A Duke Changes Everything

by Christy Carlyle

  “Maybe a bit of water in a dish.”

  “I’ll fetch some right away.” Emma bolted past, and Mina gazed up at the top of the tower. Much of the interior had been constructed of wood, and the planks were warped and softened with water damage. Yet even in its ruined state, the structure evoked a certain charm. What history had passed by these rounded walls? And why was Nicholas so adamant about its destruction?

  Above her, Milly continued to cry, little mewls of effort and distress. Mina tiptoed up and took a tentative step onto the tower’s main chamber. The space was small, the ceiling low. Mina was shocked to see a small cot, a narrow wardrobe, and the trunk Emma mentioned. Almost as if someone had lived in the space.

  “You all right, miss?” Mina called to the cat as she approached. Peering over the trunk’s side, she found Milly panting, her eyes closed, concentrating on her painful task. When she stroked a finger between the feline’s ears, Milly leaned into her touch. “We’re getting you some water, but I’m sorry to say there’s not much more we can do.”

  Settling back on her haunches, Mina noticed writing on the trunk and inhaled sharply.

  Nicholas Lyon had been engraved below the lock.

  She looked again at the small bed and noticed a pair of ragged slippers underneath. Small slippers, the size a child might wear.

  A chill crept up her back.

  She crossed to the wardrobe and wrenched open the door hanging on rusted hinges. A few pieces of clothing, dirty and mildewed, lay in the bottom. With trembling fingers, she lifted a child’s shirt. What stitches remained were neatly sewn, but most of the buttons had been lost, and moth-eaten holes dotted the fabric.

  Writing scratched into the backside of the door drew her gaze and she dropped the garment. Tears pricked her eyes. Bile rushed up her throat. She traced the letters with her finger.

  Let me out.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs clogged with the room’s musty scent. As she stumbled toward the threshold, pain radiated out from a spot beneath her ribs. A fearsome thrumming in her head made her dizzy.

  What had they done to him?

  Mina tripped on a rotted slat of stairs and her body bumped against the stairwell’s rough stones. Pressing a hand to the hard granite to steady herself, she felt hot tears streaming down her cheeks.

  She didn’t understand.

  Emerging from the tower, she knelt on the ground, swiped at her cheeks, and fought to catch her breath.

  “Mina, are you all right?” Emma stood over her, resting a hand gently on her shoulder.

  “The duke. Have you seen him?”

  “I haven’t, but Mrs. Scribb says he’s gone out to inspect the hedge maze. Says he wants to destroy the lot of it.”

  Mina stood, grasping Emma’s arm for balance. “Take the water up and then stay out of the tower. It’s not safe.”

  Emma nodded, her brows knitted in a worried frown. “Yes, miss. But what about Milly?”

  “As soon as she has her kittens, one of us can find them a safe spot in the kitchen or the stables.”

  When the girl was out of sight, Mina started for the maze. Her body felt heavy, sluggish. But she had to find him.

  The maze walls towered over her, and Mina felt a surge of trepidation when she started inside. The leafy walls that had often been her haven felt ominous now. She trailed her fingers along the leaves, letting the sharp edges of glossy foliage ground her.

  “Nicholas,” she called out weakly.

  The name on the trunk. The boy who’d been sent away. The man she couldn’t imagine leaving Enderley in a few days’ time.

  She called his name again, her voice stronger.

  “Mina?”

  His reply made her so happy her knees wobbled. But he was too far away, and she had no idea which direction.

  “Where are you?” She came to a fork in the maze, a choice of paths, and took the one to the left. “Call out again.”

  “Stay where you are, and I’ll come to you.” His voice sounded clearer.

  Mina couldn’t make herself stop. She kept striding forward, compelled to reach him. “I’ll find you.”

  The rumble of a chuckle carried on the breeze. “Mercy, you are a stubborn woman.”

  “I prefer determined.” Another fork came, and she chose the right path. No logic drove her. Just instinct. And the faint scent of his cologne on the air.

