Gayle Wilson - His Secret Duchess

Would he hurt the child? she wondered, and the hated image of the descending cane came into her mind. Panic made her strong, and some primitive instinct for survival taught her what to do. She raised her legs, their slender whiteness a flash of motion in the darkness of the bedroom. Her bare feet made contact with his body, and she kicked with all her strength, somehow throwing his huge body off hers.

Traywick had not been expecting it, but he was more agile that his bulk suggested, and somehow he managed to land on his feet. He was off balance, however, and he took several staggering steps backward in a futile effort to right himself.

They watched, child and woman, as almost in slow motion Traywick began to tumble backward, toward the small light of the nighttime fire, carefully banked before Mary had lain down to sleep. His head cracked with a force that was audible against the edge of the mantel and then Marcus Traywick fell, the back of his skull landing hard again on the stones of the hearth.

His head bounced with the force of the blow so that, unconscious now, he came to rest with his cheek against the black metal of the andiron that held the banked fire. The scent of singed hair and the sickening aroma of burning flesh pervaded the tiny chamber.

Mary was stunned by the unexpectedness of his stillness, and then she realized what the smell meant. She jumped up from the disordered bed and rushed to kneel beside the man who lay unmoving on the hearth. She grasped his hair, pulling his face away from its contact with the searing metal. She found she was panting with the exertion of the fight.

The only thought that moved through her brain was that she had done murder. She had killed a man. Not just any man, but one who had given her and her child refuge through these years. On her knees, her slight body swaying over the massive one of Marcus Traywick, the smell of his burning skin and hair filling the cold, still dimness of the room, she felt her son’s hand on her shoulder.

“Is he dead?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know,’ she whispered, wondering what she could say, how she could ever explain away what he had seen.

“I shall hit him if he’s not,” Richard said fiercely, and, glancing up for the first time, she saw that he was standing beside her, his small fingers fastened with his father’s strength around the handle of the nursery poker. “I shall kill him for hurting you.”

Her throat closed with the force of her love, and both arms enclosed around the small warrior standing beside her.

“No,” she said, her mouth moving against the fair curls, touched with gold by the flickering light of the flames. “It’s wrong to kill someone, wrong even to wish someone dead,” she breathed.

This was her punishment, she knew. For her pride. She had wanted Marcus Traywick dead, and now she had made it happen. The price for her sin. Perhaps for all her sins, she thought, hugging Richard more closely to her. She wondered how much more she would be called upon to pay.

The Duke of Vail’s long fingers lay relaxed against the smooth surface of the gaming table. Despite the amount of the wager involved, his demeanor was one of polite disinterest as the points were totaled. Most of the other patrons of White’s had quickly abandoned their own pursuits this evening in order to watch the high-stakes game His Grace was engaged in winning.

The gentlemen assembled around his table were all aristocratic and wealthy, but not nearly so much so as the man whose presence had attracted so much attention tonight, even among this elegant throng. Although long a member, by virtue of birth and reputation, of the foremost gentlemen’s club in the capital, the reclusive Vail did not often come to London now, and when he did, it was certainly not to participate in the games of chance to which the members of the ton were addicted.

No one was sure why the duke had come tonight, or why he had agreed, when invited, to take a hand, but the event was unusual enough that those who watched knew they would be able to dine out on the story for weeks to come. They could not know, of course, that they were about to be provided with a far juicier bit of gossip than they had any right to expect.

“That’s sixty points and the hand,” the Viscount Salisbury said, the words forced through lips suddenly gone numb with the realization of the sum he had just lost. He could imagine his father’s reaction. A season’s rustication, at the very least.

“My game, as well, I believe,” Vail said. His face was carefully expressionless, but there was a glimmer of sympathy in his gray eyes. He was well aware of the situation of the young Corinthian whose pockets he had just emptied. There was the fleeting thought that he might return the winnings he certainly didn’t need to the man seated across from him, but he knew that, given the constraints of their society, the attempt to do that would be far more humiliating to the young nobleman than the loss itself had been.

“Gentlemen, I thank you for the game,” the duke said, instead of making the offer he had briefly considered. Vail began gathering up the wagers, stacking the notes into an untidy pile. Forty years ago a man such as the Duke of Vail might have been accompanied by a dwarf or even a small Indian boy appropriately attired in rich Eastern garb, whose job it would have been to perform such a task for him. Times had changed, and title or no, a gentleman collected his own winnings. One might, however, as Vail certainly was, do so with an air that proclaimed the task to be hardly worth the effort.

“I was told that without your efforts in the House today, Wellington’s bill might have failed,” one of the players commented as they watched the unhurried movement of those elegant fingers. It was difficult for these young aristocrats to believe that this man could truly be interested in the dull Tory agenda.

“Although we don’t always see eye-to-eye on political matters, I agreed to speak in support. In return for a favor of long standing, if you will.” His Grace acknowledged the correctness of that information without glancing up.

“A very great favor, I should think,” Essex ventured. “I understand you returned from France to take part in the debate.”

“Family business had occupied me there for the last few months. That was finally completed, however, and I was very glad to be able to return in time to put myself at Wellington’s disposal.”

“But you’ve missed most of the Season,” someone said sympathetically.

The duke’s eyes lifted, gleaming suddenly with an unexpected amusement, to the speaker’s face. “Indeed,” he said, a trace of humor also clear in that single word. It was somehow made obvious by his tone that the charms of the famous London Season were certainly lost on him. “I am so sorry,” he said, although it was also obvious to them all that he was not.

No one knew whether or not to laugh. That was the trouble with Vail. One was never certain whether his quietly sardonic comments were intended to evoke amusement. The silence stretched uncomfortably, until the duke, as if suddenly becoming aware of their discomfort, raised his storm-gray eyes and allowed his gaze to skim the circle of faces surrounding him.

“Was there something particularly entertaining about this Season?” he asked, allowing one brow to arch slightly in question. His brows and lashes were several shades darker than the gold of his hair, which shone now almost silver-gilt in the soft glow of the chandeliers. The fine lines imprinted on his handsome features were not those of dissipation, of course. Given his family’s tragedies, it was not surprising that the face of this man bore the marks of suffering.