The piece had already boomed out twice before the door opened again and Tay Ellesmere stood there, formally dressed and his gait stiff. His hair was wet, giving the impression he had just bathed, and it was pulled back into a tight tail falling to his shoulders. One eye was ringed in black whilst the white of the other had changed into a violent red, deeper marks of the same colour snaking into his hair at the temple. He smelled of soap and of lemon, a combination that was appealing, but all she could think of were Rosemary the scullery-maid’s words: a small battered child lost behind hard green eyes.
‘I am sorry. I did not realise we had arranged a meeting.’
‘We had not, your Grace. It is just the last time I saw you it looked as though your injuries were worse than you let on and I thought to check to see if you were … well?’
‘I am. Entirely.’ The puffy edge of his right eye had made it close at one end. Lucinda wondered if it blurred his vision because he squinted as he watched her, the tick in his swollen eyelid clearly visible.
‘I see.’
She wished with all her heart that they might have a moment in private. He seemed to understand her reticence as his glance took in the servants. ‘Bingham, would you take the Duchess’s maid to the kitchen and find her something to drink.’
‘Very well, your Grace.’ It took only a moment for the room to be cleared and the door to be shut behind them.
‘A walk in the park would be out of the question, I suppose?’ She kept her tone light as she broke the awkward silence.
‘Unless you want me to scare small children.’ His smile went nowhere near his eyes. ‘Why are you here?’ Tiredness draped the query.
‘I have waited for you for the past two days and when you did not come I wondered if you had the medical help that you needed …’
‘I do.’
He did not even look at her now.
‘What was the reason for your attack on Halsey all those years ago?’
That brought his attention back. ‘Allenby broke one of the most important rules of my house.’
‘Which was?’
‘What goes on at Alderworth stays there.’
Disappointment welled. So it wasn’t solely because he had been trying to protect her, after all.
‘It seems to me enforcing such a rule would require much effort?’ The sharpness in her voice was not becoming, but she could no longer hide it. ‘Why seek more battles when you had enough of your own to fight?’
‘Usually I am more handy with my fists than you saw me to be at the Chesterfields’, and making certain scandal does not follow each of my guests home has not been unduly onerous before.’
Today Taylen Ellesmere was exactly the Duke his title proclaimed him to be, the solemn answers at odds with his damaged face and eyes. He stood strangely, too, straight-backed and erect, the pose making her wonder what other injuries he had sustained under the ministration of Halsey and his cronies.
‘But scandal follows you regardless, your Grace. Your own reputation has been the talk of the town for years.’
He moved towards her and reached out his hand, one finger tracing its way down her cheek.
‘Every opinion should be allowed to be given freely, I believe, but it is wise to remember that what is said is not always the truth.’
The warmth and the strength of him flooded into her being, a touchstone in the scattered uncertainty of her life, drawing her home.
Hold me closer, she longed to say, as if their history together melded only into the bright promise of this moment, but his hand fell back instead.
‘If you don’t wish to be in my company for a while, I would quite understand. I cannot promise that there will not be another contretemps, you see, and if you were to be hurt because of it …’
He stopped.
‘I am no weak-willed girl, your Grace. Were I to be pitted against your own skills with a bow and arrow I may well win the competition.’ She held her palms face up. ‘I have the calluses to prove it.’
For the first time that day true humour crept into his face. ‘My Diana.’ The words were whispered and then regretted. She could see the wariness in his eyes.
‘Do you have any other family at all, your Grace?’
His brow creased at the subject change. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘You seem so alone sometimes. I only wondered if there were others you might rely on.’
He shook his head and crossed to pour himself a drink, lifting a brandy decanter to offer her one as well. Declining, she waited until he began to speak.
‘I have an aunt, but I lost any contact with her years ago.’
‘A fading line, then?’
His smile was wicked. ‘Which brings us back to our agreement.’
The heir. With a thick cloak on, servants just outside the door and her maid presumably returning at any moment Lucinda also smiled. ‘A broken nose and cracked ribs have probably put paid to any designs you might have on me at the moment.’
His laughter filled the room, deep and resonant. ‘Injuries such as these have not stopped me before.’
‘I read of you once. A story in a newspaper when you had first struck gold.’
‘Where did you get it from?’
‘An old school friend’s brother sent it to me. The author of the piece made certain that the readers understood that the women you were partying with were …” She could not quite find the word.
‘Fallen?’ He provided it for her. ‘The difference between the ton and those who ply their bodies for money on the street corners of hopelessness is smaller than you might imagine. Believe me, I know it to be true.’
Was he speaking of his childhood? she wondered and braved a question. ‘How did your uncle hurt you?’
‘Badly.’
A truth, without an embroidered qualifying word attached? Lucinda could barely believe his honesty.
‘He should have been shot.’
‘He was.’
‘Oh.’
The words were on her tongue to ask by whom, but the gleam in his green eyes stopped the question. She wanted amiability and agreement to be between them, even if only for this meeting.
‘Would you ride with me tomorrow, your Grace? In the park. I usually go early before the crowds arrive.’
‘Yes.’
She could hear the voices of her maid and one of the Ellesmere servants in the hallway coming closer. ‘Shall we say nine o’clock?’
He reached over and rang the bell, the same man she had seen before hurrying back in. Claire also rejoined them, standing behind the sofa, a heavy frown upon her brow.
‘Thank you for taking the time to see that I was regaining in strength, Duchess, and please do give my regards to your family.’
‘I will, your Grace.’
So formal. So many undertones. She hoped with all her heart that her maid would say nothing of the visit to Asher’s valet before she had had the chance to tell her brother.
‘I went to see Taylen Ellesmere today,’ Lucinda announced at dinner just as the main course was being served. On the journey home she had decided that honesty would be the best ploy with her family and bringing things out into the open was far better than having them simmer and boil over in the shadows.
‘How is his face?’ Emerald asked, her smile belying any more sinister purpose.
‘I do not know if his nose is broken, though the boots of Halsey’s minions did a good job of trying to do so. Both his eyes are blackened and there is a sizeable cut to the back of his head. Perhaps other injuries linger beneath his clothes. He certainly moved as if they did.’
‘Trouble follows him like a stray dog after the meat man.’ Her brother’s voice was wary.
‘I remember a time when it seemed to follow me with as much tenacity.’ Emerald looked directly at Asher and the spark that ignited between them had Lucinda glancing away. Passion in a marriage bed was something she had never experienced, the burn of it rolling across ordinariness and lifting everything up. Every one of her siblings had that sort of feeling with their partner and she was suddenly tired of her own lack of hope for the same.
‘I have asked the Duke to accompany me on my morning ride in the park tomorrow.’
‘And he has agreed?’ There was no warmth in her brother’s query whatsoever. ‘You may regret allowing a man who seems to find a fight at every opportunity, unprovoked or not, back into your life, Lucy.’ Fury raised the tone of his voice.
‘He is my legal husband.’
‘A matter that was supposed to be resolved three years ago by a large sum of money. We hoped never to see him again and we would not have, save for a lucky strike in a Godforsaken goldfield miles from England which allowed him to crawl back.’
Lucinda stood, breath coming almost as fast as her heart was beating. ‘Perhaps that is divine intervention, then. Gold for gold and the recommencing of an ordained union promised before a minister of the Church. Surely when you hatched this plan of matrimony a small part of you thought that it might just … stick?’
Asher stood now, too, and Lucinda was glad that the table lay between them, a solid wide slab of oak that divided the room down its length.
‘God damn it, you are my sister and I was only trying to protect you.’ For the first time in memory her oldest brother sounded … defeated, the strain of the last week showing on his face in deep lines of regret.