What the Duke Desires

by Jenna Petersen

  Gabby shook her head. “Never compare yourself to that man!”

  “I must. If I can be no better than my enemy, then he has won, hasn’t he?”

  A sigh was Gabby’s response. “I’ve said from the beginning that I had my misgivings about your plans, so I don’t wish to discourage this change of heart, but I must know, why does all this suddenly matter to you? Up until even a few hours ago you weren’t certain that Simon wasn’t as much of a liar as his father.”

  Lillian flinched. She had accused him of as much. Slowly she turned to Gabby and held her friend’s gaze evenly.

  “Tonight when I found him, there was no mistaking the authenticity of his pain. And when he spoke of his father…I-I believe him, Gabby. Perhaps that is foolish or wishful thinking, but I don’t think he knew anything beyond what his father wanted him to believe. And now that the truth is coming out, it is breaking him.”

  Unexpectedly, tears stung behind her eyes at the thought that Simon had so much more information to find that could hurt him. Including the fact that she had come here with betrayal and vengeance on her mind.

  “But can you truly forget why you came here?” Gabby asked softly. “Your father’s deathbed request, your mother’s sad end…can you release those things?”

  Lillian covered her eyes. It was only those things that made her hesitate. For months she had been driven by them, her need to fulfill the duty her brother could not eating at her and keeping her moving forward even when she wanted to collapse.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I know my mother still deserves some kind of justice, but I just don’t know how.”

  Gabby reached out and caught her hand. “You lost everything. It is understandable that you would want to steal some of it back.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll go to Simon,” Lillian finally said with a shiver. “In the light of day with a little distance from tonight, I think everything will be clearer for me.”

  “And what will you say to him? Admit why you came here?”

  A shudder worked through Lillian. God, if he knew she had come here, she had made love to him, all while plotting to ruin his family name, well, she could guess he wouldn’t have a positive reaction.

  “No. Not yet.” Lillian frowned. It was a coward’s way, but so be it. “No, I want to see if I can find out a little bit more about why he was so upset. Perhaps if I know the truth, it will ease my mind. Perhaps knowing that Roger Crathorne’s beloved son despises him will be enough vengeance, even if I didn’t mete it out personally.”

  Gabby nodded, but Lillian could see the utter relief in her friend’s eyes. Strangely she felt some of the same in her own heart. This drive for revenge had never been comfortable for her. Only necessary. A duty she had felt she had to take on since no one else would.

  But the idea of letting it go made her lighter than she had been in ages.

  “And what about Simon?”

  A shiver worked through Lillian at Gabby’s quiet question.

  “What about him?” she asked, though she knew perfectly well what her friend meant.

  “You two made love tonight and it is clear you have a bond that goes deeper than mere physical desire.” Gabby tilted her head. “What do you intend to do about that?”

  Lillian shook her head. “I don’t know. I still think there is too much in the past to allow us to be together. Besides, if he discovered why I came here, what my connection to his father is…he would likely loathe me.”

  “And yet you still long to share more, don’t you?” Gabby whispered.

  Lillian turned her back on her friend and made for the bedroom. “I long for a great many things, Gabriela. But the majority of them I will never have.”

  Chapter 15

  Two hours after she entered her chamber, Lillian found herself leaving it again. Dawn had come, and it was time to search out Simon. She wanted to speak to him at the earliest possible time, both to ensure they wouldn’t be interrupted and also before she surrendered to more cowardly impulses.

  Before she let go of her quest for vengeance entirely, she had to be certain it was the right decision. Somehow talking to Simon, finding out what had troubled him so, felt like it might be enough. She clung to the hope that it would free her of her father’s dying wish.She moved through quiet hallways carefully. The other houseguests wouldn’t rise for hours, and though the servants might be waking, they would be too busy readying the house for the day to pay much heed to her if she was quiet and careful.

  As she slipped down the winding stairs to the foyer and the main area of the estate, Lillian stifled a yawn. She hadn’t slept last night. Even after she climbed between the sheets, she had tossed and turned, remembering Simon’s touch. She would likely never feel it again. There was so much to keep them apart, both the obvious and the things he didn’t even suspect.

  With a sigh, she reached for the handle of Simon’s office door. After a brief prayer for strength, she pushed and entered the chamber.

  To her dismay, the room was dark. Simon wasn’t there. Apparently he had better been able to sleep than she after their night together. Perhaps he wouldn’t rise until the others in their party had.

  And she would have to wait to discuss these very private issues with him. She turned to go, but a thought stopped her. She wouldn’t have to wait if she was able to determine what had troubled him herself.

  Slowly she faced the messy room. If Simon wasn’t awake yet, she could have hours to look through the office. Certainly he would have separated out the items he had already uncovered, if she could find that information, then she could read through it at her leisure.

  Heat filled her cheeks at the thought of searching this chamber. It was ironic that she finally had the freedom to do so and yet she was no longer certain she wished to do it.

  “Don’t you want to know the truth?” she murmured to herself. “Don’t you want to end this one way or another?”

