"Must have aggravated it." Dalton clenched his teeth. "I need another session with Olofsson. She worked wonders last time."
"I'll send for her, then." Con bobbed his scraggly beard at all the roses. "What should I do with this lot?"
"I don't know. Bathe in them for all I care. I'm off for my weekly visit to Osborne Court."
"What if the lady herself comes a-knocking?" Con chuckled. "She did say she was coming for you."
Dalton reached for the brandy bottle.
"If the Devil's Own Wallflower darkens my doorway, send her straight back to the inferno, where she belongs."
Chapter 4
"Good afternoon, Mother." Dalton gave his mother, Abigail, the Dowager Duchess of Osborne, a peck on the cheek and took a seat in her dainty pastel-hued sitting room.
Abigail nodded a greeting, but her pale green eyes didn't truly see him. She didn't even notice the jagged, swollen red welt along his jaw, only continued stroking the flank of the fluffy peach-tinged Persian cat she held in her lap.
He'd considered staying home, but he always visited his mother at Osborne Court on Saturday afternoons when he was in town. He knew she relied on his visits to bring her news of society.
It was only a brief walk through shady back streets to reach the family town house.
"I attended a ball last evening," Dalton said, feeling awkward as hell in the lace-trimmed room, worried the delicately carved legs on the chair might snap under his burden.
Society affairs were usually safe topics that wouldn't set her off into one of her panics.
They called her the Dowager Recluse now. Said she must have contracted the pox from her philandering husband. Must be hideously scarred and unfit to be seen by society.
Dalton knew her scars were all internal.
"And did you have a pleasant time, Duke?"
He wouldn't call it pleasant. "Most pleasant indeed." He kept his voice soft and soothing. "I saw Lady Clyde there. She asked about you."
"And what did you tell her?" Abigail murmured, her face clouding over.
Blunder. Dalton tensed on the pale-green-and-white-striped settee, bracing for an outburst. He wasn't supposed to mention the fact that the outside world still thought about her.
It was just that his head and his shoulder ached so.
"I can't remember," he said carefully. "I drank too much ratafia."
Her face eased. "Oh, you. Always drinking too much. Why don't you move here with me? We could have Cook fill your brandy bottles with apple cider. Why, you'd never even know the difference."
Dalton laughed, relieved that the potential storm had blown over. "I should think I'd be able to tell."
He hadn't moved to Osborne Court after his father died last year, as everyone expected him to, because his secret life had been planned from his nearby bachelor apartments, and there'd be no way to come and go as easily from the ducal house.
Many of the powerful men he'd crossed had the ear of the Prince Regent himself. They could undoubtedly have his title and all that went with it stripped away for treason.
Which would devastate his mother.
Her quiet, secluded life in the comfort and familiarity of her home was all she had left.
Taking that away from her, forcing her to leave her sanctuary would be unthinkably cruel. He would never let that happen. Not until she found the will to leave on her own.
And so he continued his quest to bring the murderer to justice. Maybe then his mother would feel safe enough to reenter the world.
And he continued righting the wrongs of his father, but he did so carefully.
So very carefully. Keeping his two worlds entirely separate.
Never betraying weakness.
Fear and love.
The emotions that made a man weak.
He'd learned to control his fear, sculpting his body and disciplining his mind for vengeance. And he'd methodically eliminated the need to love, or be loved.
When the judgment day came and he finally faced his enemy, he would be ready.
Ruthless and in control.
No fear. No weakness.
He did worry about his mother, though, even if she had dozens of servants. Ten years ago, she'd retreated into her apartments at Osborne Court and never left again.
She called it her cloister, as if she were a nun. As if she'd taken a vow of pious seclusion.
Nothing could induce her to leave. Not her husband's enraged accusations, nor Dalton's increasing concern.
Later, they realized that her self-imposed seclusion had been a gradual thing. She'd started leaving the house less, sending the servants out to do all her errands. She'd begun eating in her apartments, instead of the dining room.
She'd added more and more distance between herself and outside world, refusing invitations, not even allowing her own mother to come for a visit.
