Duke with Benefits

by Manda Collins

  “What were you thinking, Daphne?” Ivy chided from where she’d gone to stand beside Kerr. “You cannot antagonize the magistrate like that. He could have decided to throw you into the nearest gaol.”

  “I said nothing that wasn’t true,” Daphne said, puzzled. “He must know that he’s not as clever as any of us. That is why he kept asking the same questions again and again. And it is highly unlikely that he would have had me put in gaol. He has no proof that I killed Sommersby. And even so, I am the daughter of an earl. He could probably be bought off with a promise from my father to stand him membership in one of his clubs.”

  “She’s likely right about the latter,” Kerr said with a grimace. “Northman is a dreadful toadeater.”

  She was spared from reply by the reappearance of Maitland, who stalked over to her and glared. “What did you mean that you had a reason for wishing Sommersby dead? Because I know very well you weren’t speaking about the cipher. There’s something else between you that you aren’t telling us. What is it?”

  “You needn’t be such an ogre about it, Maitland,” said Lady Serena, coming to stand beside Daphne, much to her relief. “Anyone can see that she’s overset by what happened last evening. And aside from that, I believe she was standing up for you when she dressed down the squire. Who is a boor, without question. He was quite rude to keep us for so long.”

  “You’ll forgive me for not stepping back, sister,” the duke said. Daphne could feel the heat of his gaze on her as he continued to speak. “But, last night I found a dead body in a house I’ve run tame in since I was a child. The body of a man who has some connection to Lady Daphne. Something more than just their mutual quest for a cipher telling the location of lost Jacobite gold. She said it herself when she was defending me to Northman. I am merely asking her to elaborate.”

  He was angry. Daphne could see that. But she wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t known Sommersby before yesterday, so it couldn’t be grief. And there was really no other reason for him to be upset.

  Surely he wasn’t jealous? The very idea made her heart beat faster.

  “You do not need to say anything you do not wish to, Daphne,” said Sophia stepping up to stand on the other side of her. Daphne swallowed, feeling perilously close to tears. “I think she’s had quite enough interrogation for today, your grace.”

  “Come on, man,” Kerr said, stepping up to clasp Maitland by the shoulder. “Leave it be for now.”

  Daphne peeked up at him from beneath her lashes and saw that though his jaw was set, his eyes were troubled. She was able to recognize that, at least. For the barest second, her gaze locked with his, and she felt a jolt of emotion surge through her. Breathless, she quickly looked away.

  With a sigh, Maitland said, “Fine. But this isn’t over, Daphne. You will tell me whatever it is that gave you reason to want him dead. Because if you had a reason, then it’s likely someone else had the same one. And that’s why he’s dead.”

  A chill ran down Daphne’s spine at the thought. Could Sommersby have forced himself on some other young lady? Had he perhaps been killed by an angry father or a vengeful brother?

  She had thought it was simply someone else who wanted the cipher. There had been no sign of it in the hidden room, so they’d thought the killer had taken it with him. But what if it had had nothing to do with the cipher at all?

  What if Sommersby had been killed by someone just like her?

  * * *

  Deciding she couldn’t remain indoors for a moment more lest she say something she’d regret, Daphne muttered her excuses to the other ladies and slipped out the back door and followed the well-worn path to the stone stairs leading down to the little beach below.

  She breathed deeply, taking in the salt-tinged air, and let the wind whip through her hair, disarranging the tidy chignon her maid had worked so hard on that morning. The sea was rough this morning, churning up wave after wave before surging forward to break on the pebbled shoreline, which was in keeping with her tumultuous emotions.

  Daphne was not generally the sort of lady who flew into fits of emotion at the least little thing. But in the past two days she’d found herself grappling with such dark feelings as she’d not endured since Nigel Sommersby’s betrayal years ago. She’d long ago learned not to trust her father. And though she felt great affection for the elder Mr. Sommersby, indeed considered him something of a father figure, she had never been made to question his loyalty to her. Not in the way her father and Nigel Sommersby had done.