  “Shall we start a list of your qualities? I know how you like lists.”

  Mina stopped and turned back. His voice came from behind her. She circled back, stretching her legs, striding faster. The teasing tone of his voice soothed her. “Go on then. Make your list.”

  “Stubborn,” he started. “Impulsive. Determined. I’ll add that at your request.”

  Mina rushed toward the sound of his voice, turned a corner, and slammed into the firm, warm wall of his chest.

  “Irresistible,” he whispered against her hair.

  Everything she wished to say, all the questions she needed to ask, stalled on her tongue. She didn’t want words. She just needed to hold him. Slipping her hands inside his overcoat, she stroked up the satiny back of his waistcoat, and tucked her cheek against his body.

  He grunted and then melted against her. Arms locked tight, he pulled her closer, resting his chin on the top of her head. Mina was grateful he simply held her, saying nothing.

  She didn’t want the moment to end. Their heartbeats seemed to synchronize in a comforting rhythm. Then he dipped a hand into the messy bun at her nape. His fingers blazed a trail of sensation extending down her spine, sending ripples of warmth down her legs.

  “Mina?” he murmured.

  “I don’t want to talk.” No words for now. She needed his heat and nearness, and to offer her own. Just this small bit of comfort and affection. To push away all the rest. She needed to get as close as she could to this version of him that he showed only to her. Lifting her head, she rose on the toes of her boots and kissed the edge of his jaw.

  He groaned and bent to capture her mouth. With one hand he pulled her closer. The other dipped down to cup her bottom. All the hesitation of the night before was gone. He was out for plunder. One kiss became another, each fiercer than the last. He slid his tongue inside to taste her deeply. She learned quickly, nibbling his lower lip as he’d nibbled hers. Darting her tongue out to tangle with his.

  Her fingers found the buttons of his waistcoat and she slipped two free, then the buttons of his shirt below. She gasped when she touched his bare chest. He was so warm, every hard plane of muscle, every smooth stretch of skin heated her fingertips.

  He unfastened her buttons too, starting at the top of her blouse and working his way down until he reached the edge of her chemise. His fingers danced gently over the bare skin of her throat and neck, then lower to cup her breast.

  Mina hissed and arched into his palm. “Nicholas.”

  He pressed his forehead to hers as he had the night before, then pulled back to look in her eyes. His brow dipped in a frown. “Mina, what’s wrong? You’ve been crying. Tell me why.”

  So many questions perched on the tip of her tongue, the heartache of what he’d been through weighing her down, yet she couldn’t speak. The last time she’d mentioned the tower, he’d stormed off in anger.

  Yet she knew this—kissing him, holding him—was a mirage. He would go and she would remain at Enderley, and nothing would change their fates. But she wanted as much as she could have of him first.

  “Tell me,” he insisted, placing a kiss on her brow. Another at her temple. A heated brush of his lips on the tip of her nose.

  “I can’t.”

  “No one’s here but us. Whatever we say, only the hedges will hear.” He sighed and pulled her into his arms again. “You’re worried about the estate?”

  “No.” For once, none of her thoughts were of Enderley. Only of him. Of how much she wanted to understand his past.

  He stroked a hand down her back. “Come to London with me.”

 
Mina swallowed hard. The offer was tempting. To escape? With him? The prospect of throwing propriety aside and being alone together held enormous appeal. Part of her wanted to say yes with no promise of anything more than knowing she would be where he would be.

  But that wasn’t practical. That was the same blithe foolishness that had led her to heartache before. And Enderley was where she was meant to be, though discovering the tower put a dark stain on everything she felt for the estate.

  “My place is here.” She’d said the words to him before, but they’d never felt so shallow and meaningless.

  He pulled back, and cupped her cheek tenderly. “You can choose your place. Not your father or a sense of what you owe others. Consider your own wishes for once.”

  Mina reached up and pushed back a strand of black that obscured his eyes. She was getting used to the silky slide of his hair between her fingers. “I would like to visit London.”

