The Wicked Ways of a Duke(39)

“And His Grace told Mr. Fane we’ll be leaving today for Hazelwood, wherever that is,” Woddell said, recalling Prudence to the present conversation. “He had Mr. Fane make the arrangements for the train. We’re to be packed and ready by three o’clock, he told me.”

Prudence nodded, not at all surprised by this news, and very much relieved. “I’ll be glad to be gone from here, Woddell,” she said. “Very glad.”

Oh, God, I hate this house. I hate it.

His words echoed back to her, and she shivered, “But why?” she whispered. “What happened here?”

“Beg your pardon, miss?” Woddell paused in her task of dressing her mistress’s hair and ducked her head to meet her gaze in the mirror.

Prudence gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Nothing, Woddell. I was thinking out loud. That is all.”

Satisfied, the maid tucked one last pin into the chignon and started for the dressing room.

Lost in thought, Prudence scarcely noticed. Whatever the cause of his antipathy for Winter Park, she knew his mother had something to do with it. Lady Edward was an ice queen if ever there was one. So different from her own mother, who had always been full of laughter and warmth and love. Prudence could not imagine Lady Edward ever laughing or being loving toward anyone. The late duke, too, was part of the puzzle. And what of Rhys’s brother who had died?

“Would you like to wear the beige traveling suit today, miss?” Woddell asked, interrupting her speculations. “Or the buffalo red?”

“The red,” she said, and stood up. “Definitely the red.”

Wearing his favorite color was a woefully inadequate method of comfort, she thought, but at the moment, it was the only one she had.



During the two weeks that followed their departure from Winter Park, Rhys strove to regain his equilibrium. Though the other estates had no nightmarish memories, he found other, less expected ghosts waiting for him.

As they toured the various estates, Rhys’s initial emotion was embarrassment. Things were every bit as dire as he’d been told, worse than he had described to Prudence, and painful to view with her relations, who knew damn good and well why he was marrying their niece and their resentment was palpable. Stephen, as promised, said nothing, but Edith could not resist commenting on the condition of the properties. He told himself he shouldn’t care what they thought, but thick as his skin was, he was bothered by Feathergill’s silent condemnation and his wife’s snide little jabs more than he cared to admit.

Stripped of their furnishings and valuables over the years, ignored and eventually abandoned, none of the houses were fit to live in, except by the mice, beetles, and other vermin who had taken up residence. The De Winter family had once been one of the most powerful in Britain, with an aristocratic lineage dating back to Edward I, but in the rotting timbers of Hazelwood, the crumbling brick of Seton Place, and the wild, unkept landscape around Aubry Hill, only the echoes of that lineage remained.

Of all the estates, St. Cyres Castle proved to be in the worst condition. As their carriage pulled into the rutted, weed-choked drive and he saw the broken windows and rusted gates of the fortified manor house that had been his home as a small boy, he thought of his father, who had loved this house, and his embarrassment deepened into shame.

When he and Prudence paused in the Baron’s Hall of the original keep, where cobwebs decorated the elaborately carved stone mantel of the massive fireplace and only the discolorations on the whitewashed walls marked where the arms and weapons of his ancestors had hung, he could almost feel his father turning over in his grave.

This is what it’s all come to, Papa, he thought, lowering his gaze to the stone floor beneath his feet, a floor first laid in 1298. Five worthless piles of stones and weeds scattered across central England. It saddened him, and he didn’t even know why, for he’d long ago turned his back on all of it and thought he’d ceased to care.

In the distance, Edith’s high, arch voice and her husband’s deeper replies echoed faintly to the keep from another wing of the house, but past their voices, he heard other echoes. He heard his father, telling animated tales of the family history to him and Thomas by that massive fireplace late into the night. He heard the sounds of wooden swords and cricket bats as his father played with them. He heard the laughter of two carefree, innocent boys who had played here with no idea what awaited them when their father died. Such a long, long time ago. He put his head in his hands.

