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

by Christi Caldwell

  She froze. Her heart thumped wildly. Quitting Vail’s office, she moved out into the hallway, beating a familiar path, and then stopped outside the Portrait Room.

  Swallowing hard, she forced herself on wooden legs forward to that peculiar throne-like mahogany chair…under Erasmus’ painting.

  She stopped, staring up at the smiling boy, joyous in his innocence. Yet, by what Vail had shared, the child had known great evil. And he’d still known happiness because of Vail. “I have to do this,” she whispered to his memorialized self. There were no acts of heroism to see her with the fortunes Vail had known. There was no avenging sibling, swooping in to aid her. The world was remarkably limited in the opportunities it afforded women. Knowing that did not ease the guilt clogging her throat.

  Kneeling beside the chair, she tugged at the edge of the seat. When there was no miraculous give, she bent, studying the underside of it. A strand of hair fell over her eye and she blew it back. She squinted and then a faint glitter of metal caught her eye.

  Numb, she stretched a hand under and fiddled with that tiny latch.

  The faint click sounded like a gunshot in the silence, as damning and evil. Fingers shaking, Bridget shoved the lid up and peered inside. Her stomach lurched and, even as she removed the velvet sack resting atop a feather pillow, she knew.

  Bridget pressed her eyes closed, warring with herself. The instant she absconded with this book, her time with Vail would end, and she’d leave, dishonored…as deceitful as her brother and sister.

  She slid the book out, hoping she was wrong and there was some other valuable work hidden in this cherished place.

  All the air left her on an unsteady exhale.

  The Canterbury Tales

  “Of course, he would keep it here.” Precisely where it belonged, under the portrait of his beloved brother, who’d known too much suffering.

  “And tell me, where do you think it should be, Mrs. Hamlet?”

  Her heart jumped into her throat and she went absolutely still. From where she sat on the floor of Vail’s Portrait Room, she silently prayed that dry question—iced in steel—had merely been one she’d imagined of her own guilt. Prayed, that he was not there. Prayed, when she’d ceased praying long, long ago.

  Vail shouted into the quiet. “Come, nothing to say?” She jumped at the thunderous boom of the door as it slammed.

  Bridget squeezed her eyes shut. He knows. My God, he knows. She knew it implicitly without word of confirmation or even catching a glimpse of him. She knew it by the frosty contempt in his tone.

  And I hate myself just as much.

  At the eternal stretch of silence, Bridget popped her head over the bench separating them. Vail leaned against the doorway, arms folded, his right heel propped against the wall. He winged a midnight eyebrow upward. “Never tell me you’re going to linger down there like a common thief, Mrs. Hamlet?”

  And any shred of hope she’d had that he hadn’t gleaned the purpose in her being here, in his household, died. “Vail,” she said hoarsely. “I…” She glanced down at the book in her hands. I have no words. I have no way of explaining this so you might understand.

  He shoved away from the door and stalked forward; a sleek panther pursuing its prey. Gooseflesh scoured her skin. Chewing at the inside of her cheek, she searched around, like the coward she was, for escape. Restoring the book to its proper sack, she set it aside and scrambled forward on her knees until Vail’s legs lined up with her vision, blocking her retreat.

  Tears filled her eyes and she stared blurrily through them.

  “Tsk, tsk,” he said, dropping to a knee beside her. “With your skill, you know better than to leave such a valuable text lying about.”

  She tried to draw a proper breath.

  He tweaked her nose. “You should have told me you were merely looking for a book to read, Bridget.”

  He was toying with her the same way their kitchen cat did the mice inside their kitchen back in Leeds. Vail stretched out a gloved hand and, quaking, she came up on her knees and deposited that copy in his grip.

  “Of all the books you might have chosen, I’d say it is peculiar you should come here for one.” He sank his hip on the edge of the bench, that casual repose at odds with the fury teeming in his voice.

  Unable to see him through the tears blinding her vision, she said nothing. What was there to say? He was deserved of his fury and condemnation.

  “Do you know what I find interesting, Bridget?”

  “What is that?” she managed to ask, her voice weak.

