Page 115 of Beneath the Devil's Mask

Mandell bit off a savage oath. The duke looked up at him with a cold smile. “What did you expect of me, Mandell? Some sign of remorse?”

“No, but an explanation would be appreciated. You have murdered three men. It would have been four if Briggs had died.”

“In another time, another era, no one would have dared to question me. The power of life and death would have been merely another of my rights as the duke of Windermere.”

“This is not another era. This is now, damn it! There are no more feudal lords, Your Grace. Even a duke is expected to account for the taking of a life.”

The lace at the duke’s cuffs brushed the desk as he indicated the paper with a graceful gesture. “I am writing the confession of my actions even as we speak. All the details of time andplace, how I managed the business of my disguise. Everything, in short, except for my motives. Those are no one else’s concern.”

“Not even mine?”

“I could explain to you, but I doubt you will understand.”

“I beg you will attempt to do so,”

The duke merely compressed his lips and began to write again.

“You did not do it for robbery, that I know,” Mandell said. “The phantom in the cavalier hat is not, as everyone supposed, the Hook.”

“The duke of Windermere, a common footpad!” The duke gave a snort of laughter. “Hardly, but it was useful, my doings being confused with the Hook’s petty theft. While the constabulary searched thieves’ kitchens for a one-handed rogue, it kept them from interfering with me.”

“And so you are not a common thief. Only a common murderer.”

“Far from common, Mandell. A dispenser of justice, a killer of fools, a social arbiter perhaps. But never a common murderer.”

“What sort of justice was it that made you attack poor Briggs? He had never done any harm to you.”

The duke’s lip curled with contempt. “He was stupid enough to come and inform me of how he had injured my grandson and heir in the process of halting a drunken brawl.”

“Briggs was frightened that night. He came to you for help.”

“And he received it. The only possible help for such a simpleton, a yard of naked steel. He looked surprised when I ran him through. I rather believed I wounded his feelings as much as anything else.”

Mandell probed his grandfather’s eyes for some sign of madness. It would have been a comfort to think the old man mad. But his eyes remained remarkably clear with that samecold reason, that lack of compassion that had ever characterized the duke.

“Briggs was ... is my friend,” Mandell said. “His devotion to me?—”

“The relationship was never a credit to you,” the duke interrupted.

“His devotion to me,” Mandell continued through clenched teeth, “was such that even after you had nearly killed him, he preferred to keep silent rather than expose you, for fear of giving me pain. When I forced him to tell me tonight, he wept like a babe.”

“How touching,” the duke said. “I could have spared you both the discomfort of such a maudlin scene had my hand been a little steadier that night.”

His Grace flexed his fingers. “My rheumatism, you know. It interferes with my capabilities. I am not the swordsman I once was as a younger man. That is why when I killed Sir Lucien, I decided that I had better be certain and employ a pistol at close range.”

He shot an ironic glance at Mandell. “You will not pretend to mourn his death, I trust?”

“No, but I would not have shot him down in cold blood, either.”

“He was a dog, not a man. A sniveling cur who presumed to attack one of my blood in a vulgar tavern. I derived a great deal of amusement from tormenting Sir Lucien first, stalking the coward until I believe I drove him quite mad. But in the end, there could only be one fitting payment for Fairhaven’s offenses, and that was death.”

The duke gave a slight shrug as though already dismissing all thought of Sir Lucien from his mind.

“You have been committing these murders—” Mandell began.

“Executions,” the duke corrected.

“You performed these executions merely because certain people chanced to offend you?” Mandell asked in disbelieving accents. “What about that young man Keeler? He was little more than a boy.”