“Rhys, what’s wrong?”

He felt Prudence’s hand on his arm and lifted his head. “Nothing,” he answered, rubbing his hands over his face. “I was just remembering…things.”

He didn’t look at her but could feel her gaze resting on him, and he struggled for something to say. “There was a red carpet in here,” he said, gesturing to the floor in front of the fireplace. “On rainy days, my brother and I would lie here on our stomachs by the fire and listen to my father tell stories.”

She smiled, glancing around. “This was the house you lived in as a boy?”

“Until I was eleven. That’s when…” He paused, staring at the massive fireplace. “That’s when my father died, and my brother and I were sent away to school. I haven’t been back here since.”

She looked at him, head tilted to one side. “Did you like it here?”

He was surprised by the question, for he couldn’t recall ever thinking of the ducal estates in terms of his personal preferences. They had always belonged to Evelyn, and now they were burdens, responsibilities, debts. “I don’t quite know what you mean.”

Prudence walked up to him and took his hands in hers. “We have to decide which of these houses is to be our home. Where we’ll raise our children. Do you like it here?”

He stirred, uneasy. He’d had vague ideas of them living abroad, traveling to America and Europe, seasons in London on occasion. He hadn’t thought about children at all, and certainly not about settling in one place to raise them. “I like it well enough, I suppose.”

“When you lived here, were you happy?”

Happy? He pulled his hands from hers and walked to one of the windows. Propping a shoulder against the frame, he looked through the jagged, broken remnants of diamond-shaped glass panes installed when Elizabeth had been queen.

What would his life have been like if his father had lived? he wondered, staring out at an expanse of weedy turf, seeing a man and two boys fencing with wooden swords and shields, pretending to be knights of old. He hadn’t known then, of course, that his father’s restless, energetic temperament and insomnia stemmed mainly from the cocaine that eventually took his life.

He could still remember the rage that filled him when his mother shared that little tidbit with him a few years later, rage toward the man who had died and abandoned them to Evelyn for the sake of his cocaine habit.

On the other hand, Rhys reflected, he’d been terribly fond of absinthe in his Paris days, so who was he to judge? Staring out the window at the field where he and Thomas had spent so many happy days with their father, hearing the laughter that had echoed through this house so long ago, he found himself unable to summon the anger he’d once felt.

His father, he realized now, had loved them. Not even knowing for certain if they were truly his own sons, he had loved them and cared for them. Rhys closed his eyes as something hot and tight squeezed his chest. He’d forgotten, in all the shit that had come after, he’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten about love and affection and what it was like to be happy.

“You are very quiet,” Prudence said, and came to stand by his side. “What are you thinking about?”

“Look there,” he said, pointing to the lawn spread out between two overgrown knot gardens. “That’s where my father taught us how to fence and how to play cricket. And beyond that, in the distance, do you see that crag sticking up on the hill? On the other side of it is the lake where he taught us how to fish.”

“Perfect,” she said, and grabbed his hand. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” he asked as she pulled him toward the door.

“We are going fishing.”



An hour later Rhys was sitting on a grassy bank by the lake where he hadn’t fished since he was a boy. But instead of his father and brother, the company was quite different this time—different, and thoroughly delectable.

He glanced sideways at the woman seated beside him on the grass. She looked as fresh and pretty as the spring day in her green and white skirt, crisp cotton shirtwaist, and boater hat of white straw. “So,” he murmured, “you left poor Woddell to explain your disappearance to your aunt?”

“I have not disappeared.” She turned her head to look at him, all wide-eyed innocence. “I am wandering about the house, making lists of furnishings to buy. Where are you?”

“I am working very hard. I’m studying the condition of the farms. At least that’s the story Fane is telling. He is a most excellent valet, by the way—trustworthy, loyal, and a very good liar.”

“What about you? Are you a good liar?”

His heart skipped a beat at that question, but he forced himself to look at her. “What do you mean?”