Josephine’s eyes glittered, a strange, predatory expression crossing her features for a moment before she chased it away and replaced it with feigned sadness. She held the door open and stepped back. “Come in, dearest daughter. My home is your home.”
The hackles on her neck rose as she stepped over the threshold, knowing she was the nearest she had ever been to pure evil. Knowing that she must persevere. The door closed at her back. She walked deeper into the house, keeping her back to Josephine as long as she dared, only four steps. She needed to proceed according to the plan, to make certain Josephine remained near the door.
She spun about, facing the woman. “I want to help you, Josephine. I can provide you with funds, whatever it is you need. As my father’s wife, you should not go without. I am sorry he betrayed you by squandering Uncle George’s fortune, but if there is any way I can assist, I wish to.”
Josephine’s hand had slid inside her skirt, and she withdrew a small pistol, training it upon Georgiana’s heart. Georgiana stilled, took a deep breath, and raised her hands. Here was the ultimate gamble. If her stepmother chose to pull the trigger here and now, their plan would fail. But there remained the chance that Kit could be saved, and that was all that mattered to her.
“You can assist me by dying,” Josephine spat, hatred emanating from her in tangible waves. “You stupid girl. Do you know that I have been trying to arrange your death for months? And for months I failed! Now, here you are, like a fat little lamb in my parlor, worth far more to me dead than you are alive.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t true,” Georgiana said. “Perhaps you did not read the documents left behind by Uncle George with enough care. They clearly state that should my father predecease me, in the event of my death, all remaining wealth assigned to me will revert to the state of New York, to be dispersed in charitable works.”
It was a bluff. But the chance that Josephine had not read the documents herself was strong, and Georgiana felt that it was worth the risk.
Josephine went pale. “Revert to the state for charity? And what of me? Am I to be left with nothing when your father has bankrupted us before dying?”
Georgiana continued to train an unrelenting stare upon her stepmother. “What is your connection to the Fenians?”
Josephine gave a bitter laugh. “I suppose I may as well tell you now. I have nothing left to lose, so if you think you will be walking out this door and running off to tea, you’re wrong.” She paused, considering Georgiana. “If you must know, I fell in love with Jack in London. He was dashing and young and everything Robert was not. My mother’s kin hail from Ireland, you see, and when Jack told me about his cause, I knew I could help. All that money in Robert’s hands was a sin. He had no need for it, and he certainly didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve me.”
“You are right,” Georgiana agreed. “He did not deserve you.”
Her father had been an unkind man. He had withheld his love from her his entire life. He had used her and belittled her as it pleased him. He had never once embraced her or showed her tenderness. But no one deserved to be murdered.
“A little rat poison in his food each day.” Josephine laughed again, sounding unhinged. “That was all it took. Scarcely any time at all. He was sick in his bed most days, and it was easy to take the funds from the bank and give them to the cause. It was right. I do not regret a moment of it…until Jack was killed.”
“Why?” Georgiana asked.
“The cause needed the money. Jack needed it, and I loved Jack. He loved me. At first, I thought our portion would be enough. But then your father told me what your portion was.” Josephine tsked. “Such a travesty, such an error of judgment on the part of your dimwitted uncle, leaving so much of his fortune to some foolish girl. One night, your father told me that if you died, your remaining marriage settlement and all funds designated for your heirs would revert to him. What I needed to do was clear.”
“My father,” she bit out, because she had to know, even though she didn’t want to know. “Was he complicit?”
Josephine sneered. “Wouldn’t you like to believe that he wasn’t? Why do you think I learned of the requirements? Do you imagine he offered it as idle chatter?”
Georgiana swallowed against a rush of nausea. “Of course. But tell me one thing if you please. How did you know that my husband was involved in combating the Fenians?”
“It was surprisingly easy with the money to grease the proper palms.” Josephine sneered. “The London Fenians already suspected Leeds, and all I needed to do was pay a boy to intercept his correspondence and replace it with copies. I gave everything to Jack. They knew all about the little trip he had planned, and they bided their time until they could get rid of him. Only, the bastard wouldn’t die.”
Georgiana felt sick, but she forced herself to continue. Josephine was in position. At any moment, Ludlow and the team of police would strike. “How could you do it?”
“Oh, look at you.” Josephine tilted her head, considering her with an expression of ill-concealed disgust. “You’re such a—”
But Georgiana would never know what her stepmother had been about to say, for in that moment, a gunshot rang out. The world itself seemed to explode as her stepmother crumpled to the floor. In the next moment, Ludlow crashed inside with Alice at his heels.
The mastiff barked.
“Find the duke,” Georgiana ordered her trusted hound. “Find him, Alice!”
Alice’s nose went to the floor, her tail going stiff, and she ran.
City police were everywhere, swarming. Alice barked. Ludlow caught her gaze, nodding. Something passed between them, an understanding on a deeper level that required no words.
And then he nodded. “Let’s find him, Your Grace.”
Kit coughed and gasped for air.
