THE footman gave Max the message before he reached the stables.
Holt was here. Max almost staggered. He felt winded, as if the servant had driven a fist into his belly instead of delivering his news with all the deference due to a duke.
Kate’s brother awaited Max in his library, with the chief of the rebels in tow. Which meant Kate might already know the truth. Holt must have told her how Max had deceived her. The irate vicar wouldn’t keep that news to himself.
Discreetly, the footman cleared his throat, as if to prompt a response. With a start, Max recollected his purpose in coming down to the stables. Clearly, Holt had preempted Max’s move to round up the rebels. No need to ride out today, after all.
Barely able to catch enough breath to speak, he sent the footman to call off Jardine and George.
Max didn’t immediately return to the house. He looked up, squinting into the sun until his eyes smarted and small, colored lights danced in his vision. Gathering the courage to face her.
Blindly, he turned and set off towards the house. Unprecedented terror pounded in his brain and clenched around his lungs. Now, he’d pay for what he’d done.
He barely considered the stated purpose of Holt’s visit. The rebels, here at Lyle Castle? It made no sense, but he couldn’t think about that now. He had to find a way to placate his wife, to make her understand. He’d done what had to be done.
But would she forgive him for deceiving her, for marrying her without telling her the truth? He clenched both fists, trying to stave off panic. She must forgive him, or there’d be nothing left for him at all.
He reached the stairs to the terrace, feeling as if lead lined his boots. Every step took him closer to disaster and retribution. His heart slammed in his chest.
Max set his hand on the rail and dragged in a shuddering breath. He’d dealt with death and loss and pain and the worst, almost inconceivable cruelties humankind could inflict on one another. He’d performed his job stoically, without hesitation. But his ironclad stomach roiled at the thought of losing Kate. After a scant few days of knowing her, life without his wife had become, quite simply, unthinkable.
But no, she wouldn’t leave him. His bright, brave Kate would not take the easy way out. She’d stay, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to give him all of herself, the way she had on their wedding night. She’d withhold her joy and passion so he couldn’t hurt her again. A heavy price to pay for his cowardice.
Because once you lost someone’s trust, you never completely regained it. He’d learned that lesson when his father confessed that his secret gaming obsession had reduced their once wealthy family to penury. Every good thing William Brooke had done throughout Max’s childhood and adolescence had been wiped out in an instant, along with the future of all of those his father had professed to love.
Max headed towards the library, where the footman had said the vicar would wait. The servant hadn’t mentioned Kate. Would she be there, too, ranged on her brother’s side against Max?
But he didn’t reach the library. In the hall, Kate blocked his path, her eyes filled with pain.
“I have seen my brother.” Her voice echoed in the marble atrium.
He stopped short, and suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the draughty hall. All of his previous forebodings raced through his mind. She’d discovered the truth. He’d lose her. She was the most important thing in his life. Christ, he loved her!
The realization crashed into him like a runaway stagecoach, leaving him breathless, panicked, and desperate to regain his equilibrium. He needed to argue his case, convince her to forgive him. Convince her to stay.
At the look on her face, his former certainty that she’d remain with him, no matter what he’d done, withered and died. She’d leave. She was his wife until death, but she wouldn’t stay with someone like him.
Max knew what it was like to have his trust betrayed. And now he’d turned around and done the same thing to the one person he cared about most in the world.
Kate’s eyes burned brightly in her stark, ravaged face. “It was you,” she whispered. “You sent my brother to jail.”
Seventeen
In a field in France, poppies drugging pleasure, we couple in the grass beneath a crisp blue sky.
DON’T forget the rest, Max said silently. I kidnapped you and held you for ransom, though I told you it was for your protection. I stole your diary and read the most intimate secrets of your body and soul. And I used them, too, in every way I could.
He straightened, clenching his fists, preparing to fight for her with everything he had. It took him two attempts before he found his voice. “Kate,” he managed, “at the time, I believed I had no alternative. That fire killed and injured twenty people. Not all of them were family. Some were servants.” He breathed in, forcing air into his painful lungs. “Two of them were children.”
Her gaze faltered. Tears sprang to those lovely eyes.
When she didn’t speak, he went on. “All signs point to those men. Every piece of evidence we have links them with the fire. On top of that, they ran instead of facing their accuser. What else am I to think but that they committed the crime? Your brother admitted he aided and abetted their escape. Forget the sedition charge, Stephen Holt is an accessory to murder.”
Kate’s lips trembled. She bit down on the lower one until the tender flesh turned white. It tore at his chest to see how valiantly she struggled for control.
He waited, desperately hoping she’d understand.
Finally, she spoke, digging her clenched fist into her chest as if her heart hurt. “Was there no other way you could have persuaded my brother to tell you the truth? Did you have to send him to prison?”
He ran his hand through his hair, then dropped it by his side. “How can I say? There might have been. You know your brother. What do you think?”
She was silent for a moment, her expression grave and troubled. “You lied to me.”
“Yes.” He sighed. “And there is worse.”
Her jaw shifted. Every line in her body grew taut, as if she braced herself.
How difficult it was to hurt her like this! But he needed to make a clean confession, not leave the lie to fester like an open wound.
