Passion

by Gayle Eden

  “Did you know he wed?”

  “No. I had not heard that.”

  Artis looked at him, his eyes showing pain. “She was murdered…terribly butchered.”

  Jules felt a wave of shock roll through him. “When?”

  “Not long after the marriage. She…they, must have… lived in town, for she washed up on the Thames. I do not know….someone…someone sent me a missive. I have no clue who it was, but…”

  Jules cut in, “Mother lied to him. I heard her. She told him that you’d used your influence to falsify the documents of his inheritance—that he was born from your raping a maid who’d taken her life…that you ignored him because you wanted him sent away, and she’d been the one to decide to keep him.”

  Artis sighed and sat down on the edge of the desk. “I know. Pour me a whiskey, will you, my boy?” He looked at his hands that were not steady.

  Jules poured it, and one for himself. He took it over and handed it to his father. His own, he carried to the French doors, now needing air and feeling a kind of sinister finger touch his spine. “I knew she lied, because I’d seen the letters you exchanged with Raith’s uncle. But I had my own reasons for not defending you—or enlightening him.”

  “I don’t blame you, Jules. You had no more except titles and wealth than your brothers did. Matilda did her best to drive any joy, emotion, or warmth, out of all of our lives. And, I let her get by with it. I do not blame you. If not that lie, she would have driven him away by other means. She was furious that he inherited anything. She loathed the sight of him. Of us all, I suppose.”

  Jules shrugged but inwardly mused that he was being blackmailed—possibly on the brink of ruin, if not scandal, and any prospect of marriage would certainly vanish with that sort of implication. Raith’s wife had been murdered. Blaise might well be blind for the rest of his life. Bloody hell. What curse was upon them all, that they could not escape that remoteness and darkness?

  With whiskey still burning his throat, Artis said at last, “I would not blame you, of course, if you simply chose to wed and get on with your life. Make more of it, than those before you have. You’ve certainly the sort of rep and esteem among our peers that few can achieve.”

  Jules teeth set a moment. He stared out at the garden in a kind of blurred non-vision. If his father only knew.

  Finishing the whiskey, feeling the effects of it flush his skin, he murmured, “How much does Coulborne know?”

  “Everything. He was there for me…years ago. When I got Elena with child. I met with him recently, and we spoke long on the years since.”

  “Whose idea was it that I should delay asking for Caroline?

  “Mine. My selfish idea. You are my first-born Jules, my heir, and I stand here in amazement at your princely mien and masculine perfection. Did I not know what it was that made you aloof and so in control, I would be as in awe of your reputation as the ton is. However, I know only too well, what lies behind detachment—when a man makes himself an island because he is forced to, In order to protect himself against feeling.

  Only, it does not work Jules. It is no insult against Lady Caroline if I deduce you are intent on the match for all the reasons one of your station does—that we all did. She may well be the exception, but I challenge you to convince me that you know her—truly know her, or yourself. Tell me you feel some affection for her?”

  Of course, Jules could not do that. His life was calculated, which was the only way to get where he was, and stay there.

  Taking the glass to the sideboard, Jules answered instead, “What is it you expect of me?” He let the glass land with a click and turned to face the Duke. “Of us? We are grown men. I cannot comfort you with the prospect of some happy reunion between myself and Blaise, or Raith. I don’t know what you imagine I can do.”

  Artis replied, “Blaise needs our help. He will not ask for it. He bloody should have never gone back to war after the last wound nearly killed him. Now this—. I cannot imagine how a man of such energy and passion for what he does, what he seemed born for—is taking this. I dared not pull any strings or interfere in any of his decisions. It killed me not to, but as you say, you are men. And Blaise was ever a fierce one.”

  Jules smiled slightly, and for the first time in his father’s presence, he realized. Normally, their meetings were so strained and distant that they exchanged only civilities. He was starting to see another side of his sire. Whilst it was enlightening, it was also somewhat unnerving, because he had an image of Artis that was akin to an emotionless and detached aristocrat.

