“If you’ll take my advice,” his grandfather said dryly, “you won’t answer that question. Ladies,” he said, bending a stern look on his sisters, “Ian and I have much to discuss. I promised you could meet him as soon as he arrived. Now I must insist you leave us to our business and join us later for tea.”
Rather than upset the elderly ladies by telling them he wouldn’t be here long enough for tea, Ian waited while they both arose. Hortense extended her hand for his kiss, and Ian obliged. He was about to bestow the same courtesy on his other aunt, but Charity lifted her cheek, not her hand, and so he kissed that instead.
When the ladies left, so did the temporary diversion they’d provided, and the tension grew thick as the two men stood looking at each other—complete strangers with nothing in common except a startling physical resemblance and the blood that flowed in their veins. The duke stood perfectly still, rigidly erect and aristocratic, but his eyes were warm; Ian slapped his gloves impatiently against his thigh, his face cold and resolute—two men in an undeclared duel of silence and contest of wills. The duke yielded with a faint inclination of his head that acknowledged Ian as the winner as he finally broke the silence. “I think this occasion calls for champagne,” he said, reaching out for the bell cord.
Ian’s clipped, cynical reply stilled his hand. “I think it calls for something much stronger.” The implication that Ian found the occasion repugnant, rather than cause for celebration, was not lost on the duke. Inclining his head with another faint, knowing smile, he pulled the bell cord. “Scotch, isn’t it?” he asked.
Ian’s surprise that the old man seemed to know what drink he preferred was eclipsed by his astonishment when Ormsley instantly whisked into the room bearing a silver tray with a decanter of Scotch, a bottle of champagne, and two appropriate glasses on it. The butler was clairvoyant or had wings, or else the tray had been ordered before Ian arrived.
With a quick, self-conscious smile directed at Ian, the butler withdrew, closing the doors behind him. “Do you think,” the duke asked with mild amusement, “we could sit down, or are we now to have a contest to see who can stand the longest?”
“I intend to get this ordeal over with as quickly as possible,” Ian countered icily.
Instead of being insulted, as Ian meant him to be, Edward Avery Thornton looked at his grandson, and his heart swelled with pride at the dynamic, forceful man who bore his name. For over a decade Ian had flung one of the most important titles in England back in Edward’s face, and while that might have enraged another man, Edward recognized in the gesture the same proud arrogance and indomitable will that had marked all the Thornton men. At the moment, however, that indomitable will was on a collision course with his own, and so Edward was prepared to yield on almost anything in order to win what he wanted most in the world: his grandson. He wanted his respect, if he couldn’t have his love; he wanted just one small, infinitesimal piece of his affection to carry in his heart. And he wanted absolution. Most of all he needed that. He needed to be forgiven for making what had been the biggest mistake of his life thirty-two years ago, and for waiting too long to admit to Ian’s father that he was wrong. To that end, Edward was prepared to endure anything from Ian—except his immediate departure. If he couldn’t have anything else—not Ian’s affection or his respect or his forgiveness— he wanted his time. Just a little of it. Not much—a day or two, or even a few hours to cherish, a few memories to hoard in his heart during the dreary days before his life ended.
In hopes of gaining this time the duke said noncommittally, “I can probably have the papers drawn up within the week.”
Ian lowered his glass of Scotch. In a cold, clear voice he said, “Today.”
“There are legalities involved.”
Ian, who dealt with thousands of legalities in his business ventures on a daily basis, lifted his brows in glacial challenge. “Today.”
Edward hesitated, sighed, and nodded. “I suppose my clerk could begin drawing up the documents while we have a talk in here. It’s a complicated and time-consuming business, however, and it will take a few days at least. There’s the matter of the properties that are yours by right—”
“I don’t want the properties,” Ian said with contempt. “Nor the money, if there is any. I’ll take the damned title and be done with it, but that’s all.”
“But—”
“Your clerk should be able to draw up a straightforward document naming me your heir in a quarter of an hour. I’m on my way to Brinshire and then to London. I’ll leave as soon as the document is signed.”
