Page 17 of Duke with a Debt (Wicked Dukes Society #2)
CHAPTER 17
H e had hurt Rosamund.
And Stuart hated himself for it.
Their carriage ride back to London presently held a funereal air for which he was wholly at fault. After he and Rosamund had ridden back to Gilden Hall yesterday, she had pleaded a headache and taken dinner in her room. When he had knocked at the door adjoining their chambers to inquire after her welfare, she had told him that she was well, but in need of rest. By breakfast, she had still been unsmiling and quiet, avoiding his gaze and keeping her conversation painfully polite.
Even when he had helped her into the carriage, she had kept her gaze carefully averted just as she was now, looking out the window at the slowly passing scenery instead of at him. From her place in her covered cage on the floor between them, Megs made a kissing sound.
“Gormless shite,” she proclaimed.
And for once, he was completely in accord with the feathered menace. He was a gormless shite, and he deserved to be taken to task for his own stupidity.
“Do behave, Megs,” Rosamund chastised in a hushed voice, still keeping her face turned to the Hertfordshire countryside beyond the window.
“She’s not wrong,” he said. “I have been a gormless shite.”
And at last, his wife’s head turned from the sea of sky and fields out the window to him. “Did I just hear you correctly?”
“Yes, you did.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry for distressing you yesterday. I was frustrated, and the burden of what awaits me in London was hanging heavily on me, and then my foolish pride had me saying something stupid.”
“You said that I bought you,” she reminded him. “As if you were a horse. Is that how you truly feel?”
He winced, wishing he could go back in time and recall those truly stupid words. “Of course not. I was being an arse.”
“Arsehole, walk the plank,” Megs said, then made another kissing sound.
“Language, Megs,” Rosamund chided. “You must remember to be a good bird.”
“What a pretty bird,” Megs responded.
The carriage traveled through a rut that made the conveyance jostle from side to side. The parrot whistled. Stuart was trapped in Bedlam. A Bedlam of his own making, it was true.
“Please forgive me, Rosamund,” he tried again. “You did not deserve my anger or frustration. I was being an insufferable, vainglorious prig.”
She gave him a small, sad smile. One that didn’t reach her eyes. “I think you were being honest, Stuart. We have enjoyed our honeymoon, but the reasons for our marriage have not changed. I overstepped as well. This is a business arrangement between the two of us, and I was allowing my emotions to get the better of me yesterday. It shan’t happen again.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. Not one whit. Nor did he like the lack of passion and fire in her voice. Or the way she had referred to their marriage as a business arrangement. That stung. Because while it had once been true, what they had shared this last fortnight had taken them well beyond the bounds of a marriage of convenience.
Until he had dashed their tentative happiness to pieces yesterday.
She averted her gaze again, looking back out the window before he could respond.
“Look at me, Rosamund,” he commanded softly.
“I am enjoying the scenery,” she said.
Damn her. She was being stubborn. He skirted the cage containing Megs, which was on the floor between them, striking his head on the carriage roof in the process, and then knocked his shoulder into the door, adding insult to injury. But finally, he wedged himself onto the Moroccan leather at Rosamund’s side.
“Look at me,” he repeated.
She did, her expression startled and uncertain. They were pressed together on the squabs, and he was crushing her voluminous traveling skirts, but he didn’t give a damn.
“You’re crowding me,” she accused, frowning. “Go back to your seat, Stuart. I don’t want to have a row with you today.”
“I have no intention of having a row with you,” he countered. “I am trying to make amends for what I said.”
“I fear it is too late for that. You made your opinions clear. I am not to know your secrets because you don’t trust me, nor am I to interfere in any of your private concerns because I bought you.” She shook her head. “What we have is a marriage of convenience, nothing more, and yesterday served as an important reminder of that.”
She had resurrected the walls she ordinarily kept around herself. And it was his fault, but he didn’t know how to dismantle them again.
He stared into the amber-flecked depths of her brown eyes, imploring her to listen. “It doesn’t feel like a marriage of convenience when we are together, Rosamund. It feels like a great deal more than that to me.”
Her icy mask slipped, indecision reflected on her lovely face for a moment, giving him hope. “My fortune has always been a curse. I thought it might be different with you because, unlike other suitors, you were honest about what you wanted from me. I didn’t buy you. I made a bargain with you.”
She was clinging to those stupid, thoughtless words of his still. Stuart couldn’t blame her for it.
He reached for her, unable to resist, cupping her cheek. “It is a bargain I hope you don’t regret.”
“Stuart.”
She was still frowning at him. He hated being the cause of her distress.
He traced the fullness of her lower lip with his thumb. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Please say you’ll forgive me.”
She sighed softly. “Of course I forgive you.”