  Somehow hearing that question out loud helped. Just because she might find the evidence she had sought for months didn’t mean she would use it. But she needed to see it. Somehow she felt it would end the hunger she had to avenge her mother. Even if she never followed through, the fact that she could had to help.

  Didn’t it?

  She moved forward. She came around the desk, and after opening the curtains to let the morning light flood the room, she sat down to examine the overwhelming number of piles before her. There was a stack set off to the side that she turned to first. From the way they were placed, it appeared as though they had already been sorted, which meant they might be the items that had so upset Simon.

  Pulling the first sheet from the stack, she began to read. She wasn’t certain how much time passed as she went over document after document. Many had to do with legislation, and as Simon had confessed to her before, his father’s public support of laws had often been belied by his private acceptance and conveyance of money from parties opposed to the same ideals.

  She sniffed her disgust. That showed the late duke hadn’t been honorable, but it wasn’t the devastating, overpowering secret she had set out to find. Even now when she wavered on the edge of giving up revenge forever, she wanted to discover something personal and humiliating.

  She flipped forward, scanning more ledgers and letters and making mental notes about what she saw. She was nearly halfway through the piles and starting to get interested in a thread that seemed to imply the late duke had some kind of secret when the door to the chamber suddenly opened.

  Reflexively, Lillian dropped the paperwork to the desk and staggered to her feet as the intruder stepped within. She sucked in a harsh breath when she saw it was Simon himself who came into the room.

  It took a moment for him to notice her standing there, guilt-stricken and terrified, and she took that reprieve to drink in the sight of him. He looked as exhausted as she felt, and she guessed he hadn’t slept any more than she had. Both of them had been troubled, despite the pleasure they found together.

&
nbsp; Finally, he actually looked at her and lurched back in surprise before his face softened.

  “Lillian,” he said, moving toward her almost as if he couldn’t control the action.

  She longed to fly into his arms and comfort him with kisses, but she refrained. “G-good morning, Simon.”

  He looked around, as if remembering where they were. “Wait, what…what are you doing here, Lillian?”

  Utterly unprepared, she closed and opened her mouth a few times as her mind raced for the right answer. He was staring at her, his expression filled with tired confusion.

  For a brief moment, she considered telling him everything. She thought about confessing what exactly had happened to her mother, about her father’s deathbed desire for revenge and her decision to take it when her brother wouldn’t. She thought about revealing all and facing the consequences, whatever they were.

  But then he met her eyes with such warmth and sweetness, and her throat closed. If she told him, he would never look at her like that again. He would stop thinking of her as an interesting riddle and see her for what she was. An enemy.

  Since they had no future together, why did he need to know? Why did she need to change what they had for a few more fleeting days?

  “I couldn’t sleep for thinking about our shared problem.”

  She drew a deep breath. There, that wasn’t a direct lie.

  “Shared problem?” he repeated with a cock of his head.

  She nodded, her stomach churning. “Y-yes. Last night we spoke of our parents and trying to find some kind of peace with who they were and what they did. I cannot ever have a true resolution to my own issues with my mother, but I—”

  She hesitated. It wasn’t too late to stop. To forget about finding the truth, to stop lying and just leave.

  But she couldn’t.

  “I hoped I could perhaps help you,” she whispered. Her voice cracked when she said it and her hands shook at her sides.

  He moved forward, closing the door behind him. “You came here to search in order to help me?”

  “You were never clear on what it was your father did to disappoint you so greatly. I hoped I could understand if I found more information.”

  The self-loathing she had felt when she began speaking doubled when Simon’s expression softened and he moved across the cluttered room on her.

  Gathering her up, he held her against his chest, breathing in the scent of her hair as he whispered, “Thank you, Lillian. Thank you for that.”

  She blinked furiously to prevent tears from falling and nodded as she pulled away. “I shouldn’t have intruded without your permission. I apologize. It was my—my worry that drove me. I only want to help you. Will you allow that?”

  After a long pause, he nodded. “Yes.”

  Lillian waited for relief to flood her. For there to be a thrill in her belly that she was about to uncover a dark truth about a man she had considered her mortal enemy, even if she never used it.

  Neither materialized. There was only more of that nausea. That knowledge that in her use of the past to make him share his secrets, she was as manipulative as Simon’s father had been.

  Simon took her hand and led her across the room to two chairs beside the sunny window. He pursed his lips in frustration as he cleared away the piles of paperwork on the chair seats, and then offered her a place.

  They sat together, their knees close and Simon’s hand upon hers as he stared at her with an intensity that seemed to bore into her.

  “I mentioned that my father was not as honest in some of his support of legislation as he led the world to believe.”

  She nodded, remembering well the pain on his face the day he had confessed that fact. It had been the first time she’d truly felt empathy for him.

  “Yes,” she whispered when he was silent for more than a moment. “I know that felt like a betrayal to you.”

