Lisette put a hand on his arm. “You said she was wracked with guilt. Is it possible that you mistook the source of her guilt? If she knew that she had given your father syphilis after being with his uncle—”
“No!” He snatched his arm free of her. “No! It isn’t possible! You won’t convince me otherwise!” He stared at her, swamped by betrayal. “And how could you for one moment believe what my cousin is saying? The cousin I never even met until today! I told you what my mother suffered, what she endured. How dare you take his side?”
“I’m not taking anyone’s side, Max,” she said softly. “I’m just saying that it’s one solution that makes sense.”
“You think so, do you?” He gazed about at them, at the pitying looks on their faces, and every inch of him recoiled. “Just because your mothers were whores doesn’t mean that mine was, too, damn it!”
The room fell eerily silent.
When Lisette’s face turned to ash, Maximilian could have ripped out his tongue. He reached for her but she brushed his hand away.
“I’m sorry, Lisette. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” She went to stand by her brother with a look of such pain that it cut him to the heart. “We will always be beneath you, won’t we?”
Bonnaud put his arm about her protectively as he shot Maximilian a steely glance. “I told you, dear heart. He’s a duke. He’s not like us.”
Hearing that her damned brother had obviously been warning her against him spiked Maximilian’s temper higher. “You’re right, Bonnaud.” He stared the man down. “I’m not like you. I don’t speak ill of a man behind his back while at the same time currying his favor.” He shifted his gaze to Victor. “And I don’t make vile accusations about people I don’t know. I don’t—”
He choked off anything else he might have said, aware that he was out of control. Very, very out of control. Turning on his heel, he clipped out, “To hell with this. I must see to the quarantine officers. They’ll be coming aboard any minute.”
And before he could shatter completely, he strode for the door.
But he hadn’t yet reached it when a small voice asked, “What about me, Your Grace? What cruel thing have I done to you?”
His heart twisted in his chest to hear the hurt in Lisette’s voice.
You made me fall in love with you.
He choked back the words. He wasn’t that much of a fool. He’d given up enough to her already. He’d deviated from his plans, offered marriage . . . and for what? So she could look at him as some . . . pathetic, misguided fool who couldn’t see that his family was a decadent cesspool of humanity?
“You did nothing, Lisette,” he managed to say. “You have always behaved above reproach. Now I must go.”
And with that, he escaped the infirmary.
21
AS SOON AS Maximilian walked out, Lisette pulled away from Tristan, headed for the door.
“You are not going after that arse, I hope,” Tristan said as he grabbed her by the arm.
She halted to glare at him. “He’s not an arse.”
The doctor said, “I should go help His Grace with the quarantine officers. They’ll need to speak to me.” And he hurried out the door.
As soon as he was gone, Tristan snapped, “He called our mother a whore.”
“And my mother, too,” Victor cut in. “I don’t know about your mother, but mine was legitimately married to my father. She might have been a tavern maid, but that didn’t make her a whore.”
“Stop saying that word!” Lisette cried, wrapping her arms about her waist in a futile attempt to contain her pain. She’d finally shared herself with Max, body and soul, and even told him she loved him, and he’d knifed her in the heart.
How could he? He had always seemed to sympathize, always seemed to understand about Maman.
Unbidden, she saw again the betrayal on Max’s face when she’d agreed with Victor’s opinion of the kidnapping.
My God. That is why he said it. Max had only done what anyone would do when cornered—he’d struck back hard. And they had cornered him in the worst way. No doubt he’d felt abandoned all over again . . . by his mother, by his father and uncle, and this time, by her. It wasn’t fair of him and it wasn’t right, but she could understand it.
Leveling a bleak glance on both her brother and Victor, she said, “Do you realize what you’ve both done? And for no reason, either, except to hurt him. None of what you pointed out really matters—it’s all in the past. Yet you both felt compelled to tell Max that his mother, whom he has worshipped all his life, might have had an affair with his great-uncle. That the man might have sired a child on her. That his sainted mother might even have caused his father’s madness.”
She swallowed hard as everything hit her at once. “And now he realizes that his entire life has been a lie. That everything he thought about his past was a lie, that every story ever told him by his parents about his brother’s kidnapping was a lie. That his father even lied about his having a cousin. And Max abhors being lied to more than anything.”
She tipped up her chin. “So how did you expect him to react? To thank you for unveiling the blackness beneath his family’s lies? Did you expect him not to draw back in horror and strike at us all? Wouldn’t you?”
Tristan’s frown softened a fraction. “Well, when you put it like that . . .”
“And he was right about you, too, Tristan. You returned to England wanting something from him. Then, the minute he didn’t handle all your speculations with great aplomb, you turned on him by insinuating that you and I had been talking about him behind his back. Which has been done to him over and over all his life. He hates it.”
She turned to Victor. “As for you, sir, why did you even come here? Was it really to find your family? Or was it just so you could punish them for abandoning you?”
Victor glared at her. “Considering how they cut us out of their lives completely, I think I had the right to punish them.”
