Devil's Bargain Page 2

  “Persuaded.” He snorted, more incredulous than affronted at the thought that her niece would not leap at his offer.

  “But I do not think Lady Todd will be pleased to hear you have wedding plans.”

  Marc’s face hardened at the mention of his former lover’s name. What a dreadful scene she had staged when he had told her their affair was over. He said curtly, “Surely you are aware that I broke off with her weeks ago.”

  “Yes, but perhaps you are not aware that she has wagered Lord Oldfield a thousand pounds that she can win you back to her bed.”

  Marc was outraged. “Then she will be a thousand pounds poorer, for by making that wager she has guaranteed herself no chance of winning it.”

  He studied his hostess for a moment, then abruptly inquired, “What have you heard about Lady Amelia’s late lover?”

  Lady Mobry shrugged. “Only that Major Hetton pursued her from the moment they met while he was staying with the Earl of Leasingham, your neighbour at Rosedale. I understand the major was invited there because he had served in the same regiment in India as the earl’s younger son, Selwyn, and had saved Selwyn’s life in an ambush, very nearly at the cost of his own.”

  “Have you heard nothing else?” Marc asked, disappointed.

  “No, why do you ask?”

  Marc took a sip of brandy before answering. “Selwyn returned home from India with his regiment last week. He had never been wounded in an ambush, and he had never heard of Major Hetton.”

  Lady Mobry frowned. “But he wrote his parents, telling them how Hetton had saved him—”

  “The letter was a fraud.”

  “But surely they would know their son’s handwriting.”

  “The letter said that he had been wounded in his right arm during the ambush and had to have a friend write it for him.” The duke, setting his glass of brandy down hard upon the mahogany candle stand next to his chair, jumped up and began pacing in front of his hostess like an angry lion on a short leash. “No Major Garrick Hetton was ever attached to a British regiment in India or anywhere else. God only knows what his real identity was.”

  Lady Mobry gasped. “What are you saying?”

  “That apparently Major Garrick Hetton was a led captain.”

  Castleton had no need to explain to Lady Mobry that the term meant a professional duellist who hired himself out to dispose of his employer’s enemies. “I thought it odd that Hetton, the lover, was the one who called out the wronged husband instead of the other way around,” she said. “But who would have hired the man and why?”

  “I hoped you might have some idea. I myself am at a loss. Paul had no enemies. Everyone liked him.”

  The marchioness frowned. “Using a fraudulent letter to install Hetton at the Leasinghams’ where he could seduce Paul’s wife and precipitate a duel demonstrates subtlety. patience, and diabolic cunning.” Her frown deepened. “I heard that after the major killed Paul, he was most reluctant to accept your challenge.”

  “He knew I was a better shot than my brother.”

  “Have there been any attempts on your life since you killed Hetton?”

  “No,” Marc said, puzzled by her questions. “Why do you ask?”

  “Unlike your brother, you have enemies.”

  “Yes, probably dozens.” Marc stopped pacing and faced his hostess. “What are you intimating?”

  “My dear Marc,” Lady Mobry said gently, “whoever was behind this is a very, very clever man. Clever enough, I suspect, to grasp that there would be no better way to make you suffer than to kill your beloved brother.”

  Startled, the duke sank back down in his chair. He had not thought of that possibility, but he had the highest regard for Lady Mobry’s judgment. And appalling as the idea was, it made sense to him.

  But which of his enemies was so twisted that he would use an innocent brother’s life as the instrument of his revenge? Much shaken, Marc asked, “Do you have any notion who he might be?”

  She shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. Do you?”

  He ran through the list of his enemies in his mind. The only man he could think of who was so diabolically cruel and clever that he might have concocted such an insidious scheme had to be ruled out because he had not been within several thousand miles of England in five years.

  When he told Lady Mobry that, she said instantly, “You’re speaking of Sir Francis Pitson, of course.” Her face twisted in disgust as she spoke the name. “I agree that it could not be him. He does not dare return to England, thanks to you, and it would have been impossible for him to execute such an intricate plot from his exile in New Orleans. It would take a month at least for him to get a message to an accomplice here and another month for the man’s reply to reach America. What of Sir Gregory Lynnock?” Lady Mobry asked.

