Page 36 of His Arranged Duchess (Regency Wedding Crashers #5)

A scream echoed through the Abbey. Lucien glanced up from his book. Already, his heart was pounding.

Before he knew it, he was on his feet, peering tentatively out of the sanctuary of the library.

Who had screamed? It could be a maid, somebody Father had taken a dislike to.

Or, worse, a liking to.

The scream came again, and this time it chilled Lucien’s blood.

Mary-Jane.

He left the library, breaking into a run. Before he thought about it, he found his feet taking him towards the Great Hall and his father’s favourite tower.

Sure enough, the door to the East Tower stood open.

It had been many years since Lucien was small and weak enough for his father to manhandle him up those vile stairs, but the sight of the open door and the yawning staircase still filled him with dread.

A sob echoed from above, and an angry, male voice. James, no doubt.

Lucien inched into the stairwell, tilting back his head to look up at the narrow circle of light high above, where the skylights flooded the upper room with light. The staircase went round and round, making him dizzy.

“You’re a disgrace! How dare you lay a hand on her? Simply because she cannot fight back, and we can!”

For one instant, Lucien thought that it was his father speaking. But no, it was James. They looked alike and sounded alike, but the similarities ended there.

“Hold your tongue, boy,” came the cold response. This was the old duke. “She is my daughter, and I will treat her as I see fit. Spare the rod and spoil the child, so the Good Book says.”

“Don’t you dare quote the bible to me, Father . The bible also says we should treat others as we would like to be treated. Mary-Jane, go downstairs. I will deal with this.”

“You’re going nowhere, girl. As for you, my son , I think it is time I taught you a lesson once more. You are not too big and strong to learn some respect.”

An echoing, scraping noise drifted down the stairwell, and Lucien found himself frozen. He could identify the sound even years later. It was the sound of an iron-tipped cane—one that was never used for walking—being dragged over the stone floor.

No.

Clenching his teeth, Lucien began to ascend the tightly curled staircase. His heart thudded, and moving his feet seemed to take a monumental effort.

I’m coming, James. I’m coming, Mary-Jane.

There was a sickening thud, and a shout of pain from James. Mary-Jane sobbed harder.

“Leave him alone, Papa, please!” she begged. Her voice sounded thick, as though she were speaking through a mouthful of blood, or perhaps with a split lip.

There was another thud, then a scuffling sound, and the sound of something breaking, rotten wood splintering perhaps. Then, quite clearly, there was a scream. It was not Mary-Jane’s scream or James’ scream.

Something dark and heavy shot past Lucien, blocking out the light for a single second.

Thunk!

A mass landed at the bottom of the stairs, the light streaming down around it from above.

Silence.

Slowly, Lucien leaned over the banister, staring wide-eyed at the splayed corpse below.

His father lay there, eyes wide and blank. A halo of blood seeped out around him. Even more slowly, Lucien twisted to look upwards.

A section of the upper railings had come away. James stood in the gap, breathing heavily, staring down. There was a blossoming bruise across his cheekbone, a long, thin welt that might have been caused by a cane.

“You killed him,” Lucien breathed.

James swallowed thickly. He suddenly looked exhausted and ancient.

“Somebody had to,” he whispered.

Lucien jerked back to the present, almost losing his balance. He put out a hand reflexively, leaning against the papered wall for balance.

Frances was gone. She had left him standing there in the hallway like a fool, staring after her.

At once, he started forward, intending to run after her, but of course, it was too late. He had been lost in his reverie for only a minute or two, but it was unlikely he would find her now. She had probably already left.

He passed a shaking hand over his face.

The truth was that the story he had concocted—that his father’s death was an accident, and that he was the one who had pushed him—felt like the real one. The truth was, of course, much simpler.

James had pushed his father, and he had intended to do so. In fact, Lucien was glad things had worked out the way they did. Otherwise, he suspected that James might have beaten their father to death with his own cane, and that would have been much harder to explain away.

In the short months before Lucien tactfully chose to leave the country, everything had changed.

Mary-Jane became sullen and withdrawn. James stayed in his study all day and all night, barely eating.

Lucien stared at caricatures of himself in the newspapers, depicted as a devil-child murdering a parent.

It wasn’t just our cursed father who died that way.

