Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03] (3 page)

He smoked the tobacco she purchased with money she’d intended for more books and drank the brandy that she’d stolen from her cousin Deirdre’s house while Deirdre and the Marquis of Brookhaven were on their honeymoon.

If someone had remarked upon the impropriety of a young lady spending such long hours unchaperoned with the likes of the notorious Lord Graham Cavendish, Sophie would have tartly retorted—if the speaker were
female, of course; if it were a man, she would probably freeze in terror, then spasmodically break something!—that Graham, being Lady Tessa’s own cousin, was practically family. Therefore such a thought was ridiculous and the thinker ought to be ashamed, etc.

It was a well-rehearsed speech and went on at length, but since no one in the world gave a fig about the virtue of one tall, plain girl with no expectations other than scholarly spinsterhood, Sophie had never had the opportunity to use it.

After all, she had no real future to lose and Graham, who took nothing and no one seriously, including Lilah, thank the gods, risked nothing by it either. Their clandestine friendship harmed no one and benefited them both greatly.

For one brief Season Sophie was determined to do precisely as she pleased—and she pleased to explore museums and libraries and play with Graham.

Matters might be different if she were serious in her search for a husband or if Graham would ever wish to marry and have an heir.

Fortunately, there was no reason why he should when his brothers intended to procreate often and well, as soon as they had slain one last elephant, bagged one final rhinoceros, taken down one more tiger—well, anyway, there was simply no reason why things could not go on forever precisely as they were.

AFTER LEAVING SOPHIE
to her early bedtime in the house on Primrose Street, Lord Graham Cavendish
strode whistling into Eden House, the London home of the Duke of Edencourt.

The Edencourt name was old and venerable and its estate vast and once beautiful, but the past few generations had failed to hold up their end of good taste and self-restraint. Now the name of Edencourt was equated with loud, boorish behavior and a predisposition for dying at the hands of liquor or firearms—sometimes both.

The house itself never changed, unless it was to gain a few more unfortunate trophies on its already cluttered walls, so Graham had long since stopped noticing the shabby conditions and the furnishings that had been elegant generations ago but now suffered mightily from the rough usage of its current residents.

The marble floors were scuffed beyond polishing and the dark wood panels and trim were gouged by things thrown or dragged against their damaged finish. The carpets were worn thin by heavy boots and the sofas were sprung by years of supporting great lounging louts who rarely bothered to sit up straight.

Graham, blinded by years of familiarity, merely came and went from the house and tried not to run into his brothers. Tonight, if he changed quickly enough, he could be at the tables within an hour. Still, as was his habit, he stopped in the entrance hall and listened for a long moment.

He heard no roaring laughter. He smelled no foul clouds of tobacco. He felt no thudding of wrestling bodies breaking the remaining furnishings into kindling.

No, the house was entirely empty except for the
skeletal staff of servants still employed. Ah yes, his family was still far, far away.

Thank God.

His father’s butler came to take Graham’s hat and gloves. Graham grinned at him. “The chest beaters are still absent, eh, Nichols?”

After forty years of service, Nichols was the duke’s man, always and forever. His usual haughty expression soured further at Graham’s impious words.

“Good evening, Lord Graham. His Grace and your elder brothers have not sent word as to their return from their hunt in Africa. However, there is a Mr. Abbott awaiting you in His Grace’s study.”

Graham blinked. “For me? Whatever for?”

“Indeed, my lord.” Nichols looked as though he could not begin to imagine why anyone would want to speak to Graham. Ever. Graham didn’t blame him for it, for the servant was only aping the attitude of the master. His own father hadn’t said more than a dozen words to him this year.

Graham reluctantly made his way to his father’s magnificently masculine study. It was a dismal place at any time, for every wall housed a menagerie of glassy-eyed, stuffed and mounted death.

During the day the room was depressing. At night Graham harkened back to his boyhood, when nothing but the threat of his father’s heavy hand could make him step foot into the darkened, fire-lit hall of gleaming, vengeful gazes reflecting the flames of the hatred he’d imagined in their eyes.