  “Certainly he is cruel enough but I do not credit him with being that clever.” Marc picked up his brandy glass and stared thoughtfully at its amber contents. When at last he spoke again, his voice was grave. “If your suspicions are true, my sinister enemy might think to cause me more grief by slaying my bride. If I marry your niece, her life could be in danger.”

  “Only if you fall in love with her.”

  “Then she is perfectly safe,” Marc replied with certainty, “for there is no chance of that happening with any woman.”

  But after the duke left her, the marchioness sat for a long time before the fire, beset by the nagging fear that if he were wrong, Tia might pay with her life.

  Chapter 2

  Tia walked briskly among the oak and beech, trying to stave off the cold that numbed her fingers and toes. Since she had learned two days ago of Papa’s intention to force Freddie into the Navy, she had thought of nothing else. But so far she had conceived only one possible way to save her little brother. She would have to marry a kindly man who would agree to give Freddie a home. Once the boy was gone from his father’s house, Tia was certain Papa would quickly forget about him and the Navy.

  Unromantic as such a marriage sounded, it had been instilled in Tia since an early age that a female’s heart must never rule her head in choosing a husband. It was both foolish and irresponsible to let passion, which burned out as quickly as it flared, dictate one’s choice. That was what Mama had (lone, eloping with Papa after her parents had forbidden their marriage, and she had spent the rest of her life bitterly regretting it. She had been determined that her daughter not make the same mistake, and Tia had no intention of doing so.

  But how was she to meet a husband? No eligible suitors, kindly or otherwise, resided in this remote area of Warwickshire.

  A mistle thrush resting on a low oak branch suddenly took flight, startling Tia out of her thoughts. Looking up, she saw through the leafless branches of the trees the faded red brick of Ashmore’s sprawling Elizabethan manor house ahead of her. She had trespassed far deeper into the Duke of Castleton’s territory than she had intended. Hastily, she turned back toward Birnam Wood.

  As she did, she realized that she must be very near the spot where five years ago the duke had discovered her and Antony on his property. Her face still burned at the humiliating memory of that encounter.

  She and her brother had been romping with his hound. Tia, fourteen and a tomboy then, had discarded her dress in favour of a pair of her brother’s breeches and one of Papa’s old shirts. She had been small and skinny, only in the first bud of womanhood, and had easily fit into her younger, but larger, brother’s pants. To conceal the mismatch between her clothes and her sex, she had woven her long dark hair into braids that she wound around her head and concealed beneath a battered straw hat.

  Antony’s hound had led them much nearer to the manor house than they normally went, then suddenly rushed off. In vain, Tia tried to call him back. A burst of agitated barking signalling he had found some quarry among the trees was followed by a brief, peculiar sound, like a woman’s shriek stifled as it began. Tia and Antony, anxious to quiet the hound before their trespass was discovered, rushed after
him.

  A moment later they were confronted by the enraged duke himself. He had the iciest blue eyes she had ever seen, and he poured upon them a furious stream of curses.

  Tia had heard that His Grace was careless about his dress, but she was shocked to see how careless. Even though the day was cool, he was both shirt- less and shoeless, clad only in a pair of breeches, and those looked to have been hastily donned. His blond hair was so dishevelled it looked like it had been caught in a high wind, although none was blowing.

  He was a tall, muscularly built man, and his size made his anger all the more unnerving to the two young trespassers so much smaller than he. As Tia looked at the broad bare expanse of his chest above surprisingly slim hips, then up at his hard, yet undeniably handsome face, she felt deep within her the oddest sensation, a tingling excitement unlike anything she had experienced in her fourteen years.

  Antony, his courage failing him, turned and fled. Tia followed suit, but she darted away in the opposite direction, reasoning, despite her panic, that if the duke gave pursuit he would only be able to catch one of them. But Castleton was too quick for her. His muscled arm shot out and hauled her back to him by her overlarge shirt.