A gentleman with a lady on his arm passed by, shooting Lucien an odd look. Lucien gave himself a shake, turned on his heel, and strode back to the opera box.

He’d half expected Benjamin to have left. But no, he still remained, sitting in Lucien’s seat, his elbow on the armrest and his fist pressed against his mouth. The opera had resumed, and a woman was singing on stage, arms outstretched, her voice powerful enough to shake the rafters.

For a split second, Benjamin did not notice that Lucien had returned. He sat still, eyes fixed unseeingly on the stage. There was a furrow between his brows.

And then he turned around, and something like wariness crept into his face.

“Lucien, there you are. You haven’t missed much, only…”

“Why did you do it?” Lucien interrupted.

Benjamin paled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Lucien took a step forward, and Benjamin flinched.

“Yes, I think perhaps you do. Stand up.”

When Benjamin did not immediately respond, Lucien dived forward, fisting his hands in his jacket and hauling him bodily to his feet. Light glinted off countless opera glasses in the boxes opposite them, their attention attracted by movement and the promise of scandal.

“Get off me!” Benjamin hissed, tearing himself away. “It is not my fault you chose not to tell your wife something so important. Why shouldn’t she know the truth, anyway? James is dead, and Mary-Jane is gone from Society. Why should you be considered a murderer?”

“That is not the point,” Lucien snarled. “This was my secret. I told you the truth in confidence because I believed that you were my friend. I believed that you cared. I believed that you would never do what you have done.”

“Oh, and do tell me what I have done.”

“You told my wife something that you knew would distress her. You wanted to paint me as an untrustworthy liar, somebody who did not care enough to tell her the truth.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell her the truth?”

There was a beat of silence. Lucien swallowed hard, trying and failing to gather his thoughts.

“I was afraid,” Lucien murmured at last, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

Benjamin sighed, shaking his head. “This isn’t like you, Lucien. You aren’t generally so weak.”

He ground his teeth. “Don’t call me weak.”

“Listen to me,” Benjamin took a step forward, tentatively laying a hand on Lucien’s shoulder. “Let’s leave this dull old opera behind and go to some clubs. Let’s have some real fun.”

Lucien abruptly shrugged his shoulder, dislodging Benjamin’s hand. “Don’t touch me. You deliberately told her something I told you in confidence. You did it to put a wedge between Frances and me. How can I ever forgive you for that? It was cruel, Benjamin, cruel. And you never used to be cruel.”

Benjamin flinched, blinking. “That’s not fair.”

“Not fair? I think it is. It is certainly true.”

Benjamin stared at him for a moment, brow furrowed. At long last, he sighed, shaking his head as if Lucien were a particularly troublesome toddler refusing to eat his vegetables.

“You’ll feel better soon enough. Now, the club I want to take you to will cheer you up.

You won’t think of that pallid little thing a minute more, I can promise you that.

If only you’d bedded her straight away, you wouldn’t be so miserable now, and I daresay that she would be in a better mood, too. ”

Lucien was barely aware of his fist whizzing out from his side, catching Benjamin a cracking blow on his cheek.

The smaller man went sprawling out across the opera box, his feet all but leaving the ground. At once, he scrambled into a sitting position, visibly dazed. A bruise began to redden on his cheekbone, and a streak of blood began to descend from one nostril.

“You struck me,” Benjamin gasped. “How dare you? How dare you?”

A red-faced usher appeared in the doorway, breathless and mortified.

“Your lordships, please! This behavior…” he trailed off when Lucien held up a peremptory hand.

“Get out,” Lucien ordered shortly, anger seething in his voice.

The usher shifted, agonized. “Your Grace…”

“Out! Get out!”

The poor man whimpered faintly and withdrew, leaving Benjamin and Lucien alone.

“How dare you ?” Lucien hissed, taking a step forward.

Benjamin scrambled backwards until he leaned against the inside of the opera box’s front.

“You have disliked Frances since the moment you met her. Again and again, you have slighted her and made your feelings known. You’ve made it plain that you wished to get between us, and at last you have succeeded.

Congratulations. Why did you do it, Benjamin? Why?”

Red-faced, Benjamin scrambled to his feet, coming almost nose-to-nose with Lucien.

