Jane Lark - The Scandalous Love of a Duke

“Kate!” Eleanor called, in an are-you-coming voice.

Katherine glanced back and nodded before taking an irresistible final look at the boys.

John was standing in the shallow water, near where the lake dropped over a weir into a cascade, taunting her brother.

The lake rose to the indent of muscle at his hip.

Katherine’s breath caught, trapped in her lungs.

He’d lost the coltish look he’d had a few years ago when she’d first met him, he was physically magnificent now. He was over six feet tall, sinuous and muscular. She longed to touch him and her heart raced as warmth flooded her veins.

“Kate!” Eleanor called again.

John’s head turned and his ice-blue eyes spun in the direction of the trees where she was hiding. His gaze reached between the leaves as they stirred into motion on the warm breeze sweeping up from the ornamental lake. Katherine felt the intensity in his eyes.

There was an aura about John, an attraction which drew everyone in.

His looks were striking and he had a presence which captured people’s attention when he was in a room.

He was born to lead people, or perhaps bred to do so.

His fingers lifted and swept his damp jet-black hair off his brow, but his gaze didn’t leave the trees.

He had an inherent grace too.

He was calm and silent in nature, though strong-willed. He won most arguments with her brother. But he had an instinctive awareness of others, and he’d been kind to her. John had acted like a brother to her. He was always considerate. He’d included her even when Phillip forgot to, and John had never grown tired of her dogged company as Phillip sometimes did.

At what point her feelings had changed from sisterly to something else, she couldn’t say. Perhaps she’d always felt differently about John. But now it was obsession.

His gaze seemed to strike hers, though surely he had not seen her. She smiled. All the girls in his family were stunningly beautiful, it carried from their mothers. In John that beauty was breathtakingly masculine. She could not take her eyes off him when she was near him.

“John!” her brother called.

John’s gaze ripped away, his awareness disengaging from the trees and returning to the lake.

“Kate!”

Katherine caught her breath, dragging air into her lungs, and turned back.

Eleanor and the others were already at the top of the slope looking down.

Katherine lifted her hand to say she was coming, and then began to climb.

~

Egypt, December, Seven years later

John let the handle of the spade rest against his midriff, set one hand on his lean waist and wiped his brow with his forearm. Then he lifted the wide-brimmed leather hat from his head and tipped his gaze to the endlessly clear, blue sky.

God, it was hot here, but it was the middle of a bloody desert.

“Water, please.” He looked at one of the native men in his train. Almost instantly the water skin was in John’s hand.

The warm fluid slid down his throat, relieving the dryness.

He handed the skin back.

They’d found a new tomb but it was buried beneath centuries of sand.

Dropping his hat back on his head, John then bent and began digging again. His blade slipped easily into the sand, but half of each shovel load slid back into the hole. He cursed and increased his pace.

“My Lord, I have it!” Yassah, the man who’d been John’s right hand for years, called. John let his spade fall and moved to where Yassah worked, dropping to his knees to scoop sand out with his bare hands.

“It is the entrance.” There was a flare of excitement in John’s chest. The hours of hunting and digging were worth it for this moment of success.

Before Egypt, John had drifted, despondent. This was why he had come and this was why he stayed.

“It is open, robbed,” Yassah stated. He was on his knees too.

Empty. Damn . But there would still be the paintings. John leant back, resting his buttocks on his heels. “Hand me the spade.”

Later, John sat beneath the canopy before his tent, in a canvas chair, his feet resting on the sand. The sky was red, and the sun glowed on the horizon, about to fall. Then suddenly it literally dropped over the edge of the world, leaving only the blue-black darkness and a million glinting stars, the stars he’d seen painted on the ceiling of every temple.

The sun had never set like this in England.

He drew on the tip of a thin cigar and then let his hand fall when he exhaled.

The tomb they’d discovered today had been an official’s. It was empty, but it wasn’t treasure which excited John anyway. What thrilled him was the emotion of the search and the find.

John took another draw on his cigar.

He was in a thoughtful mood, brooding.

His gaze reached up to the darkness and the stars. The black of night was like polished jet here, not the dull pitch it was at home.

When his grandfather had packed John off on the grand tour to sow his wild oats abroad, the intention had been that John would return with his youthful dissipated fire burnt out. The only problem was that nothing in England drew John back.

The images from the dream he’d had last night crowded into his head. It was a dream he’d had a thousand times. This was the root of his melancholy mood. He always felt like this when he’d dreamt it.

In the dream, he was a child, looking from the window of his grandfather’s grand black coach. He saw his mother, with her dress clutched in one hand as she ran behind them, reaching towards him. His stepfather was there too, behind her, his expression violent with anger. But it wasn’t only a dream, it was a memory. A memory John had never asked to be explained. A memory he’d never admitted he had.

His grandfather had taken him from them, he’d never understood why.

His childhood had been lonely before that.

Perhaps that was why he felt so comfortable in a desert.

He’d been given back to his mother a few weeks later. But the memory his head constantly echoed in a dream was the defining moment of his life. The point he had been torn in two, by his grandfather’s will and his mother’s love. One was hard, cold and aggressive, the other warm, welcoming and enchanting. But the second had been a childish need. What abided in him now was the barren land his grandfather had cultivated.

John’s earliest memory was of his grandfather saying he had no mother, when John knew he did. He’d not been allowed to speak of her. He’d never known why. She’d written to him for years, and then she’d come. She’d taught him kindness and consideration, empathy and understanding, while his grandfather had encouraged restraint and harsh judgement.

Now, John was just constantly angry at the world. This was the reason he’d stayed abroad. He was his grandfather’s monster. The years spent in Europe had taught John that.

He took another drag on his cigar, and then exhaled.

Good God he’d been his mother’s child, naïve and foolish, when he’d arrived in Paris. Obvious prey for the she-wolves hunting those grounds. He’d been seduced by their world and fleeced. It had taken months to learn the art of disengagement. It had left him bitter. His grandfather had achieved his wish: John did not trust a soul.

The choice he’d made after that was the only one open to him – not to go back. Not going back was his defiance. The only way he could win the battle against his grandfather.

Then he’d found Egypt and a purpose, something beyond himself. Something which made him feel again. The only problem was this loneliness at night.

When it was dark, the isolation became stark and these memories flooded in. In his youth he’d covered them with friendships. In his dissipated years he’d smothered them with sex. He’d had nothing to do with women since he’d come to Egypt. There was no hiding from recollections here.