“No,” he said quietly.
A grin formed on the viscount’s fleshy lips. “Then there is no reason for the marriage. I can find another to take the girl, I expect.” He expected. Not that he had any assurance from another gentleman. Yet, it was enough to throw over the security Nick now held out for Justina.
“Ah, but it hardly matters if you can find another,” he said, infusing the hard ducal edge that shook the viscount’s previous calm. The man gulped audibly and his fingers quaked with such force, he set the glass down, spilling a healthy portion of his drink. “It matters that I am going to marry her.” He paused. “With or without your permission.”
And that had been part of his plan since its inception. Justina Barrett would have belonged to him—body, heart, and soul, forever merged, with her role of pawn for the Barrett family gone, and her happiness destroyed. With her whisperings in a lecture hall and in a midnight garden, she’d blasted a hole through his intentions for her like a cannonball through the wall of an old keep.
The viscount pursed his mouth. “The girl’s dowry belongs to Tennyson.”
Nick’s patience snapped. “Justina.” Four creases marred the nobleman’s brow. “Her name is Justina. Not girl. Not gel. Use her bloody name,” he bit out. A vise squeezed at his lungs as he imagined quick-witted, always-smiling Justina under this bastard’s thumb. How had she remained so hopeful through life?
And would she maintain that same hope after her brother and father were made to pay for Rutland’s sins?
The viscount scratched his paunch. “Doesn’t matter what her name is, it matters what use she serves,” he said with an uncharacteristic fearlessness.
“I’ve secured her dowry from Tennyson,” Surprise lit the older man’s face. “It will return and remain in Justina’s name. Hers alone, as well as the family property you lost to him.” Nick did not expect those gifts would ever earn her pardon when she discovered his actions against her family but they would be gifts so she had some control over her future.
Her father grunted. “I don’t care if the gir—Justina,” he swiftly amended when Nick narrowed his gaze, “is cared for. I’m in debt, Huntly,” he said bluntly.
Hatred for this man burned all the stronger. And here he’d believed himself never abhorring anyone with the same vitriol as he did Rutland. How wrong he’d been. “To whom?” The reckless fool still did not know that even now he looked upon the largest holder. For the first time since he’d crafted his scheme, he found an unholy delight in destroying this bastard before him that had nothing to do with his connection to Rutland and everything to do with his treatment of Justina.
Waters waved a hand. “A little bit here. A little bit there. Tennyson owns the most and there are others. Men who’d be willing to pay the right price.”
Bile stung the back of his throat. By God, Nick had resented his father for taking the coward’s way and ending himself. But those sins and crimes paled when compared to Justina’s father who’d sell her like a Covent Garden doxy. Smoothing his features into the cold, emotionless mask he’d perfected years ago, he settled a hard stare on her useless sire. “I’ve tired of this discussion.” In a false show, he came to his feet and the viscount waved his hands frantically.
“No, no. Please, sit.” That cocksure arrogance gone, Justina’s father clasped his hands together. He was too much a lackwit to see that Nick would be damned ten more times to Sunday before he left without securing her hand. She could not remain here with this man. Not when he’d sell her off to a depraved rake. “I would be interested in…negotiating.” Waters paused. “If you offer me the right amount, she can be yours.”
Not even two days ago, the offer presented by Waters would have been the pinnacle of all Nick had dreamed of these thirteen years. Now, there was a bitter triumph that his revenge would come in this way, with Justina still used as a pawn. Only now…by the man who sired her and Nick an unintentional, but still voluntary player.
“I won’t give you a pence as though she is some whore,” he said, settling back in his chair.
Waters spread his arms wide. “Then we are done here.”
Nick layered his arms to the sides of his chair and tapped his fingertips in a staccato rhythm. “There is another way…” He dangled that bait and the viscount instantly leaned forward.
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll buy up your vowels,” he said and ceased his deliberate tapping. “You name anyone and everyone you owe funds to and I’ll secure them.”