  It occurred to her now, as she perched on a large stone there where she could watch the sea, that it was not until she’d come to Beauchamp House that she was able to know what real trust was. She may have been skeptical of the other ladies and their immediate offer of friendship at first, but in the months since they’d arrived here, and perhaps thanks to the events leading up to Ivy’s marriage to Lord Kerr, she had come to realize that though their acquaintance might be short their offers of friendship were genuine. She would trust Ivy, Sophia, and Gemma with her life if need be. And though she was not as close to Lady Serena or Lord Kerr, she sensed in them a genuine decency that she hadn’t often encountered in her relations with the ton.

  The Duke of Maitland? Well, her feelings regarding him were more complicated. The one time in her life she’d had the courage to ask for what she wanted, he’d rejected her. And that still stung. She’d thought perhaps that taking someone like him—someone she liked and chose for herself—to bed would exorcise the demons of her encounter with Sommersby all those years ago. She would have given her virginity, of course, but she had thought the price worth it if she could replace the memory of Nigel Sommersby’s degrading advances with more pleasant ones. Because despite the fact that he would never be able to compete with her intellectually, Maitland was a decent man. And he would never—she knew this instinctively about him—take from her that which she did not want to give.

  Unbidden, her mind recalled the feel of his taut, muscular body covering hers on the library floor. Despite her genuine fear at being shot at, her heightened senses had seemed to revel in the weight of him. In the warmth and masculine scent of his skin. Even as she listened for another shot, some part of her had yearned for him to bend his head just the tiniest bit forward and take her mouth with his. She closed her eyes at the memory, remembering that sense of urgency as the brisk wind whirled around her.

  “The tide is coming in.”

  As if she’d conjured him from memory, Maitland’s voice broke into her thoughts, making her jump.

  He squinted against the brightness of the weak sun on the sea, and she could not guess what he might be thinking. Not that she ever could. Reading faces was far more difficult for her than reading equations.

  Uninvited, he dropped down onto the beach beside her rock, and stared out at the churning water for a moment. She was keenly aware of him there next to her. Especially given where her thoughts had just been.

  “Quill and I used to spend nearly every summer day at this spot,” he said easily. “Playing at pirates and sailors. Whatever make-believe game that might whisk us away for a while. Away from responsibilities and the demands of our parents. Away from worries.”

  She tried to imagine him as a boy, and had little trouble conjuring a tow-headed child, a little tall for his age, with fine almost girlish features. Funny how such a pretty man might yet be the picture of masculine strength.

  “It’s a good place for thinking, too,” he continued, never turning to look at her. “I have an idea of what you might be thinking about.”

  She felt her cheeks heat at his words. She doubted very much he would guess the direction of her thoughts. At least, she hoped he could not.

  “I apologize for being so hard on you earlier,” he said. This time he did turn to look at her. His blue eyes were bright with some emotion she could not name. She allowed herself to sneak a look at them before she looked away, her heart pounding at the connection, almost as if they’d touched hands rather than ga
zes. “It’s just that I…” He paused, as if searching for the right word.

  “I don’t like the idea of a connection between you and him,” he admitted, looking away from her again. “And my imagination is quite adept at conjuring reasons why you might wish him dead. None of them particularly palatable.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant by that—one didn’t eat reasons, after all.

  “Why should that bother you?” she asked instead, focusing on the part of his confession she did comprehend. “That we knew one another before, Sommersby and me?” She did not speak of what he might imagine her reasons for wanting to kill her former friend. That was too tender a subject.

  At her question, Maitland stared at her for a moment and then burst out laughing. “You really are the most fascinating lady,” he said softly.

  Her stomach gave a flip at his words. It wasn’t so much what he said—she knew she was not fascinating, unless one were considering her mathematical and ciphering abilities—but how he said it.

