Nobody's Duke (League of Dukes Book 1) Page 5

  She had not yet told him about the danger facing her, and she was not sure she would. Each time the words rose on her tongue, she swallowed them down with the bile, unable to shatter his fragile world once more.

  “The weather outside is unseasonably chilly,” she told him lightly, “and the fog is particularly atrocious. I should say it is not a day for the out-of-doors.”

  Edward frowned, his expression looking so much like Clay’s stern visage that it took her breath. “It is almost always foggy, Mama. I do not care. I want to stretch my legs.”

  “You are stretching them now, my darling boy.” She tried to keep the worry from her voice, but she feared it bled through. Her concerns were twofold now: the Fenian threat and Clayton Ludlow both. She had not realized, until Clay’s abrupt return to her life, just how uncanny the resemblance was between true father and son.

  He had not met Edward yet, and now she was more certain than ever that she must keep that introduction from occurring. If he suspected the truth, she did not know what she would do. She could only hope her marriage to Freddie would vanquish any suspicion from his mind. But one had only to look at Edward and Clay to see they shared the same blood.

  “I want to run, Mama,” he said. “I want to run in the gardens.”

  Yet another trait he and Clay shared: a love of physical motion. Before Freddie’s death, she had smilingly sent Edward outside whenever his boisterous nature required freedom and movement. But things were different now. There could be hidden dangers lurking for him outside. Anything could happen, and she would not risk her son. He was all she had.

  “You are the duke now,” she told him quietly, and though it was true she ought to encourage him to begin accustoming himself to his future duties, she hated the lie. “You must remember your position.”

  “Papa is the duke, not me.” Edward’s lip trembled. “I miss him.”

  Tears welled in her eyes, and she gathered her son against her once more, embracing him every bit as tightly as before in spite of his earlier protest. “I miss him as well, my darling. But we must be brave together. Papa would want us to be brave. And he would be so very proud of how strong you have been. You will make an honorable and good Duke of Burghly. This I know with all my heart.”

  Freddie had been their pillar. He had always been ready with a smile or a quip. His wit and his heart were unparalleled, and he had been so very generous with both. There had never been a doubt in her mind that he loved Edward as if he were his own son. When he had offered her his unconventional proposal, he had made it clear to her he would accept her babe—male or female—as his own. And he had. He had more than lived up to every promise he had made on that day.

  Until his death. Even in death, he had made certain she and Edward would be protected.

  “Do you think I can be as fine a man as he was?” Edward asked solemnly.

  The anguish on his small countenance made her crumble inside, but she refused to allow it to show. Instead, she smiled and cupped his face. “I know you can be, for you already are.”

  “Thank you, Mama,” Edward whispered. “I hope you are right. Papa always said you know better than anyone else, and I must trust you in all matters.”

  Dear Freddie. Of course he would have said so. In truth, she did not know better, and she had committed more sins in her lifetime than she could count. She was not a good person. She was no one for her son to pattern himself after.

  Something twisted painfully inside her chest then. A river of guilt deluged her, rushing over the grief. Edward had lost the only father he had ever known, but his flesh-and-blood father was somewhere beneath the same roof. She had deceived her son for seven years, and for a mad moment she wished she could unburden herself to him now. To reveal to him his father was Clayton Ludlow.

  But she could never, ever do something so foolish.

  If Clay discovered Edward was his son, she had no way of knowing how he would react. Already, he was icy and aloof. He spoke to her as if being in her presence was abhorrent. If he found out she had kept his son from him for all these years…

  Then again, perhaps he would not care. After all, he had left her without a word. Abandoning her to face her father and her shame alone. Leaving her with no choice but to accept the proposal of any man who offered. Ara had done the only thing she could. That she and Freddie had found each other at all was a miracle, and she would forever be grateful to him for being the best man she had ever known.

  A truer and finer gentleman than he had never lived.

  Blinking back tears, she released Edward with great reluctance. “There now, you have turned me into a watering pot.”

