Heiress Without a Cause (23 page)

No wonder his father had been so cold to Ellie. If he could not bear to keep a portrait of his wife, how could he stand to see a woman who looked just like her?

The twins stayed rooted at the door, holding hands like petitioners for a great lord’s favor. He thought he could tell them apart now; Kate wore a fiercer look, while Maria closed her eyes and trembled. She coughed, a sound that turned into a strangled gasp, and Kate squeezed her hand.

“Do you think we might move to the drawing room, your grace, if it would not inconvenience you?”

Kate still called him “your grace” — as though he was firmly the duke in their minds, with no blood at all between them. “I like to think the old man would hate to see someone else take his place. There is some justice in discussing the future here, don’t you think?”

It was the wrong thing to say. They both turned ashen, and Maria looked ready to cry. But it was Ellie who broke the silence. “Forcing us to meet in this room is positively barbaric, even for you,” she declared, skirting the center of the room to accost him at the side of his desk.

“Lovely to see you again too, Ellie,” Ferguson murmured. “But I see no harm in meeting here, even if we all have unpleasant memories of him calling us out on the carpet.”

Ellie frowned at him, some of the anger leaching out of her blue eyes. “Then you didn’t choose to meet here because of what happened in this room?”

“I’ve no idea what you are going on about, Ellie. What happened?”

“This is where Richard shot Father, you dolt,” she said, not sparing anyone the blow. “Father died behind the desk, and then Richard turned his pistol on himself. And poor Maria was the one who found them — Richard’s pistol was still smoking when she rushed in.”

Ferguson felt sick. That explained the new carpets — and why no one but him ever crossed the middle of the room. And if his father had died behind this desk...

He stood abruptly, knocking the chair over, and Maria started crying in earnest. “Perhaps the drawing room would be better after all.”

Ellie gave him a scathing look, then turned on her heel and marched toward the door. She tried to comfort Maria, but the twins scorned her just as they snubbed Ferguson, preferring to keep to their own company. Ellie shrugged her shoulders and walked on without them — but her spine was so stiff that Ferguson saw through her disinterest.

They repaired to one of the drawing rooms across the passageway, a room decorated in the creams and reds of the Rothwell coat of arms. The twins sat with perfect posture on a red and cream striped settee, arranging their skirts like shields around them. Ellie flung herself into a nearby armchair, her insouciance a remarkable departure from her attitude ten years earlier, when she had been so desperate to please their father.

In the ten years of Ferguson’s Scottish exile, and in the long, lonely years at Cambridge and Eton before that, he had often wished for a real family.

But with the remnants of his family arrayed before him, he remembered that family brought its own set of demons.

They had abandoned the teacart in their haste, but he suspected this would be an unpleasant business discussion rather than a social call. He leaned against the mantel, arms crossed, and looked at Ellie. “What do you wish to speak to me about?”

Ellie gestured at the twins. “You should ask them, since they do not seem to want my assistance.”

Kate glared at her. “I do not see how you could help with our ambitions. We want time to explore society before being forced to marry, not time to disgrace ourselves as you have done.”

She may have been right, but it didn’t stop Ferguson’s need to defend his sister. He barely knew the twins, but he had grown up with Ellie, and he refused to see her shamed by her own family.

“Ellie is not a disgrace. You would do well to remember that, Catherine. She could teach you many things if you let her.”

“Father said he did not know which of you was a worse influence,” Kate retorted. “But it was because of both of you that he kept us penned up. He said he would have cloistered us if he could to keep us from becoming like the rest of his children, but he wouldn’t turn into a Papist to protect us.”

Ellie laughed, a dark sound without a trace of humor. “Father would have cloistered you regardless of his religious beliefs if he could have seen an advantage to it. I’m sure he intended for you to come out when it convenienced him. Perhaps he was waiting for some property he wanted to come up on the marriage mart, since God knows he didn’t need the money.”

“Regardless, it would have been nice if you had tried to be real siblings, rather than leaving us alone,” Kate said. “We never did care for Henry and Richard, and they were too old besides, but both of you...”

