A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle

by Christi Caldwell

  He’d divided the world into sinners and saints, and she would always fall in the former category. As they’d spoken, and he’d presented his concrete view of people and goodness, she’d accepted the reality—Vail would never understand, nor forgive her betrayal. A crime was a crime, and when he discovered what had brought her here, it wouldn’t matter that everything had been for Virgil. Bridget would forever be just a thief in his eyes.

  And that is what I am.

  Creeping around, in the dead of night while the household slept on, was just further proof. Bridget tiptoed down the hall; the chill of the hardwood floor penetrated her bare feet. She folded her arms and rubbed in a bid to bring warmth back into her limbs. This cold, however, was more than just the night air. This was also the shame of her actions. She stepped on a loose floorboard and the wood groaned loudly in protest. She stopped, her heart racing, and she held her breath in dreaded anticipation of someone rushing forward with fingers pointed and charges raised against her.

  “Don’t be silly,” she muttered to herself and resumed her path to one of Vail’s Collection Rooms. What reason had she given him or his family to be suspicious? Her stomach muscles tightened, for that made it all the worse. He and his entire household had welcomed her within their fold. During the day, the female staff looked to her for guidance and that was when she was not fielding visits from Vail’s kindly brothers.

  The faint glow of a candle at the end of the hall brought her up short. The Portrait Room. Given the manner of work Vail dealt in, she’d carefully explained to the servants as to which rooms were to have fires lit and which should be doused in darkness at the end of a day. With the canvases covering those walls, the maids had been instructed to never leave the sconces lit.

  Casting a restless glance over her shoulder to the library she’d come down to search, she briefly closed her eyes. Forgotten candles could wait long enough until she’d conducted a once over of that enormous library. The longer she lingered in these rooms and halls, the closer she came to other members of the household waking to see to the start of their daily assignment. She scrubbed her hands over her face. “Bloody hell,” she muttered and shifted course, making for that Portrait Room. Shadows danced off the walls, those irregular shapes melded with the paintings of Vail’s family. An eerie chill scraped along her spine as the stares of his kin bore into her. Swallowing nervously, she forced her legs to move until she stopped beside one lit sconce.

  Bridget leaned up on tiptoe when, from the corner of her eye, the ominous shape of a large shadow slipped into focus. She gasped and spun about. Heart thundering against her ribcage, she slapped a hand to her heart. Vail sat on the French Rococo Louis XV sofa with a bottle of brandy at his feet and a glass in hand. “My lord,” she winced as her voice echoed loudly in the quiet. “Forgive me. I believed the room was empty.”

  “Only the ghosts of Falcots lost.” Vail followed that peculiar statement with a small laugh. He lifted his glass in salute and then dismissively redirected his focus to the painting directly before him.

  Worrying at her lower lip, she warred with herself. I should go. Unbidden, her eyes went to that snifter. Her own brother had, as long as she’d had the misfortune of residing with him, never been without a drink. Experience had taught her those dangerous spirits turned ordinary men into inordinately cruel ones. This was the first time, however, she’d witnessed Vail with a drink in his hand. She followed his stare to the portrait commanding all his notice and then, against all her better judgment, she drifted over to where he sat. She hovered a moment, before joining him on the sofa.

  Wordlessly, he held out his glass in silent offering. “It is all your fault, you knnoww.” There was the faintest slur to that last word, hinting at a man who’d consumed too much. Yet, where Archibald was raucously loud in his laughter and speech, Vail was as contemplative as he was in the light of a sober day.

  “Of which crime have you found me guilty?” Or the ones he knew of, anyway?

  “You have me speak of matters that are better off never discussed.” He chuckled again and took a long swallow from his nearly full glass. “And then you make me question what I already know to be true. I resent you for that, Bridget Hamlettt.”

  She puzzled her brow.

  “Your lesson on the color grayyy,” he explained, stretching his long legs out before him.

