The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires

by Sabrina Jeffries

  Vidocq snorted. “Because Tristan would never go to London.”

  “That’s what I said!” Lisette glared at Max. “But he won’t listen to me. I keep telling him it makes no sense. Tristan simply wouldn’t risk getting caught.”

  Max shot her a dark glance. “But a man would hazard much for a chance at a ducal fortune. If he and the forger were in it together—”

  “For all you know,” she shot back, “the forger kidnapped him and forged the note.”

  “Then how did the forger know of my previous connection to your brother? If the forger is involved, they have to be in it together.” Max sat back to cross his arms over his chest. “Your theory is the one that doesn’t make sense.”

  Vidocq muttered a curse under his breath. “You might as well be married, given how you two quarrel. Would one of you explain all your nonsense about Tristan being in London?”

  Max took out the note and the rubbing of the handkerchief that Tristan had sent, then tossed them across the table to Vidocq. “I got this from Bonnaud a few days ago. That’s what sent us traveling here in search of him. He summoned me to meet with him and then didn’t show up.”

  His curiosity obviously roused, Vidocq took out a pair of spectacles to examine the note more closely. Without a word, he left the room, only to return moments later with another sheet of paper. Shoving aside his plate, he laid Tristan’s note beside the other sheet, which Lisette could see held Tristan’s signature, too.

  As Lisette ate a pastry and Max began to pick apart a chicken leg, Vidocq glanced back and forth between the sheets repeatedly. Finally he announced, “I can say for certain that the note isn’t forged. Tristan did write it.”

  “Yes, but where was it sent from?” Max growled. “Was he actually in London? And where did he disappear to after he wrote it?”

  “It’s very strange,” Vidocq remarked. “This bit about not trusting his messenger—he’s being evasive.”

  “I could figure that out myself,” Max grumbled.

  Vidocq smelled the note and rubbed the paper between his fingers.

  “I don’t think the paper will up and announce where it’s been,” Max said dryly.

  Lisette kicked him under the table. When his gaze snapped to her, she said, “Let Vidocq work. This is his forte. He made his fortune developing tamperproof paper for banks.”

  “And paper can tell you where it’s been,” Vidocq added with a sharp glance at Lisette. “I would say from the uneven texture that this paper has been someplace where it absorbed moisture over time.”

  “At sea, perhaps?” Lisette said.

  “Perhaps.” Next Vidocq examined the rubbing of the handkerchief. “And this is an actual rubbing, not some artist’s rendition. The paper is raised in the right places.”

  Max blinked. “It didn’t occur to me that an artist could create a rubbing.”

  “A forger would certainly be able to fool the eye. But fooling the hand would be virtually impossible.” Vidocq removed his spectacles. “If the two of you can remain in Paris today, I will go to the Sûreté and see what they can tell me about Tristan’s mission. At least I can learn if Tristan reported having found the forger. Then we can rule out the possibility that he is working with the man. His superior might even know exactly where Tristan was headed next.”

  “I wanted to speak to the chief of the Sûreté first myself, but she wouldn’t let me,” Max said with a nod at Lisette.

  “Because you wanted to get Tristan dismissed!” Lisette countered. “You admitted it!”

  “The chief wouldn’t have told you anything, anyway,” Vidocq said smoothly. “You’re an English duke. He would have flattered you and promised to look into the matter, and then, as Lisette says, he would have dismissed Tristan without a hearing. The man is an arse.”

  “A stupid arse,” Lisette muttered. “He’s taking his best agent for granted.”

  “The man doesn’t recognize brilliance, or even mere competence,” Vidocq said. “He cares only whether the rules are followed. And Tristan always cared more about results than the methods required to get them.”

  “So if this chief doesn’t appreciate ‘brilliance,’ ” Max said with the faintest sneer, “how will you get him to tell you the information you need?”