“Well, you certainly found a good way to do it,” she said smoothly. “And now the man who had nothing whatsoever to do with your abandonment is up on deck using all his influence to have the quarantine lifted so you can convalesce somewhere more comfortable than the bowels of a ship. He really is a terrible man, isn’t he?”
She whirled for the door. She wasn’t sure what to say to Max, but she couldn’t leave things the way they’d left them.
“Tell me one thing, Lisette,” Tristan called out from behind her. “Where was this paragon of virtue last night? He wasn’t in our cabin. And he damned well wasn’t in here.”
Her heart dropped into her stomach. She might be as much to blame for her “ruin” as Max, but Tristan would never see it that way. “Where was he?” she said stiffly. “He was mourning the brother he thought he was about to lose yet again.”
Then she walked out and headed for the hatchway. Let the two of them stew a bit. Victor had been relentless in his speculations, and Tristan had been the one to bring them up in the first place. No wonder Max had recoiled. They both could have done it more gently.
She hadn’t helped, either. She’d just been so excited at the idea that the madness might not be hereditary after all, that Max might finally have some answers. She hadn’t stopped to consider how he would regard what they said. That it would destroy his faith in his mother.
Just because your mothers were whores doesn’t mean that mine was, too, damn it!
Despite understanding why he’d said it, the fact that he would include her in such a cruel sally made her reel. Because if deep down, he really saw her only as the bastard child of a whore . . .
She’d actually begun to believe that he didn’t care about her illegitimacy. But clearly he did. What if he could never let that out of his mind? What if he were ashamed of her?
Steadying herself for the prospect of seeing him, she took a breath, then climbed out of the hatchway. But she was surprised to find the deck nearly empty. There was no phalanx of officials, j
ust the captain writing something in a notebook and Max standing with the doctor in deep conversation.
She approached the captain, because that was easier than approaching Max. “What happened to the quarantine officers?”
“They’re gone. It was all over in a matter of minutes.” The captain nodded over to the mast, where a seaman was lowering the fever flag. “They came, they informed us we were out of quarantine, and they left.”
Max and the doctor approached them, and she tensed. Especially when Max refrained from looking at her.
“Captain,” he said, “can you spare a couple of men to help Mr. Cale up onto the deck? Dr. Worth and I agree that he’s much too weak to climb the ladder on his own. And my carriage is already on the dock, waiting for him.”
“Certainly, Your Grace,” the captain said. “I’ll see to it right now.”
Lisette stared at Max. “Where are you taking him?”
“To my town house, where he can be looked after properly. Dr. Worth has agreed to oversee his convalescence.”
“You would do that for Victor . . . after what he said? It’s very good of you.”
“Hardly.” Max’s cool gaze met hers. “He’s still the only other heir to the dukedom. And he’s still my only close family—even if he does seem to resent the fact at present.”
And Max was nothing if not loyal to his family.
Just then a seaman emerged from the hatchway behind them and reached down to catch Victor under the arms as another seaman handed him up. The doctor hurried over to supervise Victor’s being put onto a litter. She could hear a boat rowing up to the ship. Another sailor hurried to secure it to the side.
Then she heard the sailor say, “Are you His Grace’s servant, come to help us with the sick fellow?”
“No,” said a familiar voice, “I am definitely not His Grace’s servant.”
As Max turned toward the sound of the voice, Lisette groaned. “Dom has arrived.”
Her half brother had a look of fire in his eyes as he climbed onto the deck from the ship’s ladder. When Max stiffened, as if bracing himself for another contentious encounter with a member of her family, she hurried toward her brother to head him off.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “How did you know where to find me?”
“It wasn’t exactly hard, dear girl,” he growled, shooting Max a murderous glance. “Skrimshaw told me when I arrived yesterday evening that you’d run off with Lyons—alone and unchaperoned—on some wild-goose chase to find Tristan. So I went to the duke’s town house, and his servants told me where he was. Then I came here. To throttle the bastard.”
“You’re not going to throttle him.”
“Oh yes, I am,” Dom said, pushing past her.
But Max was already striding forward to meet him. “You needn’t worry about your sister’s reputation, Manton. I’ve already offered her marriage.”
That took the wind out of Dom’s sails. “You have?” He glanced to Lisette. “Is that true?”
She just stood there gaping at Max. She hadn’t expected him to mention that, not after what had just happened in the infirmary.
Still, it didn’t matter. He’d made it very clear that he didn’t really want to marry the daughter of a French “whore.” He couldn’t even say he loved her! He was merely trying to save her honor—and he needn’t bother.
“It’s true,” she told Dom. “He did offer marriage, but I refused.”
Max looked even more surprised than Dom. She could see him withdrawing into himself, shuttering his expression.
Her heart sank. He was going to seize the chance she was giving him to escape marrying her. And she couldn’t blame him. They weren’t nearly as well suited as she’d thought.
“That’s not how I remember it, Lisette,” Max said.
The husky words caught her off guard. He wasn’t seizing the chance after all?
For half a moment, her heart leaped. He did want her. She nearly threw herself in his arms to say that it wasn’t how she remembered it, either.
Just because your mothers were whores doesn’t mean that mine was, too, damn it!