  Like an endearment.

  Still, the memory of Sommersby’s death lingered. And she suddenly felt the need to tell him just why she had reason to stab her oldest friend, innocent of the crime though she might be.

  “He tried to force me,” she said in a low voice. So low she could barely hear herself over the wind.

  But Maitland had heard her. She could sense it in how utterly still his normally active countenance grew. In how his hand, which had been in the process of thrusting itself through his windblown hair, halted there atop his head as if he were a debutante striking an attitude: Arrested Gentleman.

  Then, everything woke up again. The wind continued to blow, and Maitland dropped his hand to rest, fist clenched, on his muscular thigh.

  He muttered a very foul word, one that Daphne had only ever heard stable hands utter. And that only when they thought she was out of earshot.

  “When?” he asked, his voice vibrating with some emotion she could not name.

  “It was years ago,” she said, feeling strangely relieved to have told him. No, she corrected. Not strange at all, because this was just how she’d felt when she told the other ladies the night before. “Long before I came here. Before he embarked upon his travels.”

  “I daresay that is why he embarked upon his travels,” Maitland said in a growl. He seemed to be taking this far more badly than she could have imagined. It had happened to her, after all. Not to him.

  But, he had a point. Had Sommersby left England because of what had happened between them? She remembered shouting that night, after her maid had saved her by arriving unexpectedly to stoke her fire for the night, sending Sommersby rushing out of her room. It had never occurred to her that the girl would have told someone. Daphne certainly hadn’t. And yet, Sommersby had been gone the next morning.

  “Perhaps,” she admitted. “He was gone the next morning, so it’s a possibility.”

  “You told your father, of course?” Maitland asked, though it didn’t sound like a question.

  “Certainly not,” Daphne said, aghast at the idea. “He would have ordered Nigel’s father to leave, too. And I was at a critical stage in my studies. Besides, the son was gone the next morning. There was no need to tell Papa.”

  She didn’t say that her father would likely have placed the blame upon her instead of on Nigel Sommersby. Oh, he would have told both Sommersbys to leave immediately, since he’d been looking for a reason to be rid of the tutor and his son for years. But once they were gone he’d have found a way to use the incident as a means to force Daphne into doing his bidding. He had always done so. Used her own weaknesses against her. To get his own way at her expense.

  Maitland cursed again.

  “He never came back,” Daphne assured him, thinking that his anger was because he perhaps thought it was an ongoing problem. “I hadn’t seen him again until yesterday on the path to Little Seaford.”

  “And he did not … succeed in forcing you?” the duke asked, his fists still clenched where they rested on his thighs. “I believe your words were that he ‘tried to force you’?”

  “No, he only touched me a bit,” she said, though she knew that made it sound much less traumatic than it had been. She swallowed, remembering his hot breath on her face, his hand rucking up her skirts. She must have made some noise, because Maitland turned to her and placed a comforting hand on her arm. Only that, his hand. But it did what he’d no doubt intended.

  Though she was not generally a demonstrative person, she felt compelled to place her hand over his. Seeking comfort from the feel of his warm skin beneath her fingertips.

  “So, you see,” she said, calmer now, “I did have reason to want him dead. Or at the very least to harm him. But you know I did not. We were together when we found him. As you told the magistrate.”

  He was quiet for a minute. So long that Daphne wondered if he’d fallen asleep, though a peek told her his eyes were open.

  “The devil of it is, Daphne,” he finally said stroking his thumb rhythmically over her arm, “I might know you didn’t do it, and the others at Beauchamp House might believe us both, but there is no guarantee Northman will do so. You admitted to him that you had reason to want the blackguard to die, and he was found in your residence. In Northman’s position, I might find myself considering you a suspect.”

  “But you aren’t in Northman’s position,” Daphne said, frowning. “And you don’t consider me a suspect.”

  “That is right,” he agreed. “Which means we need to find out who actually murdered Sommersby. Because if we do not, Northman might just decide to prosecute you for it.”

