Page 3 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke (The Marlow Family Secrets #6)

LONDON, ENGLAND

April, four months later

John’s ship docked in London just as twilight darkened into night. A light drizzle was falling as he descended the gangplank.

It felt odd stepping onto the dock, like travelling back in time. It was over seven years since he had stood on English ground.

He remembered the callow youth who left here – the boyish fool.

One of the ship’s crew had waved across a hackney carriage for his use.

It waited on the cobbled dock before him, its oil lamp glowing into the now full darkness.

He gave the address to the driver then climbed in.

A few moments after he had clicked the brass lock shut, the carriage jarred into movement, rocking over the uneven cobbles.

He had not sent word ahead. There had seemed little point when he would arrive just as fast as any messenger.

He lifted the curtain and looked at the passing streets.

They had left the narrow backstreets of the slums near the docks and now they were progressing into the more affluent areas of London.

The months of his journey had given him time to become used to the idea of coming home. He had accepted this. But it did not mean he was looking forward to it. He would be weighed down by duty here.

He did not know if his family were in London. He was heading for his grandfather’s town house because it seemed the logical place to start. His heart drummed steadily in his chest as he travelled closer to the Duke of Pembroke’s town house. Was his grandfather alive?

The streets were quiet, virtually empty. Early evening in Mayfair was not a social hour. People would be dining now, before they went out. All John could hear was the sound of the carriage horses and iron-rimmed wheels on cobble.

A few minutes later the hired carriage drew to a halt and John looked from the window at his grandfather’s palatial town residence. It was set back from the road and guarded by iron railings, taking up one entire side of the square.

John had found it oppressive as a child. As a youth he had been impressed. As a man it simply seemed ostentatious.

John climbed out onto the pavement.

He had left his luggage at the docks to be sent on.

He paid the driver.

The man tipped his hat.

John looked up at the house as the hackney pulled away. The knocker was in place, someone was home.

He took a deep breath and then jogged up the pale stone steps. When he reached the top he lifted the lion-head brass knocker and struck it down thrice. Then stepped back and waited.

It was several moments before the door opened.

Finch, the man who had been his grandfather’s butler for as long as John could remember, stood in the hall, guarding the entrance. John watched recognition, and then shock, dawn on the butler’s face. He had never seen Finch’s upper lip show any expression before.

‘Good Lord – I mean, come in, my lord. You were not expected.’

‘No. I travelled at the same speed as any message, I saw no point in sending word. My luggage will follow. Tell me who is currently at home?’ He already knew his grandfather had survived, otherwise Finch would have addressed him as Your Grace.

‘Their Graces, the Duke and Duchess, my lord, and the Duke and Duchess of Arundel.’

His grandparents then, and his uncle and aunt. John’s heart pounded. Finch nodded to a footman, obviously sending him somewhere to announce John’s arrival. Suddenly there was a shout from above.

‘John!’

He looked up as his name echoed off the black and white marble beneath his feet and the decorative marble and plaster all about him, and saw his Uncle Richard, the Duke of Arundel, descending the wide curving stone steps briskly.

This man had been like a father to John before John’s mother had come into his life.

But he had aged. His hair was peppered with grey and his face more lined.

‘Thank God. We had no idea if you had even received Edward’s letter.’ John saw relief in his uncle’s eyes as he neared and then he smiled. ‘It is good to have you home, John.’

John met Richard at the bottom of the stairs, and took his hand to shake it, but Richard also gripped John’s shoulder. An uncomfortable feeling tingled through John’s nerves. He was unused to being touched. No one had held him in four years.

‘You have changed, John. Grown up, I suppose.’

‘Uncle—’ John began, only to have his speech halted by a wave of his uncle’s hand.

‘No Uncle, just Richard, now we are both men.’

John smiled. ‘Richard, it is good to see a familiar face. The journey was long and I have no idea of how things stand. How is the Duke?’

‘Things stand not well, John.’ Richard slung an arm about John’s shoulders and drew him to the stairs. ‘I will take you up. Your grandmother and aunt will be pleased to see you.’

‘And my grandfather?’ John asked.

‘Will also be pleased. You have arrived in time, but he is near the end,’ Richard’s arm fell away from John’s shoulders as they began climbing the stairs.

