Mistress by Midnight

by Nicola Cornick

  She went out into the hall. The nursemaid was bringing Shuna, Joanna and Alex’s eighteen-month-old daughter, down the stairs. The baby held out her rounded arms to Merryn and for a moment Merryn hugged her close, breathing in her niece’s baby smell and feeling something tight and warm clutch her heart. She watched the smiling nursemaid take Shuna into the drawing room then went slowly up the stairs. The servants were lighting the candles now and the house looked bright and light, full of color and the scent of fresh flowers, so unlike the cold mausoleum that was Farne House. She thought of Garrick alone in that place. It must be unconscionably lonely, all dark corridors and silent rooms, just as the burden of a Dukedom must be lonely, carrying the responsibility for so many people.

  Again she felt a shiver of disquiet. Garrick Farne was a powerful man, a crack shot, Tom had said, a famed swordsman, a man who had walked alone in places she would have been afraid to tread with an armed guard. And now he was on her trail. She had a disquieting feeling that Garrick could be very dangerous to her indeed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “ARE YOU SURE, your grace,” Mr. Churchward said, “that you are doing the right thing?” His tone, measured as it was, implied that he felt that Garrick might possibly have taken leave of his senses and should be clapped up in Bedlam.

  They were sitting in the offices of Churchward and Churchward, lawyers to the aristocratic and discerning, in High Holborn. In fact they were in the inner sanctum, Mr. Churchward’s own office, and the door was very firmly closed. Pale sunlight tripped through the window and danced across Mr. Churchward’s imposing walnut desk, illuminating the deed of gift lying there. Mr. Churchward tapped it, impatient, unhappy.

  “I am certain I am doing the right thing, thank you, Mr. Churchward,” Garrick replied.

  “It seems to me,” Churchward pursued, “that you are giving away—” he took a deep breath “—a vast sum of money—” he put heavy emphasis on each word “—to the detriment of the Farne Dukedom.”

  “I am aware of that,” Garrick agreed.

  “One hundred thousand pounds,” Mr. Churchward said miserably. “And a very fine property in Fenners.”

  “I have explained my reasons,” Garrick said gently. It was anathema to him to own Fenners. The property should never have been his in the first place. He had known from the moment that he picked up the deeds that he would give it back, along with all the monies that had accrued to it over the past ten years.

  “Your scruples do you credit, your grace,” Mr. Churchward said, polishing his spectacles with great agitation, “but I do wonder if you may live to regret your generosity.”

  “I doubt it,” Garrick said. “I am still rich beyond decency and if I have twenty-five properties rather than twenty-six I am sure I shall survive.”

  Mr. Churchward shook his head. “Sentiment,” he said, “has no place in business, your grace. Your late father understood that.”

  “My late father,” Garrick said, his tone hard, “did not set an example I wish to follow in any area of my life, Mr. Churchward.”

  “Well, perhaps not.” The lawyer placed his glasses back on his nose. His pale eyes gleamed at Garrick through the thick lenses. “Your late father,” he admitted, “could lack compassion.”

  “You have the most marvelous line in understatement, Mr. Churchward,” Garrick said. “My father could best be described as an unfeeling bastard. I speak figuratively,” he added, “lest you should be worried that someone might challenge the legitimacy of the Dukedom.”

  There was a knock at the door and the senior clerk poked his head around. “Lord and Lady Grant, Lady Darent and Lady Merryn Fenner,” he announced somewhat breathlessly.

  Garrick stood up. He could feel tension in his shoulders, the strain making the back of his neck ache. He rubbed it surreptitiously. He had known that he had to be present for this meeting. Mr. Churchward could hardly be expected to bear the responsibility alone. But he was also acutely aware that it might cause Lady Grant and Lady Darent distress to be confronted by the man who had killed their brother. Merryn’s reaction he was fairly sure he could accurately predict.

  There was a commotion in the outer office and then Lady Grant and Lady Darent swept in. Garrick could understand why Churchward’s clerks were behaving like chickens when a fox got in the henhouse; both women were extraordinarily beautiful, perhaps not in the classic sense, but they both exuded style and charm and warmth that could set light to a room. It was difficult not to stare. Apart they would have been considered incomparable. Together they were dazzling.