  He nodded. “It was. I was raised to worship him for his honesty and his goodness and suddenly I was faced with the fact that he possessed very little of either quality. But it has gotten worse. What I am about to tell you is something that could easily destroy his reputation…and perhaps my own, if you chose to share it, so I hope I can count on your discretion.”

  Lillian swallowed. After months of hoping and searching, here was the moment of truth. She was about to be given what she had so yearned to find.

  Her silence seemed to appease him, for he continued, “I’ve found evidence that my father not only had at least one bastard child, but that he made a payment to the mother and then utterly abandoned them both.”

  She drew in a breath, recognizing instantly the importance of this information. Many men of the ton had bastard children, but few of them had the exalted reputation of the late duke, a man who had once railed publicly against the lack of care among his peers. A man who had once said that all bastard children deserved support and consideration.

  It had outraged and shamed the peerage when he stated it. If there was proof he had been an utter hypocrite, that he had deserted his own bastard son…well, that would certainly be a huge step in utterly ruining the name he had created for himself. Who would build a statue then? Or murmur platitudes at gatherings?

  “The worst part is that I think there may be more children just like the one I’ve found information about,” Simon said, covering his eyes with his hand.

  Lillian stared at the man before her. He was slouched down in the chair, rubbing his temples with a look of disillusioned pain on his face so powerful that it made her heart hurt. This information had already broken a part of the man before her. Simon could never go back to his idealized view of his father. He could never forget what he knew and suspected.

  In that moment, Lillian knew she had to let the past go. Even if she managed to convince the ton that Roger Crathorne had been the biggest hypocrite ever to walk the earth or an evil monster masquerading as a crusader…it wouldn’t bring her mother back. It wouldn’t change the pain the man had brought to her family.

  The victory would be hollow. And with it, she would only succeed in breaking up another family. Hurting Simon and his sister whom she had never met, but who had seemed kind enough from a distance.

  She thought of her mother. Not of what had happened to her all those years ago, not of her suicide, but of the woman Lillian remembered. She had been kind, she had been good. If Lillian broke another person in her mother’s name, it would not be something her mother would have liked.

  She blinked at tears. It was over.

  “Have I offended you?” Simon asked, lowering his hand. “If I have, I apologize.”

  Shaking her head, she reached for him, covering his knee with her hand.

  “No, of course you haven’t. I know this was something difficult for you to share with me. I can see your pain. But—” She stopped. Perhaps comfort was all she could offer this man. A last moment of atonement, for herself…and for his father. “At least the late duke provided some kind of payment for the child. That’s better than some men do.”

  She pursed her lips, hating to defend the man, but knowing it was what Simon needed to hear.

  Simon shook his head. “It was sizable enough, but there were no stipulations tied to it, nor any oversight over it that I could see. Lord knows if the boy ever saw a farthing, let alone if it lasted into his adulthood. He could have ended up on the street, Lillian. Or dead. And my father neither knew nor seemed to care about it.”

  She reached for straws to comfort him. “But the child’s mother might very well have been reasonable and frugal. She could have easily set aside a healthy amount for his future. He could be doing well for himself.”

  After a long moment, Simon shrugged. “I suppose that is true. I have no idea what his mother was like. There may be more notes about her here, but I’ve yet to find her.”

  “Well, there you are,” she insisted.

  “Still, I wish I knew what happened to him,” he said, his voice wistful and faraway.

  She h
esitated. “Th-there is one way you could find out, you know.”

  He tilted his head. “How?”

  “You could find him.”

  Simon’s eyes widened. Slowly, he shook his head. “No, there were no further facts beyond his name and the amount of payment to the mother. I have no idea in what town she lived or any other information.”

  She looked around. “Your father kept such voluminous records, I have no doubt there is a ledger or piece of correspondence here that gives a clearer accounting of what happened. I could help you look if you’d like.”

  She couldn’t believe the words had left her mouth. But once they were out, she felt no desire to take them back. In some way, if she could help Simon find his missing sibling, that would thwart Crathorne, who had tried so desperately to keep the children apart. And even more, it would give Simon a way to heal.

  “Find my brother,” he said, rising and turning to look outside at the sparkling, cloudless day that was blooming as they talked. “I admit I hadn’t thought of it.”

  She tilted her head. “Because he might not be of your class and rank?”

  He waved that comment off. “That is Rhys’s mindset, not my own. Unlike my father, I actually believed in the ideals we fight for. I could not care less if my brother was a pauper or a politician.”

  Lillian turned her face away. It seemed Simon’s feelings on class only applied to marriage. Not that it mattered. He didn’t know the entire connection they shared, but she did. There could be no future for them, despite her desire to comfort him and despite the passion they had shared last night.

  “No, I didn’t consider it because I suppose it would complicate things a great deal,” he murmured.

  “It would risk more people finding out about your father’s true colors,” she murmured, watching his every reaction carefully.

  He turned on her, nostrils flaring slightly. “At this moment, I don’t care about that. I deserve to know my brother if he still exists. And he deserves to know me and our sister, Naomi.”

  “Are you saying you wouldn’t care if your father’s treachery were revealed to the world?” she asked, shocked.