  Bridget cleared her throat. “It was a lesson on all colors,” she felt inclined to point out. Her gaze, of its own volition, went to the thick-corded muscles of his thighs that strained the black fabric. Oh, God. No man had a right to such perfection. Giving thanks for the dark cover of the room that concealed the blush burning up her cheeks, she spoke gently. “I feel I should also make mention that it wasn’t a lesson on colors per se, but rather—”

  “Hell.”

  Gooseflesh dotted her skin. How bleak and desolate that quietly spoken word was from his mouth. He spoke as one who’d personally visited that dark place and returned to battle the demons that haunted him still.

  He tossed back the remainder of his drink and then reached for his bottle.

  Bridget shot a hand out, intercepting his efforts. She firmly wrested the glass from his fingers and set it on the floor. She’d witnessed what spirits did to a man. She’d not see Vail make himself weak for that dangerous drink. She prepared for his snarling protests; the same ones she’d had her ears blistered when Archibald came to the country and forced his presence upon her and her family. Vail, once again, proved how very different he was from her ruthless brother.

  Falling into the scalloped back of the sofa, he dusted a hand over the day’s growth on his cheeks.

  They all battled demons—some were living, as was in her case, and others fought ones that now dwelled only in one’s mind. Her gaze drifted up to the cheerful boy on that canvas, instinctually knowing from Vail’s evasiveness days earlier that this small child was the reason for his melancholy. Heart softening, she rested her fingers on the clenched fist resting on his leg. Through the terror that came in being forever manipulated by her ruthless brother, she’d sought to shield her fears, to protect her son and Nettie. She knew what it was to struggle in silence and how that weighted a person. She had secretly yearned for someone to simply be there beside her in facing Archibald’s evil. As such, all a person sometimes required was knowing one wasn’t alone.

  Feeling Vail’s stare on her, she looked up.

  “No questions?” he asked.

  “They aren’t my place to ask,” she confessed. His expression grew instantly shuttered. “But sometimes there can come good in talking about what that hell is. It strips away the darkness and makes it real and real is something one can confront and face.”

  He lifted his stare back to that painting and his face crumpled. “His name was Erasmus.”

  His name was Erasmus.

  Those handful of words given to Bridget when he’d not let himself talk about or even make mention of that name.

  Mayhap, it was too much drink that had pulled it forth. Or mayhap, it was that Bridget Hamlet was, in fact, a siren who could lure a man into giving up his secrets and very life if she wished it. But in uttering Erasmus’ name, and giving him life once more, Bridget, his housekeeper skilled in books, proved herself correct in this, as well—there was an easing in his chest.

  Had she pressed him for details and peppered him with questions, he’d have retreated. Instead, she sat in a patient silence—waiting; her meaning clear: she’d not force him to share more than he wished.

  “Back in one of your first days here, you asked who he was.” His heart spasmed. “He was my brother,” he said hoarsely, those words emerging through a thickened throat.

  Bridget stared up wistfully at the portrait. Even in the dark of the room, the sheen of tears glowed bright in her eyes. “I know that l-look.” Her voice broke. “A little boy whom one cannot keep up with, who’d chase the rising sun all the way to its setting to experience all that a day brings.”

 
She spoke as one who knew and, mayhap, that unconfirmed supposition made it easier to lower the walls he’d erected.

  “Erasmus is…was one of the duke’s children.” That bastard who’d given Vail and so many others life, and had never properly cared for them. “He was simple and, for it, after his mother’s passing, he was sent to a hospital.”

  Bridget gasped, and her fingers reflexively clenched and unclenched about his hand. Yes, for even as people like his brother, deemed imperfect by Society were sent away to be forgotten…the world still knew what those institutions, in fact, were. She did not, however, offer false platitudes and for that he was grateful. “I should have known about his existence long before. But I did not,” he said, his voice gravelly from regret and shame. “Because I was self-absorbed.”

  She made a sound of protest.