She trailed off. Ellie caught Ferguson’s eye for just a moment, recognizing their old alliance before remembering what Ferguson had done to end it. She looked as guilty as Ferguson felt, though. Until Ferguson had escaped to Scotland, they had always watched out for each other, avoiding their older brothers and ignoring the babes who were born after their mother was replaced.

Ferguson cleared his throat. “What’s done is done. Besides, when I left, you still had your mother to look after you.”

Maria’s eyes filled with tears again. “Mama was nearly as indifferent as Father was, in her own way. She was always going off to Bath to take the waters, since she was too fragile to bear Father’s remarks about how she failed to do her duty.”

The last duchess barely survived giving birth to the twins, and she had not had any pregnancies after that. Demanding more heirs when he already had three sons seemed unnecessary — but the duke knew even then that Henry and Richard were unstable, and he would not wish to have Ferguson as his only insurance policy.

Still, from what Ferguson had seen before he left, it was the older children, particularly the sons, who were lightning rods for their father’s temper. Even Ellie had not suffered too much when she was younger, although he suspected that his father became harder with her as she grew to look more like their mother — and especially after her husband died and she refused to return to his household.

So he snapped impatiently, “We can either all go on like this forever, despising each other for what happened a decade ago, or we can overcome it. I would prefer to forgive each other, if only because I think the old man would hate to see us unite.”

“‘Forgive each other’?” Ellie asked, with another bitter laugh. “What, precisely, do you have to forgive us for?”

Ferguson shifted his weight to his other booted foot. “I’ve nothing to forgive you for directly — but I must find it within me to forgive you for living your entire life in reaction to the old man if we are to have a real relationship now.”

“How dare you,” Ellie spat. “As though running off to Scotland was not a reaction to our dear father.”

“I did not say it wasn’t,” Ferguson said. “But I think we all need to stop running away — unless you like the life you have?”

She looked down at her hands, twisting one of her rings around her finger. The twins looked back and forth between them as though watching a prizefight, mouths gaping in shock.

Finally, Kate said, “If you aren’t returning to Scotland, it surely doesn’t matter to you whether we marry quickly. Will you give me and Maria time to find the right matches, and not pressure us to marry so you can leave?”

He had forgotten the question that started the whole conversation, but perhaps it was good that they had spoken of other issues first. He might have answered differently had he not just told Ellie to stop running. He sighed. “I can’t say I will stay in London forever, but I will not push you to marry before you are ready.”

“You’ve had quite the change of heart in the last two weeks, brother,” Ellie said, flexing her fingers out in front of her as though to deny the temptation of toying with her ring. “Do either of your lady loves have anything to do with this?”

He shot her a warning glance. She knew about Madeleine’s secret, but the twins did not. It was too late, though. “You’re courting two women at once?” Kate asked.

“‘Courting’ isn’t the right word for a mistress, dear,” Ellie said. “That term only applies to Lady Madeleine, does it not?”

“If you do anything to harm her, Ellie...”

“I won’t do a thing,” Ellie said. “If you had been here the past ten years, you would realize my reputation for indiscretions is just as inaccurate as your reputation for seduction. But I do find it suspicious that you are suddenly considering staying in London for any length of time.”

He could not explain himself without saying Madeleine had already refused him, and that was as much her secret as it was his. All he divulged was, “I do have to marry someday, if only so you don’t all end up with our odious cousin Charles as the head of the family. London seems as good a place as any to find a duchess.”

Kate’s eyes sparkled with the first real humor he had seen from her since his return. “So you need matchmaking just as much as we do? Can we help?”

“Will you at least agree to come out if I say yes?”

Kate and Maria looked at each other. He hadn’t realized how much he had wanted to see them happy until that moment, and he felt a little twist of emotion as they both grinned at him.

“That is a fair trade,” Maria said. “After all, we should investigate to make sure Lady Madeleine is the right woman for you, and not just the first one you saw after coming back to London.”

