Taken by the Duke (2 page)

“It must, or I fear the consequences. Both from himself and from…”

She shook her head. No, she would not say that out loud. Not that name.

Portia had no such hesitation. “Actually, I have heard some news about the Duke of Rothcastle.”

Ava’s eyes went wide and her chest tightened with dread. “News? What kind of news?”

“I have heard he is returning to Society.”

Her lips parted. Rothcastle had been nearly as badly hurt in the accident that killed his sister as Liam had been. Perhaps that was the only reason he had not murdered her brother right on the road to Gretna Green.

She shivered at the thought, but before she could respond there was a commotion on the dance floor that brought the music to a halt. The dancers moved forward, toward the door to the great ballroom and away from the Wallflower Row where Ava and Portia were talking.

“What in the world—?” Portia began, lifting to her toes to peer over the crowd and see what could have inspired them to react in such an excited fashion. There were murmurs as they spoke to one another.

“Someone likely fainted,” Portia said with a shake of her head.

But Ava did not think so. A pit began to form in her stomach. An ache of empty fear and anticipation that only happened when she encountered one man. And then someone close by whispered the one word she had not wished to hear.

“Rothcastle.”

The name pierced her like an arrow to her heart and she pressed against the wall even harder, as if she could vanish into it. How she wished she could, especially when a dozen faces pivoted toward her to judge her reaction to the return of a man who had vowed over and over again to destroy her family.

She forced her expression to become calm, as if her heart weren’t beating out of her chest and her stomach turning and making her wish she had not eaten supper before she left for the ball.

The crowd calmed slightly and the music rose again. One by one, the couples returned to the dance floor, the crush at the door was lessened and there, through the bobbing heads of the dancers, she saw him.
Him
.

He was standing on the opposite edge of the dance floor, flanked on both sides by men of Society, who were talking to him. Some of the ladies hovered near as well, apparently undeterred by the cane in his hand or the hard, blank look on his face.

A hard, blank look that was aimed directly at her.

Ava swallowed. Rothcastle…
him
, well, he had never seemed to pay her much mind over the years. His ire was directed at her brother, and she did not exist. But she was always keenly aware of him. She kept watch for the dark blond hair, tried to avoid the crystal blue eyes even as she stared at him in ballrooms.

He was devastatingly handsome, no one could deny that. An Adonis brought by the gods themselves. Even now, when he was damaged, leaning heavily on a cane because of the reported damage to his lower body, he was beautiful.

But his eyes held nothing but hate as they seized on her for one beat, two beats, three…

To her shock, he blinked and looked away, but not before she saw something else in his stare, beyond the powerful animosity. She saw deep regret, unfathomable sadness and an emptiness she knew all too well herself.

She swallowed as she turned away and walked, without a word, from the ballroom and onto the terrace. She gasped for air in the cool night, blinking at renewed tears, trying not to see Rothcastle’s handsome, hate-filled face swimming before hers.

The terrace door behind her opened and she glanced back to see Portia coming out to her. Her friend looked frightened, sad as she reached for her. Portia’s warm arm wound around her in an attempt at comfort, but there was no relief for Ava.

“Oh, dearest,” Portia soothed. “This will pass, I promise you.”

Ava shook her head.

“No,” she said with more conviction than perhaps she had ever expressed on any other subject in her life. “Oh no, it will not pass. What I saw in his eyes, it promises this will not pass. This feud, as vile as it has been over the generations, is not over. That man intends to finish it. To finish us. Once and for all.”

Christian limped into his foyer. His butler, Sanders, stepped forward without a word and removed his topcoat, allowing Christian to switch his cane from one hand to the other for support as he did so.

“May I bring you anything, Your Grace?” Sanders asked as he draped the coat across his arm and took the hat Christian held out to him.

Christian did not answer, but waved the man off as he made his slow, painful way to the parlor. He had spoken far more than enough tonight, to the men who believed themselves to be his friends, even to a few reaching mamas who had slowly receded when he offered them no encouragement. He was tired of words at present.

He shut the door behind himself and moved to the sidebar near the fireplace. Slowly, he poured himself a sherry and took a small sip before he moved to his most comfortable chair. When he was situated, he rested his cane within easy distance and stared at the leaping flames. In this room, the flames, like his hate, never seemed to die. Someone always stoked them.

Tonight that hatred had been stoked when he came face to face with Lady Ava.

Lady Ava. In truth, he had never thought much of the girl…
woman
…before. His emotions had always been directed toward her father, then, more intensely, at her brother. But now that neither of them was available, with the old earl long dead and the new one hiding like a coward in his London home, well, it seemed there was no one else in the House of Windbury to consider except the wallflower sister.

But how was
she
a wallflower? When she was so, so…
pretty
?

He grunted in displeasure with himself that he would think something so positive about his enemy. Slowly, he began to remove his gloves, tugging one finger at a time. He shifted his weight, and pain burst through him with sudden viciousness.

He shook his head to push those weaknesses away and refocused on Windbury’s sister. She was actually more than pretty, when it came down to it. When he had speared her with a gaze meant to terrify her, it had done its job. She had been afraid, that much was evident by her expression, if not by the fact that she had done the typically cowardly Windbury thing and run away to the terrace to escape him, then left the party almost immediately afterward. Lord, how the gossips had loved that.

No, there was something else in her gaze that interested him. There was an awareness in her gray-blue eyes. An intelligence that one did not often see in the simpering misses of the
ton
. Lady Ava did not seem the type to simper.

