Passion (7 page)

“You know nothing of my family.” His nostrils
flared.

“I know little, true. I know the Duke of
Eastland arrived in town days ago after two years of morning.” She
heard his snort but added, “And the Earl of Stoneleigh, Jules, is
more popular in society than men twice his age. His fortune and
looks apparently inspire awe amid his peers. I know—the Viscount,
Captain Blaise LeClair has retired from the Navy—due to being
wounded. Some rag reports that he is blind and in seclusion—-“

“Save your provocations for Stratton,” Raith
uttered icily. “As I say, you know nothing.”

Provocation? Yes, she was pushing him,
although had no sane reason why, save she discovered even females
had their (dangerous) moods. “I assumed your icy character formed
when you lost your Suzette. But now, I gather it was already—“

“Don’t speak of her!” Raith took a step
towards her. His face a picture of chilly anger. “Do not probe that
hell, Gabriella. You will regret it.”

“Is she of any more import than my mother?”
Tara snarled, her body shaking suddenly, feeding off his own
darkness. “At least Suzette died more quickly than the drawn out
agony—“

He was across the room in seconds, his hands
gripping her arms. Glaring down, Raith shook her twice with
violence. “She was my wife, God damn you! Barely eighteen years
old. He tortured her and then slaughtered her like an animal! She
was my wife.” He rasped like burning coals, “And she died with the
horror and terror burned forever into her eyes!”

Gabriella tried to grasp his arms, her voice
less forceful from the hell in his eyes, “Raith, I—“

He shoved her back so suddenly and brutal,
that she landed on the bed.

The door crashed against the frame at his
exit.

Laying there, panting, trembling, Gabriella
finally rolled and buried her face in the coverlet, her fingers
digging into it tightly. God. Oh God. What is suddenly wrong with
me? I knew that. I knew what he saw from the papers. What is wrong
with me that I throw that torment in his face? We are here, so
close to finishing it, and suddenly, I lash out, I provoke and
probe his worst pain. I do not know myself anymore. I do not know
who I have become, or did not, until these moments….

She had not known herself still capable of
tears, but she wept…Gabriella wept, most of that night.

She knew when he left and escaped into his
shadows and hell. She did not want to think she may be mad from her
own year’s long obsession, but she was what he had made her, what
they created together. Perhaps…she was bound more to Raith LeClair
himself, than she was that past now…

Upper Brook Street. London England.

His Grace Artis Le Clair, Duke of Eastland’s
residence.

Jules arrived at his father’s mansion at the
exact hour of the summons. Handing over his caped coat and hat to
the butler, he headed towards the study, boot heels ringing on the
high polished marble floor, whilst he was idly glancing around at
the décor, nearly coming up short as it dawned on him that it had
changed. Gone were the twelve foot gold edged pillars the Duchess
insisted should line the grand entry. Instead, the green-papered
walls were visible with discreet seating, a pair of emerald
upholstered chairs and settee, near the far wall, facing a bank of
windows.

Clusters of priceless art no longer hung in
the short hall either. He frowned with some mystification before
knocking on the folding doors. He knew Eastland’s fortune was
secure, thus, he could only assume his father had other reasons for
toning down the ostentatious décor.

“Enter.”

He opened the pocketed doors and stepped
inside his father’s domain, the only room he recalled that his
mother never entered nor touched. Here was a chamber that mimicked
the Duke’s country house, one of wood-paneled walls, shelves of
books, supple leather furnishings, and well-tread carpets.

“Your Grace.” He bowed, having reached the
desk his father sat at, just beside the half-opened French doors
that splashed a bit of rain in, no other lord would allow to ruin
his rugs.

Artis set the pipe he had lit in a stand.

Jules' held his posture, hands relaxed at his
sides and body straight under that dark-eyed scrutiny. Although
they had not seen each other since the Duchess’s funeral—a strained
affair to say the least, he could not say the years had been unkind
to Artis, for he actually looked more…alive, than in the years
before.

The Duke’s hair was silver, thick, worn
tapered to the nape, his face bearing those aristocratic assets
that all his sons got some component of. Save for the color to his
skin, which attested to his years of rusticating, he looked the
epitome of English peer in his wine coat, white shirt and buff
breeches. The shorter colorful silk neck cloth—a dash of casualness
the older gents indulged in during the earlier hours.

“How have you been?” The Duke asked.

“Well, your Grace.”

Those silver brows pulled down. Jules saw the
up, and down look, his father gave him afterwards and raised his
own sooty brow.

Making a short, snorting noise, his father
waved a hand and sighed. “Sit down, Jules.”

Placing a hand on the back of a chair facing
the desk, Jules stepped around it and sat. He attended his father,
hiding his reaction to another silence whilst the Duke puffed his
pipe and looked him over rather pensively.

The pipe emitted a cloud of smoke before
Artis set it aside again, then leaned back, relaxed in his chair.
“Have you seen your brother, Blaise, yet?”

“No. Your Grace.”

“Why not?”

The sharpness of that caught Jules off guard,
but he supplied evenly, “I have yet to receive an invitation to the
Viscount’s residence.”

Staring at him, Artis murmured, “Are you
telling me that you’ve not made an effort to see your brother at
all in—what, eight years?”

“I have seen him, Your Grace. On several
occasions, years ago. We did attend several—“

The Duke shot to his feet, his hand rubbing
his nape as he growled, “That’s not what I mean.” He strode to the
French doors.

