No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (The Rules of Scoundrels #3)(64)

She shifted again, and he couldn’t stop himself from looking to her cane again, from wishing he could see her leg. He knew how it pained her; he paid her doctors handsomely to keep him apprised of the seven-year-old injury.

He looked up at her. “Lavinia,” he began. “Please. Sit. We will discuss this.”

She did not sit. “We suffer because of you?”

It did not matter that they suffered because her husband was weak-willed. If Cross were not Cross . . . if he did not have a past with Knight . . . they would be safe. “He threatens you to access me. To take from me what he wants. Stay away from him. I will make this go away. I need four days.”

“What does he want?”

My title. My name. Your children’s inheritance. “It does not matter.”

“Of course it does.”

“No. It does not matter because he will not get it. And he will not get you, either.”

Something flared in her brown eyes, something close to loathing, and she laughed without humor. “I suppose I should not be surprised. After all, my pain has always been the result of your actions, hasn’t it? Why should now be any different?”

Silence stretched between them, the words hovering in the room, their weight familiar and unbearable, echoing the cold accusations of his father that night, seven years ago. It should have been you.

And the keening wails of his mother. If only it had been you.

And of Lavinia’s cries of pain as the surgeons did what they could to set bone and clean wounds, and rid her young, frail body of the fever that had raged, threatening her young life.

Threatening Cross’s sanity.

He wanted to tell her the truth, that he’d been consumed with guilt that night, and fear the nights after, that he’d wished over and over, again and again, for years, that it had been him in that carriage. That it had been Baine at home—strong, steady, competent Baine, who never would have left them. Who never would have let her marry Dunblade.

That it had been Cross who had died—so he never would have failed them.

But the words wouldn’t come.

Instead he said, “I will repair the damage. He will never bother you again.”

That laugh again, hurt and hateful, with more experience than it should hold. “Please, don’t. You are too good at causing damage to have any skill at repairing it.” She added, “I don’t want you in my life. I will deal with him.”

“He won’t see you,” he said. “That is part of our bargain.”

“How dare you negotiate with him on my behalf?”

He shook his head and spoke the truth, tired of holding it back. “He came to me, Lavinia. And as much as you would like to believe otherwise, I couldn’t let him hurt you. I will never let him hurt you.”

The words might have had an impact, but he would never know, because at that precise moment, as they faded into the air around him, there was a loud thump from the opposite side of the large painting that hung on one wall of his office, and a dreadful knowledge settled deep and unpleasant in his gut. He knew what was on the other side of that painting, knew where it led.

Knew, too, with utter certainty, who was standing mere inches away from his office.

Lifting a hand to keep his sister from saying any more, he rounded his desk and grasped one edge of the massive gilt frame, giving the enormous oil painting a heavy yank, opening the secret entrance and revealing a wide-eyed Philippa Marbury, who tumbled out of the passageway beyond, barely catching herself on a nearby table before straightening and facing the occupants of the room.

She did not miss a beat, righting her spectacles and moving past him, into the office, to say, “Hello, Lady Dunblade,” before turning a cool blue gaze on him, triumphantly setting a pair of ivory dice on the edge of his great black desk, and adding, “You, sir, are a liar and a cheat. And I will not be ordered about like a prize hound.”

There was a moment of collective stunned silence, during which Lavinia’s jaw dropped and Cross wondered how precisely his calm, collected life had gone spiraling so completely out of control.

His Lavinia was Lavinia, Baroness Dunblade. A lady.

It was fascinating how simply society rendered invisible those who had suffered unfortunate circumstances. Lady Dunblade might require a cane to aid in her unavoidable limp, but now, as she stood on one side of Mr. Cross’s cluttered office, Pippa wondered how the lady could escape notice. Injury aside, she was tall and beautiful, with lovely red hair and brown eyes that Pippa could not help but admire.

Apparently, she was not the only one to admire those eyes. Apparently, Mr. Cross thought they were worthy of admiration as well. Pippa shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Mr. Cross was a notorious rogue—even if he’d never even hinted at any kind of roguish behavior with Pippa—and Lady Dunblade so often went beyond notice, that she could easily come and go from The Fallen Angel without causing scandal.

But scandal she was, apparently, as she was here, standing in Cross’s office, straight and proud, like a Grecian queen.

And why shouldn’t she stand proud? She’d apparently caught the attention of one of the most powerful men in London.

Pippa would be quite proud herself if she had done the same.

She resisted the thought and the thread of newly, unpleasantly, defined emotion that coursed through her with it, and turned to close the door to the secret passageway. She should have guessed that he had chosen a room with a passage leading to his office—he was not the kind of man who relied on coincidence.