Vice Page 5

  “Why can’t your cousin find his own wife?” she asked, staring incredulously.

  “Well, I suspect he might find it difficult,” the duke said, turning his signet ring on his finger with a considering air. “Lucien is not a pleasant man. No ordinary female of the right breeding would choose to wed him.”

  Juliana wondered if she was going mad. At the very least she had clearly stumbled among lunatics. Vicious, twisted lunatics.

  “You … you want a brood mare!” she exclaimed. “You would blackmail me into yielding my body as a vehicle for your cousin’s progeny, because no self-respecting woman would take on the job! You’re … you’re treating me like a bitch to be put to a stud.”

  Tarquin frowned. “Your choice of words is a trifle inelegant, my dear. I’m offering a marriage that comes with a tide and what remains of a substantial fortune. My cousin doesn’t have long to live, hence the urgency of the matter. However, I’m certain you’ll be released from his admittedly undesirable company within a twelvemonth. I’ll ensure, of course, that you’re well looked after in your widowhood. And, of course, not a word of your unfortunate history will be passed on.”

  He sipped his wine. When she still gazed at him, dumbstruck, he continued: “Your secret will be buried with me and the Dennisons. No one will ever connect Lady Edgecombe with Juliana … whoever-you-were.” His hand moved through the air in a careless gesture. “You will be safe, prosperous, and set up for life.”

  Juliana drained her champagne glass. Then she threw the glass into the fireplace. Her face was bloodless, her eyes jade stones, her voice low and bitter as aloes. “And to gain such safety … such rewards … I must simply bear the child of an undesirable invalid with one foot in the—”

  “Ah, no, not precisely.” The duke held up one hand, arresting her in midsentence. “You will not bear Lucien’s child, my dear Juliana. You will bear mine.”

  Chapter 4

  I cannot imagine how we can help you, Sir George.” Sir Brian Forsett offered his guest a chilly smile. “Juliana ceased to be our responsibility as soon as she passed into the legal control of her husband. Your father’s unfortunate death leaves his widow her own mistress, in the absence of any instructions to the contrary in Sir John’s will.”

  “And it leaves you, sir, holding her jointure in trust for her,” snapped Sir George Ridge. He was in his late twenties, a corpulent, red-faced man, with hands like ham hocks. The son of his father, physically if not in character, he was the despair of his tailors, who recognized that all their skill and all their client’s coin would never make an elegant figure of him.

  “That is so,” Sir Brian said in his customarily austere tones.

  When he offered no expansion, his choleric guest began to pace the library from window to desk, muttering to himself, dabbing with his handkerchief at the rolls of sweating flesh oozing over his stock. “But it’s iniquitous that it should be so,” he stated finally. “Your ward has murdered my father. She runs away, and you still hold her jointure—a substantial part of my inheritance, I tell you, sir—in trust for her. I say again, sir, she is a murderess!”

  “That, if I might say so, is a matter for the court,” Sir Brian said, his nose twitching slightly with distaste. The warmth of the summer afternoon was having a malodorous effect on his visitor.

  “I tell you again, sir, she is a murderess!” Sir George repeated, his nostrils flaring. “I saw the mark on my father’s back. If she was not responsible for his death, why would she run away?”

  Sir Brian shrugged his thin shoulders. “My dear sir, Juliana has always been a mystery. But until she is found, there is nothing we can do to alter the current situation.”

  “A murderess cannot inherit her victim’s estate.” Sir George slammed a fist on the desk, and his host drew back with a well-bred frown.

  “Her children can, however,” he reminded the angry young man. “She may be with child, sir. Her husband died in such circumstances as to imply that …” He paused, took a pinch of snuff, and concluded delicately, “As to imply that the marriage had been consummated.”

  His visitor stared in dismay. Such a thought had clearly never entered his mind. “It couldn’t be.” But his voice lacked conviction.

  “Why not?” gently inquired his host. “You, after all, are proof that your father was not impotent. Of course, we may never know about Juliana. One would have to find her first.”

