“I wished to avoid Lord Fenris.” She smoothed her skirts and gazed out the window. She would never be free of the hatred between the Talbots and the Wellstones if she ran at the first possibility of a confrontation.
“I meant to warn Eugenia he was here,” he said, “but it seems that’s unnecessary.” Mountjoy joined her, standing behind her, too close if anyone should see them, and not close enough. “I know my sister has no reason to like the man, but has he done something to upset you as well?”
“You might say so.”
“Will you?”
“Your grace.” She put her back to the window and told him the history between her and Lord Fenris. She could see him making all sorts of mental leaps of logic. “Naturally my father objected to my correspondence with my mother’s sister. He never forgets a slight done him. Speak a word to him in anger and twenty years later he will repeat to you the exact circumstances of the offense. He regularly reminds me of all of mine, and there were many.” She looked up at the duke. “I am now more than a quarter of a century old, and he has held a grudge against my mother’s relations since before I was born. I can only marvel, sir, at his tenacity. My maternal grandfather is no longer living, and my father cannot and, I assure you, will never forgive any relative of the man who disowned my mother for marrying him.”
“Ah.”
“I could not tell him my mother had maintained a secret correspondence with my great-aunt any more than I could confess I’d carried on as she did. If he had known, he would have forbidden it, and I would know nothing of my mother’s life.”
“And he would never forgive you.”
“No. He would not. And does not.” She crossed her arms and tapped one finger on her upper arm. “Even so, I was betrayed. After a fashion.”
“How so?”
“She meant me no harm, you understand. Quite the opposite. But when Aunt Lily passed on, she left me Syton House. My father was furious. That I had been rewarded for my treachery only made it worse, you see.”
His expression stayed thoughtful. “Her legacy to you cost you your father. The only family you had left.”
The enormity of his understanding shook her. No one, not even Ginny, had understood what it had meant to lose her father, even though he’d never been the sort of loving family she knew Ginny had grown up with. All she could do was nod.
“Syton House.” Mountjoy rubbed one cheek. “Quite a legacy, I’d say.”
“The disaster was total. She left me everything and destroyed Camber’s hopes of combining her fortune with his.”
“Everything?”
She sighed. “Eighty-six thousand pounds and two estates besides Syton House. One in Scotland, a castle near Edinburgh, and another estate in Kent.”
His eyebrows rose.
“They are leased with fifty more years remaining. I make a tidy sum on them both. I don’t have any expectation that I will be forgiven for that from any quarter. I do believe my father would be a happier man if I were reduced to living under a tree.”
“Why would you ever go home to him? Why not travel the world until he passes to his reward? Let him live in another of your houses.”
She shrugged. “He is my father, and the only person I know who remembers my mother. Sometimes he’ll even tell me about her. Things I never knew because I can hardly remember her. When he does, I begin to understand why she married him, for he loved her beyond life. There was room for only one love in his life; my mother. Just as Greer was the only love for me.”
Mountjoy cocked his head and, after considering her a moment, said, “Shall I ask Lord Fenris to leave? Or would you prefer I take you home?” He put a hand on her shoulder, and Lily’s senses focused on that contact between them. His fingers curved over her, touching her gown and bare skin, too. Her heart beat too fast. “To Bitterward, I mean.” She faced him, and in so doing, his hand fell away from her. He meant nothing by that casual touch. They were close enough to touch again. But neither of them moved. “What are you thinking?” Mountjoy asked.
She could not remember a time when any man had made her so relentlessly aware that she was a woman. The man made the back of her knees positively weak. “Nothing.”
He laughed, and her belly tightened. “Wellstone. The day you are thinking of nothing is the day the world ends.”
“Very well.” She shook her head, amused by him. “I am imagining myself calmly telling Lord Fenris that I am indeed his cousin and that if he chooses to withdraw from High Tearing on account of my being an unwanted connection, that is his choice to make. He will leave, mortified and secretly happy with his narrow escape, and that will be that.”
“Begging your pardon, but that does not sound like you. Or Fenris.”
“No?” She resisted the urge to touch him. “More likely, he’ll accuse me of stealing his watch. Or his gloves. Or perhaps his horse. That’s a hanging offense.”
Mountjoy snorted. “I very much doubt he plans that.”
“You know what he’s like. What he did to Ginny. Or nearly did. Why else would he be here, if not to pursue his family’s vendetta against mine?”
“Coincidence?”
“My attorney once warned me Camber might try to declare me mentally incompetent.”
Mountjoy frowned.
“Camber wants Aunt Lily’s legacy. He thinks it should have gone to him. Or to Fenris.”
“My God, you’re serious.”