  “Not that way, you damned little urchin!” he shouted.

  Thoroughly frightened, Tia struggled to escape. He grabbed her squirming body around the hips with one arm while his other went around her chest to subdue her. As he yanked her back against his hard, strong body, his hand closed on her budding breast, and the strange excitement she had felt a moment earlier returned.

  “What the...” Castleton growled, suddenly releasing her as though touching her had burned him.

  He jerked her around by the arm so roughly that her hat fell off. His icy blue eyes stared at the dark halo of braids around her head, then at her frightened face. The disgust that twisted his features humiliated her as nothing else ever had. A brick-red flush that she supposed was rage rose in his face.

  For a moment, he said nothing, only watched her with those eyes that chilled her like a winter wind. Then he ordered, “Get off my land and stay off it. If ever you or your damned hound set foot on Ashmore again, I will have it shot and you horsewhipped! Do you understand me?”

  Terrified by his black expression, Tia turned and fled with ignominious haste. Normally, she did not lack courage, and afterward the memory of her cowardly retreat added to the humiliation she felt. Trespassing on Ashmore in defiance of his order helped ease her shame, even though he himself was unaware of her transgressions since he rarely visited the estate.

  Now, as she hurried back toward Birnam Wood, she wondered why Castleton had been so revolted by her. Most people judged her pretty, although she would be the first to admit that she was no beauty. Her face as a trifle too long, her mouth too wide, and her thick brown-black hair too dark in an era when guinea-gold was all the crack. More objective observers held her large, animated gray eyes to be her most arresting feature, but she herself saw nothing attractive about such a nondescript colour.

  Tia reached the hedgerow of hawthorn, elder, dog rose, and spindle that marked the boundary between Birnam Wood and Ashmore. As she squeezed through a small breach in this barrier, she thought how different the intimidating duke had been from his warm, charming younger brother, Lord Paul Hamilton.

  After Lord Paul’s marriage three years ago, he and his wife, Lady Amelia, had occasionally stayed at Ashmore, and during their visits Tia had been welcome there. But ,those days were gone forever now that Lord Paul was dead. Tia had wept when she heard of his fatal duel for she had truly liked him.

  When she reached home, she shed her cloak in the hall and went to warm herself before the big stone hearth in the kitchen where Lizzie, their girl- of-all work, was washing dishes. The front door knocker sounded, and Tia told Lizzie who was up to her elbows in soapsuds that she would go. Visitors were rare at Birnam Wood, and Tia wondered who the caller could be.

  Throwing open the door, she saw a broad male chest encased in a brown, many-caped travelling coat. Her gaze moved up the coat’s row of gold buttons, past a hard chin and an even harder mouth that looked as though it never smiled, until she found herself staring into the Duke of Castleton’s icy blue eyes.

  Tia could not have been more startled if mad King George himself had appeared at her door. The puzzling sensation of breathless excitement that she had felt only once before—that day the duke had confronted her in the woods—assailed her again, stronger and more insistent now.

  “Your Grace,” she exclaimed, wondering for a frightened instant whether he had just witnessed her trespassing on Ashmore and had come to carry out his threat of five years ago.

  “So you recognize me,” he said. His voice had a rich timbre to it that reminded Tia of the baritone who sang in the village church. But his eyes, as hard and cold as she had remembered them, examined her so thoroughly and critically from the top of her head to her toes peeking out from beneath her brown kerseymere skirt that she felt like a mare in the auction ring. His face gave no hint of his reaction to what he saw, but at least there was not the disgust that had been there that day in the woods.

  Her own face grew hot with discomfort and annoyance at his bold, almost insulting, appraisal.

  “Are you Tia?” he asked at last.

  She was surprised that he knew her name. “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “I thought so. Tell your father I want to see him.”