  “And if we don’t find her, then it will take seven years to have her declared legally dead. Seven years when you will hold her jointure in trust and I will be unable to lay hands on half my land.”

  Sir Brian merely raised an eyebrow. He’d negotiated his ward’s marriage settlement with the cold, calculated pleasure of a man who was never bested in a business deal. Bluff and kindly Sir John Ridge, heading into his dotage utterly infatuated with the sixteen-year-old Juliana, hadn’t stood a chance against the needle wits of his acquisitive opponent. Juliana’s benefit had been a mere sideline for Sir Brian in the general pleasures of running rings around the slow-witted and obsessed Ridge.

  “Well, how are we to find her?” Sir George flung himself onto a sofa, scowling fiercely.

  “I suggest we leave that to the constables,” Sir Brian stated.

  “And just how much do you think that lazy gaggle of poxed curs will bestir themselves?”

  Sir Brian shrugged again. “If you have a better idea …”

  “Oh, indeed I do!” Sir George sprang to his feet with an oath. “I’ll go after the damned girl myself. And I’ll bring her back to face the magistrates if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “I commend your resolution, sir.” Sir Brian rose and moved toward the door, gently encouraging his guest’s departure. “Do, I beg you, keep me informed of your progress.”

  Sir George glared at him. There was only form politeness in Sir Brian Forsett’s tone. The longer Juliana remained at large and in hiding, the longer Forsett would have to manage her jointure as he chose. It didn’t take much imagination to understand that he would prove expert at diverting revenues from the trust into his own pocket.

  “Oh, Sir George … pray accept my condolences…. Such a terrible tragedy.” The crisp tones of Lady Amelia Forsett preceded the lady as she entered the library through the open terrace doors.

  A tall woman of haughty demeanor, she sketched a curtsy. George, intimidated despite his anger, bowed low in return. Lady Forsett’s clear pale-blue eyes assessed him and seemed to find him wanting. A chilly smile touched the corners of her mouth. “I trust I haven’t interrupted your business with my husband.”

  “Not at all, my dear,” Sir Brian reassured smoothly. “Sir George was just leaving.” He pulled the bell rope.

  Amelia curtsied again, and George, thus dismissed, found himself moving backward out of the library under the escort of a footman who seemed to have appeared out of thin air.

  “What did that lumpen oaf want?” Amelia came straight to the point as the door closed behind their guest.

  “As far as I can gather, he wishes to consign Juliana to the hangman with all dispatch, so that he can reclaim that part of his inheritance that formed her jointure.”

  “Dear me,” murmured Lady Forsett. “What vulgar haste. His father is but three days in his own grave.”

  “The entire business is utterly distasteful,” her husband said. “Of all the farcical—”

  “Typical of Juliana,” his wife interrupted, her thin lips pursing. “Such a clumsy, inconsiderate creature.”

  “Yes, but where is she?” Sir Brian interrupted with a familiar note of irritation. “Why would she run away? She couldn’t possibly have been responsible for the man’s death.” He cast his wife an inquiring look. “Could she?”

  “Who’s to say?” Lady Forsett shook her head. “She’s always been a wild and troublesome girl.”

  “With an immoderate temper,” her husband put in, frowning. “But I find it hard to believe she could have deliberately—”

&nbs
p; “Oh, not deliberately, no,” Lady Forsett interrupted. “But you know how she’s always doing the most inconvenient and inconsiderate things quite by accident. And if she flew off the handle …”

  “Quite.” Sir Brian chewed his lower lip, still frowning. “The whole business already bids fair to becoming the county scandal of the decade. If it comes to court, it will be hideous.”

  “Let us hope she isn’t found,” his wife said bluntly. “Then it will die down soon enough. If we don’t search diligently for her, who else would bother?”

  “George Ridge.”

  “Ahh … of course.” Lady Forsett tidied up a tumbling pile of leather-bound volumes on a side table.

  “But I doubt he has the wit to succeed,” her husband said. “He’s no brighter than his oaf of a father.”

