A Duke Changes Everything

by Christy Carlyle

  “Good.” A little muscle under Nick’s eye twitched. She wouldn’t like the rest. “I’ve begun reviewing the inventories you prepared and noted that some are not finished.”

  “No, but you did arrive early. I’ll ensure all of them are updated by end of day tomorrow.”

  “Excellent.” Nick stared at the beaten leather blotter of his father’s desk rather than into the amber gaze he sensed tracking his every movement. “I need a notation of everything of value with detailed descriptions so I can send the inventories off to the auctioneer.”

  “Auctioneer?” The syllables came out slowly, as if she’d never heard the word before. As if she couldn’t fathom its meaning. At least not in relation to Enderley.

  “This house is cluttered with possessions that benefit no one. Much of it, thankfully, is not part of the entail. I intend to sell what I can.” He wasn’t sure why he was detailing his plans and rushing through his words as if he were forcing out a confession. With a gesture around the room, he indicated the ridiculous suit of armor standing sentry in the corner and an old sword collection hanging on the far wall. “Once we clear these out, the room can be thoroughly cleaned.”

  “I . . . don’t understand.” Her voice came in a raspy whisper. “You wish to sell off your history?”

  “I don’t give a toss about my history, Miss Thorne.” Nick approached the cart and poured himself whiskey, a rich old brew, the same honeyed brown as the eyes shooting daggers at his back.

  “Perhaps you should, Your Grace. Tremaynes have owned this land for centuries.”

  Nick downed the whole finger of liquor in one searing swallow. “It’s time for a change.”

  “Your father—”

  “Don’t mention him again.”

  The little growl of frustration she emitted under her breath wasn’t quite low enough for Nick not to hear.

  “May I mention your brother then?”

  “If you must.”

  “As you see from the account ledgers, the previous duke left little behind.” She took two steps closer.

  Nick turned to refill his glass, but he sensed her nearness, breathed in a lungful of her fresh, sweet scent as she came to stand just over his shoulder. When he turned, she was too close. Dangerously so. An arm’s reach away.

  She gazed up at him, emotions raw, her desperation palpable.

  “Even he did not think of selling Tremayne heirlooms,” she said stiffly.

  “Despite appearances, I am not my father. And I sure as hell am nothing like my brother.”

  She began shaking her head, as if she didn’t believe him, or didn’t want his denial. Nick reached out and slipped a finger under her chin, urging her to look into his eyes. To hear him. To understand the man she was dealing with.

  But her skin was warm and so damn soft. He found himself stroking his thumb against the silken edge of her chin.

  She tensed but didn’t pull away.

  “I’m not a nice man, Miss Thorne. Not even a particularly good one. He saw to that.” Nick tipped his head to indicate the portrait looming over them. “Inheriting this estate proves I’m not a lucky man either. But I am fair.”

  Hope flared in her eyes, and Nick clenched his jaw against the urge to give her something, anything, to be hopeful for. But he couldn’t. He’d only come to Enderley to settle matters and leave the pile behind him once and for all.

  He let her go, clenched his fist to hold on to her warmth, the only heat in this arctic room. “I’ll give you and the staff a fortnight to get Enderley in order. I can bring in help to remove the items we wish to sell.”

  Hope sputtered in her gaze, like a snuffed candle. “You truly mean to gut the house.”

  He hated the emptiness in her voice, the telltale quiver in her chin.

  Nick put on his business mien. The one he used with aristocrats in the den. The one that said he would brook no argument.

  “Don’t cling to any other possibility, Miss Thorne.” He needed her to understand what he was and that he hadn’t come to give any of them hope. “I mean to gut Enderley, lease it, and never think on these cold stone walls again.”

  Chapter Six

  Nick punched the pillow, angling the lumpy thing to find a bit of comfort, but Enderley wouldn’t give him any relief. Scents and sounds were too eerily familiar. When he closed his eyes, the past rushed in, ghost fingers reaching out from every corner and crevice of the damnable house.