“Perhaps
that
is why she has not landed a husband,” he mused, surprised that he did so out loud. “She hasn’t been broken yet.”

Yet.

He stood, a heated slice of pain shooting from his hip to his ankle as he grasped his cane and leaned on it for a moment. When he had gathered his composure, he moved across the room to the large, lovely portrait of Matilda that he kept hanging in the sitting room on the wall across from the fire. In it, she was smiling slightly, and the artist had captured the teasing that had sometimes been in her bright eyes. As he stared, she seemed to look back at him. He could almost hear her voice when he looked too long.

“Don’t do it, Christian,” she seemed to whisper tonight.

He shook away the momentary lapse of reality. Great God, that was exactly what his sister would say if she were alive and knew of his plans. For a moment, he doubted them, doubted himself.

Then he shook it all away. This was what he had to do. There was no going back. Matilda was
not
alive to scold him, to laugh with him, and
this
was his revenge.

He moved to the door and rang the bell before returning to his chair. He rested his head against the softness and stared at the ceiling above him, clearing his mind of emotion, of physical pain as he did so. Only when the door to the parlor opened did he return his attention to the world around him.

“Yes, Your Grace?” Sanders asked as he stepped into the room. “What service may I perform?”

“Have arrangements been made?” Christian asked.

The butler shifted ever so slightly. “Y-Yes, sir. But—”

Christian turned toward him sharply. “But?”

A beat passed between them and finally Sanders swallowed. “My lord, are you entirely certain of this course of action?”

Christian sat up straighter. Great God, was his servant daring to question him?

“Know your place, Sanders,” he said, his tone low but firm and quivering with outrage. “Simply because you served my father and even my grandfather does not mean you can question me.”

He leaned back against the seat again, exhaustion mobbing him suddenly. He lifted a hand and loosely waved it at his butler. “Do it…
please
. Shut the house down after my departure, and I will see you at Stonehill Gate in Somerset in a few days.”

Sanders hesitated, but when Christian speared him with a pointed glare, the butler sighed.

“Yes, Your Grace. Of course. Is that all?”

“Tell Brinkley I will be up to my chamber in half an hour’s time. Otherwise, that is all.”

The butler bowed his head. “Good evening, my lord.”

The servant stepped from the room, shutting the door behind him. Even when he was gone, Christian could feel his disapproval hanging in the room around him. He wanted not to care, but in truth, Sanders was a decent man. He had helped to raise Christian. He
did
care that the butler now looked at him with concern and a hint of horror that could not be mistaken.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said to himself as he got up a second time and paced the room, his cane gripped firmly in his hand.

He looked up at the mirror above the fireplace and sighed. His eyes were so empty, red-rimmed, accentuated with dark shadows. He was but a shell of a man now. A shell of what he had been.

“Stay the course,” he told that broken person in the mirror. “This is what we must do, what we will do.”

But the mirror image did not seem to be entirely convinced, and Christian turned away from it to pour himself another drink. Perhaps this time it would make him forget.

Chapter Two

It had been less than twenty-four hours since Christian’s return to Society, but Ava had thought of little else in the intervening hours. Even if she wished to think of something else, she could not. She had received probably half a dozen notes from “friends” pretending to inquire after her well being in the situation, when really they were fishing for facts to whisper about in corners as they stared at her. She tossed into the fire the latest one from a girl who had mercilessly teased her when they were children and took a deep breath.

Straightening her shoulders, she strode down the hallway, up the stairs and turned toward her brother’s chambers. Halfway there, she was met by a maid carrying a tray with Liam’s supper. The girl smiled at her, but there was sadness—no, it was
pity
—in her eyes.

“Thank you, Gretchen,” Ava said, clenching her teeth against each new humiliation. She took the tray. “I will take care of the rest.”

The girl looked rather disappointed. Sometimes Ava thought the servants lived for the high drama of her brother’s sequester as much as those in the
ton
did. She was certain it was a main topic below stairs, at least when the stern housekeeper Mrs. Bunting and their butler Hornby weren’t listening.

Still, Gretchen bobbed out a curtsey and, with only a brief look over her shoulder, disappeared from sight in the hallway. When she was alone, Ava stared at the door. Somehow it always took all her courage to knock. At night she sometimes dreamed of knocking here and having the entire house collapse around her, her brother crushed by the weight of the falling stones, her own body falling and falling away. She woke in a cold sweat every time that dream troubled her.

“For God’s sake,” she scolded herself and then knocked three times. Of course there was no reply within. “Liam?”

Still nothing.

“Liam, it’s Ava, I have your supper.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten in her head, trying to remember that her brother was still hurting inside and out. Trying to recall how that explained his churlish behavior.

Explained, but did not excuse.

She might have wondered if he still lived but for the fall of his footsteps as he paced his room unceasingly.

Finally, she cleared her throat. She knew one unfailing way to obtain his attention.

“I thought you might want to know that the Duke of Rothcastle was in attendance at the ball last night.”

The pacing stopped abruptly. After a moment his footfalls moved toward the door. The lock slid free, and he cracked the door to peek at her in the hallway.

Ava sucked in her breath. Liam looked terrible. His green eyes, once filled with life and laughter, were dull and dark with despair so deep that Ava wanted to turn away from it. His brown hair was far too long and hung around his face like some kind of beast’s fur. That look was only worsened by the fact that he hadn’t shaved in weeks, so his beard was bedraggled.