Heartless Duke

by Scott, Scarlett

  “You love her, don’t you?” Griffin asked softly.

  “Yes.” More than anything. More than anyone. Hopelessly. Helplessly. “I do.”

  “You’re a bigger fool than I thought you were, Carlisle.”

  “Yes,” Leo agreed again, unrepentant, without hesitation. “I am. I have one more request for you. I also need you to use your Dublin contacts to find out everything you can about Cullen O’Malley.”

  Specifically, just how guilty he was. Or how innocent.

  One way or another, the truth would emerge.

  And Leo would be waiting.

  The day had come.

  For at least the hundredth time since its arrival the day before, Bridget scanned the terse contents of the missive from one Mrs. Eudora Templeton.

  My dear Duchess,

  I would like to offer you my sincere felicitations on your recent nuptials. I hope you might join me for tea tomorrow afternoon at half past two. I trust you are familiar with the address.

  Kind regards,

  Mrs. Eudora Templeton

  The three simple sentences were innocuous enough. Anyone else who read them would have assumed an acquaintance desired her presence for some harmless afternoon tea. The only trouble was, Mrs. Eudora Templeton did not exist.

  Like Jane Palliser, she was a fiction. One invented by John for just such a purpose; to contact her without anyone else being made the wiser. An icy cold noose of doom seemed to tighten upon her throat. Her hands trembled as she carefully refolded the letter, hiding its bold scrawl. John had returned to London, and he had somehow discovered her shameful secret.

  He knew she had become the Duchess of Carlisle.

  She steeled herself against a sudden clench of her gut, a rush of bile in her throat. Her past had just been resurrected like a specter from the grave to remind her who she was and where she truly belonged.

  She could not remain Leo’s wife.

  She did not deserve him, and she never had. She was not worthy of a man as honorable and good as he. She was a thief disguised as a guest, lurking through his home, counting the candlesticks whilst he fed her dinner. She was a bad woman, a criminal. Bridget O’Malley did not belong in the splendor of the duchess’s apartments in Blayton House.

  The damask wallpaper, thick carpets, polished and gilded furniture, and the handsome paintings on the wall all reminded her of it. Even her gown, borrowed from Daisy, fine navy silk more sumptuous and beautiful than she had ever dreamed of wearing, seemed to mock her.

  It was a shell, a disguise. Fine trappings to cover the ugliness that lay beneath, a woman with an inconstant heart, who could not be true to anyone she loved. Not her brother, not her half sister, not her husband, not her homeland. What a pathetic impostor she was, pretending to be everything she was not. Torn in a hundred different directions. Nothing left of her to give anyone.

  She had been selfish since marrying Leo. These last few days had been the best of her life, spent in his arms, in his bed, learning the joys of each other’s passion. Simple moments too, such as eating breakfast together. Just that morning, he had forked up a bite of his egg and offered it for her to taste. Reading poetry to him while he laid his head in her lap. Watching him sleep.

  He was a beautiful man, and for the charmed span of their brief union, he had been hers, and she had felt like a queen, as if all things were possible. As if there would be a solution she could find that did not involve betraying the man she loved.

  But there was none to be had, and she knew it now with the grim evidence of her abject failure folded in her hand, those few words burning into her skin like the devil’s brand. The mantle clock told her she was running out of time. She had an hour to spare until she needed to meet John, and she had yet to contrive a suitable means of explaining her desire to depart Blayton House, which she had not done once during the course of their marriage, and to do so alone.

  Leo would be suspicious.

  He was not a fool, and though he had proclaimed his love for her, sometimes she caught him watching her when he thought she was not looking, and he wore the expression of a man who had brought a wild creature into his home and remained uncertain of whether or not it was truly tame. Whether or not it—she—could be trusted.

  She could not be.

  Her decision to heed John’s call proved that. Bridget told herself she owed Cullen her allegiance more than Leo. That she must choose her love for her flesh and blood over her love for the man she had only known a scant few weeks. It was only fair. Only sensible. And besides, John could well have news concerning Cullen. Surely his trial would soon be set, and they would need to take action to free him from prison before his sentencing could occur.

  She could only pray John’s price would not be too steep. In preparation of this day, she had sewn a small, hidden pocket into the skirt of the dress she wore. Inside it, she kept the cipher key she had removed from Leo’s waistcoat at Harlton Hall. She had originally sewn it within the lining of her corset, a fortuitous decision, because it meant no one had discovered it on her person and taken possession of it during her wounding and illness.

  All this time, she had kept the cipher key. There had been many instances when she had been tempted, oh so very tempted, to reveal her theft of it to Leo. To return it to him. But something, some warning voice in the back of her mind which recalled all too well the sting of poverty and the bitterness of working for a pittance in shops, had not allowed it. That voice had promised her she must keep such a valuable treasure for the day when she would need it most.

  And the day had come. She hoped surrendering it to John would keep him content. That it would serve her well enough to at least see Cullen spared from the hangman’s noose. Bridget tucked the summons from Mrs. Eudora Templeton into the hidden pocket along with her other contraband.