A small army of physicians concluded that she suffered from mental anxieties of the most severe kind. They said this fear of leaving the house sometimes manifested itself in females, particularly in females who'd experienced traumatic events.
The week of Alec's death they'd been visiting Balfry House, the country estate the duke had purchased for his Irish Protestant bride, one of the famously beautiful Kerry sisters.
Sometimes, when Dalton closed his eyes, he saw sunlight glinting on the green waters of Balfry Bay. Felt a chubby little hand clasped in his. And then not clasped.
Never again.
He should have been watching Alec more closely.
Some of his clothing had washed up onshore, though his wee body had been carried out to sea. A forlorn tweed cap, waterlogged and torn.
Dalton squeezed his eyes shut.
The cut on his jaw stung; his right fist and shoulder ached.
His mind ached as well, sitting with his mother, unable to tell her the agonizing truth.
He'd reached the end of his father's list last night and was no closer to finding the murderer.
She'd confided to Dalton that she thought the murderer was in London. She was sure he was waiting for her out there. Waiting to end her life, as he'd ended the life of her darling son.
The old duke had threatened to send her away to an asylum, but Dalton had fought with all his might, and his mother had remained at Osborne Court.
"Cook made a rather fine pheasant pie yesterday," Abigail observed, stroking the fluffy cat until he purred. "Wasn't it delicious, my darling? Didn't you lick your wee little paws?"
Dalton had lost count of how many cats had taken up residence at Osborne Court. They were all enormously rotund, with round moon faces and worried, wrinkled expressions.
One of them rubbed against his Hessians. He gave its chin an obligatory scratch and it flopped onto its back, all four paws raised like some enormous fluffy capsized insect.
Shameless hussy, he thought. But he couldn't resist the siren call of that soft fur. When he rubbed its ample belly, the cat purred so loudly his hand vibrated.
"Buttercup, sweetling," remonstrated his mother. "Don't you know dukes never pet kitties?"
The old duke certainly never had. He'd always been bellowing about the Persian Menace, as he called the cats. Threatening to stuff them all in a sack and drown them in the Thames.
Dalton hadn't thought to become the duke for many years to come. He'd even thought he might die before inheriting the title since he was reckless with his body, plunging into perilous situations that would have killed a weaker man.
He'd never even considered his father might go before him.
The old duke had seemed healthy as a horse. He drank excessively, bedded a different woman every night, and gambled into the wee hours with his crooked friends.
But one morning, at the breakfast table, he'd apparently clutched at his chest, turned blue about the lips, and fallen face-first into a pile of fried lamb's kidneys.
Dalton had never told his father how much he hated him, but he'd shown it, gambling away his father's money and playing the rake, the wastrel. Becoming the Hellhound and wreaking justice on his father's corrupt set.
There'd been one day, six months after the old duke's death, when Dalton and his mother had looked at each other over a glass of sherry and he'd seen it reflected in her eyes.
The macabre sense of relief.
"I think I shall have Cook make a gooseberry tart tomorrow," Abigail mused, scratching the cat's tufted chin.
"That would be nice," he said in a neutral tone. If she wanted to say more she would.
His mother glanced up, her face brightening. "Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you. I had a letter today. From Ginny." She waved a pale hand through the air. "She wrote about the old times, when we were famous beauties. My, how many beaux we had between the three of us sisters."
Dalton smiled. "Tell me about one of your suitors." It seemed everyone wished to chat about former loves lately. Even gruff old Con.
"Well, let's see . . ." she mused. "There was the Earl of Kilkenny, of course, he was a great favorite, not as rich as your father, though. And there was one . . . Mr. O'Roarke, Patrick was his given name." She stared into the flickering flames in the grate. "I haven't thought of him in years."
"Merely a mister?" Dalton teased. "Doesn't sound suitable for one of the Kerry sisters."
"And he was poor as a pauper as well. A lowly shipping clerk. But my, how he loved me. He was mad for me. I heard later that he made his fortune abroad, in the colonies, of all places, and now he's wealthier than Midas. Imagine that. He was terribly angry when I refused him. Nearly strangled me. I was so frightened. But what choice had I? A duke or a shipping clerk."