Sins of a Duke (18 page)

“How the devil do you know about that?”

She sighed. “Papa, really. I keep abreast of everything. Did you ruin her?”

“No. But at the moment she and I are…” He closed his eyes for a heartbeat. “We’ve told people that we’re going to be married.”

“Married?” his daughter repeated, looking as shocked as he’d ever seen her.

“That is the present situation, yes.”

“And you told other people before you told me? Who?”

“Telling anyone was something of an accident, my
heart. As soon as it happened I came home straightaway to tell you.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Where is Josefina? I would like to speak with her.”

“She went home. I’ll see her tomorrow.”

“Will this make me a princess?”

The first glimmer of humor he’d felt all evening touched him. “I’m afraid not. You’ve always been
my
princess, if that helps.”

Twisting, she hugged him, resting her cheek against his. “I like her,” she stated. “She knows pirates and soldiers. But when you got mad at me for inviting her into the house, I thought you didn’t like her. That made it very hard on me. You should have told me that you were falling in love. I gave Uncle Shay some very good advice when he was courting Aunt Sarala. I’m helpful.”

Love
. According to the rest of his family, he was no longer capable of the emotion. In love with Josefina? At the moment he wasn’t certain whether he wanted to kiss her or strangle her. He knew quite well what he wanted to do to her father. “As I said, Peep, this is only the situation at this moment. We made the decision for…business reasons, and it will undoubtedly change.”

She lifted her head to look at him, her gray eyes serious. “Papa, I can’t help being troubled to hear you say this is all business. You’re a very wealthy duke, you know, and you don’t
have
to marry anyone.”

Sebastian lifted an eyebrow. “Thank you for reminding me.” Down below a carriage turned up the drive. “So if I did love her, you wouldn’t mind if I married her?”

Even as he spoke, he regretted the question. For one thing, he shouldn’t have been putting such thoughts in Peep’s head. For another, he certainly had other, more pressing things to worry about at the moment.

“Because of Mama, you mean?” she asked.

“Yes. Because of Mama.”

She pursed her lips, obviously considering. “Would you still love Mama?”

“Always.” His heart lurched, as it always did when they talked about Charlotte.

“Well, I love Buttercup, and I love you, and I love Aunt Nell and Uncle Valentine and Uncle Shay and Aunt Saral—”

“Your point being?” He curled one of the dark ringlets of her hair around his finger.

“My point is that you and I both love several people, and I don’t think adding one more will hurt anything.”

Except perhaps the future of the entire Griffin clan. He took his daughter’s hand and stood. “You are very wise, my lady.”

“I know. Who’s coming to visit us? Are you certain it’s not Josefina?”

“No, it’s your aunts and uncles. There’s likely to be some arguing, so I’ll need you to go up to bed.”

“Very well. This news has worn me out.” She tugged his sleeve down to kiss him on the cheek. “Don’t yell at them too much.”

“I won’t.” In fact, it was far more likely they would all yell at him—and with good reason.

As Penelope went upstairs, he headed down. “Who’s here?” he asked Stanton, then remembered the length of Peep’s litany of close relations. “No, tell me who’s not here. That will be simpler.”

“No Witfelds are here, Your Grace,” the butler answered. “Shall I send the sandwiches into the morning room?”

“Yes. We may be there for quite some time.”

Z
achary wolfed down his seventh cucumber sandwich. “A knife?” he mumbled around it. “You’re absolutely certain?”

Sebastian paced to the hearth and back. “For the third bloody time, yes, I’m certain,” he snapped. These people might be precious to him, but he did not under any circumstances enjoy being called to task. “Why, do you think it might have been a spoon?”

“No. I’m just trying to grasp the—”

“She clearly saved your life,” Nell interrupted. “I was set to hate her, but Sebastian, if she hadn’t—”

“If she hadn’t been a part of this to begin with, no one would have been trying to kill our brother.” Shay sat where he’d been for the past three-quarters of an hour, his fists still clenched and his expression the most grim Sebastian had seen in four years. Since the last family tragedy.

“You can’t say that for certain,” Valentine countered, twining and untwining his fingers with Eleanor’s. “Whether or not Melbourne became involved directly, the
rey would still be here plotting, and I’d wager pounds to pence that this family would have been the first to uncover the fraud.”

“And then who would have stopped the assassination?” Eleanor seconded.

“By announcing a wedding?” Shay snorted. “Come now, Nell. She planned this all along.”

“I don’t think so.” Sebastian wasn’t even certain he’d spoken aloud until he caught the quizzical gazes aimed in his direction. “She did try to warn me that I might be in danger. I didn’t listen.”

“I’ve been part of this family for only a year,” Sarala said abruptly, the remains of her India-raised accent still in her words, “so please tell me if I’m overstepping.”

“You’re not,” he said shortly. As a member of the family she had as much right to grind at him as anyone else in the room, though if he clenched his jaw any harder he would break some teeth.

She nodded. “Then with the limited amount of time you have before meeting with the Embrys, perhaps we should be considering where things stand now, as opposed to how or why they came to be this way.”