Since he was a boy, Nick had appreciated how powerless those outside the peerage, in fact, were. He’d never, however, truly gleaned the extent of the power in the hands of noblemen, until he’d ascended to the rank of duke. Doors once closed, were opened. Ladies who’d once desired nothing more than a spot in his bed, vied for the role of duchess.
The irony was not lost to him in this moment. He now sat before the only man in the entire realm who’d rather have a fat purse than a cemented connection with a duke. “All of it?” Waters croaked. “You don’t even know how much the amount is.”
“The amount doesn’t matter.” Those were the truest words he’d ever given this reprobate. Nick had built his fortune in trade long before he’d inherited equally vast wealth from his dead relative. “Give me the names of the men who own your debt,” he repeated. Feeling sullied for even sitting in the room with this man, he removed his gloves from his jacket and beat them together, eager for the end of the exchange.
Waters choked and shook his head. “You’d do that?”
He had done that. “I will.” He’d own it all.
An unexpected wariness filled the man’s blue eyes. Justina’s eyes. Nick stared, riveted by those clear blue depths; that tangible reminder of her blood relation to this foul beast. “Why are you so determined to have the gel?”
“Would you talk me out of my decision?” he countered, deliberately evasive.
His response had the desired effect as the viscount shook his head frantically. “No. No. Beautiful girl. A Diamond. Prettiest in three Seasons, they say. Empty-headed, so you won’t have one of those fishwives challenging you.”
Justina Barrett possessed greater wit and intellect than the whole of the peerage combined. The stinging rebuke on his tongue burned, asking to be set free on this pompous, coldhearted bastard. “We’ll wed on the morrow.” Nick climbed to his feet. “Compile a list of those owning your vowels and see they are delivered to me.” In doing so, he would have every last name and every last confirmation that he owned all this man possessed.
The viscount sprang to his feet. “An honor, Your Grace. Justina will make you a splendid bride,” he said, quickly coming around the side of the desk. He wheezed as though he’d trekked across a countryside on foot.
Nick’s lip peeled back in an involuntary sneer. The man did not give a jot, however, as to what manner of husband he would make Justina. “I’ll show myself out.” Before the viscount even crossed the room, Nick pulled the door open and started down the same corridors he’d marched a short while ago, eager to be free of this house and the vileness of Waters’ soul. When he was a father, his own children would not know the selfishness of this man or even his own father, who’d taken his life and left their family in a quagmire of uncertainty. Which only conjured images of laying Justina down and knowing her in every way.
She will be mine.
Before, revenge had driven that need. Now, coupled with that, was a hungering for her; an irrational, inexplicable need that had proven his weakness.
He turned at the end of the corridor and slowed to a stop. All the tension eased from his taut frame. Justina hovered in the middle of the corridor. What power did she hold over him that she could, with her presence alone, dull the fury that had fueled his every thought and movement for thirteen years?
In her arms, she hugged a black leather book close. “Your Grace,” she greeted softly.
A small smile hovered on his lips. “I think we’ve moved far beyond
formalities, Justina,” he said, quietly. After all, tomorrow they would be man and wife.
Her tongue darted out and traced the seam of her lips. “Why?”
Her question snapped him back from desirous musings. “Why?”
“Why would you offer to marry me?”
Images flitted forward. Justina on her back, arms outstretched. In his bed. “There was our meeting in the street,” he began, drifting closer and erasing the space between them. Nick dusted his knuckles down the side of her cheek. He dipped his face lower and the scent of chocolate lingered on her breath, caressed his lips; tantalizing and sweet, so that he wanted to taste it on her. “Never tell me, you’ve forgotten our exchanges in the gardens and your parlor and—”
Justina gave her head a shake. “I did not forget,” she interrupted. He’d have to be deafer than a post to fail to hear that slight emphasis. The lady stepped away and he mourned the loss of heat that had spilled onto his person at her body’s nearness. She glanced about and then motioned to the open door beside her. “I would speak to you, away from the prying eyes of servants.”