  His eyes lit and he offered her a blinding smile. “Then I’ll take you. A visit to see the city.” He looked momentarily abashed. “I’ll put you up in a hotel. You can bring Anna if you like.”

  “Emma?”

  “That’s the one.”

  What he was offering was scandalous. Mina didn’t need to read the etiquette book her father had bought her on her thirteenth birthday to know that an unmarried nobleman escorting an unmarried commoner around London would ruin her forever in the eyes of those like Lady Claxton. Not that the noblewoman thought much of her now.

  He took her hand and kissed the backs of her fingers. “Shall I make the arrangements? We can depart next week.”

  “I should remain here while the ballroom repairs are underway.” Mina nibbled the edge of her fingernail. “I also sent out for a mason to work on the parapet walk, and the library is to get a new rug and repaired window glass.”

  “I’m not taking you to London as my steward.”

  Mina’s throat burned. In order to take his offer, to embrace the possibility of spending more time with him, she’d have to give up the one thing she had long held on to. The one point of certainty in her life.

  Yet now that was tainted too.

  “I went to the tower.”

  He turned to stone. Every warm, pine-scented inch of him. All the light flickered out in his gaze. Then he moved, lifting his hands from her, buttoning up his shirt and waistcoat as he backed away.

  She couldn’t stop now that she’d started. Whatever was between them, whether it would bloom or turn to pain and rejection, she didn’t want to add any more pretending.

  “I ordered you to destroy it.” His voice was low and deadly calm. One could almost mistake his demeanor for poise, except that he’d clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t need to explain. Not to you. Not to anyone.” His chin quivered and his mouth trembled. “You wish to remain my steward? Then do your job.”

  He swept past her, and Mina reached out, only managing to grasp a handful of his overcoat. “Please don’t go.”

  Nick jolted to a stop. Please don’t go. The words might as well have been chiseled on his tongue for all the times he’d screamed them.

  He stopped, but he couldn’t look at her. When he did, all he wanted was to touch her, kiss her. To lose himself in her sweetness and never think of the past again.

  And all she wanted was to be steward of a miserable pile of stones.

  “You spent time in the tower.” The tentative, broken catch in her voice made his own throat ache. “When you were a child?”

  Nick’s ears burned, a piercing pain, as if someone was screaming an inch away. Maybe it was an echo of his own voice, screaming in his head.

  He should never have come back to Enderley. Except that if he hadn’t, he would’ve never met Mina. Whether she knew it or not, she and the estate she clung to so fiercely were not one and the same.

  To hell with Enderley. Every impulse told him to take her, seduce her, use whatever charms he possessed to keep her. He needed to leave Sussex and never look on this gloomy heap again.

  He would not tread near the story of how he’d been shoved inside the tower and feared he’d never escape.

  “Don’t ask me to tell that tale.” He turned back to her, but he couldn’t look into her eyes. “If any of this is real”—he waved a hand between them and wished he was close enough to touch her one more time—“then never ask me that question again.”

  She said no more, and a rush of relief loosened the knot in his stomach. Perhaps she understood, or at least accepted that this was a history he could never divulge. Then she looked up at him, a glistening line of tears streaking down her cheek.

  “Did he . . . lock you in? Your father?”

  He hadn’t meant to show her anything, but something in his face, his gaze, must have given the answer away. Whatever masks he’d mastered in business matters, they didn’t work with Mina.

  “Why would he do such a thing?”

  That answer was easy. “Tremayne hated me. He believed rumors that my mother was unfaithful. In his twisted mind, they became true. He said he’d make me pay for her betrayal.”

  Her hands came up, clutched over her mouth. She looked as if she might wretch. Then her eyes ballooned. “That day I saw you,” she whispered. “The day the carriage came to take you away. That’s why you never came back.”

  Nick’s throat went dry. His heart burned in his chest. His skin felt as tight and useless as old parchment. One more word and he feared he’d tear in two.