  Chapter 5

  The next morning, Maitland was still thinking about his conversation with Daphne as he made his way downstairs for breakfast.

  He wasn’t quite sure what to do with what she had told him about Nigel Sommersby’s attack on her. What could be done, after all? The man was dead, and it wasn’t as if Maitland had any claim on Daphne beyond that of friendship. The knowledge had put her awkward proposition not long after they met into some sort of perspective, however. And he wished he’d known about her past before he’d rejected her with so little finesse. One thing was clear, however. They had to learn who had actually killed Sommersby. Not only because of Northman’s suspicions about Daphne, but also because despite what he’d said earlier that day in the heat of the moment, it was all too likely that whoever had killed the man had done so because of the Cameron Cipher.

  There were simply too many elements that pointed in that direction. First that Sommersby and Foster were in the area expressly to search for the cipher. Secondly, that the man had mentioned, and then been found murdered in, the library at Beauchamp House, where Daphne had been told by Lady Celeste the Cameron Cipher was hidden. It was too much of a coincidence that the man would be killed while in the midst of searching for the thing.

  Was it also coincidence that had Foster away on the night of Sommersby’s murder visiting friends whose existence no one could verify? The innkeeper had seemed to think Foster would return, but what if he’d simply disguised his flight by inventing the story of a quick journey? He’d just stepped onto the first-floor landing, when Serena came hurrying toward him, her familiar countenance flushed with anxiety.

  “What is it?” he asked his sister, knowing she didn’t upset easily. Especially not after the hard life she’d lived with her now mercifully dead husband. “Is Northman back?”

  A gasp sounded behind him, and he turned to see Daphne, looking pale. “Is he here to arrest me?” Clearly she was more worried about the magistrate’s suspicions than she’d earlier let on.

  “No, no,” Serena assured her with a strained smile. “I’m afraid it’s a different visitor, though. And I am not sure whether it will be a happy one for you.”

  Maitland’s brows drew together. It was likely Sommersby’s father. Though how he could have gotten here so quickly was a mystery. Still, when family was involved, speed was possible.

&nbs
p; “Who is it?” Daphne asked, frowning.

  Serena bit her lip. “I’m afraid it’s your father, dear. And he does not appear to be in the best of tempers.”

  This didn’t lighten the other lady’s expression. If anything, she looked even more troubled.

  “What can he be doing here? I expressly told him that I was not to be disturbed during my time here at Beauchamp House.” She rushed forward, leaving the siblings to trail after her as she headed for the drawing room. “If he has need of funds then he will simply have to win it at the tables himself.”

  Maitland exchanged a look with his sister as they followed the somewhat windblown Daphne. Surely she hadn’t meant that she had won money for her father in the past. Though God knew she was a gifted card player. She showed no particular fondness for whist as a general rule, but it had only taken a few hands with her to know she possessed exceptional skill there. Likely because of her extraordinary memory.

  It might have been more discreet for him to leave her to speak to her father alone, but Maitland found himself pushing past Serena, who seemed reluctant to go back into the drawing room where Daphne and her father were closeted.

  “There you are, my dear,” said the Earl of Forsyth with a beaming smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Maitland saw at once that Daphne favored him. Her green eyes were the same shade as his, though there were lines of dissipation bracketing the earl’s. And though his expertly cropped blond hair was shot through with silver, what remained of its original color was the same shade as hers. But whereas Daphne’s gaze was focused off to the left of whomever she conversed with, like a bird hovering just over a branch, Forsyth’s speared one with cold calculation. As he did to Daphne now.

  “You are looking well, Daphne,” the earl continued, stepping forward to embrace his daughter, who looked as uncomfortable with the contact as Maitland had ever seen her. “The sea air agrees with you. As I knew it would.”

  “The sea is very beautiful,” Daphne replied woodenly. “Why are you here, Father?”