Nick hesitated and then followed her inside the cheerful parlor.
She spoke without preamble. “You’ve not come by in a week.” Her words came out, not as an accusation, but as a statement of fact she sought to puzzle through. She slashed the air with a hand. “Last evening, you rescue me, yet again, and then you offer me marriage, saving me from ruin. Why would you do that?” She ran questioning eyes over his face.
How could the answer be both: to destroy and to save? And yet, that was the very real truth. He’d save her from being sold off by Waters, because if that were to happen, her spirit would wither and die. And he would be damned if he let anyone extinguish her effervescent light.
“You met my sister,” he began quietly. He was letting her in, not to deceive or trick, but because he would have her know at least a part of who he was.
Since Justina returned from the ball last evening, she’d taken to her chambers where sleep eluded her. Instead, she’d been kept awake, riddled with regret for what would never be. But also, relief for what would not be—marriage to the Marquess of Tennyson.
And through that relief and regret, she’d sought to puzzle through Nick’s rescue and offer of marriage as well as that cryptic warning issued by Tennyson before he’d attempted to ruin her. Why should Nick, a powerful duke who could have anyone he wished, who answered to none, and who’d disappeared from her life one week prior, save her as he’d done?
Standing outside while he’d met with her father, her ear pressed to the oak panel, she’d secretly hoped there would be an utterance of something—devotion. Affection. Even the simplest regard.
Oh, of course it could not be love. They’d known each other but a handful of days and, yet, nearly a fortnight earlier, she’d allowed herself to believe there could be that beautiful emotion she’d always dreamed of for herself.
Now, with but a handful of steps between them, Nick’s unexpected admission, quashed that romantic sliver of hope she’d held.
Justina set her book down on the table with a soft thump. “Your sister?” she ventured, knowing she must sound like the greatest lackwit for echoing his words, which highlighted how little they knew of one another. “I do not understand how your sister has anything to do with your offering for me,” she confessed in hesitant tones.
“I am trying to explain.” Explain. As in why he should have ever asked for her hand. Her fingers came up reflexively to rub the dull ache in her chest and she caught herself, forcing her hand to her side.
Nick wandered over to a rose-inlaid table and picked up a porcelain figurine; the painted couple now chipped, it would hardly fetch a pence and, as such, was one of the few pieces her reprobate father had not sold off. “I was not born to be a duke,” he murmured, more to himself, studying that porcelain couple as though they contained the answers to life. “My father was a merchant.” At last, he picked his head up, leveling her with a piercing gaze.
“Do you expect I should judge you for having roots in trade?” she countered.
“It mattered very much to all of Society,” he said with a wry grin. As a duke, she’d believed him incapable of knowing the same censure of Society’s prying eyes. Only, with his revelation, he proved that he, too, had not always been immune to the judgmental ton.
Sadness suffused her heart. Yes, how little they knew one another. If he should even wonder, even think that of her, he knew her not at all. “I am not all of Society, Nick.” Since she’d made her Come Out, she’d wanted to divorce herself in every way from those condescending lords and ladies who were content with the image on the surface; those shallow people who never looked deeper. “Do you believe I, whose father would sell me to the highest bidder, who would orchestrate my ruin to settle his debt, would find your father lacking simply because he was a merchant?” She was unable to keep the hurt from creeping into that query.
His gaze still fixed on her, Nick set down the figurine. “A fortnight ago, I would have said yes. I was invisible to the peerage for so long. I’d believed those people incapable of seeing anyone outside their respected sphere.”
Justina drifted around the opposite side of the table and stopped across from him. She skimmed her fingers over the chipped surface. The whole of the ton saw in Nick Tallings, the Duke of Huntly, a rogue, in possession of one of the oldest titles. How many had truly given thought to who he was and who he’d been outside of that title? Including, her. Shame filled her. “It never mattered,” she said softly. “To most it does. To me, it never did.” To her, he’d been the man who’d thrown himself into the path of a wild horse to save her and who’d sat beside her in a lecture hall and encouraged her to speak her mind.