  “Certainly not by consulting him. Better to keep him out of it entirely.” Vidocq gave his sly smile. “I have connections, others I can talk to. Don’t worry—I’ll know everything the Sûreté knows about Tristan by nightfall.”

  “That will give us time to have a more thorough look at Tristan’s house,” Lisette said. “We might find something there to tell us who this friend of his is. The one he thinks is Peter.”

  Max nodded. “It’s worth a try.”

  “And it will give His Grace a chance to tell you all the parts of the story he’s left out about his family,” Vidocq said, his gaze on Max.

  The color drained from Max’s face. “Thank you for reminding me, Vidocq.” Max stared grimly into his cup of tea. “Aren’t you supposed to be going somewhere?”

  Vidocq rose. “If you have not told her by the time I return, I will tell her myself.”

  “I understand.” Max drew himself up. “It doesn’t matter if she knows anyway,” he added in a tone that told Lisette that it mattered very much to him. “She was bound to learn of it eventually.”

  “Very well. Then I’m off to the Sûreté. The two of you should finish your déjeuner. You are welcome to stay as long as you like, either here or at Tristan’s rooms. Ask my servants for whatever you need, ‘Mr. Kale.’ They will be happy to attend you. They know Lisette well.”

  He walked over to brush a kiss to Lisette’s forehead, then murmured in French, “Careful, my angel. You’re playing a dangerous game with this duke.”

  She leaned up to whisper in his ear, “He’s not as bad as you seem to think.”

  Vidocq looked skeptical but didn’t answer. He merely tipped his head to Max and left.

  She returned to her breakfast, all too aware of Max’s gaze on her as she bit into a pear. He wasn’t eating. Instead, he sat there drinking tea and tearing the remainder of his roll into crumbs.

  It broke her heart. He looked so lost. “Max, I don’t know why Vidocq is suddenly so eager to pry into a stranger’s affairs, but—”

  “He only wants to protect you.” He gave a choked laugh. “I certainly understand that.”

  His surprising defense of Vidocq caught her off guard. “Do you?”

  Max looked bleak. “You seem very . . . comfortable together.”

  “We are,” she said simply. “He’s like a father to me.”

  “I could tell.”

  At least he didn’t say it with the jealous edge he’d had last night. She relaxed a fraction. “He hired Tristan at a time when Maman and I desperately needed the funds. Then, after Maman died, Vidocq gave me a position as well. So I am very grateful to him.” After wiping her mouth with the napkin, she rose from the table. “But that does not mean that I do whatever he says.”

  She’d seen enough to know that Max’s pride and dignity had been bludgeoned rather thoroughly today. If she truly cared about him, she needed to give him his privacy. No matter what Vidocq said.

  In that moment, she made a decision. “Just ignore Vidocq’s demands that you tell me the ‘truth.’ You may keep your secrets, Max. They are of no concern to me.”

  14

  LISETTE WAS TIRED of trying to figure Max out, tired of how it obsessed her. If he wanted to close himself off from anyone who might care about him, then she would let him.

  With that resolve, she left the table and headed out the dining room door. One of the servants called to her in French from the other end of the hall, “Is everything all right, miss? Is there anything we can get for you?”

  “No, nothing,” she responded. “We won’t require your services any further this afternoon. We have some work to do at my brother’s lodgings.”

  “Very good, miss,” the servant said.<
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  As Lisette hurried down the hall, she heard Max’s chair scrape in the dining room. Then he was striding after her as she passed through Vidocq’s house and the courtyard to the other house.

  “My secrets are of more concern to you than you realize,” Max clipped out as they entered Tristan’s rooms.

  When she would have kept going through Tristan’s small public area to the study, Max hurried ahead of her to block her path. “My secrets are the reason I cannot marry you. That I will not marry you.”

  He wore that shuttered look that always made her feel as if she should tread softly. Only this time, she could see the pain behind it.