  “Juliana, on the other hand—”

  “Is as quick-witted as they come,” Sir Brian finished for her with an arid smile. “If she doesn’t wish to be found, I’ll wager it’ll take more than George Ridge to catch her.”

  George Ridge was still scowling as he rode out of the stable yard at Forsett Towers. His mount was a raw-boned gray, as ugly-tempered as his master, and he tossed his head violently, curling his lips back over the cruel curb bit. When his rider slashed his flank with his crop, the horse threw back his head with a high-pitched whinny, reared, and took off down the uneven gravel driveway as if pursued by Lucifer’s pitchfork-carrying devils.

  George had received even less satisfaction from the Forsetts than he’d expected. He cursed Sir Brian for an arrogant, nose-in-the-air meddler who hadn’t the decency even to offer to assist in the search for his ungovernable, murdering, fugitive erstwhile ward.

  Juliana. George pulled back on the reins as he turned the horse out of the gate and onto the lane. Juliana. Her image filled his internal vision in a hot, red surge of lust. He licked his lips. He’d lusted after her ever since he’d first seen her on the arm of his besotted, drooling father. His father’s massive bulk had made her seem small as she walked beside him, but it couldn’t disguise the voluptuous swell of her bosom beneath her demure bodice, the swing of her curving hips beneath the simple country gown that Lady Forsett insisted she wear.

  Her hair had excited him as much as the hints of her body. A blazing, unruly mass of springing curls that seemed to promise an uninhibited and passionate nature. At first she’d been friendly, smiling at him, her green eyes warm, but then he’d made his mistake and yielded to the prompting of the lascivious dreams that swirled through his nights. He had attempted to kiss her, and she’d nearly scratched his eyes out. From then on her gaze had been cool and suspicious, her voice had lost its rich current of merriment, become distant and dismissive.

  George’s lust had not diminished, but anger and resentment had added a malevolent fuel. Now he saw his father’s bride as the usurper. A twisting, manipulating bitch who had ensnared Sir John Ridge in his dotage with the promises of her youthful body. And in exchange for those promises she had been rewarded with the dower house in perpetuity, together with two thousand acres of prime land and all revenues accruing from its thick forests and tenant farms.

  George had listened to his father’s measured explanations for giving away George’s inheritance. He had protested, but to no avail. Sir Brian Forsett had been adamant that these were the only terms on which he would agree to his ward’s becoming Lady Ridge. And Sir John had been willing to agree to anything in order to have that sweet young body in his bed.

  He’d had his wish, and it had killed him. George cut savagely at his horse’s flanks. Juliana had disappeared, leaving her former guardian in possession of her jointure. And George was left with only half of his rightful inheritance.

  But if he could find her, then her crime would disqualify her from her inheritance. Unless she was with child. If she pleaded her belly, they wouldn’t sentence her to death. And her child would inherit the jointure. On the other hand, if she was to be married to Sir George Ridge—the grieving young widow wedded so appropriately to her late husband’s son—then it wouldn’t matter if she was with child or not. Everything would return to the Ridge family, and he, George, would have Juliana in his own bed.

  Would she agree? He put spur to his horse, setting him at a high bramble hedge. The horse soared over, teeth bared in a yellow grimace, eyes rolling, and landed with a jolt on the far side.

  George cursed the animal’s clumsiness and jerked back on the curb rein. Juliana would agree because she would have no choice. In exchange he would swear that his father’s death was accidental. No one would question George Ridge’s interpretation of such an embarrassing incident. The story would be the joke of the county for months, and everyone would understand that a fat old man, drunk after his wedding, couldn’t keep pace on his wedding night with a fresh filly of barely seventeen.

  Juliana would agree. But first he had to find her.

  He swung his mount to the right and headed for Winchester. She had to have left the area. And the only way to do that was by carriage or on horseback. No horses had been taken from the stables at Ridge Hall. But the stagecoaches departed from Winchester in the very early morning. He would inquire at the Rose and Crown, and he would post notices around the city just in case a wagoner or carter had taken up a lone woman in the middle of the night.

