered about the dartboard and damned Redmond was winning again, which reminded him that he could have sworn he’d seen Violet Redmond, of all people, arguing with what appeared to be a sailor down by the docks just the other night, after a ball for the Earl of Ardmay. Obviously he’d been drinking too much; rumor had it she was attending a house party in the country, nowhere near London. He hadn’t mentioned a word of it to anyone. Culpepper and Cooke were hunched over the chessboard and Cooke’s eyebrows as usual looked as frisky and alert as pets. Ian couldn’t help but look around and around, drinking in blessed familiarity, laying his hand flat against the scarred wood table. The previous week’s events seemed like a hellish dream, the sort one had after a heavy dinner and too much bad liquor. It was even possible to laugh about it now.

  “Christ. And you’re still alive?”

  Colin was both clearly impressed and tamping what appeared to be something like envy. It was an exploit worthy of him at his best. Or at his worst. However one viewed it.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “If you mean scale a tree to get to Lady Abigail, I’m shocked you need to ask. Shocked. You’ve seen her!” He waited for Colin to nod in masculine comprehension. “It was the challenge of the thing, you see. And I’d gotten away with it for three nights. And the fourth . . .” He slumped into despair and sighed, and his sigh evolved into a theatrical groan and he dropped his face into his palms. “The fourth would have been a magical thing,” he croaked through his fingers. “You should have felt her skin . . . her bare shoulders . . . oh, God, Colin. So soft.”

  Colin shifted restlessly. He was a married man now. Not a dead man.

  “But the fiancée of the bloody Duke of Falconbridge! Ian, for the love of . . .”

  Ian lifted his head up slowly, suspiciously. His eyes widened when it occurred to him that Colin—of all people!—was actually about to give him a scolding.

  And off he went:

  “I might be invincible, Ian, but that doesn’t mean you are. You ought to marry and stop all this nonsense.”

  If Ian’s feet hadn’t still been sore he might have succumbed to the urge to kick Colin’s shin under the table. Colin had decided that marriage was his cure for everything, since he was so delighted with the condition. He drove everyone mad with this theory.

  “You can speak of invincibility now, Colin,” is what he said aloud. “You should have liked to have been me, or any of us, that morning, as we waited in London for the news of your . . . of your . . .”

  Death by hanging was how that sentence should have been completed, but they still didn’t speak of it easily. None of them liked to remember a moment in which they’d confronted the notion that Everseas might be something other than invincible after all, since they’d seemed to have gotten away with everything since 1066 or thereabouts.

  O
f course they were, as it turned out. Invincible, that was. But this had only been reestablished after a few years had been shaved from everyone’s lives.

  Colin had never shared with his family the whole story of how he’d been rescued from the gallows. He’d rather glossed it over. In truth the woman who was now his wife had been paid to do it for reasons far from noble, but now they were married and happily raising cows and sheep, and he saw no need to invoke hoots and mirth from his brothers, which is precisely what would happen when they discovered he’d been rescued by a girl. And the fact that he’d been a hairsbreadth away from an ignominious death—though they’d been accused of numerous things over the centuries, but not one Eversea had been caught until Colin—was still a slightly sensitive topic.

  Ian said, “Given the opportunity, you’d have done something very like it if you hadn’t married, and you know it. The bit with the countess and trellis—”

  Colin interjected hurriedly. “Well, you got away with your life if not your clothes, so why do you still look so bloody enervated? Did he call you out?”

  Ian opened his mouth. He hesitated.

  Colin flung himself back in his chair and stared at his brother balefully. “He called you out, didn’t he? Oh, God. You’ll die of a certainty. And yes, I’ll be your second.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith. The bastard makes a lovely large target. I’d hardly be likely to miss.”