  “Of all the books in my entire household you might have chosen, you, in fact, sneaked inside my Portrait Room,” He waved the leather copy about. “You could have selected any title and you picked this one.”

  A sob stuck in her throat and she pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle it. Tell him everything. Tell him about Virgil and Nettie and Archibald. “I can explain,” she whispered, struggling to her feet.

  Where he’d once been tender and loving, all of that had faded, leaving this shadow of a man hardened by hatred. It gleamed in his eyes and iced his features. It poured from his heavily muscled frame, transforming him into a stranger. I did this. Knowing she was responsible for that change only deepened the agony rolling through her in waves.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Hamlet. Tell me all.”

  That silken command sent the hair at the back of her neck up as a bleak desolation swept over her. He would never believe her now. And even if he did, he’d never care. Mayhap, he never would have. That realization didn’t ease this slow, vicious breaking of her heart. She gave him the only words she could. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  His mask slipped, revealing a crack in his remarkable composure. But then he spoke, and it may as well have been a mere flicker of the shadows—or her own hopes. “Tell me what you are sorry for.”

  It was a demand that urged an answer that would see her in Newgate, if he so wished it. Her breath came in quick spurts, until stars danced behind her eyes. I’m going to faint. For the first time in her life, she was going to wilt on the floor. Numbly, she shot her hand out to steady herself on the desk, but her fingers found his thick calf instead. “I can’t,” she got out, her tongue heavy in her mouth, staring at her fingers upon his person. Did we really make love only an hour ago? Or had it been a lifetime ago that he’d gazed upon her with warmth and tenderness?

  He chuckled and shoved aside her touch.

  A keening moan worked its way up her throat.

  “Tell me,” he thundered, pounding his fist against his open palm.

  Crying out, she jumped to her feet, and rushed to put the bench between them. Memories of the backhand Archibald dealt ten years ago when she’d ordered him to care for his child, flashed behind her mind’s eye. This is Vail. Even as he hates me, he’d still not put a hand to me.

  Her confidence in that faltered as he matched her steps. She retreated and he continued coming. “I-I came for the Ch-Chaucer,” she confessed, her teeth chattering noisily. She stumbled over her hem, caught herself, and edged away from him. He deserved answers. “I was promised funds if I obtained it.”

  “Stole it.” Those two syllables rolled off his tongue like a caress. Only the loathing underscoring them made a mockery of anything gentle.

  “S-Stole it.” She gave a juddering nod. Her knees knocked against the leather-winged chair before his desk and she toppled over the arm, landing inelegantly on her buttocks. Trapped. Once again, by a different gentleman. The end result had always been the same—her ruin. She’d just been naive enough to believe she could survive in a ruthless world. I have failed Virgil. And I have wronged Vail. She’d failed all those she loved.

  He towered over her, immobile; a statue carved of stone and as icy cold.

  Craning her head, she looked at him through her tears. “I needed the funds,” she said blankly and then winced at the avariciousness of them. She struggled into a standing position.

  He peeled his lip in a derisive sneer. “Well, i
t seems you are capable of telling the truth.” Vail pointed to the door. “Move now, Mrs. Hamlet.”

  Dread kept her rooted to the floor. She clutched at her throat, more than half-fearing a constable waited outside that door. “Where are we going?” she whispered.

  “Why, I’m showing you to your rooms.” He paused. “Until I figure out just what to do with you.”

  Chapter 17

  The following morning, not even seven hours after Bridget’s betrayal and a sleepless night for Vail, silence reigned in his office.

  His brother, Edward, was the first to speak. “I don’t believe it.” He echoed the very denial Vail had tossed out to Tabitha at the Coaxing Tom.

  Vail grabbed his cup of coffee and took a sip of the fortifying brew. Horrid, rotted, stuff that he’d always despised, but had welcomed for the surge of energy it gave him. Until he’d tasted the cup Bridget brewed. He set his coffee down hard.