“Ian,” Edward began, but he would not plead, particularly not when he could see it was useless. The pride and unbending will, the strength and determination that marked Ian as his grandson, also put him out of Edward’s reach. It was too late. Surprised by Ian’s willingness to take a title but not the wealth that accompanied it, he arose stiffly from his chair and went down the hall to tell his clerk to draw up the documents. He also told him to include all the properties and their substantial incomes. He was a Thornton, after all, with pride of his own. His luck had obviously run out, but not his pride. Ian would leave in an hour, but he would leave endowed with all the wealth and estates that were his birthright.
Ian was standing at the windows when his grandfather returned. “It’s done,” Edward said, sitting back down in his chair. Some of the rigidity went out of Ian’s shoulders; the loathsome matter was finished. He nodded, then refilled his glass and sat down across from his grandfather.
After another long moment of pregnant silence he remarked conversationally, “I understand felicitations are in order.”
Ian started. His betrothal to Christina, which was about to be broken, was not yet common knowledge.
“Christina Taylor is a lovely young woman. I knew her grandfather and her uncles, and, of course, her father, the Earl of Melbourne. She’ll make you a fine wife, Ian.”
“Inasmuch as bigamy is a crime in this country, I find that unlikely.”
Startled by the discovery that his information was apparently incorrect, Edward took another swallow of champagne and asked, “May I ask who the fortunate young woman is, then?”
Ian opened his mouth to tell him to go to hell, but there was something alarming about the way his grandfather was slowly putting his glass down. He watched as the older man began to rise. “I’m not supposed to drink spirits,” the duke said apologetically. “I believe I’ll have a rest. Ring for Ormsley, if you please,” he said in a harsh voice. “He’ll know what to do.”
There was an urgency about the scene that hit Ian as he did as bidden. An instant later Ormsley was helping his grandfather upstairs and a physician was being summoned. He arrived within a half hour, rushing up the stairs with his bag of instruments, and Ian waited in the drawing room, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that he’d arrived just in time for his grandfather’s death.
When the physician came downstairs, however, he seemed relieved. “I’ve warned him repeatedly not to touch spirits,” he said, looking harassed. “They affect his heart. He’s resting now, however. You may go up after an hour or two.”
Ian didn’t want to care how ill he was. He told himself the old man who looked so much like him was nothing to him, and despite that he heard himself ask in a curt voice, “How long does he have?”
The physician lifted his hands, palms up. “Who’s to say? A week, a month,” he speculated, “a year, maybe more. His heart is weak, but his will is strong—more so now than ever,” he continued, shrugging into the light cape Ormsley was putting over his shoulders.
“What do you mean, ‘more now than ever’?”
The physician smiled in surprise. “Why, I meant that your coming here has meant a great deal to him, my lord. It’s had an amazing effect on him—well, not amazing, really. I should say a miraculous effect. Normally he rails at me when he’s ill. Today he almost hugged me in his eagerness to tell me you were here, and why. Actually, I was ordered to ‘have a look a
t you,’ ” he continued in the confiding tone of an old family friend, “although I wasn’t supposed to tell you I was doing so, of course.” Grinning, he added, “He thinks you are a ‘handsome devil.’ ”
Ian refused to react to that astonishing information with any emotion whatsoever.
“Good day, my lord,” the doctor said. Turning to the duke’s sisters, who’d been hovering worriedly in the hall, he tipped his hat. “Ladies,” he said, and he departed.
“I’ll just go up and look in on him,” Hortense announced. Turning to Charity, she said sternly, “Do not bore Ian with too much chatter,” she admonished, already climbing the stairs. In an odd, dire voice, she added, “And do not meddle.”
For the next hour Ian paced the floor, with Charity watching him with great interest. The one thing he did not have was time, and time was what he was losing. At this rate Elizabeth would be giving birth to her first child before he got back to London. And before he could go to her uncle with his suit he had to deal with the unpleasant task of breaking off nuptial negotiations with Christina’s father.