Even now, a man grown, he hesitated outside the
door, then took a deep breath and pushed it open, smiling at the young, rather exhausted-looking man waiting within. After all, the duke was not there. There was no need to brace himself.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

The tale went thusly—

On the edge of the veldt, on the dark continent of Africa, man was a soft, fragile creature out of place in a harsh, wild environment. Intelligent men moved carefully and usually lived. Stupid men, on the other hand, tended to die. Badly.

In a hunting camp in the African country of Kenya, a sun-darkened physician pushed open the canvas flap of the largest tent and stepped wearily into the circle of light created by a large central fire and several standing torches.

Three burly Englishmen awaited him outside. “How is the duke?” “Will he live?” “Bloody hell, man, speak up!”

The doctor sighed as he straightened. “I fear that the injuries His Grace suffered during the trampling by the bull elephant were too serious. He is no more.”

After a moment of stunned silence—and it was a long moment, for the three eldest sons of the Duke of Edencourt were not the quickest of men—one of the younger ones looked to the eldest, awe in his face. “You’re the duke now.”

The eldest, but alas, least intelligent of the brothers drew slowly to his greatest height. “I am the duke now. I’ll take on the estate and the title—but not until I’ve avenged my father and destroyed that killer elephant!” He raised his fist into the air. “That bull elephant must die!”

The second eldest brother, only slightly less thick-headed and nearly as drunk, nodded emphatically. “A battle to the death!”

The Kenyan guide, an experienced man of the savannah, moved to divert catastrophe. “Your Grace, my lords, this elephant is very dangerous. We should flee his territory and take your father’s body back—”

“
Flee?
” The third brother, who had until now been fostering the glimmerings of a similar thought, raised his hackles at such cowardly phrasing. “By God, man, the sons of Edencourt flee nothing!” He joined his brothers, raising his rifle high. “To the death it is!”

Alas, and so it was.

BACK IN THE
grim death-decorated study of the late Duke of Edencourt, his youngest son fancied that the eyes that surrounded him and the young, round-faced solicitor took on a feral gleam of satisfaction.

“All of them?” Graham leaned back in his chair—his father’s chair, had he but noticed—and ran one hand weakly over his face. “But of course. They were indivisible to the end. Good God. Death by self-inflicted stupidity.”

The man, Mr. Abbott, nodded. “Just so. The guide
tried to save them but only he and two of his men escaped with their lives.”

“There was nothing he could have done.” Graham waved his hand. “He couldn’t have stopped them. No one ever has.” He shook his head, still too shocked to feel anything like grief. At least, he hoped that was the case.

He’d never felt close to his father or brothers, for they were another breed of men entirely from him. Alternately ganged up on or ignored when he was young, he’d learned over time that the best way to deal with his family was to avoid them as much as possible.

When he’d gained something of reputation as a lady-killer in adulthood, he’d been offered a grudging sort of respect, for the chest beaters ever relished a hunt, any hunt. Still, the truce was always wary and short-lived on either side.

“Your Grace, I must inform you—”

Graham’s world stopped abruptly, then began to spin again with a nauseating new tilt to its axis.

Your Grace
.

He swallowed, but his throat was too dry. Reeling, he staggered to his feet and stumbled across the room where his father’s—no, now his!—whiskey decanter glimmered like amber salvation.

Graham tossed back one for the dry throat and another one to take away the taste of the first one. He poured yet another, just to look at. Then he turned back to Abbott.

“I’m the Duke of Edencourt.”

Abbott nodded. “Yes, Your Grace, you are.”

Graham moved to reseat himself in his father’s chair, then recoiled and found himself one with less weighty history. “I’m the Duke of Edencourt,” he informed his glass of whiskey. Oh, hell, it was already empty.

Abbott took it away. “Your Grace—”

“Oy! I was drinking that!”

Abbott threw it across the room, where it shattered in the fireplace. Graham blinked, realizing for the first time that Abbott wasn’t just weary. The man was tight-lipped with fury and disgust!

