Griffin Stone: Duke Of Decadence (Dangerous Dukes Book 3)

by Carole Mortimer

  All that had existed for Bella was sitting alone in the darkness, being forced to eat the stale bread and water, followed by those questions being repeated over and over again. Followed by the painful kicks and slaps. The abuse had been accompanied by the harsh warnings of the first jailer when Bella had cried out that she did not understand the questions let alone have the answers they wanted.

  Her nightmare, if it was a nightmare, and not actually a memory, had seemed to go on endlessly. Pain, cold and hunger.

  Until Bella had finally awoken to the sound of her own screams as she’d sat up in the bed. Those feelings still with her even though she was now fully awake; the shaking of her body beyond her control.

  Pelham had burst through the bedchamber door first, quickly followed by the housekeeper, the two of them doing all that they could to soothe and calm her.

  Except Bella could not be calmed or soothed. Not once she’d accepted that she had not been dreaming. That they were memories that had returned to her.

  Along with the knowledge that her beloved parents were both dead.

  So what did her captors want?

  What did she overhear?

  Who had she told?

  Tell me, tell me, tell me!

  She sat up suddenly, eyes wide as she turned to look at a grim-faced Griffin. ‘Jacob,’ she breathed harshly. ‘The man who held me prisoner was called Jacob!’

  Chapter Five

  Bella’s, or rather Beatrix’s, gasped statement was not what Griffin had been expecting to hear.

  She had been so caught up in her nightmares still, so lost in those awful memories, that Griffin was sure she did not realise she had been talking out loud the whole time as she’d recounted the details of the visions that had caused her to wake screaming.

  And as she’d remembered Griffin had felt himself becoming angrier and angrier at all she had suffered. It was a cold and vengeful anger, which he knew would only be assuaged when he found, and punished, the two people responsible for having treated Beatrix so cruelly.

  Yet hadn’t he also been guilty of mistreating her? By refusing to trust her and treating her with suspicion?

  Admittedly, his many years as an agent for the Crown had created a deep cynicism and distrust within him. To the point where he was now wary of anyone who was not family or a close friend. This left him with a very small circle of people: his grandmother, the Dangerous Dukes and their wives, and Aubrey Maystone. And recent events had only added to his distrust and wariness.

  However, was it possible that she was innocently involved in his own reason for being in Lancashire? ‘Jacob?’ he repeated softly. ‘Could this man you refer to possibly be called Jacob Harker?’

  She gave a pained frown. ‘I never heard his last name, only his first, and I believe even that was by accident.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’ Griffin prompted gently. ‘Did he have any distinguishing marks? A scar, perhaps? Or a mole?’ Recalling that Harker had a mole on the left side of his neck.

  She shuddered. ‘I never saw him.’

  Griffin frowned his puzzlement. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Usually there was a blindfold secured back and over my ears. On the day I heard his name they had been questioning me again, and had not covered my ears sufficiently, so that I could hear a muffled conversation, more like an argument, between the two of them outside of where I was kept prisoner.’ She swallowed. ‘The second jailer was angry, and remonstrating with the first, I think because they had once again failed to get the answers from me they wanted. One shouted that I would be dead before they had their answers. That is when I overheard one of them refer to the other as Jacob.’

  Complete deprivation of sight, sound and touch, along with a minimum of food and water, with the added threat of dying a painful death; it was a standard method of torture.

  That those things had been done to this helpless young woman made Griffin feel positively murderous.

  If her parents were both dead, then where was her guardian, her closest male relative? Someone, somewhere had surely been entrusted with the care of her after her parents’ deaths? Whoever they were they deserved to be shot for their negligence.

  Of course young ladies did sometimes run away in the middle of the night during or after the London season, but usually they returned several days or weeks later, either in disgrace or with a husband!

  There was always the possibility that her guardians believed she had eloped.

  ‘Bella—Beatrix?’ Griffin hesitated over the name.

  ‘Bea,’ she corrected flatly. ‘I believe my parents referred to me as Bea.’

  Griffin did not miss the past tense in that statement, or the look of pained bewilderment in Bea’s eyes. A pained bewilderment that he perfectly understood if, in fact, her parents were both dead, as she had dreamt they were. ‘Do you remember them?’

  ‘Only in the dream,’ she answered dully. ‘And only that one instance, when I was dancing giddily with my mother.’

  That was, Griffin now strongly suspected, because shock and fear were responsible for causing her amnesia. The memories were obviously returning to her, even if only subconsciously, but her imprisonment, the harshness of her treatment, meant it would probably take time for all of her memories from before her abduction to return to her completely.

  He might have wished she could forget her imprisonment and torture too!

  Griffin’s attempts today, to see if Bea belonged to a family in the area, had come to naught.

  On his way out this afternoon he had instructed Reynolds, his estate manager, to check on any of the empty cottages and woodcutters’ sheds within the estate, in the hopes that he might find some sign of where Bea might have been held prisoner. Her flight through the woods the previous night surely meant that Bea could not have run far dressed as she was and without footwear.

  Bea.