  And then Merryn walked in. Her eyes met Garrick’s and he found that he could not look away. Where Joanna Grant and Tess Darent had a cool, empty beauty, Merryn was all fire and passion. She stopped dead in the doorway so that Tess Darent almost walked into her.

  “What the devil is he doing here?” she exclaimed.

  Her loathing of him was completely unconcealed. It blazed from her blue eyes. There was antipathy in every line of her slender body. Garrick thought she was about to turn on her heel and walk out.

  “You might have warned us, Mr. Churchward,” Joanna Grant said, with what Garrick thought was admirable restraint.

  “And then we need not have come!” Merryn snapped.

  Garrick smiled at her and was rewarded with a glare in return. He knew that it was not simply dislike that motivated her. If he chose to reveal anything of their previous meetings she would be in a very difficult situation indeed. He raised his brows in quizzical challenge and saw her blush before she looked away. Her lips set in a tight, angry line.

  “Lady Merryn,” he said. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  That brought him another fierce snap of anger from those blue eyes.

  “I was not aware that you had met his grace of Farne recently, Merryn,” Joanna said mildly.

  “We met at the library yesterday,” Merryn said.

  “And a couple of days before that,” Garrick put in, “in my b—”

  “Bank!” Merryn said loudly. Everyone looked at her.

  “At the bank?” Joanna sounded surprised.

  “Acre and Co. in the Strand,” Merryn said. Her gaze, equally as challenging as Garrick’s own, held his for one long moment. “I was admiring the architecture. Such a fine design.”

  Tess Darent gave a little yawn, hiding it behind one languid hand. “Lud, Merryn, how very like you,” she said.

  Merryn smiled. Garrick saw the flash of triumph in her eyes.

  “I bank at Coutts and Co.,” he said gently, “for future reference, Lady Merryn.”

  “Then perhaps you were admiring the architecture, too,” Merryn said sweetly. Her look dared him to go further, to expose her. He could see the defiance in her eyes. He could also see the pulse that fluttered in her throat. Merryn Fenner was nervous, he thought, for all her daring.

  “I was certainly admiring something,” he murmured. “I found our encounter most stimulating.”

  He dropped his gaze to her mouth. Merryn blushed, biting her lip, a gesture that only served to emphasize how full and luscious those lips were. Garrick felt a punch of lust, which was not, he thought, the appropriate physical or mental state to be in for a meeting with his lawyer.

  Churchward cleared his throat. “Ladies, Lord Grant…” He ushered them all into their seats. Tess and Joanna arranged themselves prettily. Merryn sat bolt upright, her gaze pointedly turned away from Garrick. A glacial silence fell.

  “If we might proceed…” Churchward said. “I must thank you all for coming at such short notice.” He fixed his dusty spectacles more firmly on his nose. “And for your forbearance, ladies. I asked you here today because the Duke of Farne—” a thread of disapproval entered his voice “—wishes to make you an offer.”

  “Not of marriage, I hope,” Merryn said shortly.

  “Not unless you desire it, Lady Merryn,” Garrick said smoothly.

  “I’d rather you gave me the plague,” Merryn snapped.

  “Merryn,”
Joanna Grant said reproachfully, and Garrick saw Merryn grimace. A shade of pink came into her face and she fell silent.

  “Let us not be too hasty.” Tess Darent was sitting a little straighter in her chair and showing some interest in the proceedings for the first time. Her gaze inspected Garrick thoroughly. “I might be happy to add a Duke to my collection,” she said.

  “Not this one, Tess,” Joanna said dryly. “He looks too healthy for you. He could not be relied upon to die within a year of your wedding.”

  “More is the pity,” Garrick heard Merryn murmur.

  “Besides,” Joanna added, even more dryly, “he is too virile for your taste.”

  Garrick saw Merryn’s gaze jerk up to his face and a wave of hot color stung her cheeks. For a second they stared at one another, captured in a fierce blaze of awareness, and then Merryn turned her head away again and her eyelashes flickered down to hide her expression. Garrick saw her knit her fingers tightly together in her lap.