  Sitting upright in the creaking guest bed, he scraped at the stubble on his chin and longed for his own room at Lyon’s—the thick double mattress, the lush velvet bedcovers, the soft silken sheets. If anyone wondered why he insisted on such luxuries, let them suffer a night in this grim place.

  But it wasn’t truly luxury he craved. He’d happily return to the smoke-filled rooms at Lyon’s or wander the soot-filled streets of London. Anything was preferable to spending the night in this damp, musty tomb. The place stoked memories he’d long kept at bay and he sensed his father’s presence everywhere.

  Especially in his portrait in the study.

  Thankfully, there were no portraits staring out at Nick from the guest chamber’s walls, just bland landscapes of pallid men hunting outnumbered foxes.

  Still, his father’s specter hovered over the house, eyes burning from that damned portrait. The one Nick couldn’t stomach seeing next to his mother’s.

  When they’d escaped together in the dark of night from Enderley, from one who’d become more monster than man, neither of them had ever dreamed of returning. His mother wouldn’t have wanted her portrait hanging next to his father’s.

  Giving up on any possibility of sleep, Nick donned a shirt and trousers and set off toward the study like he was striding into a brawl—chin up, chest out, hands flexing into fists. But deep inside, in places he stomped down, a part of him was still that damned skittish boy he’d once been.

  Nick’s hand shook as he pushed open the door. Memories rushed back in a torrent of images.

  Even at nine years old, he shivered so fiercely his teeth rattled whenever his father summoned him.

  The old man glared from the moment Nick stepped into the room. Eyes pinched under the weight of his glower, nostrils flaring, he flicked his hand, urging Nick closer.

  “Come, creature, and look at me when I speak to you.” He snatched a tumbler from his desk, tipped the glass back, and drained every last drop before scowling at Nick again. “Bastard child. Why didn’t you perish in your cradle? Would’ve saved me the trouble of feeding and clothing you.”

  He grimaced as if Nick’s existence turned his stomach. Then he reeled back and swung, the back of his hand cracking against Nick’s cheek.

  The thud in his ears made him dizzy. He’d learned to keep himself still. A flinch, a cry, any sign of weakness stoked his father’s rage.

  “Don’t look at me, boy! Turn those devil eyes away.”

  Nick flicked his gaze down and focused on the carpet, the carved wood of his father’s desk, anything but the man himself. The duke’s commands never made sense. Look. Don’t look. Speak. Don’t speak. Kneel. Stand. Nick obeyed, hoping to end their encounters quickly. But they never ended after one blow or lash. Teeth clenched, body shaking, he waited for the next.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, evil imp?”

  “Nothing, sir.” Nick tried swallowing, but his mouth had gone dust-dry.

  “And what are you?”

  “Nothing, sir.” Nick rasped the words his father made him repeat every time.

  The duke shifted. Nick winced, anticipating the next strike. Fire came instead, lancing across his cheek, gouging into his skin. Pain spread until his whole face burned. Hot blood trickled onto his chin. Nick lifted a trembling hand to his face. His fingers came away sticky and red. Daring a glance at his father, he found the man smiling as he flipped a penknife in his hand.

  “Your mother won’t remark on our resemblance anymore, will she? Now you look like the monster you are.”

  N
ick shoved the memory back, gripped the cold metal knob of the study door, and sucked in deep breaths until he was here, now, not shivering like the pathetic child he’d once been. Inside the room, a shaft of moonlight slanted through the draperies. Its glow found his father’s portrait, lighting the devil’s glare with a silvery gleam.

  Those pale blue eyes, so like his own, jabbed at Nick. Poking at old wounds that should have healed years before. Two glowing shards, perfect windows onto his father’s glacial soul. Not even a paid portraitist had managed to hide the viciousness in the old man’s gaze.

  “You’re dead,” he told the creature on the wall, but no satisfaction came. Nick imagined his father, in his own twisted way, enjoying Nick’s misery at being back at the estate. Shackled to all its responsibilities. Imprisoned in the place his father had once turned into Nick’s prison.

  No. That was one memory he would never revisit. The tower. The lock. The months of fear and hopelessness. He wasn’t imprisoned here anymore. A fortnight and he’d never see this damned house again.