“When I kidnapped you, it was not for your protection. I held you until your brother gave me the information I wanted. The letter I wrote that first morning was a ransom note. That was my method of persuasion.”
Color leached from her face. The pained confusion in her eyes made him long to hold her, but he hadn’t earned the right. He couldn’t bear her to reject his touch, so he kept his hands fisted at his side.
How could he explain? He wished they might go somewhere more private than this cold, marble entryway, but he needed to say this now or he might never screw up the courage to do it again.
“You suspected I did more than shuffle paper at the Home Office. Well, you were right. They called me ‘the Fixer.’ No job was too difficult or too dirty for me to handle. I dealt with the gutter scum, the villainous, and the corrupt. These are men who do not operate within the bounds of the law. To defeat them, sometimes one must play outside the rules.”
She held out a hand, as if to ward off his words.
But he had to tell her everything now. “I’ve been tainted by that world, Kate. To survive there, sentiment cannot play a part. When I jailed your brother, when I kidnapped you, you were just a job to me. It was only later that you became so much more.”
He shook his head, marveling at his blindness. “Do you know what my motto has always been? ‘The end justifies the means.’ I persuaded myself that no good cause would be served by telling you the truth about any of this, that being together was all that mattered. I was a coward. Afraid of losing you.” His voice roughened. “More afraid than I’ve been of anything in my life.”
“That’s why you wanted to marry so quickly, wasn’t it?” she said. “Before I found out.”
What he chiefly remembered was a desperate need to make her
his and to get inside that lovely body again, without delay. “It certainly wasn’t the most compelling reason.”
A faint blush stained her cheeks. His heart leaped to see her color return. He scarcely dared to guess what it might mean.
She fluttered a hand. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I dare not beg you to forgive me just yet,” said Max, struggling to keep his voice even, trying not to hope too hard. “I can only promise you that I will never lie to you again.”
Soberly, she regarded him. “I daresay we both have our secrets.”
Not if she was thinking of her diary. He’d stolen that secret from her. Guilt and shame howled through him like an icy wind. He ought to tell her about that, too, but she didn’t look as though she could take much more. Another shocking revelation and her fragile hold on control might snap. He simply couldn’t hurt her that much.
But even as he thought it, his better self told him his reasoning was specious.
Max caught her hands in his, an overwhelming sense of longing drowning the objections of his conscience. He wanted her back in his arms, at any cost. He wanted to tell her how much she meant to him, but the words wouldn’t come.
When she didn’t pull away, hope spiraled delicately inside him, gaining strength until it coiled painfully around his chest. He waited, and the wait seemed like a thousand years.
Finally, she took a deep, shaky breath. “You shouldn’t have concealed the truth. But knowing what you’d done wouldn’t have made any difference.” Her lips twisted in gentle self-mockery. “I don’t think anything could stop me loving you.”
The relief almost unmanned him. Sick with it, he bowed his head, afraid to touch her in case she evaporated, like a mirage. “I don’t deserve you.” He looked up and drowned in those brandy-colored eyes. “But I’m presumptuous enough to love you, too.”
Tell her about the diary.
She smiled and wound her arms around his neck. “Oh, my dear. I know.”
MAX was late for the interview with the vicar and Tucker, the rebel leader, but for the best of reasons—he’d been kissing his wife. His love.
Feeling extraordinarily well disposed towards the world in general, Max listened to Tucker’s story without interruption.
At the end of the tale, Max rested his head against the high back of his leather chair to think.
“You see? It’s as I told you,” said Holt eagerly. “True, the men did go up to the house to make their demands known to the new duke. They chose a day that was momentous for the entire estate, when the old duke’s will was read.”
“We hadn’t even got there yet when we smelled smoke and the servants raised the alarm,” added Tucker.
Max waved a hand to silence them. “Gentlemen, I’ve heard all this.” He picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Suppose I believe you. Where does that leave me?” He bent his gaze on Tucker. “Do you know who set the fire?”
“No, Your Grace.”
The answer came readily enough, but Max wasn’t convinced. He glared at Tucker under lowered brows, but the man lifted his chin, refusing to be cowed.
Max stifled a frustrated oath. Someone must know something. They always did in small communities like this. But he suspected threats wouldn’t do him any good, not with Tucker, and certainly not with Holt. For the moment, he’d let it go.
“If you happen to hear something or remember anything suspicious, let me know.”
Holt had a gleam in his eye that Max didn’t trust. He was a cunning bastard for a vicar. “Suppose we did know something of interest,” said Holt. “Would it be worth our while to disclose it?”
“It would save your friends’ necks, if that’s what you mean,” growled Max. He glowered at Holt for a moment before addressing Tucker. “Very well. What would your men expect in return?”
“They want to come back to work on the estate,” said Holt before Tucker could answer. “At a decent wage, mind—not the pauper’s allowance the old duke made— and a fair rent.”
Max hesitated. Well, what harm would it do? The estate would have to replace those men otherwise and he believed Tucker’s story, damn him. In his line of work, he’d developed sharp instincts about people, and Tucker appeared just the sort of man he’d like to have working for him— honest, dependable, and forthright.