  “Papa was always smiling,” her son observed with a gravity that belied his age. “He would want us to smile too, Mama. He always hated when you cried.”

  Yes, he had. Much to her shame, there had been days when—despite the fulfillment of being Edward’s mother and despite the comfortable companionship she’d shared with Freddie—she had been miserable. Days when the past and what might have been had returned to swallow her whole. Freddie had always managed to chase her doldrums in one fashion or another. Sometimes, with chocolate. Others with bawdy jokes.

  She smiled sadly to think back on those innocent days. Her old self would not have been able to fathom what lay ahead. Indeed, she could scarcely wrap her mind around it.

  “You make me smile now,” she told her son. “I love you so very much, my darling boy.”

  “I love you too, Mama,” he said, looking down at his shoes, shuffling them as if embarrassed.

  Who was this young man he was turning into before her eyes? Was it Freddie’s death that had manifested it, or was it merely a part of growing into a young man? She could not say, but either way, her heart hurt.

  “We will go on an excursion soon,” she told him suddenly, wanting to chase the sadness from his eyes. “Anywhere you like, I shall take you. Think on it, and then we will go.”

  He beamed. “Thank you, Mama.”

  She fixed him with a stern look. “Now off with you, my love. You must return to your studies. I shall see you in a few hours, and I expect a report on everything you have learned.”

  Looking lighter, his shoulders not stooping quite so low with the weight he carried in the wake of Freddie’s death, he bowed. Then he was gone, leaving her alone in her sitting room with only her guilt and her sadness to keep her company.

  Damn it all to hell.

  His bloody cat was missing. Clay had searched his apartments, sinking to his knees on the plush woolen carpet to peer beneath the bed, looking atop furniture, beneath chairs. Anywhere he could conceive of the feline hiding, he had examined. After half an hour of thorough searching, he had reached the conclusion that someone—likely a Burghly House chambermaid or other such domestic—had inadvertently allowed Sherman to escape.

  The little fellow had a fondness for freedom, and Clay could not fault him for it. Lord knew he longed for the same, and more than ever now he was forced to do his duty in such proximity to the woman who had betrayed him. But since he had been keeping Sherman’s presence to himself, locating the feline could prove all the more difficult.

  Today marked his third at Burghly House.

  He grimaced, making one last, cursory search of his chamber before he ventured onward in his quest. Three days of being within the same walls as Ara. Two nights of sleeping a scant few chambers away.

  For the differences between them and the ugliness of their past, she might as well have been in another country rather than just at the opposite end of the hall. She was as far removed from him as she had ever been. At least on this second go around, he had the benefit of knowing precisely where he stood with her.

  She had no longer wanted him when she finally realized it would mean giving up her title and her riches. She had seemed so innocent and good when he had first met her in the forest joining their fathers’ lands, and he had been a fool to believe in her protestations that his bastardry did not matter to h
er. Like any man hungering for more than he had been apportioned, she had been a siren’s song for him. The beautiful earl’s daughter with violet-blue eyes and fiery hair, with the sweet kisses and beseeching gazes and the promises he never should have believed.

  Hell yes, he had believed every one of them. But the blade of a knife had dispelled his disillusions just as swiftly. For when she had truly understood that doors would close to her, that she would not be treated to the manner of respect she was accustomed, that she would not possess the prestige and wealth she desired, she had betrayed him.

  Your blood for the blood you spilled, the man who had sliced open his face had said coolly. The earl considers the debt paid now. You will never speak to Lady Araminta or look upon her again.

  On that day, he had made a firm promise to himself he would never again be weak. On that day, he had begun fashioning himself into the hardened man he had ultimately become.

  How ironic, then, that the warrior he now was—the trained assassin, the man who could wield a blade or pistol or the strength of his hands with lethal results—was now searching for one errant feline.

  “Sherman,” he called one last time for good measure, lest he linger in the chamber all day, trapped in the muck of his past.