  Colin snorted. “So you’d cuckold the man and then shoot him dead. I’ve never been prouder of you.” He drained his ale and waved futilely for another one. Polly Hawthorne, Ned Hawthorne’s daughter, still hadn’t forgiven him for marrying Madeline Greenway, crushing dreams she’d harbored—well, that she and nearly every female in Pennyroyal Green between the ages of twelve and eighty had harbored—since she was eight. She was just sixteen or seventeen years old now and she’d perfected pretending he was invisible. “Ian, if you would . . .” he said desperately.

  Ian sighed and beckoned to Polly with a flap of a hand. She flounced over. To Ian she gave a radiant smile. To Colin she gave a view of her back.

  “A light and a dark, Polly, my sweetness.”

  Her smile broadened, her dimples deepened. “Of course, Mr. Eversea.”

  And off she went.

  “Truth be told, Colin, and I would only say this to you, as you’ve spent nearly your entire life in the pursuit of absolutely the wrong women—”

  “All excellent women,” Colin hastened to defend.

  “I’m sure they seemed so at the time,” Ian humored. “And all very wrong. I mean, dangling from that trellis outside of Countess Malmsey’s window—”

  “Your point?” Colin interjected darkly.

  “Well, you see, regardless of what I’ve done, of course I’d attempt to shoot him. I won’t stand there and be shot by the duke for the nobility of the thing. But do consider that I may have done him a favor. I shall never tell a soul beyond you, but Lady Abigail Beasley is . . . no lady. Good heavens, she is as bold as either you or I and she knows one or two things she cannot have come by at the knee of her governess. And oh, what I would have learned on the fourth night . . .” He shook his head. “Anyhow, you’d think she’d have the sense to stay true to a man like the duke. His reputation is hardly a secret. Better he should know of her faithlessness now, aye?”

  “Yes. It was all altruism on your part, I’m certain. You deserve a medal. And I’m certain one day you’ll share a good laugh about it with Moncrieffe next time your paths cross in White’s if you don’t kill each other first.”

  Ian froze. Somehow it hadn’t yet occurred to him that of course he’d be seeing the duke about town, and an encounter in White’s wasn’t only possible, it was entirely likely. He was feeling bolder, however, and as though he could survive the ignominy of an incidental meeting.

  “I’ve heard the engagement has been ended. Upon ‘mutual agreement of both parties,’ ” Colin added. “And that she departed the country.”

  He had no doubt the duke had ordered her to leave the country.

  “And where should the likes of you get gossip like that?”

  “Adam. Someone in the village told him, as it had filtered into the village from London. Women tell him everything.”

  His tone said everything about why this was both a marvelous advantage and a terrible curse. Adam Sylvaine was their cousin on their mother’s side, and since the Everseas owned the living they’d installed him as a vicar and the little church in Pennyroyal Green had never been more crowded on Sundays, owing to Adam’s . . . appeal.

  Polly Hawthorne wove through the crowd and pointedly settled both ales down in front of Ian. She cut Colin dead with an admirable flick of her long, black braid as she departed with coins jingling in her hand.

  Ian grinned. He was beginning to feel a little more like himself, despite his barked shin and raw feet and hands and the damned souvenir splinter in his thumb, which was working itself out only slowly, surely a form of penance.

  “And besides, the duke didn’t call me out. He just sent me out the window.”

  Colin leaned back slowly against his chair. He pressed his lips together pensively.

  And then he began drumming his fingers rhythmically against his tankard of ale. And said nothing.

  “What?” Ian demanded irritably.

  “Ah, but here is what troubles me, Ian. They say the duke’s heart is so hard and black that musket balls glance right off. And that he always gets his revenge in some fashion.”

  “Rumor and conjecture and pure bloody balderdash.” The rumors were easier to dismiss, anyway, after that first sip of the dark. Courage in a tankard.

  “If he didn’t call you out, then what did he say? Anything?”

  Ian hesitated to say it aloud. “Something about the punishment fitting the crime,” he admitted.

  Colin took this in.

  “Chhhrrrrist,” he finally said grimly.