“I know that now.” His gruff baritone washed over her. “I’m telling you so you might…” He paused and seemed to search his mind. “…understand,” he settled for.
Understand the reason for his intervention last evening.
“When I was a boy, my father’s business was failing. There was a…” Something dark filled his eyes and a chill ran through her. There was a depth of coldness that she’d not seen from him; an iciness that went against the man he’d shown himself to be since that day in Gipsy Hill. They all carried secrets. Which ones belonged to this man?
“There was a…?” She urged him on with her eyes and words.
“Nobleman.” His lip peeled back in a sneer and Justina stared unblinkingly as that cynical glint in his eyes transformed him into more a stranger than when they’d met in the streets. “This gentleman called in my father’s loans two years early. It mattered not that my father devoted his life to that business. Or that in calling in that debt, my father, my entire family would be ruined. He destroyed my family,” he whispered. At the stark emptiness there, she took a step closer, wanting to drive back the pain he now spoke of.
“What happened to your family?” she encouraged when he fell quiet, filled with loathing for the nameless peer who’d destroyed a family.
He blinked and looked up. Had he forgotten her presence here until now? “My father died…” His expression darkened and the coldness there drove back all warmth from the room, leaving her chilled inside. “…soon after the debts were called in. We were forced to live with my grandfather, an earl who quite delighted in reminding my remaining family of our uselessness. My mother died not long after my father. My sister and I were…” Another hard grin formed on his lips. “left with my grandfather. I was determined to never be dependent on anyone, my grandfather included. I built one of the greatest steel companies in England.”
She’d not even known of his mercantile roots. “You are a merchant?” Awe filled her for this man who would buck Social dictates and build his success and power with his own hands.
His lips twisted wryly. “I expect you find it scandalous to wed a man who works in trade, still.”
“On the contrary,” she said shaking her head. She found him inspiring
. The ton looked down upon self-made men, and yet… “There is far greater honor in a man who’d work in trade to restore his family’s wealth and honor, than a man who’d squander it all, and rely on nothing but the leniency of his creditors.” As her father had done.
Surprise showed in his face.
They truly were strangers, in every way…he, a stranger who had stepped in to save her out of some misbegotten sense of honor. “What of your sister?” she asked softly, bringing him back to the tale of his family. Needing to know just who Nick Tallings, in fact, was.
“I was fourteen, Cecily fifteen, and my grandfather demanded she make a match,” he spoke quickly, as though wanting the story told as fast as possible.
Her heart wrenched. At fifteen, Justina was still the naïve girl lost in her love of ribbons and bonnets, dreaming of love. She listened to his telling, torn between awe for what he’d managed to accomplish and regret for a boy who’d been forced to abandon his childhood because of some ruthless nobleman’s disregard.
“I should have stopped it,” he said and the muscles of his throat moved. “I should have prevented her from agreeing and I did not. And for it, she is wedded to an old, miserable lord who won’t, at the very least, make a young widow of her.” Fire glinted in his eyes. “You will never be like my mother or sister.” Or my own mother. “Your dowry will belong to you. The manor your father lost, will belong to you. All of it.” Her heart swelled to bursting, not at the material gifts he held out, but rather the intangible offering there. Self-control when Society would rob any woman of that gift.
He would give her freedom should she wish it, when his own sister was without. Another pang struck her chest, for Lady Cecily who’d been forced to grow up too soon, and for the hell she now knew, and for the guilt he carried. Justina stretched a hand across the table and touched his arm. His bicep jumped under her fingers and he met her gaze. “You were a boy. You will blame yourself for not intervening to save her and yet you were no different than her—a child, still.” A child forced to grow up too soon. She forced her hand to her side and she smoothed her palms down the sides of her skirts. “Marrying me will not right an imagined wrong you’ve done your sister,” she said quietly. He snapped his eyebrows into a line.
To Enchant a Wicked Duke Page 18