  She wouldn’t stop. She was too impulsive, too bloody bullheaded. She’d storm straight toward the empty gaping darkness inside him. She wasn’t afraid. The lady was unhesitating. She was going to march right in and poke her finger in the bloody, aching wound.

  “Nicholas, where did the carriage take you?”

  “To hell, where I belonged, according to my father.” Nick gritted his teeth and rushed over the words. Despite how much he hated returning to those wretched memories, he found himself telling her. “I cried like the weak little fool I was. Wouldn’t even look out the window for fear my mother would notice my tears.”

  He could see the blasted carriage in his mind’s eye, hear the gravel crunch under its wheels. The black hulking beast of a brougham waiting to take him away from Mama. But he’d been happy to leave his father’s vitriol behind, and that’s what finally propelled him onto the single carriage step.

  He’d never admitted to anyone that he’d cried as he settled on those velvet squabs. Half his emotions had been relief. Boarding school, he’d thought, would free him from his father’s wrath.

  “I don’t know who he was, the man who took me. Not the usual coachman. He was a behemoth who reeked of onions and ale.” The vehicle had jerked forward and he’d slammed against the bench, praying the journey wouldn’t take long. “The carriage stopped minutes after we departed. The man wrenched open the door and snatched me up.” Nick swallowed back a rush of bile. “He locked his hand over my face so tightly, I couldn’t breathe.”

  Mina said nothing, but a little cry of distress escaped.

  “Did you know that hell is up, not below? Up, up, up we went. The stones cut my knees when he dropped me in the room. I barely had a moment to look around before the door was locked behind me.” God, he’d been hungry in the beginning. “No one returned for three days. Then a tray was slid inside. Gruel. Tea.”

  “How long?”

  “Months.”

  Mina let out an agonized moan. He felt it echo inside him, but he couldn’t make a sound. Even when she came to him and wrapped her soft body against his, he couldn’t respond as he longed to.

  His muscles wouldn’t work. His tongue wouldn’t work. His heart wouldn’t work.

  Mina pulled back to look at him, tears brimming in her eyes. “How did you get out? Why did no one know you were there?”

  Nick drew the pad of his thumb across her cheek. “My mother thought I was at boarding school. She
even visited the headmaster when all her letters to me went unanswered. She confronted my father when she returned. Wilder helped her, helped both of us, to escape.”

  “I’m sorry.” She wept, little hiccuping tears, and held him. Lending him her warmth, her comfort, her goodness. But it was as if a wall separated them. He couldn’t feel her. Even as impulses rushed through him—to taste her, to push her against the hedge, strip off her trousers, and sink inside her lush body.

  Urges raged, but he couldn’t feel the emotions connected to any of them. Suddenly, he was empty. As useless as his father always claimed.

  And now Mina pitied him. Now she knew he wasn’t the business maven gamblers feared. He was a pathetic wretch who’d been his father’s prisoner.

  “I don’t want your pity.”

  “What about my sympathy?” She gripped the front of his shirt and lifted onto her toes. “What about this?” Her mouth touched his, an urgent press of need and heat.

  Nick willed himself not to respond. To pull away. “You should go, Miss Thorne.”

  If she stayed, he was going to do something they’d both regret. The anger would come back, and he’d turn it on her. Either that or he’d seduce her. Spend an hour pleasuring her until they both forgot their own names. But she deserved better than a thoughtless tumble in the open air on a cold midwinter morning with a scarred, empty man.

  And he didn’t deserve her at all.

  Her eyes lit with sparks of gold as she backed away, then she snapped her head around at the sound of shouted voices.

  Two men’s voices. No, three.

  She started off to follow the sound. Always charging into trouble, his steward was.

  “Do you know the way out?” he called after her.

  Back stiff, she halted but didn’t look back at him. “I’m not certain. Do you?”

  Nick approached until he was directly behind her. Close enough to touch her. Close enough to get a whiff of her floral scent. Close enough to feel frustration vibrating off her.

  “Follow me,” he said before striding ahead.

  Chapter Fifteen