  Ian didn’t have time to retort. Olivia and Genevieve had just pushed through the door of the Pig & Thistle, letting in a gust of autumn air, and when they didn’t immediately begin divesting themselves of cloaks and gloves—the warmth of the place was like donning a second coat—he correctly imagined they were to collect him to greet guests at home. The Everseas were holding an autumn house party. Another blessedly normal event.

  He gestured with his chin in their direction, and held a finger to his lips, which was unnecessary. It was a tacit understanding that not a word of his exploit would be breathed to anyone else in the family.

  Their sisters immediately spotted their tall brothers slouched over ales and wended their way through the tables, nodding and smiling to friends and acquaintances in the pub.

  “I wonder what’s wrong with Genevieve,” Ian murmured. “She looks a bit pale.”

  They didn’t mention Olivia. She looked lovely, as usual, but they both almost unconsciously glanced toward the dartboard, where Jonathan Redmond was handily winning and looking more and more like his brother Lyon, the eldest Redmond, every day, which did nothing to endear him to the Everseas. The Redmonds maintained Olivia was the heartless siren who had caused their heir to mysteriously disappear. Olivia steadfastly denied anything of the sort, insisted, sometimes with a yawn, sometimes with a tinkly incredulous laugh, that her heart was whole and hale, all the while skillfully shaking off suitors with the grace with which a duck shakes water from its feathers.

  And Ian would have strangled Lyon Redmond if he could, because despite everything, not a one of them could bear to see anyone hurt their sisters.

  “Darling brothers, we’ve been sent to fetch you. Father is expecting an important guest in a few hours and he wants you to be present when he arrives.”

  “Who could possibly warrant my presence so urgently?”

  Olivia presented the name with as much ceremony as she would a scepter.

  “The Duke of Falconbridge.”

  To their astonishment, their brothers greeted this news with resounding silence.<
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  Olivia murmured in Genevieve’s ear, “I wonder what’s wrong with Ian. He looks pale.”

  Chapter 3

  The duke stood in the Everseas’ echoing marble foyer, his feet planted on the north end of an enormous inlaid marble compass star, a mosaic in shades of gold. A team of efficient liveried footmen had borne away his hat and coat and walking stick and trunk, a groom and several excited stable boys had taken breathless custody of his carriage and team. A cluster of housemaids stood peering ’round the landing down at him. He gained an impression of bright eyes, knuckles stuffed in mouths to stifle giggles, mob caps quivering as they whispered excitedly.

  He was always watched. He was accustomed to it.

  “Pardon, Your Grace!”

  He dodged another pair of footmen staggering under armloads of incongruously dazzling flowers. Brilliant hothouse blooms in oranges and crimsons, like a Tahitian sunset on stalks.

  “Try the green salon,” Jacob Eversea called after them as he bustled into the foyer. “Ask Mrs. Eversea where you ought to put it.”

  “Olivia,” Mr. Eversea explained cryptically, turning back to the duke. “Delighted, honored to have you with us, Moncrieffe. You couldn’t have written ahead at a more opportune time. We’re having a ball! A modest affair, of course, compared to the London occasions, but we do have a suitable room for it and enthusiastic company expected. I do hope you’ll be comfortable while you’re with us. And we can most certainly get up a card game from all the neighbor men on Saturday. Couldn’t be happier you suggested it. They’ll all be honored to lose their blunt to you. I’ll send word ’round the ballroom.”

  “Thank you, Eversea. I couldn’t hope for more satisfactory accommodations.”

  He’d been up the stairs and down again swiftly. His chamber was large and primarily brown and comfortable indeed, softness everywhere in the carpets and curtains and counterpane, but he’d merely brushed the dust off before he’d inquired of a housemaid as to where Ian Eversea slept.

  And then he’d slipped in the room and deposited Ian’s other boot on the end of the bed. The boot pistol had blown a ragged hole through the toe of it when it landed a good thirty or so feet outside of Abigail’s window.