  How strange that he had chosen a name for her not so far from her own.

  Tears dampened her lashes as she pulled abruptly out of his arms before standing up. ‘I do not know how or when my parents died, but it must have been recently I think, because in my dream I attended their funeral, and I did not look so different then, except for the bruises, from how I am now.’ The tears fell unchecked down the pallor of her hollowed cheeks.

  ‘I am sorry for that, Bea,’ Griffin consoled as he stood up to go to her, taking a light grasp of her arms as he looked down at her. ‘I am so very sorry for your loss.’

  ‘I do not remember them.’ She shook her head sadly as she drew her bottom lip between her teeth in an effort to stop any more tears from falling. ‘I only know of them at all because I saw myself standing at their gravesides, and knew that I loved and grieved for them both.’

  How Bea had survived, even as well as she had, after all that had recently been done to her, Griffin could not even begin to comprehend.

  She might have survived physically, he corrected himself grimly, but emotionally it was a different matter. It appeared now that Bea’s mind had simply shut itself down and refused to remember.

  Except in her dreams.

  But the things that Bea had now recalled about herself in those dreams were something Griffin might use in order to further try and identify who she was. She was obviously well spoken and educated, which indicated that in all likelihood her parents had been also. A further adage to that was they had, in all probability, been members of society; there could not be too many couples in society who had both died at the same time, and recently, and with a daughter named Beatrix.

  Being so far away from London himself, Griffin now knew he had no choice but to write to Aubrey Maystone and ask him to look into the matter for him.

  ‘Bea, I hate having to ask you to dwell on this any further just now, but...’

  ‘If I have the
answer I will gladly give it,’ Bea assured him sadly, the grief, the dark oppression of her dreams, obviously still weighing her down.

  He nodded. ‘The questions the man Jacob asked. What were they?’

  ‘They were the same two questions, over and over again. How much did I overhear? Who had I told?’ She frowned as she gave a shake of her head. ‘I did not know the answers then, and I do not know them now.’

  Griffin realised that someone obviously believed that she knew something they would rather she did not.

  And it was in all possibility something to do with the reason why Jacob Harker had left Northamptonshire so suddenly several weeks ago, and travelled up to Lancashire.

  Something of relevance to the foiled assassination plot of the Prince Regent just weeks ago?

  Harker’s possible involvement in Bea’s abduction would seem to imply that was in all probability the case.

  Griffin filed the information away in his head. ‘How did you finally manage to escape?’

  She frowned. ‘The man, Jacob, had taken to unfastening my hands and feet when I was allowed to use—’ She gave a shake of her head, her cheeks becoming flushed. ‘I believe I struck him on the side of the head with the bucket before ripping off my blindfold and simply running and running. Does this man, Jacob, mean something to you?’ She looked up at him sharply.

  Griffin frowned grimly. ‘It is not important.’

  ‘It is important to me!’ Some of her earlier fire returned as her eyes flashed darkly.

  Griffin gentled his voice. ‘I believe the best thing for now would be for you to rest.’

  ‘No!’ Bea pulled out of the Duke’s grasp before stepping back. ‘I cannot. I do not wish to rest.’ Even the thought of going to sleep again, of having more nightmares, was enough to fill her with panic. ‘I should like to know what relevance this man Jacob Harker has to you. Why, upon hearing the name Jacob, did you immediately assume he might be this Harker you speak of?’

  ‘He is a known troublemaker in the area, that is all,’ Griffin soothed.

  Bea was not fooled for a moment by that explanation. ‘That still does not explain why—’

  ‘Bell—Bea,’ he corrected apologetically. ‘It is not the best time for us to talk about him, when you are already so upset.’ He looked grim. ‘I am more interested in the questions that were asked of you, and what significance they— Damn it!’ he muttered in frustration as there was a brief knock on the bedchamber door. ‘We will talk of this again once we are alone again.’

  ‘I really do not think I can discuss my actual imprisonment any more just now, Griffin.’ Her voice broke emotionally. ‘It is too—distressing.’ She was slightly ashamed of this show of weakness on her part, but was unable, for the moment, to think any more of her imprisonment and what her dreams had already revealed.

  Her worst fear now—a fear she dared not talk of out loud—was that she might also have been violated.

  She did not remember it, did not feel in the least sore between her legs. But perhaps she would not have noticed that soreness amongst the other bruises, cuts and abrasions on her body?

  Just the thought of that smelly and disgusting man laying so much as a finger on her—

  The dreams, revelations, that she had already had, about her most recent life, before Griffin had found her in the woods last night, along with the things she had not yet remembered, made Bea’s position here now seem even more precarious than it had been previously.

  If that were possible.

  She was an orphan. And one whom no one seemed to have claimed or loved, for if they had then surely her sudden disappearance would have caused a hue and cry, and in all likelihood Griffin would now know exactly who she was.

  Instead of which he was obviously as much in the dark as to her identity as she was.

  Although the name Jacob had certainly meant something to him. Something he did not wish to discuss with her.