Besides, he needed that information. “Once I’ve met each of your men and I’m satisfied of their good character, I don’t see why not.”
Holt beamed and rose from the table to shake Max’s hand. “Done!”
“And the information?” Max took a pen and dipped it in ink, trying to conceal his impatience. They’d only ask for more if they knew how anxious he was to hear it.
Tucker spoke. “We—the men and I—think it were this stranger what came about our parts, ooh, mebbe a month afore the trouble started. Name of Hoskins.”
Useless. Max put down his pen. To these country folk, anyone whose great-grandfather hadn’t been born and raised in the district was suspect.
“Young hothead, he was,” continued Tucker. “Always wanting to get into fights, looking for trouble. Whenever we talked about taking a stand on wages and rents, this boy would urge full-blown revolt.”
Straightening, Max snatched up his pen. There’d been rumors in the Home Office that the spies sent into rural and industrial areas to scent out dissension and unrest were in fact instigating violent insurrection, then informing on the perpetrators and claiming their rewards. No one was certain whether these agents provocateurs existed. But perhaps Max had found one.
“And what makes you think this young fellow lit the fire?” said Max, making a note of all he’d been told.
“Well, he were mighty keen on coming with us when we went to see the duke, but on the day, he weren’t nowhere to be seen. As far as anyone hereabouts knows, he disappeared that day and never came back.”
This sounded like it might lead somewhere. “Can you tell me what he looked like? Height, coloring, and so on?”
The description could easily have fitted any number of young men.
“I could draw ’im for ye, p’raps,” said Tucker. “I’m a fair draughtsman, Your Grace.”
Max passed him the necessary implements and the man set to work with quick, bold slashes of his pencil. He finished the rough portrait in short order and passed it to Max.
No one Max recognized, unfortunately, but he’d ask around at the Home Office. He sighed. Another trip to London when he needed to be at Lyle. At least this time he could take Kate with him . . .
He slid the portrait into his file and rose to see the men out.
Tucker looked him in the eye and held out his hand. Max shook it without hesitation before he recognized the gesture as a test.
He fixed the man with a no-nonsense stare. “I mean to make changes here, Tucker. Important ones. I trust I’ll have your support.”
Tucker squinted one eye and cocked his head. “Ye might at that, Your Grace. We’ll see.”
THE duke’s apartments breathed luxury, in contrast with the rest of the shabby, almost Spartan house. Clearly, the old duke hadn’t stinted when it came to his own comfort. Kate sat in their private sitting room on the floor by the fire, sipping a glass of brandy. She smiled, running her hand through the thick pile of the Aubusson carpet. The fiery taste of cognac stirred memories of that night at the hunting box, when Lyle had dominated her completely. Now, she waited for him to do it again.
A meeting with his steward had occupied Lyle since shortly after Stephen left. Kate had arranged a light supper to be served them in the library, where they toiled over the estate books. A pity not to dine together on their first night in their new home, but a good master looked after his land and his tenants before he saw to his own comfort. Kate approved of Lyle’s dedication.
She cupped the brandy balloon in her palms and swirled the amber liquid around to warm it. Raising her glass silently in a toast to her husband, she
took another sip. Dutch courage. This time, however, she’d limit her libations to one glass.
Tonight she’d assert herself once and for all. She’d tell Lyle all she desired. She’d make him understand she was no delicate flower. Kate wanted the bold, devastating lover of the hunting lodge, before he’d thought of her as his wife. She wanted to tumble down from the pedestal where he’d set her, straight into his strong, passionate embrace.
The door to Lyle’s bedchamber opened and closed, breaking into her thoughts. Lyle?
Kate set down the glass, her heartbeat kicking up a notch. Listening, she heard the murmur of voices. Lyle and his new valet—another trapping of dukedom Max seemed happier without. She’d wait until Dawkins left. And then . . .
It seemed a lifetime later that the valet quitted Max’s bedchamber.
Kate waited a few moments. Then quietly, she moved to the doorway and cautiously looked in. No one.
Surely Max couldn’t have left, too? Perhaps he’d gone to her bedchamber.
Chuckling at their cross-purpose, Kate moved towards the connecting door on the other side of the chamber. But before she reached it, a sound came from the dressing room. Lyle must still be here, after all.
Kate switched direction and headed in the direction of the sound. What a ridiculously large apartment for one man!
On the threshold, she stopped short, her hand flying to her mouth.
He didn’t see her, for his eyes were shut tightly. His dressing gown gaped open, revealing a glimpse of muscled chest and flat abdomen with its sprinkling of dark, coarse hair that arrowed down past his navel. One big hand clenched his erection, moving up the shaft, closing over the head, before gliding back down its length, while the other hand squeezed the base of his member. A dark red flush stained the crests of his cheekbones. His erection was similarly flushed, its tip glistening with moisture as he worked his hand up and down.
Shocked and disoriented, Kate held her breath, unsure what she should do or how she should react. She watched Lyle, appalled, fascinated by the sight of him pleasuring himself. All that male power, the expression of concentration and rapture on his face, was almost unbearably erotic. But as his movements grew faster, her mind finally interpreted what she saw.
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