‘I think he has been holding on for your return. He will want to speak to you at once. I will tell him you are here. He is much changed, John. He has been ill for many months.’

John nodded sharply, angry at the emptiness in his chest and the anxiety stirring his stomach. For God’s sake, I am a man full grown now. I need not fear him.

‘Why not wait with your grandmother and Penny? They will be overjoyed you are here. I will come and fetch you.’ His uncle must have sensed John’s inner turmoil.

John felt like the child who had left. The child his uncle had always seemed to pity. He nodded though and walked on along the familiar hall as Richard turned the other way.

John’s head was suddenly full of pictures from the past. The most acute being the day his mother and stepfather had come here to collect him during that troubled tenth year of his life. The day he had been returned to her a short time after the scene which haunted him.

When she had previously taken John from his boarding school, it had been in the middle of the night. John’s stepfather had been with her. He had been a stranger to John at the time. They had travelled north for miles, then she had married that stranger.

Not long afterwards John’s grandfather had come to take him back. The moment of his dream.

The day his mother had collected John from this house, his grandfather recognised her as John’s mother for the first time. No one had told him why.

The drawing room door stood ajar, and the sound of women talking drifted through the gap.

‘I have no idea what else to do. He will see no other physician, but he is so obviously in considerable pain and yet he will not take laudanum,’ John’s grandmother was saying, in a worried voice.

Both she and his Aunt Penny had been like mothers to him until he was ten.

He thrust his maudlin childish thoughts aside and pushed the door wider to enter. ‘Grandmamma. Aunt Penny.’

Both women stood, exclaiming at the sight of him crossing the room, their eyes wide in shock.

‘Grandmother.’ He lifted her hand from by her side and kissed the back of her fingers, bowing. When he straightened he saw her eyes glitter in the candlelight. He hugged her gently and pressed a kiss on her temple before letting her go.

‘Oh, John, your grandfather will be glad. I am glad. It is good to have you home. You look well. Your journey was not too difficult?’

‘My journey was long, and difficult, but that is travelling, and particularly in winter. It is good to see you too, Grandmother. You have not aged a day.’

She smiled, her tears were from happiness. ‘Flatterer.’

‘You have an air of mystery about you now, John, and I think it suits you,’ his aunt said.

John turned to her, smiled and opened his arms.

She hugged him. ‘Ellen must be overjoyed.’ She was also crying when he released her.

‘I have not seen Mama yet. I thought it best to come here first. Is she in town?’

‘Oh, John, yes, she is in town, and she will never forgive me for seeing you first.’

‘I shall have Finch send word,’ his grandmother said. ‘The whole family are in London…’ Because of my grandfather’s illness? ‘I shall ask him to contact them all.’

‘John.’

John turned to face Richard who stood at the open door.

‘His Grace wishes to see you.’

A moment later John was walking back along the statue-lined hall beside his uncle.

‘How long is he likely to live?’

His uncle glanced sideways. ‘It could be hours or days or weeks, John. There is no certainty. He has defied a hundred predictions already.’

John nodded, feeling his anxiety rise again.

‘You have nothing to fear,’ his uncle stated more quietly as he rested a palm on his shoulder.

John shrugged it off. He was not that scared child any more, and if his grandfather was so close to death, he needed to earn respect not pity. ‘I am half his age and in my prime. He is on his death bed. He can hardly dominate me now.’

‘I was not challenging you, John,’ his uncle answered with a smile. ‘I know you are capable, but I also know how cutting his words can be. Pay no mind to them. I have never done so.’

John tried to recognise Richard’s good intent but only felt discomfort. He felt emotionally naked and vulnerable, and he did not like it. He had not felt this way for years.

Richard knocked on the door of the state bedchamber and waited to be called in.

John’s heartbeat raced when Richard turned the handle.

The red and gold decoration in the room was subdued by the low light.

Just two candles were burning, one on either side of the bed casting shadows.

The bed’s tall canopy towered above them, and long curtains fell to the floor at either side, screening his grandfather from view.

But John could hear his laboured breathing, and the chamber had the putrid smell of sickness.

His grandfather’s valet stood across the room and another man was beside the bed. The physician?

‘Your Grace, I have brought John.’ Richard moved forward.

John followed.