“You’ve no idea the rancor he holds toward me. I didn’t think he’d ever give up.” She glanced away. “I don’t think he did. Not really. He’s been biding his time.” She laughed softly. “Thank goodness Camber never spoke to my father. If he had, he might have found grounds.”
He frowned again. “Would your father allow such a thing to happen?”
“Perhaps not deliberately.”
Mountjoy didn’t answer right away, but he continued to frown. “I can take you home if you’d rather not meet Fenris today.”
“Thank you, your grace.” She touched his sleeve. “That’s kind of you. But not necessary.”
He cocked his head, a thoughtful expression on his face. “It might be wiser to meet him at Bitterward where you are surrounded by friends and people he cannot bully as easily as he must hope to bully you.”
At first, she thought that by friends he meant Ginny, but then she realized he meant more than that. Just as Ginny had promised, he was extending an offer of his personal support. In all her life, she had never had anywhere to look for assistance but to herself and those whom she hired to act on her behalf. The idea that Mountjoy intended to help her was as disconcerting as it was astonishing. “You mean that.”
He regarded her in silence. Lily held her breath, expecting any moment that he would withdraw his offer or chastise her for putting him to such an inconvenience.
“I do,” he said. “You are my sister’s friend. My friend as well, if I am permitted to be so bold. Even if you were not, I would not leave any woman to the mercy of Lord Fenris. Certainly not you.” He smoothed the front of his coat. Not that it did any good. Nothing would improve the appearance of his coat. “Not while you are under my roof. Even if you weren’t, I should hope you’d know you could appeal to me for assistance.”
Lily swallowed the lump in her throat. She didn’t care if he dressed as if he’d never set foot in a tailor’s shop. His support touched her deeply. “Thank you, your grace.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “But I think I ought to meet him now, if only to give him a face to go with the devil’s spawn he’s been imagining all these years.”
“I’ll go with you. To make the introduction.”
Tears jammed up in her throat and further words were impossible. All she could do was nod her agreement.
“We will present him a united front of persons of whom he can disapprove all he likes and to no avail.”
She wanted to thank him, but if she spoke she’d sound as if she were crying, and she never cried. Instead, she nodded.
; “Very well then.” Mountjoy headed for the door, but Lily, having mastered herself, stopped him from opening it. To know that she was not alone made more difference to her than she would have believed.
“Best let me go first,” she said.
He nodded, and she reached for the door. As she pulled it toward her, the metal knob came off in her hand. She didn’t understand at first what had happened, only that the door remained closed. “How odd.”
“What is it?” Mountjoy said from behind her.
She showed him the doorknob. “I’ve broken the door.”
Chapter Nine
“BROKEN? HOW CAN THE DOOR BE BROKEN?” MOUNT-joy took the bit of metal she handed him in answer. While he examined it, Miss Wellstone tried again to open the door.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. The metal had sheared clean off, leaving only the brass plate affixed to the door. He looked up when she let out a frustrated huff. “What?”
“I am unable to open the door.”
His first inkling of disaster hit. He clutched the broken doorknob. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, my dear Duke,” Miss Wellstone said a bit too evenly, “that when Ginny left, she closed the door, and with the knob no longer attached, there is no way to open it.”
“Allow me.” Mountjoy dropped the doorknob into his pocket and examined the faceplate. The metal was smooth except where the knob had been attached, and only the smallest bits of twisted metal remained behind. She was right. Without the broken-off knob, there would be no easy way to pull the door open.
“My hands are smaller than yours. Perhaps I can grasp a bit of the metal.” She stripped off her gloves, and he took them from her while she bent to the door. Her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth.
“Caution, Wellstone. It’s sharp.”
“Thank you for that reminder of the obvious.” She arranged her fingers over the spot where the knob had been attached and pulled. The door moved forward an infinitesimal amount, then her fingers slipped. “Drat.”
Mountjoy didn’t think anything except that she had failed to open the door until she hissed and caught her left hand in her right. Blood welled between her fingers. “You’ve hurt yourself.”
“It’s nothing.” She looked at him, eyes wide, features so impossibly delicate, now ashen because she had hurt herself and was trying to hide it. His chest tightened.
“It’s not nothing.” He reached for her hand. “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Let me see.” He caught her injured hand in his. The moment she released her grip on her fingers, blood flowed even faster from a cut along the side and across the pad of her index finger, covering her skin in brilliant red. He pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped it around her fingers. Blood soaked through almost immediately. “I ought not have let you near the door.”
“I am an experienced door opener, I’ll have you know.”
He glared at the door. There were other reasons to get them out of here as quickly as possible, but her injury was the most pressing at the moment. “Do you see the key anywhere? I might be able to use that as a lever to pull the door forward enough to open it.”
“Brilliant idea.”