  Amazing what one held inside, behind the façade.

  “I followed the war closely. Blaise was much discussed in the clubs and coffeehouses.” Jules relaxed enough to supply, “Although others speculated on his reasons for recklessness, I discerned he wanted to return and finish it after Napoleon escaped. He deserved and earned the right to be a part of that.”

  “At a high cost.”

  “He would have made Admiral, eventually.”

  “Yes.” Artis smiled faintly. “I remember his scraps as a boy, always in trouble for bucking the rules. Odd, I thought, that he should go in the Navy. But later, I realized it was where he fit.”

  “It was also an escape.” Jules stared at him.

  “Yes.” Artis looked around the room and then back at him. “He got to expend his anger at the same time it kept him away from home, from Matilda, and from me, I expect.”

  “It was the atmosphere we all escaped, the indifference on your part, the bitter sternness, the rigidity of hers—the isolation.” Jules shrugged. “He chose a life where he enjoyed camaraderie and brotherhood.”

  Artis nodded and did not challenge that summation. “I don’t know what I expect, the best, I suppose. I shall see him myself. However, I hope you will do so. He may take some assistance from you, better than I.”

  “And Raith?”

  “We must find him, Jules. The missive hinted that he knew who killed his wife—and that the man was wealthy, possibly in our very circles.”

  “Are you sure?” Jules was swiftly sifting faces of peers and wealthy men, through is mind.

  “I know little. Which is why it is urgent we try to find him. If it was the prince himself, I shall stand with Raith and see him hung. But I fear…I fear… because of lies and the life Raith has led, what darkness he has carried from those lies, and from this…I don’t know.”

  Jules sat more heavily down in the chair again. The rain picked up outside. A sinister chill seemed to waft through the room.

  One of the servants came and laid a fire, then poured them coffee. Jules had several appointments. He had also missed his routine visit to his club. However, with the cup in his palms, his eyes watching the fire, he made a decision. This may well be the year of his ruin. If he was going to meet his father’s requests, he was going to do it his way.

  He stood eventually and placed the cup on the tray near the pot. “I shall collect you at noon tomorrow. We may as well see Blaise together.”

  The Duke stood, having shaken off his own muse, and smiled as Jules prepared to leave. “Very well. Jules?”

  Having turned, Jules looked back at him.

  “I love you.”

  Nodding, more in reflex and because he did not know what else to do, Jules took his leave. Such words were odd, strange, like a foreign language, oblique and obscure drifting through his head during the ride home.

  He arrived at his townhouse, the butler stepping out with an umbrella, so thick was the rain. In his rooms, after changing, Stoneleigh sat by the window, ignoring the valet who kept peeking in— obviously wondering why Jules hadn’t ordered his bath and his formals laid out for the ball he was to attend.

  Rain did not stop the traffic nor the number of coaches heading out with their finely dressed passengers to attend the social gatherings. Jules could not recall, since he had been coming up to London, when he had missed an accepted invite. He chose them carefully, knowing which were of more import. Alt
hough he indulged himself at times with boating, boxing, riding, they were more to stay in physical shape than to be enjoyed. When one filled every hour of one’s schedule to serve a purpose, it left no room for indulgences of the personal kind.

  Sticking to coffee, because he’d drank more than was his habit earlier in the day, he breathed in the pungent scent and was reminded sharply of that week when everything changed in his life.

  Peculiar as his existence was, on the one hand, being the heir, and on the other, having no more or less than his siblings, he had buried himself in academics, and filled most isolated hours learning what he must to run the estates he would someday oversee. It was not that he did not enjoy intellectual pursuits, but as he grew older, nature introduced distractions and the normal urges of his body intruded.

  The university, as strict as the classes were, was also easy access to brothels and females of easy virtue. His fellow students knew where every vice and sin to be had was. Just as often, there were women secreted into their chambers, as well as wine and intoxicants.