  Nick approached the man’s hulking desk and lifted the penknife that had once dripped with his own blood. The scar on his cheek twinged in recognition.

  What a weakling he’d been. Sensitive and fragile. His father had loathed him for that weakness as much as his deluded certainty that Nick was not his true born son.

  The shock of his father’s loathing had been the worst part. He’d been so innocent. Eager for Papa’s approval. Desperate to please. Never dreaming just how far the man would go to make him suffer.

  “There’s no victory for you here,” he told the man who’d never get a chance to strike at him again. “Now that this pile is mine, I’ll tear it all down. Everything you’ve built. Every Tremayne family heirloom will be sold, and I’ll rent this hellish place to the highest bidder. A stranger will sleep in your bed and eat at your table.”

  Nick flipped the knife in his hand, raised his arm, and launched the blade straight between his father’s eyes. For one delicious moment, the tip impaled its mark. Then the hilt’s weight pulled the penknife down.

  Failure. Again. He’d known it every time he faced his father.

  He strode to the window, wrenched up the glass, and stuck out his head to drag in long, chilling breaths. A smoky haze filled the air. The smoldering scent of burning leaves. A whisper of memory came. Huge piles of leaves gathered by the groundskeeper. Jumping in with all the glee of a seven-year-old. Being whipped afterward.

  At his back, he still felt the man’s empty eyes on him.

  You’re dead. Nick refused to allot the man another thought. He sure as hell wasn’t going to stare at his image for however long he remained in this bloody house.

  He turned to face his father’s portrait, strode to a delicate wood table, kicked the edge with his boot, and sent it slamming into the wall. After climbing atop, he knocked the portrait from the wall. The frame split with a satisfying crack when it hit the floor.

  Nick jumped down and poured himself a finger of whiskey, contemplating how best to rid himself of the thing. The frame would never fit into the fireplace, or even the kitchen hearth, which was crowded with pots and racks.

  Through the open window, smoke curled up into the clear night sky.

  Nick smiled.

  Mina bolted awake as if she’d been shaken from a dream, yet her chamber was empty and quiet. She held her breath, straining to hear an errant sound or some portent of trouble.

  A man’s voice filtered up from downstairs. Not Wilder. Not Tobias.

  Deeper. Richer. Angrier.

  She pulled on her dressing gown and stepped into her tall boots. A terrible scraping noise made the hairs on her nape quiver, and she rushed toward the stairs without lighting the candle she kept by her bed.

  As she descended, she heard the duke shout once more.

  “Get out!”

  Good grief, had the cat crossed his path?

  Mina broke into a run. The ruckus seemed to be coming from the ducal study. She burst into the room and found chaos. Glass lay in broken shards on the carpet, the cherry table sat dusty and scratched against the wall, and the window sash had been thrown up as wide as it would go. Drapery swept past the sill and fluttered in the breeze.

  Mina glimpsed movement through the open window. The Duke of Tremayne strode across the grass. His white shirt stood out in the moonglow and an object trailed behind him in the grass.

  Scanning the room, Mina noted another empty patch of plaster. He’d ripped down the old duke’s portrait.

  But where on earth was he going with it?

  Mina climbed over the low sill as the duke continued on, dragging the enormous portrait behind him. Her nose burned at the smell of smoke in the air and she knew. The burn pile of leaves the groundskeeper had assembled midday still flickered with a few hot embers. He was going to banish his father to the flames.

  She didn’t blame him. That portrait had always sent shivers down her spine. But the duke couldn’t take to wandering the fields at night, burning whatever displeased him. What piece of the estate would he choose to destroy next?

  She strode quickly through the grass, stepping close enough to hear him grunt as he heaved the massive frame, nearly as tall as his considerable height, into the smoldering pile of leaves. He planted one hand on his hip and watched, unmoving, as a few sparks leaped into flame. Then he let out a bitter, deep-throated chuckle.

  Had the man gone mad?

  “Your Grace?”