“Why do you think?” he snarled. “Because I wanted my friend back! Since the moment you met her, it was as if we were not friends. Everything changed. Am I a monster for wanting things to be the way they were before?”

Lucien groaned aloud, covering his face with his hands. “Life is not like that, Benjamin. Things go forward all the time. Sometimes change comes, and we simply can’t undo it. And the plain fact is that even if you did do all of this to keep me as your friend, you’ve lost me now. It’s over.”

The color drained from Benjamin’s face. “Don’t say that.”

Lucien turned away. “I think perhaps you and I are on very different paths, old friend.”

Benjamin scrambled after him, hurrying to put himself between Lucien and the doorway.

“Now, hold on a moment. You cannot simply end our friendship now, Lucien. Not after all I’ve done for you.”

Lucien stared at him. “And what have you done for me?”

He gave a harsh laugh. “What have I done? What have I done ?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Get out of my way.”

A hundred pairs of eyes bored into Lucien’s back.

He didn’t want to risk turning around to look at the audience, lest he discover that more people were staring at him than at the stage.

He was vaguely aware that the singing was continuing.

A man and a woman were singing now, a choral accompaniment in the background. The music swelled, reaching a climax.

Benjamin waved a shaking finger in his face.

“That man your duchess was going to marry. Lord Easton. He intended to make you trouble, a good deal of trouble. I won’t bother to hide it from you, but I discovered the little secret your duchess is hiding, and needless to say, she should never have become a duchess at all.”

Fury boiled up inside Lucien, hot and simmering, and he took a threatening step forward. Benjamin gave a yelp and danced backwards into the hallway outside the box, holding up his hands.

“Don’t you dare hit me again!”

Lucien felt his anger seep out of him just as rapidly as it had come. He was suddenly exhausted, his shoulders rounded and heavy as if a great weight was bound, dragging him towards the ground.

“I am not going to hit you, Benjamin. But I do need you to get out of my way. This discussion is at an end. Let’s go our separate ways and hope not to run into each other again.”

He shouldered past Benjamin, striding along the hall towards where a group of white-faced ushers waited, clearly terrified to intervene but unable to ignore the situation any longer.

“Wait!” Benjamin called, carefully modulating his voice to reach Lucien’s ears but not the ushers’. “He was going to go to the papers with what he’d learned.”

Lucien stopped dead, twisting around to look at the man who’d once been his dearest friend.

“Lord Easton?”

Benjamin nodded. “He was drunk and enraged. She’d humiliated him, he said.

He knew there was something she was hiding, so he dug and dug until he found it.

I’m not entirely sure how, but he knew the truth and said he had evidence to prove it.

He intended to reveal all. Once he published the story in one paper, they would all take it up.

The news would spread like a fire. There’d be no stopping it.

But I stopped it, Lucien. I paid him off, because even though I don’t care for your duchess, I do care for you .

You are my friend, and I would never let such a thing happen to you.

” He paused, turning aside to spit out a mouthful of blood.

One of the ushers tutted audibly. “I prevented you from being ruined, Lucien. Think of that.”

The exhaustion was spreading. He almost felt numb.

Part of him wanted to curl up on the floor right there and then, closing his eyes and nuzzling into the soft carpet.

It was a childish want, of course. Only children and fools thought that they could go to sleep and wake up to find the world different and their problems gone.

That was something the old duke had beaten out of his children very early on. He didn’t like children, or childish behavior, and made his sentiments very, very clear.

“I saved you,” Benjamin repeated, when Lucien did not immediately respond. “I saved you from being ruined.”

“No, Benjamin,” Lucien answered listlessly. “You only saved me from being ruined because you wanted to ruin me yourself. And you have succeeded, I think.”

He didn’t bother to wait for a response, turning on his heel and walking down the hallway. The group of ushers parted to let him through, staying silent as he walked past.

In the background, the song finished, and the crowd broke out in rapturous applause.

It seemed that most of them, at least, had not been distracted by Lucien and Benjamin’s argument.

That was good. It seemed a shame for such a beautiful piece of music to be ignored in favour of a sordid, ordinary scandal.

Lucien walked and walked, people scurrying to get out of his way. He left the theatre almost without realising. A soft, drizzling rain waited for him outside, the gentle patter drowning out the muffled sounds of applause.

He put his head down and began to walk home.