  The cat did not materialize, not so much as the hint of a meow or a swish of a tail. Clay exited his chamber and stalked down the hall, knowing from past experience the first place he ought to look was outside. The furry devil adored fresh air, and he considered an opened door his own personal invitation.

  Sighing, Clay made his way to the first floor of the stately house. He had enjoyed a productive start to his stay here. He had added six additional guards after an inspection of the periphery of the home. He had interviewed servants. Most importantly, he had kept his distance from the duchess.

  He had not seen her since their clash in the drawing room the day before. Since then, he had taken each of his meals in his chamber, for he did not wish to break bread with her. The ears and eyes he had on the streets of London had reported to him that for the moment, all appeared quiet on the Fenian front. Authorities were doing their damnedest to run those responsible for Burghly’s death to ground—as well they should—so that was likely the reason for the silence.

  He could only hope after the passing of a fortnight without incident, he would be permitted to leave this unwanted post far behind him. If there was no hint of further acts of vengeance upon the duchess, and if the Fenians retreated to lick their wounds, and if the most alarming thing to have occurred thus far during his stay here was the disappearance of his bloody cat, he could not imagine any means by which Leo or the Home Office would compel him to stay.

  The longer he remained here, the more dangerous it was to his sanity. To his restraint. To his ability to keep from either kissing or throttling the Duchess of Burghly. Damn it, he hated thinking of her as her title, for it seemed so far removed from the girl with the bewitching smiles and the tender kisses. The girl who had defied her father to sneak away and meet him…

  But then, that girl had been a fantasy.

  And the fantasy had become the duchess.

  And he remained the duke’s bastard.

  Hopeless, all around.

  He made his way to the door that led to the gardens and exited, expecting he would find the cat somewhere within the neatly kept labyrinth of shrubbery. It did not take him long to hear a familiar meow, but he was not quite prepared for the discovery he made when he rounded a well-manicured hedge.

  There, on a stone bench, sat a young, dark-haired boy, holding the missing cat in his lap. Long-limbed and thin-framed, he was a collection of awkward angles that rather put him in mind of himself at a younger age. It had not been until he’d gained his twentieth year that he had finally begun to grow into his own massive frame, and even then, it had taken more years for him to build his muscles and strength.

  Clay stopped. He recognized the boy from the pictures he had seen on his first day at Burghly House. The same pictures he was forced to walk past each day, only now he had become more adept at ignoring them.

  It was the lad.

  Her lad.

  The sight of him was akin to a blade sinking into Clay’s gut. Ara had a son. Of course she did. She had also had a husband. Another life that spanned far more years than the stolen weeks they had once shared. His rational mind knew these undeniable truths. But the sight of him, in vivid color before Clay, holding his bloody cat, took that knowledge and made it real. So real it burned in his gut and the backs of his eyes.

  The boy looked up at him, his expression wary. “Who are you, sir?”

  Canny of the little fellow not to trust anyone. Clay supposed that was the way of things now the lad’s father had been murdered. He approached the bench, flashing what he hoped was a reassuring smile. He had no inkling of what to say to children. Possessing a scarred visage and a massive form did not precisely endear him to them.

  He bowed. “I am Mr. Ludlow. Perhaps a more apt question would be who are you, and why have you stolen my feline?”

  The boy’s eyes went wide, and here at last was the resemblance to Ara in the blue-violet gaze. “I am the Duke of Burghly, and I do not thieve cats, sir. I found him wandering in the halls, and as we were both lonely and in need of sunshine, we decided to tour the garden.”

  How strange to think Ara’s son—this pale, sad-looking youth—was a duke. Clay bent and gave Sherman a head scratch. The cat rose on his hind legs with a sound of approval that was half purr, half meow. “Did you have a dialogue with him, Your Grace?”

  The lad blinked, his brows snapping together. “Of course not, sir. He is a cat and cannot speak.”

  He scratched his chin, feigning perplexity. “How very odd, then, that you would know he was lonely and in need of sunshine.”