“Your Grace, my family has served yours as solicitors and men of business for five generations. Your grandfather never managed to pay us on time or completely, and your father never paid us at all. The advice I am about to offer you is the first and last you’ll ever get from an Abbott, so listen closely.”

Graham drew back, eyes focusing at last. “I’m listening.”

Abbott straightened, his eyes snapping in his mild face. “Waste no time in assuming your responsibilities. Your estate is in ruins and your lands lie fallow. Your people are suffering and your debt is overwhelming. For God’s sake, man, if there is not a great influx of cash to Edencourt as soon as possible, there won’t be anything left to save! The only recourse left to you is to find a rich wife and find her quickly, before it is too late. There is less than a month left of the Season. I suggest you charm her quickly and well.”

With that, Abbott turned on his heel and strode from the study and from Eden House. Graham watched him, dimly aware through his reverberating shock that with
Abbott went any hope he had of getting help with the vast and ailing estate of Edencourt.

Which he had never bothered to learn a single thing about.

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the cool glass of the window. “I’m so thoroughly buggered.”

HOW COULD EDEN
House, already empty, now seem emptier? Graham strolled the halls restlessly in the dark. Room after room, grandly shabby, had an eerie echo of desertion never noticed before. Had the mere expectation of its owner’s return populated the rooms with life? Or had Graham’s own distaste for his family kept him from feeling alone? Better alone than with them?

He was certainly alone now. The emptiness of the house, his house now, was merely a manifestation of the emptiness of his entire life. A man didn’t become a duke every day. Yet here he was, promoted beyond the bounds of his wildest dreams, had he ever bothered to dream at all, and there was no one to tell.

Except Sophie, of course. The thought comforted him. Sophie would listen to the awful story of his father’s and brothers’ end and she would see the ludicrous waste of it. Sophie would say something tart and sensible and it would be just the thing he’d been thinking at that moment. As always, he would instantly feel less alone. However, she was the only one. An entire life spent in play and only one good playfellow to show for it.

He paused in his mother’s room, a gracious chamber that had been spared the hard usage of a house full of men. The silk bed hangings were a deep rose beneath the dust, and the furniture was dainty and elegant, though Graham remembered that it had also belonged to his grandmother in her day.

Upon the dressing table was a box, an inlaid case that held a lady’s small, daily jewelry. Graham doubted his mother had owned any other kind, for the coffers had been depleted years before she’d married into the Cavendish clan. He flipped open the lid with one finger, but the case was empty. Someone had emptied it of valuables long ago, he imagined. Just what his mother would have wanted, her little treasures pawned for more adventures in fatality.

It was a very nice room, but it was just a room. Once this room had meant something to him, as it had even to his father, he imagined, for though his father had never spoken of her, the duke had never married again either. That might have been because he already had his heir along with several spares, or it might have been something deeper. Graham would have liked to believe that his father had been capable of something deeper, once upon a time.

He snorted. Probably not. His father had been precisely what he’d seemed, aggressive and coarse.

Turning to go, he grazed the edge of the little dressing table with his hip. Being rather more elderly than stable, it teetered. Graham caught it with a quick motion, but the jewel case slipped off and fell to the floor. God, he was as bad as Sophie!

He bent to sweep up the case. It had cracked along one corner, the joined wood parting in a thick dark crevice. Graham frowned as he gazed at it. It wasn’t of value to him particularly, but he hated to throw it out.

Then he saw a gleam of metal through the crack. Tilting the case, he shook it, but nothing fell. Looking more closely, he tugged at the ancient velvet lining in that corner, pulling it away to see that it had come unstuck long ago. Beneath it lay a ring of gold.

It wasn’t an especially impressive ring. The stone was diamond but not overlarge, and the simple band and setting showed no particular finesse. For all that, it was very pretty. Merely a simple, unpretentious ring, the sort a lady might enjoy wearing simply because she liked it.

Graham barely remembered his mother. She was a whiff of perfume in his mind, a softer voice amid the manly roaring. Even so, he doubted his mother would have wished him to use this bauble for a betrothal ring. It wasn’t nearly ostentatious enough to offer to a girl he hoped to make a duchess.