“You aren’t really going to leave today, are you, dear boy?” Charity piped up suddenly.
Stifling a sigh of impatience, Ian bowed. “I’m afraid I must, ma’am.”
“He’ll be heartbroken.”
Suppressing the urge to inform the elderly lady that Ian doubted the duke had a heart to break, he said curtly, “He’ll survive.”
She watched him so intently after that that Ian began to wonder if she was addled or trying to read his mind. Addled, he decided when she suddenly stood up and insisted he ought to see a drawing of some peacocks his father had made as a boy. “Another time, perhaps,” he declined.
“I really think,” she said, tipping her head to the side in her funny birdlike way, “it ought to be now.”
Silently wishing her to perdition, Ian started to decline and then changed his mind and relented. It might help the time to pass more quickly. She took him down a hall and into a room that appeared to be his grandfather’s private study. Once inside she put her finger to her lips, thinking. “Now where was that drawing?” she wondered aloud, looking innocent and confused. “Oh, yes,” she brightened, “I remember.” Tripping over to the desk, she searched under the drawer for some sort of concealed lock. “You will adore it, I’m sure. Now where can that lock be?” she continued in the same vague, chatty manner of a confused elderly lady. “Here it is!” she cried, and the left-hand drawer slid open.
“You’ll find it right in there,” she said, pointing to the large open drawer. “Just rummage through those papers and you’ll see it, I’m sure.”
Ian refused to invade another man’s desk, but Charity had no such compunction. Reaching her arms in to the elbows, she brought up a large stack of thick paper and dumped it on the desk. “Now which one am I looking for?” she mused aloud as she separated them. “My eyes are not what they once were. Do you see a bird among these, dear Ian?”
Ian dragged his impatient gaze from the clock to the littered desktop and then froze. Looking back at him in a hundred poses were sketches of himself. There were detailed sketches of Ian standing at the helm of the first ship of his fleet . . . Ian walking past the village church in Scotland with one of the village girls laughing up at him . . . Ian as a solemn six-year-old, riding his pony . . . Ian at seven and eight and nine and ten . . . In addition to the sketches, there were dozens of lengthy, written reports about Ian, some current, others dating all the way back to his youth.
“Is there a bird among them, dear boy?” Charity asked innocently, peering not at the things on the desk, but at his face, noting the muscle beginning to twitch at Ian’s tense jaw.
“No.”
“Then they must be in the schoolroom! Of course,” she said cheerfully, “that’s it. How like me, Hortense would say, to have made such a silly mistake.”
Ian dragged his eyes from the proof that his grandfather had been keeping track of him almost from the day of his birth—certainly from the day when he was able to leave the cottage on his own two legs—to her face and said mockingly, “Hortense isn’t very perceptive. I would say you are as wily as a fox.”
She gave him a little knowing smile and pressed her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell her, will you? She does so enjoy thinking she is the clever one.”
“How did he manage to have these drawn?” Ian asked, stopping her as she turned away.
“A woman in the village near your home drew many of them. Later he hired an artist when he knew you were going to be somewhere at a specific time. I’ll just leave you here where it’s nice and quiet.” She was leaving him, Ian knew, to look through the items on the desk. For a long moment he hesitated, and then he slowly sat down in the chair, looking over the confidential reports on himself. They were all written by one Mr. Edgard Norwich, and as Ian began scanning the thick stack of pages, his anger at his grandfather for this outrageous invasion of his privacy slowly became amusement. For one thing, nearly every letter from the investigator began with phrases that made it clear the duke had chastised him for not reporting in enough detail. The top letter began,
I apologize, Your Grace, for my unintentional laxness in failing to mention that indeed Mr. Thornton enjoys an occasional cheroot. . . .
The next one opened with,
I did not realize, Your Grace, that you would wish to know how fast his horse ran in the race—in addition to knowing that he won.