He drew a breath. “Very well. Josefina told her father that I suspected something. With a public announcement bringing me into the family, Embry will consider me both silenced and an ally, reluctant or not. He’s probably already counting the additional money I’ll provide them.”

“I love greed.” Valentine leaned forward to pull the tray of sandwiches away from Zachary. “It’s easy to play on, and easy to predict.”

“So how can we use it to get Seb out of this mess?” Zachary sent a glare at Valentine. “Giving Embry money will only encourage him.” Surreptitiously he slid the sandwiches back in front of him and took another.

“Whose side is Princess Josefina on?” Caroline asked,
speaking for the first time since she and Zachary had entered the room.

“Her father’s, obviously.”

Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t think so, Zach. She gave Sebastian some very confidential information. And while bringing a wealthy ally into the fold does help her father’s cause, Embry’s first choice in dealing with Melbourne was to see him dead. Whatever happened after, she went against her father then.”

It would have been better if she’d never sided with the rey at all. “Much as you must all be enjoying seeing me make mistakes and squirm because of them, the real issue is not what happens between Josefina and myself. It’s how to correct my—our family’s—association with Embry.”

“Bugger that,” Shay retorted bluntly. “Whatever we might have said about your interference in our lives, no one in this room wishes you pain.”

Seeing their serious, concerned faces, he would accept that statement as the truth. “Very well. To buy us some time, tomorrow I will play the son-in-law-to-be,” he decided. “Embry may think that including me in his plans helps him, but it also helps me. I still have questions, and he’s the best one to answer them.”

“What about the—”

“Shay, go back to Eton and get John Rice-Able. Hide him somewhere, but I want him available in the event that we need someone’s word to counter Embry’s. As for the rest, I think we’ll have to wait until after my meeting. I can prepare, but he still has to make the next move.”

“I don’t like it,” Zach protested anyway. “One of us should go with you tomorrow.”

“Not if I want him to say anything helpful. Go home. We’ll meet back here for dinner.”

In pairs his siblings and in-laws bade him good night and left. His head ached. What the devil was he supposed
to do between now and the morning? Sleep was out of the question. Riddles and knots twisted his insides until he could barely breathe, much less think straight. There had to be something he’d missed, something he could do that would make a difference. What that something might be, though, continued to elude him. The rest of the family might enjoy seeing his human side, but he took absolutely no pleasure in revealing his own bloody mistakes.

The last to leave were Nell and Valentine. The marquis handed his wife into their coach, then leaned in and said something to her. As Sebastian watched from the portico, his closest friend turned around again and approached him.

“Let’s take a stroll through the garden, Melbourne,” Valentine said, gesturing.

“No. I don’t need any advice on extricating myself from female entanglements. Go home.”

Valentine sighed. “Tell me this, then—at the moment your plan is to gain all the information you can and then present it to Prinny and the authorities in order to prevent innocent citizens from sailing off to their doom, yes?”

“A bit long-winded, but yes.”

The marquis looked him straight in the eye. “They’ll hang her, you know. The princess.”

Sebastian flinched, and he knew Valentine saw it. “If she is on our side, then I’ll do what I can to protect her from that.”

“Ah.
What you can
. Within the bounds of propriety, I suppose. You’ll have quite the task making yourself look heroic and avoiding a scandal, as it is.”

“That’s enough, Deverill.”

“Just pointing out the obvious,” Valentine returned easily. “Everyone knows you’ll do anything to avoid a scandal. That was why you publicly begged for her father’s permission to marry her once she threw herself on you, wasn’t it? Because declaring the lot of them thieves and
frauds right then would have been what—completely reasonable and believable?”

“Just say what’s on your bloody mind and leave,” Sebastian ground out, his fists clenching again. Yes, he’d been asking himself those same damned questions, and no, he didn’t know what the answer might be.

“I
will
say it, then, since you’re too damned stubborn. You like Josefina. My guess is that you like her more than you probably even realize.”

“That’s enough.”

“One scandal over four hundred years of Dukes of Melbourne,” Valentine pressed, “and two thousand years of Griffins and Grifani and whatever else there was—I think your family name can stand up to it. Don’t blame your cowardice about following your heart on anything but yourself.”

Sebastian hit him. He’d wanted to hit someone all evening—anything to focus his frustration. Deverill had just made himself the best target.

Valentine staggered, sweeping his leg around as he went down. Caught behind the knees, Sebastian fell backward. In a second he and Valentine were rolling on the sharp gravel of the drive.

An elbow slammed across his chin, and he tasted blood. Good. Fury, frustration, closed over him. His fist connected hard with Valentine’s ribcage, and the marquis grunted.

“Stop it!” Eleanor’s voice came. They both ignored it.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a physical fight; most, all, of his battles were verbal, wits and politics. This felt deeper, and far more satisfying.

“Stanton! Assistance!”

Deverill’s sleeve tore off in his hand, and Sebastian threw it aside. Shoving hard, he got a knee underneath him and started to push to his feet. Abruptly cold water drenched his head and shoulders.

Sputtering, he released Valentine and rolled sideways. “Who the devil did that?” he roared, staggering to his feet.