  Suddenly her heart was pounding. It was foolish of her, but no matter what she’d told herself until now, no matter what she’d told him, she wanted very much to be his wife. And the way he kept bringing it up told her that it was something he’d considered.

  Either that, or he was just like Father—playing with her emotions.

  She forced her voice to be light. “Don’t tell me you have a secret wife stashed away somewhere, like the English king with his Mrs. Fitzherbert.”

  His dry laugh relieved her. “No, the only secret relation I have may be a brother. Or not. I no longer know.”

  She pounced on that to avoid revisiting his refusal to marry her. She didn’t think she could bear to hear his reason for it. It must be serious indeed if Vidocq knew of it. “So do you now think that Tristan might actually have found your brother?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose,” he said. “The tale of the fire has always left me with too many questions. If my uncle was mad, how was he sane enough to go to Gheel to seek a cure? Or was he put there? And if the authorities jailed him there, as they sometimes do violent madmen, why aren’t there records of it? The trouble is, I will never be able to get answers to my questions. The investigator is long dead, and the reports he gave to my father are gone.”

  She blinked. “Why?”

  “My father burned them not long before he died.”

  That shocked her. “But that . . . that makes no sense! Why would he do such a mad thing?” She instantly regretted her poor choice of words.

  But Max just said flatly, “Probably because he was mad.”

  A sudden unnamable fear seized her heart. “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what Vidocq wanted you to know.” He gave a shuddering breath. “I not only had a great-uncle who went insane in his later years, but a father who did so as well. And given such a history, it is likely that I, too, will go mad before I die.”

  Mad? He thought he was going to go mad? Her blood ran cold. Her poor dear Max! This was the secret he’d been keeping from her?

  Without waiting for her response, Max turned on his heel and stalked off to Tristan’s study.

  Her mind raced as she used the new information to reexamine everything he’d said and done in the past few days. But one thing stood out above the rest. “No,” she said as she hurried after him.

  That made him halt, then whirl to face her. “What do you mean, no?”

  “Just because your father and great-uncle went insane is no reason to believe that you will, too.”

  “God help me, Lisette, you have to listen to—”

  “No! I won’t!” Perhaps it was only desperation driving her, but she knew in her heart that he was making a leap he should not. “Was your grandfather mad? And your great-grandfather?”

  He stared bleakly at her. “No, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Of course it does! You’re not like your father, I’m sure of it. You’re the sanest man I know.”

  “For now I am. Who knows what I will be in ten or twenty years? It didn’t strike them until they were older.”

  She stared at him, comprehension dawning. “Is this why you don’t let anyone near? Because you have this awful fear hanging over your head that you will end up insane?”

  “Do not patronize me!” he ground out. She flinched, and he softened his tone. “I didn’t let you close because I didn’t want you to know.” His eyes, so deeply haunted, searched her face. “For the first time in my life, a woman regarded me without prejudice, without measuring me by my wealth or by the gossip about my family.”

  The yearning in his face made her heart ache for him.

  “You were the only woman who didn’t look at me and wonder, every time I said anything out of the ordinary, ‘Is it starting? Will he pick up a fork any moment and jab me with it?’ ”

  His voice turned cold. “That’s how society found out about Father. One day at a dinner with the Duke of Wellington, he imagined he saw some assailant, and he stuck a fork in the arm of one of Wellington’s fine guests. After that, there was no hiding the fact that he was losing his mind.” He steadied a hard gaze on her. “And there was also no hiding the fact that I was likely to be the same.”

  “If that is what people in your fine circles have been telling you, then they are mad, too,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” he gritted out. “But they still watch me, wait for me to show signs of it. And I know, if no one else does, that with two such relations in my family, I am very likely to inherit it.”

  She could see that he really believed it. Fighting back tears, she laid her hand on his arm, but he shook it off. “Don’t pity me either, damn it!” he growled, anger flaring in his face.