The unspoken was there, hanging in the air between them. She would forgive him, but she would not so easily forget. He had chipped at her defenses, but he hadn’t yet managed to obliterate them. He could only hope that he hadn’t foolishly ruined everything they had built during their honeymoon.
“Thank you,” he said simply.
The carriage rocked on, bringing them ever nearer to London and the reckoning that awaited them.
The street surrounding the town house was a throng of carriages. Quite unusual for this time of day. The moment their conveyance rumbled to an abrupt halt in the sea of broughams and landaus, Rosamund sensed that something was amiss. At her side, Stuart stiffened before peering out the Venetian blinds and cursing.
“Wesley,” he growled. “What the devil has he done now?”
She couldn’t deny it—his brother seemed a reasonable conclusion. Nor could she deny that returning to London after their honeymoon in Hertfordshire felt like a grim harbinger. The confluence of carriage traffic and their arrival was apropos.
“Gormless shite,” Megs chirped from her cage.
“Megs,” she scolded quietly, “you really mustn’t.”
“I’ll not protest the name for my brother either,” Stuart said grimly. “Damn it, why aren’t we moving?”
He gave the roof an irritable rap. And still, the carriage remained where it was, blocked from further travel by the snarl of conveyances ahead. A few more moments of irritated silence and stillness ensued before Stuart surrendered with a heavy sigh.
“Remain where you are,” he told her, a muscle in his jaw working as proof of his quiet fury. “I’ll see if I can ascertain what is happening and why all these blasted carriages are blocking the street.”
She nodded, because they were too far from the town house to carry Megs in her cage, and she would not abandon her beloved companion. Poor Megs would be frightened to be suddenly alone in the cramped confines.
“What do you think it could be?” she asked.
He stuffed his hat on his head. “If it’s what I fear it is, then my brother needs a sound drubbing.”
Those words did nothing to dispel her worry. But she didn’t have time to tell him as much, because in the next breath, he was wrenching open the carriage door himself and leaping to the street below.
“Stuart!” she called after him.
He turned back, looking over his shoulder, his countenance hewn of marble.
“Don’t do anything you will regret,” she implored.
“You needn’t worry over my brother,” he said coolly.
And then without another word, he stalked away, far too quickly for Rosamund to tell him that it wasn’t Lord Wesley she was concerned about at all. Rather, it was him.
A servant swung the carriage door closed, leaving her alone with her beloved African grey.
“Well, Megs,” she murmured, unable to keep the sadness from her voice, “I don’t know what will become of this.”
“Walk the plank,” her parrot said. “Handsome duke.”
The last two words took her by surprise. She bent down, flipping back the covering on Megs’s cage to find the bird gazing up at her.
“What did you say, Megs?” she asked.
Megs made a kissing sound and cocked her head to the side. “Handsome duke. Megs want pistache.”
“That devious man,” she breathed, wondering when Stuart had been spending time with the African grey without her knowledge. “He’s been teaching you to say that, hasn’t he?”
Megs extended her wings. “What a pretty bird.”
“You are the prettiest bird,” Rosamund agreed solemnly, that strange, pernicious fullness in her chest returning.
The one that had been steadily present, growing ever larger and more imperative during the idyllic days of her honeymoon. The one that Rosamund was beginning to fear was the beginnings of love, or something like it.
His town house looked as if it had been invaded by a phalanx of marauding enemy soldiers. Stuart stood in the entry, staring aghast at the river of people parading all over his house. These were not the lords and ladies of a Mayfair ballroom. No, indeed. These were the rabble with whom Wesley had no doubt been consorting at the filthy gambling warrens he inhabited. Stuart had suspected as much on his walk as he had spied many hired hacks in the congestion. But here was his proof, unveiled before his eyes.
The drunken revelries before him were nothing short of depraved. Men and women wandered about, shouting over the top of one another, in various states of dishabille. Stuart had attended many house parties hosted by the Wicked Dukes Society, and all of those paled in comparison to what he witnessed now. A bare-breasted woman laughed as she clutched a bottle of wine in one hand, a red-faced older gent not far behind her. In the main hall, a man had a woman pressed to the faded damask wall, her skirts up and his hand beneath them. Two women were locked in a heated kiss in the doorway of his blasted drawing room.
The floor was sticky with spilled wine. The raucous voices and laughter were hideously loud. And there were at least three different tables where cards were being dealt and dice were being cast. In his absence, his brother had turned the town house into a combination of a house of ill repute and a gambling den.
“Fleetwood!” he called out, hoping his poor, sainted butler was somewhere within earshot. “Fleetwood, are you in here?”
But his butler was nowhere to be found. Instead, an unfamiliar fellow with a long mustache stumbled past Stuart before tossing up his accounts in a nearby potted palm.