Eleanor gripped a large bucket in both hands, Stanton beside her with another. Deverill stood and shook water out of his hair. “Damnation, Nell,” he grumbled.

“And just what did that solve, you two?” Eleanor retorted, her expression cold but her hands shaking. “You said you were going to have a
word
with him, Valentine! For heaven’s sake!” She slammed down the bucket and stalked back to the coach.

Valentine rubbed his jaw, eyeing Sebastian. “Feel better?”

Drawing a deep breath, Sebastian motioned for Stanton to go back to the house. “Actually, yes,” he said reluctantly. The fury that had boiled in his chest all night at least felt manageable, now.

“Good. I was running out of barbs to hurl at you.” Squatting, the marquis retrieved his coat sleeve, then straightened again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bastard.”

“Fop.”

Sebastian wiped his chin. “Blackguard.”

“Nocky boy.”

“Rakeshame.”

“Stiff rump.” With a quick grin Valentine returned to his coach and climbed in. A moment later the vehicle rumbled onto the street and turned for Corbett House.

Sebastian wrung out his coattails. Whatever his intention, Deverill had brought up several very good points. And he had something he needed to see to.

He returned to the house. “Stanton, have Green saddle Merlin. I need to change clothes, and then I’ll be going out. Don’t wait up.” He passed the butler, then stopped again. “And the next time you break into a fight of mine, I expect you to take my side, not try to stop it.”

The butler softly closed the front door. “Yes, Your Grace.”

He headed upstairs, shedding his coat as he went. Yes, Valentine had made a great deal of sense. The Griffin name
could
withstand a little out-and-out scandal. When it came down to it, could he? It seemed that over the next few days he would find out. Starting with tonight.

Josefina sat up in her large bed, a spread of correspondence around her. As she carefully reread all of the letters her father had ever sent her, it began to make sense. What she’d done was wrong; it always had been. But even when she knew they were scheming about something, even when she knew she was spinning untruths into even prettier lies, she enjoyed the way they immersed themselves in the fiction until it felt and looked real. And her father was so confident in his superiority that he could make it seem as though whoever fell for their plays deserved to be taken advantage of.

Her mother had always called him a dreamer, taking on one campaign, one war after another looking for fame or glory. As she read now, she could see the growing edge of desperation in his depiction of himself and his situation, the envy toward first Wellesley and then Bolivar and Rivera. Even toward her mother’s father, with his high position in the Spanish colonial government.

Was that what drove him? Envy? Or arrogance? She supposed it didn’t matter, and the thing she’d truly wanted to find somewhere in his correspondence—a conscience, a concern for anyone but himself—simply wasn’t there. Considering the various schemes with which she’d helped him over the years, she supposed she didn’t have a conscience, either. Or she’d thought not, anyway.

Two things had changed that. Previously their plans had been about money. Now, though, he wanted other
people to risk their lives, and that was far different than encouraging them to part with a few quid. And then she’d met Sebastian Harold Griffin.

She should have hated him, she supposed. He was arrogant, and confident, and ridiculously mindful of propriety and the way his peers perceived him. But he’d also been lonely, and enticing, and he’d gotten angry when he’d suspected lies—not because they affected him, but because they affected the people of his country.
His
people, he’d said, and she understood that he felt a genuine responsibility toward them and for them.

Josefina took a slow breath. So now she knew. And tonight she had saved Sebastian’s life, not to protect her father’s plans, but for herself. It was fitting, she supposed, that however it turned out, neither man would ever forgive her for choosing that particular route. She didn’t know why she had, except that it seemed the one declaration sure to give her father pause. And maybe she’d done it because ten minutes earlier Sebastian had said he never wanted to set eyes on her again, and now he had do.

Her half-open window slid up. She gasped, diving off the far side of the bed and scrambling for the pistol in the bed stand. Letters went flying everywhere. Fumbling, her legs tangling in sheets and her night rail, she yanked open the drawer. “Go away,” she hissed, “or I will shoot.”

“I’m not going away,” Sebastian’s low voice came, “so either shoot me or put that blasted thing away.”

She gripped the pistol as he climbed with absurd grace over the window sill and into the room. Brushing off his coat, he closed the window again before he looked at her.

“I never imagined you as the climbing the trellis sort,” she said.

“That was my second one,” he returned. “And hopefully the last. Since you did go to the trouble of saving my
life earlier, I would hope that you don’t actually intend to use that.” He gestured at the pistol.

“That depends on why you’re here. We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

“I’m here to talk. I need some answers before tomorrow.” He tilted his head, his gaze in the candlelight taking in her bare feet and arms, and lingering at the purple mark above her right elbow. “I apologize for that,” he said in a low voice. “I have no excuse.”

Josefina wasn’t so certain about that. Still, if he’d given her the advantage, she meant to keep it. “I accept your apology,” she said in her most regal voice. “What happened to your lip?”

“A disagreement,” he returned, touching the bruise that overran the left corner of his mouth.

Swallowing, she placed the pistol back in the drawer and closed it away. “This has become complicated, hasn’t it?” Keeping her gaze and all her attention on him, she bent sideways to finish untangling her right foot from the bed sheets.