  He whipped around to face her, his expression bemused but not shocked. As if he fully expected her to find him burning furnishings at the witching hour. “It’s quite late. You should go back to bed.”

  Mina’s reply got stuck in her throat.

  The man looked dangerous. Wild. Tangled waves of black hair framed his face. A few messy strands crisscrossed his forehead. His shirt, unbuttoned low on his chest, revealed hard planes and shadowed muscles.

  She tried not to gawk but wasn’t quite sure where to fix her gaze.

  The painting. She pointed past him toward the spot where flames licked up into the night sky. “It is indeed late, Your Grace. Why are you stomping around the grounds half-dressed, burning art in the leaf pile?”

  The duke stared at her finger a moment, crossed his arms, and arched one dark brow. “It’s my painting. My grounds. My bloody leaf pile.”

  Mina gritted her teeth. “We don’t generally spend our evenings at Enderley tossing portraits into the flames. The staff will think you’ve gone dotty.”

  “The staff are all tucked in their beds. Why aren’t you, Miss Thorne?”

  “Because I’m too worried about which piece of Enderley you plan to burn next.”

  He let out a startled laugh, not the bitter chuckle of watching his father burn, but a warmer sound. “I’m done burning furnishings for the night. Does that satisfy, Thorne?” He glanced over his shoulder at the smoking portrait. “You knew the man. Can you blame me?”

  Mina understood disliking Talbot Lyon. The man had been a tyrant, brutal in his treatment of the staff, irrational and unhinged in his later years, but she couldn’t encourage the new duke’s destructive bent.

  “Did you know the artist who painted your father was quite famous? If you disapproved of the portrait, we might have sold it for at least a hundred pounds.”

  He narrowed his eyes and approached until he was close enough for her to smell his woodsy cologne. The scent of lavender wafted off him too. An Enderley scent. Mrs. Scribb always put a bit on the linens before placing them on the beds.

  “I would have paid two hundred pounds for the pleasure of burning it.”

  “That two hundred would have allowed us to hire new staff, refill the larder.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Miss Thorne, but I don’t give a damn about Enderley.”

  Mina’s chest burned as if he’d speared her with a fragment of the burning picture frame.

  “If I had the time, I’d wrench it apart stone by stone.” He
cast his gaze past her shoulder, to the far edge of the estate, where the old Tudor tower stood.

  “You won’t do your duty then?” Mina understood having responsibilities thrust upon one’s shoulders and finding one’s life veering in an unexpected direction. But she couldn’t imagine shirking one’s duty, especially not when so many relied on him for their livelihood.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “But it seems you do not wish to be duke.”

  “I can’t tell if you have a dry sense of humor, Thorne, or an extraordinary talent for understatement.” A single long stride and he was too close. So near that her body began to warm. He radiated heat, even in the cool night air. “Surely, you know the rumors. Most say I have no right to the Tremayne title. Or haven’t you heard that my father believed I was a bastard?”

  “You’re not. That portrait proves it.” The old duke’s face was nearly obscured now, in a wash of melting paint and burning canvas.

  “Resemble him, don’t I?” He bent his head so that they were eye to eye. “Same cold eyes.”

  “The likeness is undeniable.” Mina could hardly tell the man he was more attractive in every way than his father. “Not to mention that you seem to share the same temper.”

  He smirked, but his eyes flashed with pain, as if the accusation stung.

  “Of course, I’ve only known you for a handful of hours, Your Grace. But if you truly mean to abandon the estate, then you’re more like Eustace than your father.”

  “I’m nothing like them.” He moved in close, as if to emphasize his words. His chin trembled. A muscle flickered in his jaw. “Eustace? You speak of my brother familiarly. Were you close?”

  “I knew him all my life.”

  A grimace twisted his full lips. “Ah, yes, because he was here and I was not. As you said, Miss Thorne, you don’t know me.” He began to turn away, and Mina suddenly wanted to know why he’d left the estate as a child and never returned. Had the rumors about his parentage been the cause?

  “I did see you once, the day you left. I was watching from an upstairs window. I liked to look out on the countryside, until the maids chased me away.”