By God.
“Where is Lord Wesley?” he hollered over the din of revelries.
“Wot’s that, luv?” asked a red-haired woman who stumbled into his chest, her bubbies bursting out of her bodice. “Did you say yer lookin’ fer Alice? I’m right ’ere, m’luv.”
He took her arms in a gentle yet firm hold and thrust her away from him, feeling nothing but ill. “The host of this fête,” he shouted above the din. “Where is he?”
“Who is it?” she asked, her eyes wide. “I ’aven’t seen him, luv. Supposed to be a grand duke’s house, this is. Wot do ye think?”
He was going to throttle his brother for this abomination.
He had just arrived back home with his wife, their relationship tentative, thanks to his own foolish mistakes, and his carriage was being waylaid by traffic because Wesley was having a goddamned bacchanal. Without Stuart’s approval and expressly against his wishes.
“I’m the damned duke!” he shouted, trying to be heard and to vent his fury all at the same time. “This is my house! Out , all of you!”
Alice blinked at him blearily, mouth parting in an O of complete confusion. No one else even paid him any heed.
And a sudden thought overcame every other consideration in his mind.
Mother.
Good God, where was his mother as all this mayhem was carrying on? His heart leapt into his throat. If one of these drunken fools had dared to hurt her in any way, he would tear them apart with his bare hands.
Mindless with worry now, he waded through the revelers, passing two laughing men who were smoking cheroots and a woman who had slumped against a doorway and was presently snoring. Everyone was a blur of sound and color as he stalked to the staircase. A strident whoop preceded a strange woman sliding down the banister wearing nothing but a corset and drawers. She hiccupped and landed on her feet by sheer luck, the impact jostling her abundant breasts from her undergarment. They sprang forth, ruddy-tipped and blue-veined.
Stuart stormed past her, up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He didn’t even give a damn about Wesley. All he wanted was to find his mother and reassure himself that she was well. By the time he reached her chamber, he was ready to commit murder.
“Mother?” He pounded on the closed door. “Mother, it’s Stuart. Are you in there?”
“Your Grace?” A hesitant voice on the other side reached him.
One he recognized.
“Yes, it’s Camden. Norton, is my mother within?” he asked, barely restraining himself from putting his shoulder to the door and bursting over the threshold by force rather than awaiting a response.
“Yes, Your Grace,” came the faithful lady’s maid voice.
The door opened to reveal the domestic, clad in her customary drab gray attire. She sighed with relief as she saw him, an uncharacteristic action for the ordinarily stalwart woman.
“Oh, Your Grace. Thank heavens you have returned.”
He crossed the threshold, closing the door at his back lest any of the revelers attempt to elbow their way into his mother’s private apartments. “Not a moment too soon, it would appear,” he observed grimly.
“Stuart?”
His mother was seated at her writing desk as usual, looking flustered, her left hand, which was also weaker than her right following the stroke, resting on the polished mahogany surface. The cap on her head was slightly askew, and he wondered if she had plucked at it in her distress.
“Mother.” He rushed to her, belatedly offering a bow when he had reached her side, his gaze searching her familiar form for any hints of ailment or duress. “Are you well?”
“I suppose I am as well as I’m able to be,” she said, sounding indignant. “What is happening, Stuart? There has been all manner of noise, and Norton has had to hide within. Fleetwood and the others have decamped belowstairs.”
“I know as much as you do,” he explained grimly. “I’ve only just returned from my honeymoon with my wife.”
“Your honeymoon,” his mother repeated, smiling brightly. “How was the fortnight, Stuart? I do so hope I shall have a babe to fawn over soon.”
Heat crept up the back of his neck. “Mother.”
It was all he could say. In truth, he hoped that Rosamund was with child. They’d certainly made an excellent concerted effort of getting her enceinte . But that didn’t mean he wanted to speak about such matters before the woman who had birthed him. And particularly not here and now, with her lady’s maid present.
“I want a grandchild,” his mother said, unaffected by his chastisement. “I do so wish I’d had a chance to speak with your wife before you left.”
“We are returned now,” he said firmly, “and there shall be ample time for that. All we need to do is return the house to a modicum of sanity. Have you any idea what is happening? I’ve no doubt this is all Wesley’s doing, of course.”
“He said he wished to host a ball,” Mother said, her voice sounding small as she fixed her gaze on her writing desk, as if she were studying the sheets of paper and inkwell atop its surface. “This is not a ball, is it?”
“It’s madness,” he said honestly. “You are uninjured and in good health?”
“Of course. Wesley would never do anything that would cause me harm,” Mother told him, utterly certain of her words.