By some miracle, the sadistic bastard’s water supply had run out. And the barking had gotten louder. Nearer. Along with footsteps. His torturer heard the commotion as well.
“Sounds as if we have company,” his captor spat. “Such a shame. I wanted to torture you a bit more before finishing you.”
The barking grew closer still.
And then there was the voice he’d recognize anywhere calling his name. The voice of an angel. His angel.
“Kit!”
What in the bloody hell was she doing here? Did she not know the danger? For the first time since regaining consciousness hours earlier, emotions he had successfully held at bay assailed him.
Panic.
Fear.
Good Christ, he was helpless, useless and incapacitated. The madman determined to slowly drown him to death was armed. There was no good option available to him save one.
“Kit!” Her voice, beautiful and clear, rang out on the other side of the door. A chorus of barks ensued.
Sweet Jesus, was it possible? He even recognized that bark. Alice. How in the name of all that was holy?
“What the hell?” growled the man.
Kit took a deep, shuddering breath and bellowed with all his might. “Georgie! Get the hell away from here! Protect yourself!”
His captor’s snarling face hovered over his, and that was when he saw the gleam of a wicked blade, raised and poised to strike. “Looks like I’ll be sending you to hell a little sooner than planned.”
In the next moment, the door burst open, and a barking, growling flash of fur launched itself into the room. Shock rippled on his captor’s features as the canine launched herself at him. He caught a glimpse of the mastiff’s sharp teeth as she bit down hard on the man’s arm.
The knife clattered to the floor as his captor cried out in pain.
“Good girl, Alice!”
A flurry of footfalls sounded, along with a rush of voices. The small room was suddenly filled with moving bodies. Police officers, he realized, and…bloody hell, was that the not-butler he spied?
“Stand down!”
“Seize him!”
But Kit focused on the only voice he wanted to
hear and the only face he wanted to see. His wife’s. She raced toward him, throwing herself upon him, covering his face in kisses.
“Kit!” she cried out. “Are you hurt? Say something.”
Thank Christ. He closed his eyes for a moment as relief unfurled within him, warm and comforting, along with the fiercest rush of love he’d ever known. She had saved him. His avenging angel, he amended, and how fitting that she had come armed with one of her beloved dogs.
It was over.
She was safe.
“Kit,” Georgie said again, fear coloring her voice as she rained kisses across his brow, his nose. “Will you not speak, please?”
“I bloody love you, Georgie,” he said, opening his eyes again to find her beautiful face hovering over his. She was all he could see, all he wanted to see. Forever.
A blinding smile curved her lips. “And I love you, Kit.”
They were safe at last.
Everything was right in his world.
London, October 15th, 1881—The Duke and Duchess of Leeds have announced the creation of a home for rescued animals. Her Grace, formerly of New York City, is well-known as the heiress to the Western Star Railroad fortune and has become a champion for the plight of abandoned creatures. The home is widely considered to be the first of its kind, with many more to follow.
New York, October 19th, 1881—The disgraced Mrs. Josephine Dumont, having convalesced from a gunshot wound, currently awaits trial along with Mr. Sean McGill for the murder of Mr. Robert Dumont and various other charges that correspond to aiding and abetting the Fenians. The evidence against Mrs. Dumont and Mr. McGill is voluminous and is expected to lead to additional arrests in New York City, London, and Liverpool…
reported in The New York Times
eorgiana clung to the beloved warmth of her husband’s hand as he guided her through Leeds House, en route to the surprise he had awaiting her. With the blindfold he’d gently tied over her eyes firmly in place, she couldn’t see a blessed thing. She felt rather like a mole, feeling her way through a subterranean layer.
A well-loved and cherished mole, to be sure.
In the last year, she had become a wife and a duchess. She had fallen hopelessly in love with her husband, had learned just how precious and wonderful a gift it was to have her love returned in equal and ardent measure. She had grown stronger, wiser, had learned to let go of the past and move forward into the bright future awaiting her and Kit both. And she had just discovered within the last two weeks that their love and their world was about to grow by the size of one small child.
She hadn’t yet told Kit, but she had every intention of doing so today after his surprise. The woman she was now, dressed in a navy bodice and custom, billowing trousers—an ensemble that had cost a small fortune but that enabled her to work with her animals with freedom of motion—was happy. Her happiness was a buoyant, beautiful thing inside her chest that made her feel simultaneously as if she had stepped into a fairytale and as if she couldn’t breathe.
Her corset was cinched but not so very tight.
Really, it was her love for the man at her side that had her at sixes and sevens.
The tall, lean, elegant stranger she had married and grown to love. The Duke of Leeds was still more beautiful than most women, all harsh angles and strong symmetry and commanding presence. He had fierce brows, a patrician nose, blades for cheekbones, a wide, rigid jaw, and the most perfectly sculpted lips she’d ever seen on a gentleman.
She loved him more than she had ever imagined possible.
But even so, as she bumped into a piece of furniture with her knee and then struck her elbow upon another unseen object, her patience wore thin. “Kit, when can I remove this blindfold? I’m like a bat, flapping about blindly into things.”