  Juliana spent her next three days in the house on Russell Street in relative isolation, talking only to Bella, the maid who attended her and brought her meals. Her memory of the moments in the salon immediately after the duke’s infamous proposition was vague. She had been devastated by outrage, rendered speechless; not trusting herself to remain in his company, she’d fled the room. No one had come after her, and no one had mentioned the matter to her again. Her chamber door was no longer locked, but on the one occasion she had ventured down to the hall, Mr. Garston had appeared out of nowhere and asked her in tones that brooked no argument to return to her chamber. She had been provided with everything she’d asked for: books, writing and drawing materials. But she was still unmistakably a prisoner in this topsy-turvy establishment that slept all day and awoke at night.

  She would lie abed throughout the night listening to the strains of music from the salons, the bursts of feminine laughter, the sonorous male voices on the stairs, the chink of china and glass. Rich aromas from the kitchens wafted beneath her door, and she would entertain herself trying to identify the delicacies from which they emanated. Her own fare was the plain and plentiful food she assumed was served in the kitchens, but clearly the clients and the working ladies of the house dined very differently.

  She would doze lightly throughout the night, usually falling deeply asleep at dawn as the door knocker finally ceased its banging and the sounds of merriment faded. As the sky lightened, she would hear voices in the corridor outside, soft and weary women’s voices, the occasional chuckle, and once the sound of heart-wrenching weeping. The weeper had been comforted by a murmur of women, and then Mistress Dennison’s voice had broken into the whisperings. Kindly but firm. Juliana had listened as she’d dispatched the women to their beds and taken the weeper away with her.

  Apart from apprehension, which she fought to keep under control, Juliana’s main complaint was boredom. She was accustomed to an active existence, and by the third day being penned in her chamber was becoming insupportable. She had asked no questions, made no demands for her freedom, stubborn pride insisting that she not give her captors the satisfaction of seeing her dismay. She would show them that she could wait them out, and when they saw she was adamant, then they would release her.

  But on the early afternoon of the fourth day things changed. The little maid appeared in Juliana’s chamber with her arms full of silk and lace.

  “Y’are to dine downstairs, miss,” she said, beaming over the gauzy, colorful armful. “And then be presented in the drawing room.” She opened her arms, and her burdens toppled to the bed. “See what a beautiful gown Mistress Dennison ’as ’ad fashioned for ye.” She sho
ok out the folds of jade-green silk and held it up for Juliana’s inspection.

  “Take it away, Bella,” Juliana instructed. Her heart was jumping in her breast, but she thought her voice sounded reassuringly curt and firm.

  “Eh, miss, I can’t do that.” Bella stopped admiring the gown in her hands and stared at Juliana. “Mistress Dennison ’ad it made up specially for ye. It wasn’t ready till this morning, so ye’ve been kept up ’ere. But now y’are all set.” She turned enthusiastically to the pile of material on the bed. “See … fresh linen, two petticoats, silk stockings, and look at these pretty slippers. Real silver buckles, I’ll lay odds, miss! Mistress Dennison ’as only the best fer ’er girls.” She held out a pair of dainty apple-green silk shoes with high heels.

  Juliana took them in a kind of trance, measuring the heel with her finger. Her feet were unruly enough when they were flat on the ground; what they would get up to in these shoes didn’t bear thinking of.

  She dropped them onto the floor. “Would you inform Mistress Dennison that I have no intention of wearing these clothes or of being presented … or, indeed, of anything at all.”

  Bella looked aghast. “But, miss—”

  “But nothing,” Juliana said brusquely. “Now, deliver my message … and take these harlot’s garments away with you.” She gestured disdainfully to the bed.

  “Oh, no, miss, I dursn’t.” Bella dropped a curtsy and scuttled from the room.

  Juliana sat down on the window seat, ignored her pounding heart, folded her hands in her lap, and awaited developments.

  They came with the arrival of both Dennisons within ten minutes. Elizabeth, resplendent in a gown of tangerine silk over a sky-blue petticoat, sailed into the room, followed by a tall gentleman clad in a suit of canary-yellow taffeta, his hair powdered and curled.