  ‘Come in, Pelham,’ the Duke now instructed impatiently as a second knock sounded on the door. The door opened and the butler entered with the tray of tea things, quickly followed by the housekeeper carrying a large box.

  ‘Some of Miss Bella’s gowns, Your Grace,’ she explained hastily as the Duke scowled at her presence.

  ‘My goddaughter would prefer that we call her Bea in future,’ Griffin announced haughtily.

  Earlier today Bea had been almost excited at the prospect of new gowns, ones that actually fitted her. But the events since had reduced their arrival to mediocrity.

  And Griffin’s claim now, that she was his goddaughter, further robbed her of speech.

  Although she appreciated that their present situation must be as awkward for him as it was for her. If not more so.

  He was a duke, and a widower, and this was his primary ducal estate, and Bea’s dreams now indicated they would not discover who she was, or to what family she belonged, as quickly as he might have hoped. Bea could hardly continue to stay here without some further offer of explanation being made to his household staff as to the reason for her sudden presence in their employer’s home.

  But surely her late arrival last night with the Duke, wearing only her soiled nightgown, gave instant lie to the claim she was his goddaughter?

  If Pelham or Mrs Harcourt found his choice of explanation in the least surprising, then they gave no indication of it. The butler placed the tray of tea things on the table in front of the window, and the housekeeper placed the box containing Bea’s new gowns on the bed, both acknowledging their employer respectfully before departing the bedchamber.

  ‘I am sorry I could not pre-warn you of my announcement, Bea.’ He grimaced ruefully once they were alone together. ‘As I am sure you can appreciate, following this afternoon’s upset, some further explanation for your presence here now has to be given.’

  As Bea also knew, without his having to say it, that Griffin was a man who disliked intensely having to explain himself to anyone.

  As the powerful and wealthy Duke of Rotherham he no doubt rarely felt the need to do so!

  Except Bea needed some further explanations herself.

  Since waking she had several times thought of her dishevelled state when Griffin had found her the previous night. ‘Who undressed and bathed me last night, and then dressed me in a clean nightgown?’ she prompted slowly; she had certainly not been wearing the soiled or bloodstained garment from her dreams when she woke this morning.

  ‘I did,’ he dismissed briskly. ‘I thought it best that none of my household staff be made privy to your bruises or abrasions,’ he added abruptly as Bea’s eyes widened.

  Instead this breathtakingly handsome man had undressed her before bathing her completely naked body.

  That he had seen her in that dirty and disgusting state was humiliating enough. To think of him stripping her, washing her, and then dressing her in a clean nightgown was far too intimate to contemplate.

  ‘And my old nightgown?’

  ‘I gave it to Pelham and instructed him to burn it this morning,’ Griffin said coolly. ‘Do not look so aghast, Bea; Pelham has been at Stonehurst Park for most of my life. He is and always has been the height of discretion, and you may rest assured he will not discuss the matter with anyone else.’

  Bea was far more concerned with Griffin having seen her total humiliation, her unwashed and bruised body, than she was with the kindly butler’s sensibilities.

  She kept her eyes downcast as she turned away to look at the laden tea tray, noting the two cups and saucers. ‘Will you be joining me for tea?’

  ‘I think not, thank you,’ Griffin refused stiffly, accepting that Bea was unwilling to discuss this any further just now, and knowing it was past time he removed himself from her bedchamber.

  Despite her earlier upset, and his claim now of being her godfather, it was st
ill not acceptable that he spend so much time alone with her in her bedchamber.

  Even if a part of him wished to do so.

  Being reminded of the intimacy of bathing her the night before, of kissing her, and holding her in his arms, listening as she talked of the nightmares, Griffin felt the tenuous strands of an emotional bond being forged between the two of them.

  And it would not do.

  He was not truly Bea’s godfather, but a healthy and virile man of two and thirty who was totally unrelated to her, and who had several times responded to her in a physical way that was definitely not in the least godfatherly!

  They did not as yet know Bea’s true circumstances or age, but Griffin now felt sure she came from a good family, and that he was at the very least ten years her senior.

  He had suffered through an unhappy marriage, and his experiences with women these past six years had not lessened that disillusionment in the slightest. He was distrustful of them at best, cynical at worst.

  He had once believed that Felicity felt an affection for him, and that the two of them would be together for the rest of their lives. He had been fond of Felicity, if not deeply in love with her, and totally faithful and loyal to their marriage. Both had been thrown back in his face when Felicity had chosen another man’s affections and body over his own.

  He would have to marry again one day, of course, if only to provide his heir, but Griffin was determined his second wife would be a woman for whom he held only respect, as the future mother of his children. Nor would he expect his duchess to feel any unwanted affection for him.

  He had not been in the past, and he was not now, nor could he ever be, any young woman’s romantic image of a knight in shining armour.

  Still, at the moment he was sure Bea must feel a certain gratitude towards him, an emotion based solely on his having rescued her the previous evening.

  As such, his own physical response to her, as well as his growing feelings for her, were both totally inappropriate.

  ‘We will meet again at dinner, if you feel up to joining me downstairs?’ he asked coolly.