“You do have an appalling lack of grace, my love,” he agreed, and there was a grin in his voice.
“You scoundrel,” she said without heat, for she adored his teasing nature. It was so much easier to endure than his dark moods, though as his wife, she loved him surly as much as she loved him silly.
“You love this scoundrel,” he said swiftly.
“Of course I do.” She smiled. “But I decidedly do not love walking into furniture. When can I take this infernal blindfold off?”
“In good time.”
“I feel horribly naked without my ability to see,” she complained and then flushed when she realized what she’d said and how wicked it sounded.
“Strange you should say that,” he murmured into her ear then, his lips grazing her as he spoke. “I’ve a secret desire to see you in nothing but the blindfold, darling.”
She shivered, an answering throb beginning between her thighs. Perhaps the blindfold wasn’t such a bad thing after all. She made a mental note to stuff it into her concealed trousers pocket after Kit removed it.
“You’re a wicked man,” she said, breathless.
He squeezed her hand. “You like me wicked.”
“I wouldn’t have you any other way,” she admitted, following where he led her. She would follow him anywhere, any time. To the moon if he but asked it of her.
Thankfully he did not have so lengthy a journey in mind today. At last, they stopped, and his lips brushed her cheek. “You may remove the blindfold now, my love.”
She released his hand and reached behind her, fingers nimbly undoing the knot that held the cloth in place. They stood together at the entrance to the dining room, a massive dinner laid out on the long table. Two footmen in full livery and their new butler, Pittston, awaited them. As she took in the scene before her, she tucked the blindfold into her pocket for later use.
Kit held out his arm for her, and she noted for the second time that night how very handsome he was, with his dark hair neatly combed and a rakish beard shadowing his jaw. Her heart fluttered like a butterfly.
“My darling duchess, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to our wedding breakfast redux?” Kit asked with a formal air, as though they had just crossed paths in a ballroom for the first time and he had asked her for a dance.
She could still recall the dance (a polonaise) of that long ago day, how stilted he had been, a world away from the man who now owned her heart. Georgiana tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Of course, my darling duke.”
Touched by his effort to woo her in a way he had not on the first occasion of their wedding breakfast, she did not notice until she was seated that the array of dishes laid out in elegant splendor before her was almost entirely the same, down to the perfectly formed aspics.
“You’ve recreated our wedding breakfast,” she said, awed as she took in the array of dishes she had chosen.
“Sans the ortolans,” he said, a flush stealing over his high cheekbones. “I know you could not bear to eat them then any more than you could now.”
“They were my father’s choice,” she said.
“Precisely as I suspected.” Kit’s smile was soft, almost boyish in his eagerness to please her. “Our wedding breakfast was never for him. It was for us. But since I missed it, I thought it only fitting that we could enjoy it together now, just as we should have done almost a year ago.”
Tears pricked her eyes at his gesture. Every detail was correct—each dish she had chosen, from the entrées chaudes to the lobster salad, was laid out awaiting them, in the fashion of a feast rather than a staid, multi-course affair. She could not have asked for a more perfect surprise or a more perfect husband. “Oh, Kit. I love you so, you wonderful man.”
“I love you, Georgie mine.” He raised a brow and gave her a half grin.
The servants offered each of them a plate laden with delicacies, beginning with the entrées froides. There, at last, was the lobster salad Georgiana had requested with Kit in mind, the selfsame salad she had not been willing to consume after the manner in which he’d left.
“Les Salades de Homards,” Kit intoned. “The infamous lobster salad.”
She raised a forkful as though in salute
. “To you, my love.”
He copied her gesture. “No, to you, darling, with my humblest and most sincere apologies for being an arse the first time around.”
They both sampled their dishes at the same time.
And it was…definitely not delicious. It was mushy and cold and tasted of the sea, doused in a vinegar dressing that was far too potent. She chewed it slowly, hoping the salad may have a deeper flavor or a note of decadence that emerged the longer one allowed it to sit upon one’s palate.
But, once again, she was doomed to suffer a disappointment.
Georgiana made a moue of distaste that dissolved into a fit of laughter when she realized her husband bore a matching expression of ill-concealed disgust. “It isn’t very good, is it?”
“No, my love.”
They grinned at each other.
“All that time I resented you for not staying to eat the lobster salad,” she said on a fit of giggles.
“And it wasn’t any bloody good anyhow,” he finished for her, laughing as well.
When their mutual levity subsided at last, Georgiana met her husband’s glittering gaze, feeling a molten rush of anticipation sliding through her at the tender way he looked at her now. “It was never about the wedding breakfast or the menu I prepared or about any of the dishes that were served.”
He sobered. “I know, love.”
“It was about you.” She lowered her fork to her plate, her eyes never straying from his. “It was always only about you.”
“I will happily spend the rest of our lives making it up to you,” he promised with an intensity that left no doubt about the veracity of his words.
“Oh Kit,” she said on a sigh, feeling a prick of happy tears and blinking furiously to keep them at bay. “You have. Your love is all I require.”
Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4) Page 29