  How she wished she could reveal all to Leo. But it would be futile, and she knew it well. Even if she confessed to him now, why should he believe or aid her? He had made his opinion of Cullen’s incarceration abundantly clear. He would not help her brother.

  Justice must be had for the men whose blood was spilled that day.

  She could still hear his quiet assertion. She pressed a hand to her lips to choke back a sob. The worst of it was, she could not argue with him. Those who had plotted and committed the savage murders in Phoenix Park had been wrong. But Cullen was not among their numbers. She knew it with all her heart.

  Her husband, however, did not. He had made it abundantly clear to her precisely where he stood on the matter of her brother’s innocence.

  I know you want to believe the best of him because he is your brother, but the evidence against him is significant. Even were I inclined to offer him aid, I do not think it would make a difference.

  Now, just as it had days ago during their heated conversation, Leo’s words scored her like a dagger delivering painful pricks to her flesh, again and again. Leo did not believe in Cullen because he did not know him as she did. Because he did not love him as she did.

  How could she forgive herself if she allowed her brother to go to the gallows? How could she bear to choose between the two men she loved?

  She inhaled. Exhaled. Told herself she could do this. She had to do this.

  Because she had no choice.

  Five steps, six, seven, twelve to her chamber door. She lifted the latch and stepped into the hall. Centuries of Carlisle ancestors gazed at her with censure in their eyes as she swept past their portraits. More silent, damning reminders she did not belong here within these walls.

  Impostor, they said.

  Liar, those paintings whispered.

  Thief, they charged after her.

  Yes, she was all of those things, and she could not deny it as she descended the magnificent stairway. Each step brought her closer to her reckoning.

  Why was it she felt as if she were the one facing a grim death on the gallows?

  Hargrove, the butler, approached her as she alighted from the last stair. He was
dignified and stiff in bearing at all times, but with his grandfatherly shock of white hair and his propensity for kind smiles when she least expected them of him, he had fast become a favorite.

  “Your Grace,” he greeted her. “His Grace wished me to convey to you he had an unexpected matter to attend to this afternoon. He will join you for dinner.”

  Relief washed over her.

  She would not have to lie to Leo. Not yet. “Very good, Hargrove, and quite timely, as I have a need to go shopping this afternoon. Would you please see to it that a carriage is readied for my use?”

  “Of course, Your Grace. Would you like to review the dinner menu for this evening?”

  How she wished she belonged to a world in which such a triviality was commonplace. Where she hailed from, one was merely content for sustenance. Far too many had starved during famine, losing their lives at the hands of Englishmen like Leo. It had never occurred to her to ask if he was a landowner, and the realization filled her with shame.

  She clung to that shame now, needing it, needing the reminder of all the empty bellies and dead tenant farmers left behind by English landlords in times of scarcity. “I am certain it will be lovely, Hargrove. The carriage is all I require, if you please.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Leo watched from the window of an unmarked carriage as Bridget emerged from Blayton House. The sight of her, dressed as elegantly as a duchess ought to be, regal in her jaunty hat and blue afternoon gown, wearing only a wrap loosely hooked over each elbow, was enough to make nausea churn inside him.

  He had spent the days since enlisting Griffin’s aid in his plan alternately doing everything in his power to show his wife how deep his feelings for her ran, and waiting for some form of communication to arrive for her, sent by one of her Fenian connections. It arrived within mere days, an innocent enough missive from Mrs. Eudora Templeton. An invitation to tea at half past two.

  And he had waited some more for Bridget to bring him the missive. To confess to him. To tell him she trusted him enough to give him the truth at last. To ask him for his aid.

  He was still bloody waiting.

  Her defection was akin to a kick to the gut, or a cudgel to the head. This was not the outcome he had envisioned when he had developed his plan, when he had involved Strathmore. He had imagined Bridget would believe in him and love him enough to trust him. That she would unburden herself and ask for his help.

  He had been wrong.

  Deadly, stupidly, horrifically wrong.

  Oh, he had realized as much when she had not mentioned her unusual correspondence to him at dinner the previous evening. When he had gone to her bedchamber and kissed her and fucked her senseless, she had not spoken a word of the supposed invitation to tea she had received. When he had joined her for breakfast this morning, he had remained stupidly hopeful she would unburden herself.

  But she had not.

  And instead of taking her in his arms and promising her they would solve this problem together, he was watching her from afar as she climbed into his carriage. She was meeting a Fenian, alone, in secret. There was only one reason why she would be doing such a thing, and it made him want to retch.

  She had chosen the Fenians over Leo. Of course she had, and he had been the biggest fool for believing in her. For listening to her when those deep blue eyes met his and she told him she loved him. For falling in love with her himself. For thinking his love could ever be enough.

  The carriage containing his faithless wife jostled into motion, and he knocked on the wall of his carriage three times in sharp succession, the sign to begin following. He had chased her down before, and it would seem he would need to do so once more.

  Bridget stopped the carriage at the millinery where she had once worked. It was near enough to the rooms John kept she felt comfortable finding her way from there. She gave the driver instructions to return for her in an hour’s time and pretended to enter the millinery until the conveyance lumbered out of sight. Then she walked as hastily as she could to her true destination.