  It was week’s end, some holiday and like most times he could have left, he was avoiding going home, spending his time as he intended, reading and studying. With the lax supervision, the Hall became one grand party, with all sorts of raucous singing, music, drinking and dancing.

  Chaps were running up and down the halls, carrying on all sorts of foolish games. Females, had always flirted when they spied Jules, the bolder ones plopping on his lap or teasing him, not a few showing him their bare bottoms—and their tops—passing by the doorway.

  Unable to study and distracted by the chap in the room with him who was making love to a woman on the chaise, not a foot away—he’d closed his books and gone out into the hall, soon having a bottle of wine thrust into his hand, then one more, before being hauled about into chambers filled with wild revelry.

  Foxed, and without his normal inhibitions, Jules allowed himself to be fondled, kissed and rubbed by a pair of coarse talking beauties, finding himself later laying somewhere on the floor, amid a pile of cloaks and wine bottles.

  Jules was amazed at his younger self now—that he had taken no thought to the intimacies participated in, right there in a room full of people. Somehow, with everyone else seemingly throwing cautions to the wind, he did not give it a second thought—even if his thoughts were hindered by intoxication.

  He had lost his virginity, smoked his first cheroot, and been foxed and experienced oral sex, all in the first hour. By dawn, he had learned a few more positions, and drank to the point of puking out the windows.

  He awakened in a hazy room and climbed over snoring bodies. Sick and with a pounding head, he’d found a bath and bed.

  The next night, a bit more educated, he’d departed the Hall early and walked a bit, ate, then drank a few brandies—just enough, he assumed, to take the edge off his innate compulsion to withdraw and detach himself from the temptations around him.

  He had taken his time picking out the female he felt attracted to, and had plans for a more intimate exploration of carnal knowledge. Some sort of storage room became their trysting spot. His adventures with her lasted half the night, and he’d found himself back with the crowd. He remembered laughing, smoking opium from a hookah pipe and having some hazy recollection of leaving again with someone…going to rooms that were not familiar…

  Jules shook his head and drank of the coffee, not sure enough of anything to dispel the accusations of the blackmailer, even to himself. The date was correct. It was not as if he could forget that weekend. However, the experience changed him, because he had a moment with the young woman in that little room—where he looked at the woman, and she had been more detached than he.

  At some point, she had said, much to his mortification, “You’ll ave to pay me double for the chaffing ye’ve caused.”

  He had paid her and even though he had joined the others, he’d had to push himself twice as hard to find that earlier careless attitude.

  The second morning ended with him staring at those trousers on the floor and then fleeing, dressing whilst he dashed out. He had not slept for days, drank only coffee, suffering hellish nausea from his indulgences.

  Between the experience with the woman, and the waking up in that room, Jules vowed to never again lose control—or rather, not be in control of himself and his facilities. He had infrequently had women since, though did not keep a mistress. Jules leashed his appetites the way he did the rest of his life, and paid in advance. He did the necessary, left, and seldom went back to the same woman twice.

  Grunting, Jules propped his feet on a stool, looking broodingly at the toes of his boots, rather than out the window now. He supposed it was a miracle he had reached his 30th year enjoying the status and rep he had. Whoever was blackmailing him, and he was paying up, leaving the money at the designated place in Hyde Park—had carefully, knowingly, and perfectly, timed it.

  Chapter 2

  Generally, the populace of London endeavored to block out the constant noise. Blaise used it—listening to the tolls and street patter, the palpable sounds and the more subtle ones he would not have perceived sighted.

  Being a man of military discipline, having no tolerance for inactivity or coddling, he decided he was not dead and so he had to learn how to live as a civilian—albeit a blind one. He also pressed his cousin Ry to go about his own amusements, and occupied himself with learning to navigate his own house.

  His wardrobe he arranged so that he needed the young valet less, after they put it in the order he desired, buff trousers with brown or burgundy coats, white shirt and cravat, gloves and the rest of those hues, linen, tweed, creams—black and grays, were done the same, and white too. Anything multi colored, vests, scarves, or the like, he kept separate.