Stuart, meanwhile, was no longer convinced his brother was incapable of doing their mother harm. This wild soiree was proof of that. Wesley and the servants were nowhere to be found. The town house had been overrun by all manner of drunkards and wastrels and even light-skirts. Anything could have happened to Mother. He shuddered to think what would have occurred had his return to London been delayed or had he and Rosamund decided to linger in Hertfordshire and their charmed honeymoon for just a bit longer.
He shook his head. “Mother, I know you wish to believe the very best of my brother, but you have not seen what is happening in this very house. I was afraid to come to you for fear you had been defiled or worse.”
“Camden,” his mother rebuked. “You mustn’t speak of such dreadful things. You would shock your lady wife, I am sure. Where is your new duchess?”
“Awaiting me in our carriage,” he gritted, “on account of the abundance of conveyances approaching, lingering at, and leaving our home.”
“Oh dear,” his mother murmured, taking her weak hand into her lap and resting the other atop it. “It is a dreadful return for the two of you.”
“Yes,” he agreed, bending to press a kiss atop his mother’s head. “But what is important is that you are well. The rest, we shall deal with presently. I will chase the unwanted guests below and return.”
He spun on his heel, intent upon the task awaiting him and eager to be rid of the hoi polloi destroying his home below.
“Stuart?” his mother called after him.
With a heavy sigh, he paused, turning back to her. “Yes, Mother?”
“I didn’t want to trouble you with this, but I’ve searched everywhere for months, and there is only one conclusion for me to reach. They are gone.”
He blinked, not understanding. “What is gone, Mother?”
“My journals,” she elaborated. “I have been keeping them all my life.”
His gut twisted. He cast a glance in Norton’s direction. The servant was busying herself in a task, but she still possessed ears. And yet he didn’t dare to dismiss her, sending her belowstairs for fear of what she would find on her way there.
Stuart looked back to his mother. “When did they go missing?”
“I can’t be certain, but months ago, I fear,” Mother answered, her lower lip trembling. “Stuart, no one must read my writings. They were meant for my eyes alone.”
A sickening sensation blossomed in his gut as suspicion began to take root.
“Has Wesley paid you a visit in the last few months?” he asked.
“Yes, of course he has, dear.” Mother frowned. “Why do you ask?”
Because everything was beginning to make sense. Stuart had wondered where the blackmailer had come upon the information in the letters he’d received. He’d supposed it was a former acquaintance of his mother’s who had somehow recognized her after so many years.
“No reason,” he lied, not wanting to burden his mother with more worries until he had proof that Wesley was behind the blackmail letters. “I must clear out the house now, but I will return. Don’t open your door to anyone but me.”
“Of course, dearest,” his mother agreed.
Stuart left her room and stalked down the hall to the chamber his brother kept. Not even bothering to knock, he threw open the door with so much irate force that it slammed into the wall, making a deep divot in the plaster with the door handle. But he didn’t give a damn. He was a man on a mission, intent to find some manner of evidence to prove Wesley had been behind the blackmail letters.
The room was, as usual, strewn with garments that had been left where they’d been thrown. Stuart started with the writing desk, finding nothing but blank paper, a pen, and a capped inkwell. He moved to the bedside table next, then the wardrobe, systematically making his way through every piece of furniture in the room.
Nothing.
“Damn it,” he muttered, returning to the desk.
There had to be something somewhere. Stuart shuffled through the papers a second time. Still nothing but empty pages. He was about to stop his search when he suddenly recalled that the writing desk, which had once belonged to his father, had a hollow secret compartment. Running his fingers over the bottom lip of the desk, he searched for the hidden mechanism that allowed the desk drawer to open. He found the cool metal of the catch and pressed.
The drawer popped open a scant few inches, and Stuart pulled it the rest of the way. There it was, the evidence of his brother’s complicity. The compartment was brimming with papers, letters, and small bound-leather books. Correspondence from Messrs. Dolan and Rowe, drafts of notes written to Stuart, the wording precisely the same as the missives he’d received, then burned to ash. There was no other way for these letters to be in his brother’s possession other than he had written them himself. It was apparent that Wesley had made an effort to disguise his handwriting. Flipping open the books revealed his mother’s tidy penmanship and private words.
Stuart’s gut churned.
His brother had stolen their mother’s private journals and had not just read them, but then used the information within to blackmail Stuart, knowing he would do anything in his power to protect their mother and her delicate health. Little wonder Wesley had been thick in funds. Undoubtedly, the thousands of pounds he had claimed to have won at the tables had been unwittingly provided by Stuart himself.
Grimly, Stuart collected everything from within the hidden compartment. Arms laden with journals and incriminating letters, he stalked to his own chamber, secreting everything in his wardrobe. Then he descended the stairs to the mayhem below.
It was time to face his bastard of a brother.