  “I was,” he said, matter-of-factly. “For the earliest years of my life we moved from place to place. All I wanted was a home and a family and when my mother retired in a small Suffolk village, I was determined to have that. I found friendship, and then I found a young lady, and she ensnared me from the instant I spied her in Sunday services.” His gaze grew distant, as he recalled that first meeting. “She was a squire’s daughter. Beautiful. Respectable. And I was determined that she’d be mine.”

  “What happened to her?” There was a hesitancy to Bridget’s query.

  “What happened to her?” He made a sound of disgust and shoved angrily to his feet. Wanting to escape the memories of his greatest follies and, yet, at the same time, wanting to torturously walk that same path, again. “Rather, what happened to me? She couldn’t marry a man with no prospects. She couldn’t marry a gentleman not linked to the peerage,” he amended. Restless, he wandered over to the floor-length window alongside Erasmus’ portrait. Peeling back the gold brocade, he stared out into the streets.

  …You are a duke’s son, Vail… that means something…you mean something because of it…

  The floorboards groaned, indicating Bridget had moved. She settled a hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to finish. “Then I revealed I was a duke’s son.” It had been the last time he’d ever touted his connection to Ravenscourt. “She urged me to go to him and seek a commission in the King’s Army.” So, he’d choked down his pride and gone to that man who’d so callously cast his mother out. “I would have done anything for her.” Even fight a war. He sucked in a shuddery breath. When the only people I should have done anything for were my siblings.

  “Oh, Vail,” she said achingly.

  He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. The sting of Adrina’s betrayal had faded long ago. All that remained now was the shame of his own selfishness. “I returned and found she’d married an earl. I was so mired in my own grief I drank and whored and lived a decadent lifestyle, ignoring all correspondences I’d received. They grew and grew. Until one day, I sobered, opened one, and learned of Erasmus. His mother had discovered who I was and, while she was sick and dying, wrote to me.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “And I never even read those notes until after she’d gone. She didn’t know her son would be cared for.” His voice broke. “She knew nothing but fear in death.”

  Bridget moved into his arms and he stiffened as she folded him in her embrace. He fluttered his hands about her; this woman who’d been a mere stranger days ago, who’d somehow slipped inside and managed to pull the darkest secrets from him. Vail settled his arms about her, taking that undeserved comfort she offered. He inhaled deep of her floral fragrance.

  “You having shut the world out because of your heartbreak did not make you selfish. It made you human.” She rested her cheek upon his chest. “You have this unrealistic sense of what human beings are. You allow no missteps or mistakes but, yet, that is what we all inevitably do—falter.”

  Her words ran through his mind and he sighed. “Some are greater than others.”

  Bridget drifted from his arms, and he ached to call her back and take the solace she offered. Except, she continued on to Erasmus’ portrait. “He looks happy here,” she observed.

  Clasping his hands behind him, he rocked on his heels. “What he suffered through would have broken most grown men.” He’d witnessed soldiers before battle crumple from far less. He glanced up at the first sibling he’d managed to locate. “He was tiny. So small. And yet emerged from that experience smiling, still.” Though the child he’d managed to track down to a hospital had been limited in the words he had and the ease with which one understood him, there had been a depth to Erasmus’ spirit, unrivaled by any man, woman, or child he’d known before. “Where many boys his age would speak of ponies and revel in making mischief, Erasmus was content to sit in the walled in gardens outside, with a cloth doll his mother had made.” A painful laugh escaped him, as remembrances of his brother lost in the wonderful world he’d created in his own mind slid forward. “He was also weak. His heart…” His own clenched at the memory of the doctors he’d brought out to care for his brother. “If one placed an ear against his chest, there was the faintest murmur. And then he was no more,” he whispered, achingly into the quiet.

  “That would not have changed had you found him earlier,” she said gently.

  “But it might have,” he pointed out. “I, however, was seeking Society’s approval. A woman’s love and, in the end, left to battle Boney’s forces, not even thinking of the others I knew existed.” He’d simply read of those Ravenscourt bastards with a detached indifference. Until he’d read that letter from Erasmus’ mother and found that those men, women, and children were, in fact—siblings.