That halted her. No matter what he claimed right now, he would never be able to forget who she was. And she would never be able to fit into his world. What had she been thinking?
Besides, he no longer had to worry about dying mad and alone. He had his cousin, and given what Victor and Dr. Worth had said, there was a good chance madness would not be in his future. So she refused to hold him to an offer he’d made under vastly different circumstances.
He would appreciate it later, and congratulate himself on having made a narrow escape. As would she.
Or so she tried to tell herself. “Perhaps it’s not . . . exactly what I said,” she remarked softly. “But I think you’ll agree that it’s for the best that we don’t marry.”
“The hell it is,” Dom put in. “According to Skrimshaw, the two of you set off to travel halfway across England and France—”
“Under aliases,” Lisette said. “My reputation is intact.” She’d deal with Mrs. Greasley later. No point in telling Dom right now that his sister would soon have to pretend to be the grieving widow of a land agent.
“Reputation is one thing,” Dom snapped. “But if Lyons laid one hand on you, Lisette, I swear—”
“His Grace was a perfect gentleman,” she said, swallowing down the tears clogging her throat. She clasped her hands behind her back to hide their shaking from Dom. “I have nothing to reproach him for.”
Something flared in Max’s eyes—though she couldn’t tell if it was anger or desire. Or both.
But before he could speak, the captain came up to him. “Mr. Cale is on shore now, Your Grace. They’re waiting for you.”
“Thank you. Tell them I’ll be there shortly.” Max faced Lisette. “I must go get Victor and Dr. Worth settled in, and I have several important matters to attend to. But I will call on you in a few days, I promise. This is not over.”
Then he strode off.
She wished she could believe him, but she knew better. Once he realized that he had no more reason to fear marrying someone of his own rank, he would forget her.
A pity that she would never forget him.
Tears welled in her eyes that she fought mightily to contain.
“What the hell just happened?” Dom asked. “And who is Victor Cale? Skrimshaw told me the two of you went off to find the duke’s brother, but I thought he said his name was Peter.” His eyes narrowed on her. “And why are you crying?”
She brushed the tears ruthlessly away. “I’m not. It’s just this sea air. It makes my eyes water.”
“Lisette—”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Dom.” Heading for the hatchway to see what was keeping Tristan, she changed the subject. “I assume you avoided having Hucker follow you here.”
Dom froze. “Hucker? George’s man of affairs?”
Her blood chilled. She turned back to him. “You received my note, right?”
“No, I didn’t receive a damned thing. What are you talking about?”
“You had to have gotten my note!” How could he have not? Oh, Lord, what if Hucker had followed him? “We have to get Tristan off this ship. Now, before Hucker and George get here!”
Tristan’s voice came from the opened hatchway. “Why are Hucker and George coming here?”
The minute he caught sight of his half brother, Dom paled. “Are you out of your mind, you damned fool? What are you doing in England?”
“It’s a long story,” Lisette said. “We need to leave. We probably don’t have much time.”
“Where’s the duke?” Tristan asked.
“Gone. And I’m sure he’ll honor his promise to you if he can, but I don’t know if there is much he can do if you actually get yourself arrested. So we have to get you off this ship!”
“Let me fetch my trunk,” Tristan said and hurried down the hatchway.
She climbed down after him. “The
re’s no time, drat you!”
But he was already in his cabin, packing up. When she rushed in and tried to get him to leave, he said, “Relax, Lisette, even if Hucker did follow Dom to the dock, he’s got no reason to think Dom is coming to see me. Why would he think that?”
Oh, Lord, she’d forgotten that Tristan didn’t know she’d been in France with Max. “Because the duke and I went to France after you, and he knows it.”
“What?” Tristan said. “You traveled alone with Lyons?”
“We don’t have time for this!”
“She’s right about that,” Dom said from the doorway. “If George had Hucker follow her to France, he must really be eager to arrest you.”
“Exactly!” she cried. “So come on!”
The two of them got Tristan onto the deck. Then he halted. “What about your bag, Lisette?”
“It doesn’t matter!” she said, frustrated. “We have to get you off the ship!”
“Too late for that,” said a new voice.
Lisette’s heart dropped as she slowly turned to find George climbing on deck with Hucker following behind. And after them, half a score of officers swarmed aboard. “Lord save us,” she whispered.
“Damn you, George,” Dom growled.
Their brother ignored them both. “Good morning, Tristan,” George said with a look of pure satisfaction. “I hate to tell you, but the only way you’re leaving this ship is in chains.”
He nodded to Tristan, and one of the officers hurried over to seize her brother. “Tristan Bonnaud, I arrest you in the name of the king for . . .”
She couldn’t hear the rest of it over the blood pounding in her ears. Despite all her attempts to prevent it, George had finally gotten Tristan exactly where he wanted him. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
22
AS THE CARRIAGE fought its way through morning traffic in London, Maximilian could only stare out the window. Dr. Worth had taken a hackney coach to his own abode, saying that he would gather some medications and then meet them at the town house. Victor, who lay on the seat opposite, was sleeping after his exhausting transfer from the ship to Maximilian’s coach.
The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires Page 26