He didn’t need their help, even though Madeleine was, in fact, the first woman he had seen in London — but if it led to an easier bond with the twins, he would play along. He turned his attention to Ellie. “Do you care to have a hand in bringing them out, or do you prefer to stay away from this muddle?”

Ellie still lounged in her chair with a relaxed air, but he saw her frown. “It is their decision, not mine. I will help to the extent that they do not think my reputation is a burden.”

Kate’s grin widened. “If the plan is to live without reacting to Father, then I think it’s only fitting you should be at our debut. We may as well show the ton that we all stand together despite what they think of both of you.”

With her carefree air and the rumors still swirling about their father’s death, Ferguson suspected the ton would soon see Kate in the same light if she was not careful, but he kept the thought to himself. He was too relieved that they would come out and move on with their lives without continuing to argue — and that they had thawed slightly to Ellie, even if the four of them were far from being friends.

Ellie stood abruptly, her eyes moist. She looked at Ferguson for a long moment; if there were tears there, they were just a sheen over a pool of resolve.

“Don’t disappoint me, Will,” she said, using the name he had abandoned when he left for Eton. “I couldn’t bear it if you left me behind again.”

He didn’t say anything as she departed. He wondered how long it would take for her to believe that he would not abandon her — it was rather similar to Madeleine’s distrust of him. But where Madeleine’s concern was based on hearsay, Ellie had spent the last decade angry at him.

She might think he would turn into their father — but she had inherited the old man’s bitterness. He just had to convince Madeleine, his sisters, and everyone else that he wasn’t the man they thought he was before they gave up on him entirely.

Or before the temptation to hang it all and go back to Scotland grew any stronger.

That night, Madeleine sat in silence in Ferguson’s coach. Josephine rode with them, on Alex’s orders, and there was nothing they wished to talk about with an audience.

But despite her maid’s presence, it felt like she and Ferguson inhabited a special world, created just for the two of them. The thought consumed her, made her wish that they never had to rejoin the world that would someday pull them apart. She felt it just watching him stride into a room, whether it was the theatre or a crowded ballroom in Mayfair, and it was all she could think of when she fell into his arms. In those moments, she forgot her reasons for refusing him — and never wanted to let him go.

But could those feelings last when her time at the theatre ended? Or did she feel so special with him because they were in extraordinary circumstances, magical only because they could never be repeated?

She looked across the coach. His face was inscrutable in the shadows. If they could talk, she knew what he would say about her thoughts — that what they had was unique, and that she should become his duchess.

But she had seen love matches flare out, leaving two unhappy people trapped in the wreckage. Ferguson had seen his own father destroyed by love — it could be a poison as much as a pleasure. Could this bond they shared turn into something lasting?

Or would it grow darker, twist around into loathing as the pressures of society overtook them?

Perhaps the pensive look on her face was what convinced Josephine that it was safe to leave her alone with Ferguson when they arrived. The maid left her in the foyer, telling her to dress while she cleared the path into Salford House.

Madeleine did not feel confident loving anyone. But she didn’t feel like letting go either. So as soon as Josephine was out of sight, she took Ferguson’s hand and pulled him up the stairs.

His lips were on her before he even shut the door. He had been unreadable in the coach, but now his desire for her was unmistakable. Their mouths locked against each other, his hands skimming over her derriere, her fingers burying themselves in his hair. The heat, the hunger, all the swirling need and frustration and desire and fear — the strength of it all scared her, even as it added a fierce edge to their kiss.

He untied her cravat and pulled her shirt over her head, dumping it on the floor before claiming her lips again. She tried to do the same to him, but he caught her hands and pulled away.

“You must return to Salford House too soon, love,” he said. “We have to dress you, not undress me.”

He used the endearment like it was easy for him, like he had already come to terms with what was between them. She loved it and hated it, just as undecided about the word as she was about what he wanted from her. So she kissed him, not wanting to think about the question he would undoubtedly ask her again.