The key, however, was nowhere by the door, and they both looked.
Mountjoy scowled. “If it fell from the lock, I’m dashed if I can see where it landed.”
“Do you suppose it could be in a drawer somewhere?”
If they weren’t able to open the door in the next five minutes, he was going to have to call for help with all the unpleasant ramifications that such a public action entailed. Jesus, the house was full of people. And that prig Fenris, who probably already thought the worst of Lily, would have his prejudices confirmed. Should they be discovered alone, in a room that had been closed against intruders, scandal would be the inevitable result. At least he liked her well enough. More than well enough. He got on well with Lily. If it came to that.
If.
“Why,” he said with more tartness than was required, “would someone put the key anywhere but in the door?”
“Look around you, your grace, what do you see?”
He was helpless to act except in a way that would not please either of them, and he was not a man prone to helplessness in anything. “Furniture. A window. An average room.”
“Are you blind?” She winced and brought her hand closer to her body. “The room is maroon, sir.”
“What’s that to do with anything?” The handkerchief around her hand was more red than white now. He stripped off his gloves and tried to get some kind of leverage on the decorative metal plate, but his hands were too big and the bits left of the doorknob were far too small and razor sharp besides.
“I regret to say,” she said in a thin voice, “that anyone who would decorate a room with such a singular lack of consideration to what is pleasing and restful to the eye is not likely to have been sensible about where the key ought to be kept. You’d best pray Miss Kirk has better taste than her mother.”
He ignored the dig, but, Lord, the thought of anyone having a hand in making over Bitterward gave him the shivers. “I’ll look again, then.” He walked to a highboy and opened a drawer at about his waist height on the theory that the key wouldn’t be kept inconveniently high or low. “How is your hand?”
“Better.” From the corner of his eyes, he saw her study the room, gripping her handkerchief-wrapped fingers and tapping her toe. “It wouldn’t have to be the key to the door would it?” she asked.
“Of course it would.”
Lily walked to a secretaire. “Why? The door is not locked. All we need is leverage. Any key, any object capable of catching in the lock will do.”
He shut another drawer of the highboy and acknowledged that with a tight nod. “Quite so.”
With both hands, she pointed to the key sticking in the upper lock of the desk. “This one will do nicely I should think.”
If he did have to marry her, he was unlikely to be bored anytime soon. Exasperated, yes. Amused, often. But bored? Never. “Quick thinking, Wellstone. Please”—he strode to her—“don’t use your hand. I’ll get it.” He extracted the key from the secretaire. A tassel of reddish purple silk hung from the end. He didn’t like the color much himself, but what did he know? As he wriggled the key into the lock, someone knocked on the door.
Lily understood the seriousness of the moment, for she stood beside him, quite still and silent. Not that it mattered who it was. At this point, his duty was to get her out of here to have her injury looked after and never mind explaining why he had been closeted away with an unmarried lady.
“Lily?”
That was Eugenia’s voice. Thank God.
“Yes, Ginny, I’m here.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, yes. Tell me, Ginny, is anyone there with you? Or are you alone?”
“I am not alone.”
He and Lily exchanged a look. “It can’t be helped, Wellstone,” he said in a low voice.
“Ah,” Lily said for Eugenia’s benefit. Her somber nod of understanding was for his benefit. “If you wouldn’t mind opening the door, there’s been a malfunction of some sort. We are not currently able to open it from this side.”
“Oh, dear.”
Mountjoy put an arm around Lily’s waist and drew her away. “Be so good as to open the door, Eugenia.”
The door rattled, then moved smoothly inward, and Eugenia walked in, one hand on the side of the door. Lord Fenris and Mr. Kirk came in behind her. Eugenia took one look at Lily’s hand and blanched. “What happened?” She whirled to him. “Mountjoy, what happened?”
“Shall I fetch a doctor?” Fenris asked. He pulled out his handkerchief and, as Mountjoy had done, handed it to Lily.
“Thank you, my lord.” Lily gave him a nod and wrapped Fenris’s handkerchief around her hand.
“That’s blood,” Mr. Kirk said. “Blood all over your hand.”
“Yes, sir, it is. I had the misfortune of doing myself an injury.”
Mr. Kirk turned the color of chalk. His eyes rolled up in his head. He wasn’t a tall man, but he made considerable noise when he hit the floor and landed at Lily’s feet.
“Someone had best call a doctor,” she said, staring down at the insensible Mr. Kirk.
“Dr. Longfield is here somewhere,” Eugenia said. “Perhaps we ought to fetch him.”
Lord Fenris crouched and patted Mr. Kirk’s cheek. The man did not respond. “An excellent notion, Mrs. Bryant. I’ll see to him until the doctor has looked after Miss Wellstone.”
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