From the creases and folds in the hundreds of reports it was obvious to Ian that they’d been handled and read repeatedly, and it was equally obvious from some of the investigator’s casual comments that his grandfather had apparently expressed his personal pride to him:
You will be pleased to know, Your Grace, that young Ian is a fine whip, just as you expected. . . .
I quite agree with you, as do many others, that Mr. Thornton is undoubtedly a genius . . . .
I assure you, Your Grace, that your concern over that duel is unfounded. It was a flesh wound in the arm, nothing more.
Ian flipped through them at random, unaware that the barricade he’d erected against his grandfather was beginning to crack very slightly.
“Your Grace,” the investigator had written in a rare fit of exasperation when Ian was eleven,
“the suggestion that I should be able to find a physician who might secretly look at young Ian’s sore throat is beyond all bounds of reason. Even if I could find one who was willing to pretend to be a lost traveler, I really cannot see how he could contrive to have a peek at the boy’s throat without causing suspicion!”
The minutes became an hour, and Ian’s disbelief increased as he scanned the entire history of his life, from his achievements to his peccadilloes. His gambling gains and losses appeared regularly; each ship he added to his fleet had been described, and sketches forwarded separately; his financial progress had been reported in minute and glowing detail.
Slowly Ian opened the drawer and shoved the papers into it, then he left the study, closing the door behind him. He was on his way to the drawing room when Ormsley found him to say the duke wished to visit with him now.
His grandfather was sitting in a chair near the fireplace, garbed in a dressing robe, when Ian walked in, and he looked surprisingly strong. “You look”—Ian hesitated, irritated with the relief he felt—“recovered,” he finished curtly.
“I’ve rarely felt better in my life,” the duke averred, and whether he meant it or was only exerting the will his doctor admired, Ian wasn’t certain. “The papers are ready,” he continued. “I’ve already signed them. I—er—took the liberty of ordering a meal sent up here, in hopes you’d share it with me before you leave. You’ll have to eat somewhere, you know.”
Ian hesitated, then nodded, and the tension seemed to leave the duke’s body.
“Excellent!” He beamed and handed Ian the papers and a quill. He watched with inner satisfaction as Ian signed them without bothering to read them—and in so doi
ng unwittingly accepted not only his father’s title but all the wealth that went with it. “Now, where were we when our conversation had to be abandoned downstairs?” he said when Ian handed the papers back to him.
Ian’s thoughts were still in the study, where a desk was filled with his likenesses and carefully maintained reports of every facet of his life, and for a moment he looked blankly at the older man.
“Ah, yes,” the duke prodded as Ian sat down across from him, “we were discussing your future wife. Who is the fortunate young woman?”
Propping his ankle atop the opposite knee, Ian leaned back in his chair and regarded him in casual, speculative silence, one dark brow lifted in amused mockery. “Don’t you know?” he asked dryly. “I’ve known for five days. Or is Mr. Norwich behind in his correspondence again?”
His grandfather stiffened and then seemed to age in his chair. “Charity,” he said quietly. With a ragged sigh he lifted his eyes to Ian’s, his gaze proud and beseeching at the same time. “Are you angry?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to say ‘I’m sorry’?”
“Don’t say it,” Ian said curtly.
His grandfather drew a long breath and nodded again, accepting Ian’s answer. “Well, then, can we talk? For just a little while?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Your future wife, for one thing,” he said warmly. “Who is she?”
“Elizabeth Cameron.”
The duke gave a start. “Really? I thought you had done with that messy affair two years ago.”
Ian suppressed a grim smile at his phrasing and his gall.
“I shall send her my congratulations at once,” his grandfather announced.
“They’d be extremely premature,” Ian said flatly. Yet over the next hour, soothed by brandy and lulled by exhaustion and his grandfather’s perceptive, ceaseless questions, he reluctantly related the situation with Elizabeth’s uncle. To his grim surprise, he did not need to explain about the ugly gossip that surrounded Elizabeth, or the fact that her reputation was in tatters. Even his grandfather was aware of it, as was, apparently, the entire ton, exactly as Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones had claimed.
Almost Heaven Page 31