  But this time she wouldn’t let him push her away. “Do not mistake concern for pity.” She choked down her tears, struggling against the urge to weep for all he’d suffered. “I am sorry for what you’ve endured, but you won’t convince me that it means you’re destined for the same fate. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”

  “That’s the other reason I didn’t tell you about Father. Because I knew you would ignore the obvious.” He gave a harsh laugh. “The same woman who believes in her brother’s goodness, even when everything points in the other direction, is certainly not going to believe that a man who seems perfectly sane right now might not remain so.” He lowered his voice to an aching murmur. “Especially when it’s a man she cares about.”

  Her heart leaped into her throat. “I do care about you. Too much to let you go on fearing that you might have such an awful future. Sometimes you just have to ignore your fears.”

  “The way you ignore yours?” he clipped out.

  She froze. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re so afraid you’ll end up like your mother, left alone with a couple of children and no means to take care of them. So afraid that men will disappoint you. I don’t see you ignoring your fears, Lisette.”

  He was right. She’d been so busy protecting herself against having her heart trampled by the duke that she hadn’t noticed the tortured man inside the golden castle.

  Well, she was certainly noticing now. This was the secret that kept him rigid and remote and afraid of his own desires, fearing that one little slip would reveal some lurking madness. It was the secret that made him ache for all he’d lost when his brother had died, leaving him to inherit the dukedom.

  It was also the secret that made him behave kindly at times. Because he knew what it was like to be covertly mocked. Who would have guessed that she and a duke would have such an essential thing in common?

  “Yes, it’s true,” she managed as she fought back the sympathy she was certain must show on her face. “I’ve let my fears govern my life far too long. But I begin to think I cut myself off from a great deal in the process. Perhaps it’s time I stop living in my mother’s past.”

  Clearly that wasn’t the response he’d expected, for he began shaking his head. “You’re wise to worry about men, and most assuredly about me. I will definitely disappoint you.”

  “At least you never lie to me,” she said. “You aren’t like Father, who used the hope of a marriage to get Mother into his bed. You never once claimed that we could have anything beyond your . . . your . . .”

  “Wild passion for you that possesses me despite all my attempts to
stomp it out?” His gaze burned into hers. “No. But that doesn’t make this any easier.”

  She didn’t want to make it easier for him to throw his life away out of some fear that might never come to pass. “So you mean never to marry?” she asked bluntly. “Or is it just me you are determined you ‘can’t marry’?”

  He squared his shoulders. “Whether I marry depends largely on whether Peter is alive. If he’s not, I have to provide an heir for the dukedom. There’s no one to inherit, and I refuse to break up all my property and sell it. I have tenants who depend on me, thousands of servants at my estates—I cannot let them down by not marrying.”

  That confused her. “So you do mean to marry.”

  “If Peter isn’t alive, yes. But it will have to be a particular kind of match.”

  “And what kind is that?” she managed.

  “I watched my mother die slowly inside as my father went mad. She was so destroyed by it that I swore I’d never put a woman I cared about through that. Nor one who cared about me.” When she frowned, he added, “But there are women who would gladly forego a love match for the privilege of being a duchess. Women who care more about their rank and station than about affection, whose hearts won’t break when they see their husbands go mad, as long as they know that their place in society is assured for all time.”

  “And you actually think you want that sort of woman taking care of you if you should go mad?” she cried. “Some . . . some grasping harpy who will stand over your bed waiting for you to die?”

  He paled at her blunt description. “Better that than a weeping half widow, half wife, living in hell for as long as the madness lasts. For my father, it lasted four years. Four years, Lisette. Imagine watching someone you care about forget everything he ever was. To go from being a man of great position to a joke whispered about in the halls of fine houses.”

  “That doesn’t mean that the answer is to find someone who doesn’t care about you.”

  “It will take someone like that to agree to my conditions.” Obstinacy made his jaw go taut. “Any woman I marry must agree to give me over to caretakers once the madness begins. My mother wasted away trying to care for my father in his final days, which is why she died only a year later.”