Loving The Lost Duke (Dangerous Deceptions #1)(7)

While I work out which of them was trying to kill me.





Chapter Two - Where Sophie Damages the Duke


‘I do not know whether to shake your hand or throw the fire irons at you.’ His uncle paced across the rug in the centre of his drawing room, stopped and glared at Cal from under eyebrows that had grown even bushier than he remembered. ‘Why the devil did you take off like that? Why have you been away so long?’

‘I left you a very full letter.’ Cal dropped uninvited into the nearest armchair and crossed one leg over the other. He really must get some new boots.

‘Indeed you did. An elegantly composed missive of thanks for my care for your affairs, an outline of your plans and the helpful suggestion that departing like that would prevent “wearisome brangling.”’

‘Well, it did. If I had mentioned the my plans first we would still be discussing them now,’ Cal said mildly. ‘I needed to stand on my own two feet. I needed to see something beyond the four walls of Calderbrook. I needed some sunshine.’

‘In the Arctic?’ Ralph demanded from the other side of the room.

‘That was later. Besides, the sun shines all day and night in the summer there.’ His uncle was still frowning. ‘You had looked after me diligently, for so long, both as my uncle and my guardian. On my twenty first birthday you were free of the burden and I… I had never been able to rely on myself alone. I felt I was stifling under all that concern. It was invigorating to be free.’

‘A fine way to thank my father for his care of you, I must say.’ Ralph grumbled.

‘Believe me, I know how well my uncle cared for… my estates. He could not have been a more conscientious trustee if they had been his own.’ He was careful to keep his tone neutral, but the older man frowned. ‘I simply felt I would be healthier, out of the country.’

There it was, the sign he had been watching for, a flickering glance between the two men, almost as if they were uneasy with each other, not only with him. Ralph glanced at his father and Peter glanced at his son. Guilt or anxiety? Puzzlement or frustration?

‘I had brought you up to care for your great estates and the moment you have your hands on them you walk away from them.’

‘I left them in the very capable hands of my carefully chosen secretary and man of affairs who was fully briefed on my wishes and plans. I have been in constant contact with him. I have not been shirking my responsibilities, believe me.’

‘Prescott, that damned secretary of yours, was as mysterious as he could be.’ His uncle was still not to be appeased. ‘His Grace was here, His Grace was there. His Grace is travelling. His Grace is at sea. We were at sea, I can tell you.’ He stalked over to the sideboard, poured himself a glass of brandy, gestured irritably to the two younger men to help themselves, then subsided, fuming, into a chair.

‘I wrote to you, every month without fail.’ Cal rose, helped himself to the decanters, then poured a glass for his cousin, receiving a grudging smile when he pressed it into his hand.

‘Always about where you had been, never where you were heading to.’ Lord Peter was not prepared to give up his complaints. ‘How the devil were we to lay hands on you?’

You were not. That was the entire point. ‘I hoped to release you to devote all your attention to your own estates, your own affairs. You had been saddled with mine for fourteen years, ever since I was seven.’

‘It was my duty.’ His uncle cleared his throat, glared down into his glass as though it had dared to contradict him. ‘It was more than that. You were another son to me, you must know that.’

‘And you were the father I never really had.’ And I believed it with every fibre of my being until I was twenty. That is what hurts, more than anything. How can I live with myself, suspecting that? How can I not?

It had been a stifling August day and he was lying in a fever, hot, restless, with all the windows and doors to his bedchamber thrown open. The doctor in the next room had kept his voice low as he spoke to his assistant, but it had carried just enough through windows set at right-angles to each other. ‘I do not pretend to understand it. That young man has suffered more unexplained fevers and internal upsets than I have ever come across. And he is accident-prone into the bargain.’ The assistant had muttered something and the doctor had reacted sharply. ‘Of course not! What a suggestion. Who would wish him harm?’

Who would wish me harm? No-one except… Except my heir, the man who has devoted his life to my fortune, my estates. My uncle and his son for whom none of that labour will bring the slightest benefit. Unless I die and it all becomes theirs.

And with nothing else to occupy his mind the suspicion grew until it would not leave him. Confined to bed he had all the time in the world to review those accidents. The broken girth, the sprung plank in the rowing boat, the falling masonry, the slippery step, the mysterious shot in the woods that might have been poachers. Or might not. And the succession of fevers and stomach upsets, the violent pains and cramps, the rashes and the headaches that affected no-one else, not even his closest servants.

Cui bono? Who benefits? His uncle of course, his father’s only brother, and after him his cousin Ralph. No-one else had anything to gain from his death but they had everything. He logged the accidents against their frequent presence in the house and found patterns but no proof. Not one iota. Nor was there ever anything remotely suspicious in the way they were with him. But suspicion was like poison: insidious, weakening, impossible to eradicate once it had got a hold.