  He gave the young man instructions on what to have ordered for him, and just the way he liked his tasseled Hessians polished, and where to place them. His watch, stick pins, cheroot case, whatever else he laid out, had an order so that he was not fumbling and feeling around—like a blind man—for it.

  His bathing chambers, regarding his personal items, he placed in a sequence he could easily remember, and though the valet still had to shave him, he insisted on bathing and dressing himself.

  Sir Langley came by midweek and removed the bandages. What Blaise saw was a dull gray wall of nothing after the salve was cleaned off. Nevertheless, the stitching was out and Langley gave him a pair of dark-lens glasses.

  “The whites are still bloody, and you’ll need to protect your eyes from brighter lights,” the physician said.

  Refraining from mentioning he could not see any damn lights, he let the doctor probe around and he put the glasses on, whilst the back of his head was checked for lumps. His hair was growing fast, enough so the natural waves were there, if not much length yet.

  Blaise could feel the tender scars and marks of the stitches when he touched his face, and the scabbing that held the wounds together. He figured the skin was a bright pink compared to his swarth from being a naval man. It doubtless looked bloody awful.

  He had yet to go out, getting his air, foul as it was, from the windows, and his exercise by moving through his house, down the stairs, counting steps—at the same time directing which tables needed to be moved and generally trying to conquer the enemy—which he decided was his blindness.

  He began too, when Ry was there, to appreciate the man’s dry wit. He learned that Ry was his own age, 28, and that his parents died young—that very summer they had fished together in fact. Ry joined the army at first opportunity, given that they had only what the Duke of Eastland provided for income. Ry had a younger sister, still in school.

  Blaise often escaped the estate back then and roamed the countryside. He prodded a long ago memory of when he was ten and fishing in old Milbank’s stream. That is where Ry had found him, having been banished from the “adults” who were in the drawing room. He found that memory quite enjoyable seeing as he recalled that Ry was no fussy young lad,
and had skinned his own pole, and baited the hook too.

  Describing himself, his cousin said, “I’m five feet and eleven without boots, have curly hair, black as pitch that ladies love to twine around their fingers, and enjoy robust health despite the French’s best efforts to kill me—unless I’ve spent a night of debauchery, in which case, I’m bloody hell when I wake.”

  He had laughed. “To merry old England and due to a Frenchie who stumbled across a log and landed atop me with his bayonet, I’m missing one eye. Nevertheless, the one I have left is a pretty enough blue to please the ladies. And, by sheer luck and a wild shot, one of my balls went the way of the wind. The important bits function, thankfully though. I have enough shot embedded in me that I avoid ships. If I’m ever on one and fall overboard, I’ll sink like an anvil.”

  That certainly made Blaise laugh, which he had not expected to do much of in this phase of his life. Aside from that humor, there were those things he did not have to explain to Ry that made them good housemates—namely, the moments of morass, which came upon him, when Ry would simply hand him a drink and leave him to himself.

  Recovered was a subjective and ever altering word, to Blaise. He had yet to define it. However, surrender was not an option either. He realized quickly, he simply did not have it in him.

  Dressed in his buff and browns, having awakened early this day, he had his breakfast while the butler, Henderson, read the papers to him. He had noticed, with much surprise, that the small staff he did keep, whilst obviously sensitive to his insistence of not being treated like a “cripple,” had rallied with enthusiasm to make the transition easier for him from sight to blindness.

  It amused, rather than irritated him, to hear the housekeeper calling to the maid to put blue iris’s in the hall vases, have the ivory linens pressed. Or the way the chore boy would make a point of mentioning which rooms were lit and which were closed that day for cleaning—or, who was where, doing what, in the house. The reading of the paper aloud, likely came by Ry’s suggestion, since his cousin was apt to mention some current event in his offhand way.