  Taking care to make certain she was not being watched, she skirted the building—an apothecary’s shop—to the rear where she could find the entrance to the simple lodgings John had been renting for the last year using the alias Reginald Palliser. Jane Palliser was a shop girl who could come and go without notice, visiting her brother.

  Everything had been carefully plotted and planned, and how easy it was now to return to the life she had lived before going to Harlton Hall. Up one narrow flight of stairs, past a door with a faulty latch, her fist raised to rap on the last door five times in quick succession. It was as if no time had ever passed. As if she had never become the Duchess of Carlisle. As if she had not lost her heart to Leo.

  Except for the pain in her heart and the aching bitterness in her soul.

  The door opened. John stood there, silhouetted by bright afternoon light pouring in the window at his back. He caught her to him suddenly in a tight embrace, and startled, she hugged him back. It should have felt familiar. Comforting. Instead, it felt like a betrayal.

  Because it was.

  “Come inside, sister,” he invited, playing their roles though it seemed unlikely anyone was within earshot.

  Don’t do it, cried her heart.

  You must for Cullen’s sake, cried the rest of her.

  Bridget did as she was bid, stepping over the threshold. John closed the door behind her. They were alone, facing each other. He had grown a beard in the time since she had last seen him, and his hair was in need of a trim. His frame seemed more gaunt than before, the plum shadows beneath his eyes more pronounced.

  “How is Cullen?” she asked into the silence that had descended between them, for it was all she could care about. All that mattered. It was the sole reason she stood here before him. “Have you seen him? Do you know when his trial shall be?”

  “He is weakening,” John said grimly. “It is to be expected. The conditions he faces are harsh, and the trial is set for a fortnight from now. We are running out of time where he is concerned, I am afraid.”

  Her heart clenched painfully. “That is what I feared.”

  “You did not take the young duke as I asked of you,” John observed coolly, his expression impenetrable.

  “I attempted to, but I was caught and shot,” she said truthfully. “I did the best I could, John.”

  “We were depending upon you, Bridget. Cullen was depending upon you.”

  His censure hit her like a lash. She stiffened. “I am aware. As I said, I was wounded and fell ill. I did as much as I could to bring the young duke to you as you had asked of me. In the end, I could not manage it.”

  “And yet you had time to wed yourself to the Duke of Carlisle.” John made a low whistle, his tone mocking. He was a short man, not much taller than she was herself, but she wondered for the first time if she should fear him. If he would attempt to do her physical harm. “Tell me, Bridget, how did that come to be?”

  It occurred to her she could either be honest with him or she could feed him the version of the truth he would find the most useful. If she exaggerated her loyalties, made it seem as if she had married Leo to aid the cause, perhaps John would be more inclined to help Cullen even without the Duke of Burghly in his grasp.

  “I married him for the cause,” she lied. “When the plot fell through and I was wounded, I created a new plan. I decided if I could entrap him, convince him I loved him, he would be ours. Think of it, John, what could be better than having access to the leader of the men charged with arresting those who would aid and abet our cause?”

  His lips compressed into a firm, grim line. “Why did you not contact me? Why did you not send me a message? Explain to me why I needed to learn of this from someone else, why I needed to be the one who made contact.”

  “I had not the means of contacting you that would not be discovered by Carlisle,” she said. “He may have married me, but he is hardly in the palm of my hand, and he is too intelligent, too war
y not to be suspicious of me. He already knew I was a Fenian because of my disastrous attempt at spiriting the young duke away.”

  She wondered for a brief, dizzying moment if her words were true. Since their feelings for each other had changed, Leo had been unrelenting in his declarations of love. He had given her pleasure. Had changed her forever. But what if he remained suspicious of her, even after all they had shared? The question made her frown.

  She wished she knew the answer.

  But part of her was beginning to suspect she did, and furthermore, it was an answer she could not like.

  To her relief, John nodded, some of the strain seeming to dissipate before her eyes. “I feared as much. Your marriage to him is rather fortuitous, as I have formulated a new plan, one that will far surpass any others in the past.”

  Wariness hit her. “I gathered some information from him, John.” She reached into her hidden pocket and extracted the cipher key, holding it out for him to take. “I believe this to be the diagram used to translate ciphered messages the League sends amongst its ranks.”

  He took it from her, unfolded it, his eyes scanning the contents. “Well done, Bridget, but I am afraid this is not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked, the wariness turning into dread, sinking through her like a stone.

  He tilted his head, considering her. “Would you kill for your brother, Bridget? Would you kill to save Cullen?”

  Her blood went cold, everything inside her withering like the flowers beneath winter’s ice. “I did as you asked, John.”

  “You did not bring me the boy.” His voice was hard now, edged with steel. “It would have been the perfect plot, exchanging his life for those of our men in Kilmainham. Not only did you fail me, and fail Cullen, but you got yourself shot and captured in the process. I am afraid your marriage—fortuitous though it may be—and your discovery of this cipher key are simply not enough. We need action and destruction, complete and full war, if we aim to truly accomplish what we want.”