  Bridget wandered away from him and he followed the gentle, graceful sway of her hips like a moth drawn to a flame. She stroked her fingers over the sapphire blue satin wallpaper and raised her touch higher, caressing the gold frame that contained his brother Colin’s portrait. “Who is he?” she asked curiously.

  “Colin. He’s a Bow Street Runner. One of the best in London,” he said with a pride he expected a father should feel.

  “Was he one when you found him?”

  He shook his head tightly. Another sibling he’d failed. “He’d been living in the streets of St. Giles. Picking pockets to survive and care for our sister,” he said, tossing out that reminder of the man he was, for a woman who’d make foolish pardons.

  Bridget eyed Colin’s portrait for a long moment, head cocked at a little angle. “Yet, he’s a Bow Street Runner. One of the finest, you said?” she asked, tossing a glance over her shoulder.

  He nodded.

  Sighing, Bridget drifted over. “You don’t see. You would lash out at yourself for the remainder of your life for giving your heart to a woman undeserving of that gift. For going off to fight. You focus on that and you fail to see what happened because you did. None of these people,” she gestured to the framed portraits about the room. “Would have the stability and security they do if you hadn’t been titled and had the monies to begin your business. So sometimes, from great darkness, comes good. And it would be wrong to miss all that good because you’re mired in what brought you there.”

  Her words cascaded over him, filling him inside and out with an odd lightness.

  Their gazes locked and a charged moment passed between them.

  Bridget cleared her throat “I should return to my rooms.” Without awaiting a reply, she started for the door.

  “Bridget,” he called out.

  She paused, glancing back.

  “Thank you.” Vail held her eyes. Wanting her to stay. Wanting this stolen moment with her to go on.

  Lifting her head in a slight acknowledgement, she left.

  Chapter 10

  There were many benefits to being a housekeeper. For a servant, it was a coveted post for the elevated station one enjoyed in one’s employer’s household.

  With her Sunday her own, and now spent alone in Hyde Park with Virgil and Nettie, seated on the grounds watching them, Bridget appreciated her role—albeit her temporary role—all the more.

  In fac
t, with the morning cry of the kestrel and the dew on the emerald green grass, she could almost believe they were back in Leeds. She could imagine them rising before the sun fully crested the dawn sky and breaking from the responsibilities that came with each day.

  Except, she was not in Leeds. She was in London to steal from Vail. A nobleman who genuinely loved his siblings and looked after them, and erroneously blamed himself for the suffering they’d known.

  Her purpose here in London had been loathsome when she’d been first presented with it by Archibald. What she’d underestimated was just how agonizing the task would be to carry out… particularly when her employer had moved from nameless stranger to honorable, admirable gentleman.

  A memory slid forward of Vail as he’d spoken of his departed brother; a small child whom Society cast out because he’d been born different, but whom he had loved and cared for anyway.

  A cinch squeezed about her heart, wrenching the organ. For last evening, Vail had let her inside to who he’d been as a boy and then as a young man who’d dedicated his life to helping his siblings…and who blamed himself for the one he’d been unable to aid.

  Not unlike her, he’d lived firsthand the violence of the world around him. She’d witnessed the horror and disquiet in his eyes, at the path their discourse had traveled. Who was the fool woman who’d thrown away the gift of his love? Was it the same woman from the note she’d spied upon his desk when he’d been sleeping?

  Fighting back the pit of jealousy low in her belly, Bridget sighed. Where she had only reasons to be ashamed, Vail had proven himself a man of honor. For just as he’d pointed out in their debate on Dante, he had taken control of his future and blazed a path for himself.

  And what have I done with my honor? I’ve followed blindly where my evil brother would lead me.

  It spoke depths of the difference between her and Vail. And telling herself in the light of a new day that a woman was with fewer options didn’t do anything to dull the sharp blade of guilt twisting inside.