  He spoke in deadened methodical tones. “She admitted as much. She came to steal the Chaucer. Promised funds.” From whom she’d still not indicated. Vail shifted his attention to the other gentleman present: his brother, Colin, whom he’d summoned as the sun rose, stood against the wall, taking in the exchange with his usual quiet. “Two lords were overheard last evening speaking at the Coaxing Tom about a transaction. My contacts there gathered neither names nor details of when this exchange was to occur.”

  Silent as the grave, Colin flipped open his notepad and recorded several notes in his book. The scratch of his charcoal pencil grating in the tense quiet. “And your contacts at the Coaxing Tom?” he asked, all business in his tone and demeanor.

  “Tabitha Sparks, a prostitute. And a street lad named Jeremy.”

  How am I this calm? How is my tone even when my bloody heart is shattered in ways Adrina hadn’t even managed? Because I opened myself to Bridget. I splayed myself open and showed her my soul, and she shared nothing more than her lies.

  Sucking in a slow breath, he looked away from his brothers’ probing stares and glanced down at the floor. A vise squeezed about his chest cutting off the ability to draw proper breath into his lungs.

  “I’ll interview her after I’ve a chance to speak to your contacts,” Colin directed that at his notebook. “Their facts will help me ferret out what she’s keeping from you.”

  Ferret out. In the span of one day, Bridget Hamlet had gone from a woman he’d escorted to his friend’s home and made love with, to a duplicitous creature the likes of which landed in Newgate.

  “And where is she now?”

  “In her chambers with a footman stationed outside her door.”

  “I can provide a guard,” Colin said, stuffing his book back inside his jacket. He adjusted the lapels.

  A guard. His gut, empty for anything but his black coffee, churned. Vail inclined his head in thanks and stared blankly as Colin left.

  As soon as he’d gone, Edward turned to Vail. “You are certain?” He’d the same shattered look in his eyes that had greeted Vail that morning.

  Unable to see that sentiment there without thinking of his own foolishness, he stalked over to the fireplace and dropped his hands atop the stone mantel. He stared blankly into the cold, empty grate. “She admitted it,” he said hollowly. “She confessed to her complicity in the plan to steal the Chaucer.”

  I needed the funds.

  And it surely spoke to his weakness that as she’d wept silent tears and pleaded with her eyes for him to understand, that he’d yearned to know the answer to why. That the need had come not from his business or fortunes, but rather the struggle she’d known that had brought her to this point.

  The floorboards groaned indicating Edward moved. “This is my fault,” Edward said hoarsely from just beyond his shoulder. “I am so sorry. I thought I’d found you the perfect housekeeper and, instead, I brought a thief into your midst.”

  A thief. Vail let the words roll around his mind and silently mouthed them, testing them on his tongue. Those two syllables, he’d been unable to bring himself to utter. “It is not your fault,” he said tiredly. “She fooled us all.” And broke my heart.

  He fisted the edge of the mantel, gripping tight in a bid to keep himself upright. My God, I loved her. He would have fetched her a handful of stars if she’d but asked him. In the end, he’d made the same mistake he had with Adrina. He clenched his jaw. Never again. He’d build those same protective walls up and be damned if he ever let any bloody woman in again.

  “You cannot go in there, my lord,” Gavin’s plaintive wail from the corridors cut across his tortured musings. “I’ve told you he’s not accepting—”

  “Oh, he’ll see me,” came Lord Marlborough’s echoing warning. “By Christ, he’ll see me.”

  Bloody hell. Jamming the heels of his palms into his eyes, he rubbed. What else could it possibly be? This day could not be any goddamned worse.

  The door flew open and the earl stormed inside. With his flushed cheeks and quickened gait, there wasn’t a thing sickly-looking about the ailing lord. He opened his mouth and broke into a paroxysm of coughing, shattering the illusion of wellness. Yanking out a kerchief, the older man glared at Gavin over the fabric.

  Vail gave him a small nod and Gavin backed out of the room with a grateful glimmer in his eyes.

  “You are not stepping foot inside my libraries, Chilton,” he rasped, around the cloth.

  And yet the day apparently was destined to dissolve into another horrid nightmare. “Fickle as always, I see,” he said dryly, with feigned nonchalance.