  “Ladies…” Churchward sounded reproving. Evidently, Garrick thought, he had had some previous experience of the shocking ways of the Fenner sisters. “No one,” he said severely, “is offering to marry anyone.” He turned to Garrick. “If you permit, your grace?”

  “Of course,” Garrick said. “Please proceed, Mr. Churchward.”

  Once again he felt Merryn Fenner’s gaze on him. Her expression was dark now, unreadable. For a second, though, Garrick thought that she looked frightened and he felt a tug of emotion inside; he wondered what this meeting must be like for her, stirring up as it did feelings and memories she had clearly never overcome. Then she raised her chin, scorning the tacit sympathy he realized that he had offered, rejecting every vestige of comfort he might give. Her dismissal felt like a slap across the face.

  “This is a deed of gift made on the eleventh of November in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fourteen,” Mr. Churchward said precisely. “By this gift his grace Garrick Charles Christmas Farne, nineteenth Duke of Farne—”

  “Christmas?” Merryn said, quite as though she could not help herself.

  “I was born on the twenty-fifth of December,” Garrick said, smiling at her, “to a very devout mother.”

  “How unfortunate for you,” Merryn said politely.

  “It could have been worse,” Garrick said.

  “The nineteenth Duke of Farne…” Mr. Churchward’s stern voice bore them down “…freely gives in equal part the house and estate in the County of Dorset and the sum of one hundred thousand pounds to Joanna, Lady Grant, Teresa, Lady Darent, and Lady Merryn Fenner, to hold as their absolute right and dispose of as they wish, with his grace the Duke of Farne making no further claim upon the estate or the fortune accruing unto it. The estate,” he added, “is in excellent repair.”

  There was an odd silence as Churchward finished, like the lull before the first bolt of lightning split the sky. Garrick saw Joanna and Tess exchange a look and then Merryn’s chair clattered back with such sharpness that they all winced.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  Garrick could see that she was trembling. Her entire frame shook with the force of whatever anger or misery possessed her. Her eyes were huge. He could feel her passion and the pain beneath it, so raw and fierce it hurt. He put out a hand toward her, instinctively wanting to offer comfort again, and saw her recoil.

  “Because Fenners should belong to you.” He spoke directly to her, as though the others were not there. “I did not know that my father had purchased the estate. He should not have done so. It is rightfully yours. So I am giving it back.”

  She looked right into his eyes and Garrick felt the force of her gaze sweep through him. She was so transparent, so honest a person that nothing was hidden. There was no artifice in Merryn Fenner and that meant she had no defenses at times like this.

  “This is to ease your conscience!” Her words hit him with the force of a blow. She swept the deed of gift to the floor with an unsteady hand. “You killed Stephen and now you think that this will be recompense?”

  “Merryn.” Joanna had placed a restraining hand on her sister’s arm. “Please…”

  “It is in no way intended as recompense,” Garrick said. “The death of your brother was—” He stopped, remembering the moment in the library the previous day. No words of his could ever give the Fenner sisters back what they had lost. There had been plenty of reasons to rid the world of a scoundrel like Stephen Fenner but he was not about to reveal them here. It would do no good. Merryn Fenner would never forgive him, no matter the truth. And once he were to start speaking of the tragedy he would put at risk all the people he had sworn to protect and all the secrets that had been so carefully hidden twelve years before. He chose his words with care.

  “It is something that I regret every day of my life,” he said. That at least was true but he saw from the flare of contempt in Merryn’s face how inadequate the words were.

  “The gift of Fenners,” he continued, “is, however, a matter apart. It should not belong to the Farne Dukedom. That is wrong. So I am giving it back.”

  Alex Grant spoke for the first time. He had sat very still and silent throughout, but now he shifted in his chair.

  “That is…generous of you, Farne,” he said.

  “It is right,” Garrick said shortly, “not generous.” He felt Grant’s perceptive gray gaze rest on him for a long moment. He wanted no credit for his actions. He simply wanted to be rid of the estate.

