Page 15 of His Arranged Duchess (Regency Wedding Crashers #5)

“You must try to understand, Lucien. When Papa was young, things were different. I imagine his father was most cruel to him.”

“He is cruel to us , Mary-Jane!”

“He is our father. We must forgive him. We have to.”

Did she still think that, he wondered? So far, Gray had made no progress in tracking her down.

He was trying not to think about what his sister’s fate might be.

Perhaps she did not want to be found. Perhaps she was at the bottom of a river, or buried under weeds in a ditch.

The thought made him shudder, and he resolutely put the idea from his mind.

She is out there. I shall find her. And with Frances’s money, I can restore our estate to what it should be, and I can restore Mary-Jane to her place, too. I have already saved James once.

The house was dark and silent, the servants having all gone to bed. Aside from a few more footmen and a scullery maid or two, the house was still operating on a skeleton staff. He would have to do something about that.

Lucien’s feet stopped dead of their own accord. He stood quite still, not daring to breathe. He had stopped in the middle of the Great Hall, a vast, circular space in the middle of the house. It could be used as a second ballroom easily enough and provided access to all four towers.

He knew, without looking at the heavy stones arched above the doorway, which tower he had stopped in front of.

The East Tower was the oldest of all the towers and had at one time been the only tower at Blackstone Abbey.

The other towers had been added generations ago, but they still seemed newer than the first. The East Tower was also the tallest with the narrowest spiral staircase and the coldest drafts rushing through it.

The door, too, was different—tall and narrow, made of dark wood studded with iron.

Lucien stared up at it, heart thudding. In an instant, he was a little boy again, staring fearfully up at the very same door, waiting .

Waiting for his father to come down, knowing that nothing good awaited him. Quite the reverse, in fact.

Lucien’s hand shook a little, and a fat, white blob of wax fell onto the floor. It solidified at once, and he made an effort to steady his hand. It would do him no good if the candle went out entirely, leaving him in darkness.

It was childish to be afraid of the dark, Lucien knew that. Each of them had had a specific fear when they were children. Mary-Jane was mortally afraid of spiders, while James feared heights the most. Lucien’s fear was the dark, and it, generally speaking, was easy enough to banish.

Ignoring one’s fears was not enough for the old duke, however. No, they must face them. Closing his eyes, Lucien remembered the worst of their ‘training’.

He recalled Mary-Jane screaming until her voice ran out as their father emptied a bucket of spiders over her head, the creatures racing wildly here and there, scuttling over her face, down into her clothing, getting tangled in her hair until it seemed that her hair was moving of its own accord.

In the end, he’d had to tie her wrists and ankles to a chair to prevent her from running away.

James’ trial had been quite different. Lucien recalled him standing on the parapet of the East Tower with the sky all around him, a dizzying drop beneath.

He’d gone quite white, Lucien recalled, his jaw set and his eyes steely.

At first, he’d seemed to be doing well, then his eyes had abruptly rolled back into his head, and he’d gone limp, losing consciousness.

He probably would have fallen to his death if Lucien had not grabbed him, hauling him back with all the meagre strength a twelve-year-old boy possessed.

Their father had done nothing.

Quite naturally, Lucien’s test came next.

There were no windows in the stairway of the East Tower.

If the door at the top was bolted, one could not get up into the main room of the tower.

If the door at the bottom were locked, too, then a person would be trapped within absolute darkness, encased in walls so thick one’s screams could not be heard.

Taking a step closer, Lucien placed his hand flat on the cold wooden door. He wondered if the gouges he’d made with his nails remained on the other side. Perhaps his pleas to be released had been heard, but nobody would dare go up against the old duke.

The candle guttered again, its light not illuminating even a fraction of the vast Great Hall. Quite abruptly, Lucien had had enough. He let his hand drop from the door. He thought of Frances, the only child of a stern but doting mother.

She could not possibly understand any of this. And perhaps it is better this way.

Exhaustion crept over him, as if somebody had dropped a heavy, warm cloak over his shoulders. Abruptly, Lucien turned on his heel and marched back the way he had come. He did not allow himself to look back at the door to the East Tower.

It is best to keep her at arm’s length. Best for her, that is. Yes, certainly. Best for her.