  “I invited you to bring your damned housekeeper to my household, not your bloody mistress,” the earl barked, strength restored to his voice. “You would dare disrespect not only me but my daughters by bringing your lightskirt about?”

  He was going to lose rights to the largest collection in England. Damning Bridget Hamlet for the thousandth time since he’d learned of her treachery, he searched for a blasted solution. “She is not my mistress and certainly not a lightskirt,” he said between his teeth. Why it should matter how Marlborough or anyone else saw her was a mystery that could only be explained by the fact that he’d not slept in more than a day.

  “I might not attend ton functions as I once did, but my eldest daughter was paid a visit by her friend, Lady Adrina.” Oh, bloody hell. “She informed me of the manner of man I’d be doing business with.”

  Fury pumped through his veins. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. He’d seen the thirst for retribution in her eyes at Huntly’s just yesterday. “Lady Adrina was ill-informed, as was the rest of Polite Society,” he drawled, strolling over to his sideboard. His back presented to the fuming lord, he searched his mind for a way to appease Marlborough.

  The earl snorted. “I don’t believe it. I saw the way you looked at that lady.” How? As though he’d been bewitched by her mind and her siren’s ability to pull stories of his past from him? “No respectable man looks at his housekeeper the way you do Mrs. Hamlet.” With every statement, the tenor of the earl’s voice escalated until it thundered off the ceiling. “Or shows up with her in public at a duchess’ salon, and then you think to come to my house, with my daughters and—”

  “She’s my wife.”

  It was harder to determine who was more shocked.

  Vail, himself for that false utterance, his silent until now brother whose mouth fell open, or the earl with his angled head. “Come, again?”

  To give his shaking hands a task, Vail poured first one brandy. What in blazes have I done? Except…as he went through the motions of splashing several fingerfuls into Marlborough’s glass, he sorted out the situation with the duplicitous Mrs. Hamlet in his mind. Yes, she’d intended to steal from him, but she’d also proven immensely beneficial, by way of his business. His mind worked. As Adrina had pointed out, Vail required a hostess, particularly given his sister’s upcoming entry into Polite Society, and equally as important were his hopes for Marlborough’s libraries.

  In fact, as long as he thought
of it as nothing more than a business arrangement, it all made logical sense.

  “Mrs. Hamlet is Mrs. Hamlet no more, but rather,” he lifted his glass. “My baroness.”

  The earl thinned his eyes and stared at him through those narrow slots. “And why don’t I know anything about this?”

  Maintaining an evenness to his features, Vail shrugged. “I expect it’s far more interesting for the ton to gossip about false rumors of me bedding my housekeeper, than to mention my marriage to the lady.”

  Lord Marlborough glanced over in Edward’s direction. “This true, Winterly?”

  Edward offered a lazy, unaffected grin. “Are you truly asking me whether Vail invented a wife to appease you, my lord?” He chuckled.

  “Humph.” The earl faced Vail squarely. “So, you’ve married the girl.”

  I will. He’d no choice. Not if he wanted to complete this transaction. He met Lord Marlborough’s statement with silence. Vail had earned the collector’s wrath for declining marriage to a different woman—the man’s daughter—two years ago.

  How ironic that Vail was as steeped in lies as Bridget. He battled back guilt. The falsities he’d fed Marlborough represented a means to an end.

  Mayhap Bridget has her reasons, too…

  He thrust back that unwanted niggling voice in his head.

  The earl took a long sip of his drink. With a grimace, he set it down on the painted tray of the gold Louis XV table. “The appointment stands. I expect you tomorrow.” He gave Vail a once over. “It’s not every day I’m wrong. Marrying that one with her knowledge of literature and collecting? You’re as clever as I took you for at our last meeting. See that you come with your new bride. She’ll get on great with my daughter.” Turning on his heel, the earl let himself out.

  Vail winced, counted the ticking of the Morbier long-case clock, knowing what was coming from his brother. Knowing precisely what he’d say…

  Edward made to speak, but he held a hand up, jerking his head toward the door. With the way his life had crumpled in the past day, he’d wager his entire fortune, titles, and estates that the earl was an earshot away from listening in and, thus, destroying Vail’s hopes for that collection.