  Dear God, she thought, her fear rising. He had come about her trespassing. In the years her family had lived at Birnam Wood, the duke had never taken the least notice of her father even though he was an Easton, once of Laytham Hall. What reason could Castleton have now except to complain about her trespassing? “Do you want to see Papa about me?” she blurted.

  His icy eyes narrowed. “Yes,” he said curtly. “So you are already aware of my reason for calling.”

  Tia nodded, wondering what he meant to do to her. She remembered the threats he’d made long ago, but not even he would dare... She stared up at him. There was not a trace of softness or mercy in the harsh, unyielding lines of his face. He was the hardest, coldest man Tia had ever seen.

  “Please, Your Grace, do not keep me in suspense,” she pleaded. “Tell me your intentions.”

  He looked suddenly furious. “What a bold piece you are! I had not thought you would be so forward.”

  She did not feel in the least bold. Nor could she imagine why her question had made him so angry Could it be that he was a little queer in the attic?

  “Naturally, I must discuss the matter with your father first,” he said brusquely. “Get him. I have no time to waste.”

  With a trembling hand, Tia opened the door to her father’s library and announced their caller.

  Papa might be an Easton from Laytham Hall, but he was clearly in awe of the duke. “Here to see me?” he cried, jumping up so quickly that the book he was reading tumbled to the floor.

  He nervously bowed the duke into the library “To what do I owe the honour of this visit?”

  Castleton glanced back in surprise at Tia in the hall, “Surely you and your daughter have discussed it.”

  Tia could feel her cheeks turning scarlet. “No, he does not know,” she said defiantly. Why would the duke think she would have told her father about her trespass? “Papa has not the smallest interest whatsoever in the matter, I assure you.”

  The duke looked genuinely startled. “You jest! Every father is vitally interested in the possibility of an advantageous marriage for his daughter.”

  Dumbfounded, she stammered, “Marriage! To whom?”

  “Me.”

  Chapter 3

  For an instant, Tia thought that it was the duke... who was jesting, but the harsh, unsmiling lines of his face disabused her of that. Her voice was no more than a squeak. “You marry me! You are mad!”

  He looked as astonished at this response as she had been at his announcement. Then he agreed sardonically, “Of course I am. I have to be to take
a leg shackle,”

  “But you do not even know me,” Tia protested. He gave a careless shrug of his powerful shoulders. “What has that to do with anything?”

  “With marriage, a great deal!” she exclaimed, even though she knew that people of Castleton’s rank often wed, for dynastic and financial considerations, spouses they had scarcely met.

  His cold eyes narrowed assessingly. “Are you one of those odd women who do not wish to marry?”

  “Of course I want to marry.” Matrimony was the only acceptable occupation for a woman of Tia’s breeding. But she had never dreamed of wedding a great title or fortune. Her modest hopes had been for an obscure gentleman of comfortable means, a kind, amiable soul whom she could hold in true affection. There was nothing either kind or amiable about Castleton.

  Much agitated, she cried, “But I don’t even like you, Your Grace.”

  To her amazement, her unflattering declaration amused rather than angered him. “How do you know?” he asked, smiling for the first time. “As you pointed out, we don’t even know each other.”

  Tia stared at him, fascinated by the change the smile wrought in his face, thawing the icy eyes and banishing the hard, contemptuous set of his face. Her heart suddenly seemed to turn over in her breast, and she had difficulty catching her breath.

  “Surely, Your Grace,” she stammered, “you would prefer a beauty”

  “No! I most emphatically do not want a beauty! I am choosing a wife, not a convenient.”

  “One would expect your qualifications for a wife would be even more exacting!” Tia retorted.

  “I prefer fidelity to beauty” he snapped. “More importantly, your breeding is acceptable.”

  “Thank you,” she said with sarcastic politeness. “But I have no dowry. To put it bluntly, Your Grace, we are in the basket.”

  “It is of no importance,” he said impatiently. “I prefer a wife whose family is dished.”

  “Why?” she asked in astonishment.

  “Because you are more likely to be grateful for what I can give you, without showering me with recriminations for what I cannot.”