  “One hundred thousand pounds to share between us,” Tess Darent said. “How marvelous!”

  Merryn turned on her. “Surely you cannot be intending to take it?” she demanded. “You are rich—you do not even need thirty thousand pounds!”

  “I always need thirty thousand pounds, Merryn darling,” Tess said calmly. “Any right-thinking woman would.” She wrinkled up her nose. “You can have the house, though. I hate living in the country.”

  Garrick could see all the emotions chasing themselves across Merryn’s face, bewilderment and disgust, closely followed by despair as she realized that her sisters, so much more worldly and, arguably, less-principled than she, were very likely to accept the offer. She looked intensely lonely, just as she had when she had walked away from him at the library.

  “I won’t take it!” She turned back to Garrick, fury igniting her gaze.

  “You cannot refuse it,” Garrick said gently. “It is a gift.”

  “I can try.” She took an angry pace away. “I’ll give it away.”

  “That is your privilege.”

  She gave him a look of such searing contempt Garrick felt it all the way to his soul.

  “Damn you,” she said distinctly.

  Garrick thought of Harriet Knight. There was quite a queue of people wishing him in perdition. Interesting that he had cared not a jot for Harriet’s dismissal of him. It had left him utterly cold, whereas Merryn Fenner’s scorn raked him more deeply than he would have liked. He inclined his head. “Quite so, Lady Merryn.”

  “I think,” Alex interposed, “that we had best discuss this matter in private.” He stood up. “Mr. Churchward.” He shook the lawyer by the hand. “We will be in touch. Thank you. Farne…” His nod was a shade more cordial than it had been at the beginning of the meeting.

  “You will not buy me off,” Merryn said through her teeth.

  “Come along, Merryn,” Joanna said, sounding like a governess.

  They went out. Garrick could hear Tess Darent’s voice fading away as she chattered to Joanna about the new winter wardrobe she would purchase with some of her thirty thousand pounds. He saw that Churchward had overheard Lady Darent, too. The lawyer grimaced.

  “The late Lord Fenner’s daughters are all very different from one another,” he murmured.

  Garrick thought that of the three, Tess was actually the one most like Stephen Fenner. Stephen, too, had been blessedly short of moral scruples when it came to money. Joanna, he rather suspected, had hidden depths. She might appear to be a society
butterfly but she could not have attracted and held the love of a man like Alex Grant without some substance. As for Merryn, well, she was as transparent as glass, painfully honest and demanding the same integrity from all those that she met. He winced as he remembered her disillusion on hearing Tess’s response to the deed of gift. Life could be very cruel to idealists. Which was another reason why to tell her of her brother’s true character would be wantonly cruel.

  He stood up, stretched, feeling the tension drain away from his body.

  “Thank you, Churchward,” he said, shaking the lawyer by the hand. “I appreciate your support.”

  “One hundred thousand pounds,” Churchward mourned. “You are sure you will not change your mind, your grace?”

  Garrick laughed. “Too late. Lady Darent will already be spending her share, I feel sure.” He sighed, straightened. “Please let me know as soon as Lady Grant responds formally to the offer and please have all the estate papers ready to send over to her.” He smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Churchward.”

  He went out. He felt a huge wash of relief to be outside in the fresh air. He resolved to ride out that afternoon. His ducal duties could wait a little. He needed space and speed and the opportunity to outrun his ghosts. Merryn Fenner filled his consciousness with her vivid passion and the sharp awareness that undercut every one of their encounters.

  You will not buy me off…

  He had not for one moment thought that he could.

  “HAVE YOU A MOMENT, GUV’NOR?”

  The man who had stuck his head around Tom’s office door was Ned Heighton, one of the men who worked for him picking up information in the rookeries and coffee shops of London. A former Army Provost, Heighton had fallen from grace through some misdemeanor and been court-martialed and dishonorably discharged from the army. Tom had never inquired into the cause of his disgrace, although he suspected it was drink-related. Heighton could be a little too fond of the bottle. Still, the army’s loss was Tom’s gain. Heighton was a very sound man.