  “I surmised,” the lad said, looking proud of himself.

  “Ah, clever fellow, Your Grace,” he said. “For a moment there, I was convinced you were capable of speaking cat.”

  The lad laughed, giving Sherman a long stroke over his back. The traitorous cat showed no inclination to leave his new friend’s lap. “You are making a sally, Mr. Ludlow.”

  “Yes,” he admitted, realizing he was actually enjoying this odd little exchange. The boy’s dark hair caught his attention once more. For some reason, he had imagined the lad’s hair would be copper like his mother’s. “Does anyone know you are here in the gardens on your own?”

  “Are you one of the men who has come to protect us from the bad men who murdered Papa?” the lad asked instead of answering his query. “I overheard the servants talking.”

  The question took him by surprise. “Yes,” he answered simply. “I am. And this furred menace is my most trusted partner. He was a gift to me from a friend with a talent for rescuing stray animals. His name is Sherman.”

  The lad nodded. “Sherman. I do think the name suits him, though I had him in mind as Mr. Patches. He is a most agreeable feline, sir.”

  “Most discerning of you, Your Grace,” he intoned seriously, “for his full Christian name is Mr. Sherman Patches.”

  Ara’s son smiled at him again, this time revealing a missing front tooth. “You are strange, Mr. Ludlow, but I think I like you. I know I like Mr. Sherman Patches. Only do not tell Mama you have him here. I asked her for a puppy a few days ago, and she told me animals do not belong inside the home.”

  “Is that so?” He patted Sherman on the head once more, recalling the household schedule. The boy was to be ensconced with his governess in the schoolroom at this time, which strongly suggested the governess was not performing her duties. “Then he will have to be our secret, Your Grace. Now unless I am mistaken, you ought to be at your studies. Is that not right?”

  The lad looked sheepish. “Yes, but Miss Argent sometimes snoozes into our Latin books, and then I come out here to the garden. You won’t tell Mama, will you?”

  Clay had two men stationed on the perimeter of this side of Burghly Hous
e, but he did not like the thought of the lad wandering about unchaperoned. What the devil was his governess doing falling asleep in the midst of his studies, anyway?

  “From now on when you wish to venture into the garden, find me and I shall accompany you,” he offered.

  “The bad men will not come to our gardens, will they, Mr. Ludlow?” the lad asked, his face ashen.

  The boy’s question brought a lump to his throat. He did not want to like this boy, who was half Ara and half another man, and yet he did. No young child should have to fear for his safety in his own home.

  He met the boy’s gaze, so like his mother’s. “Not while I am here, Your Grace. Now come. We must return Sherman to my apartments before he is spotted by your mama, and we must also return you to your studies.”

  “Very well, Mr. Ludlow. I suppose I have been outside taking the air long enough.”

  Clay scooped his cat into his arms.

  Devil take it, what was that infernal warmth blossoming in his chest?

  This will not do. It will not do at all.

  Chapter Six

  Eight years earlier

  There she stood, illuminated in the beam of light filtering through the tree boughs overhead so her hair glowed with fire. Her hat dangled from her fingers, suspended by trailing satin ribbons, and she wore no gloves. Her riding habit was vibrant blue. She looked like a goddess fashioned of ice and fire.

  Clay knew damn well he never should have returned for her. He should have left her here, knowing inevitably there would come a day when she no longer waited for him and she would move on with her life. She would find a gentleman who was worthy of her, one who was suitable for her to wed. Some earl or duke. Perhaps the heir apparent. A man who could give her jewels and silk gowns. Who could escort her to the most fashionable balls and soirees.

  But he was selfish. He wanted her more than he wanted to take his next breath. And so, he had come back to their meeting place deep in the forest connecting her father’s estate to his, hoping she would be there at the appointed time, as always. He could not halt his forward motion now. He was like a cannonball shot from a gun, speeding his way to her, hell-bent upon destruction.