Having gotten to his own feet, Jules offered,
“I take it I have displeased you, sir.”

“Can we not drop the damned formality,
Jules?” Artis gruffed and glanced aside at him. “Sit down or stand
if you like, but for God sakes, if we’re going to have a
conversation, stop bloody Your Gracing me. I’m your father.”

Never having had a dressing down because he’d
always been aware, thanks to his mother and others, of who and what
he must be, nor having seen anything akin to affection, warmth, or
anything else from the distant duke—

Jules held his stare through several tics of
the clock, before he drawled with coolness, “You’ll forgive me
then, if I need a moment to discern just what it is (that)
suggests, by your definition. Unless memory fails me, and I doubt
it does, there is nothing unusual in my…address to you. Nor, in the
fact that any of your sons lack some sort of— intimate
brotherhood.”

“Do not condescend to me, my boy,” the Duke
retorted, not harsh but rather tiredly. He came to stand close to
Jules and looked him right in the eye. “I know my failings and I
know what I gave up and sacrificed and allowed to take place in
your life, and your brothers.”

Discomforted and yet oddly held by the look
on his father’s face, the words he was speaking, the last thing
Jules expected was for the Duke to reach out and touch his arm.

He almost flinched from it, but his Grace was
saying, “There’s no need for me to explain your mother, we all
lived with her, but that doesn’t excuse my distance and lack of
affection towards any of you. All that I can say is that I am
sorry. I thought I did it for Raith…and I am sure you know that the
Duchess was not his mother. I thought that was why— but I am not so
sure that Matilda would have been any different had I never
fathered him.”

Jules had no reply. He had found his way much
too early in life, to his own island.

However, the Duke was persistent. He slightly
squeezed with those fingers resting on Jules’s arm. “Explaining her
doesn’t excuse me and my emotional isolation. I am damned sorry,
Jules. More than you will ever know. I am proud of you. Proud, that
despite the mess of a life I helped create, you turned into such a
well-respected and responsible man. A true peer.”

Jules felt tension crawl over him. When his
father dropped his hand, he made his way to the sideboard, pouring
a brandy whilst his Grace fetched his pipe.

Brandy in hand, Jules sat on the edge of the
desk, drinking half down, whilst watching Artis by the French
doors.

“I went to see Lord Coulborne yester
eve.”

Jules swallowed a mouthful. “Did you? I was
not aware his Grace was a great acquaintance of yours.”

“We had reason to trust each other…years ago,
and have found a comfortable friendship.” Those dark eyes
considered him through a waft of pipe smoke.

The tension increased although Jules was hard
pressed to define why. It was doubtless the blasted way his father
scrutinized him…and his own anxiety over being blackmailed.

“He informs me you intend to ask for his
daughter, Lady Caroline’s hand.”

“That was my intention?”

“Might I ask you to delay such a move?”

Jules stared at him sharply. “And why would I
do that?”

Artis turned completely and uttered, “Because
I want you to do something for me—for all of us, before you settle
down into marriage and your own family.”

Jules cocked his brow.

“I want you to go see Blaise, and invite him
here, and to find your brother, Raith.”

“Why—would you imagine I am interested in or
care to gather your scattered flock? I don’t remember either male
you speak of being particularly interested in being found—or being
in my presence.”

Artis seemed to flinch. “Are you really as
cold as you look, Jules. Are you as much like your mother as you
sound at this moment?”

Jules straightened from the desk, finished
the drink, and strode over to put down the glass. He had every
intention of leaving, having recoiled from such a comparison.

“I have not dismissed you.”

At his father’s bark, Jules spun and eyed his
sire with even frostier green eyes. “With all due respect, Your
Grace. I am well past the age or inclination of needing your
approval of my actions, caring of your suppositions of my
character, or having an interest in any quest for mending your
relationships—or lack thereof, with your sons.”

“As you say, Jules.” Artis nodded with more
calmness than Jules expected. “I have only what you will indulge
me. I begged only once before in my life, and that was to your
mother—on my knees.”

Jules felt queasy imagining such a thing. His
father, for all his faults, was a dignified man.

“Yes. I did that, so that she would allow me
to have Raith, to raise him. It still was not enough. She made us
all pay—made you, the innocent pay. Although as I said, I do not
think she had the capacity to love or be affectionate to anyone. My
sins did not help. My emotional absence—self-preservation, I
thought it, did not help.”

Artis walked to the desk and deposited the
pipe. He raked a hand through his hair, then let it drop, gazing at
the desktop. He husked, “Do you know where he is, Jules.
Raith?”

“I did, once,” Jules supplied tightly. “I
knew that when he left home he found work in summerset on an estate
there, and later on the docks, in Liverpool.”

“Did you know he wed?”

“No. I had not heard that.”

Artis looked at him, his eyes showing pain.
“She was murdered…terribly butchered.”

Jules felt a wave of shock roll through him.
“When?”

“Not long after the marriage. She…they, must
have… lived in town, for she washed up on the Thames. I do not
know….someone…someone sent me a missive. I have no clue who it was,
but…”

Jules cut in, “Mother lied to him. I heard
her. She told him that you’d used your influence to falsify the
documents of his inheritance—that he was born from your raping a
maid who’d taken her life…that you ignored him because you wanted
him sent away, and she’d been the one to decide to keep him.”

Artis sighed and sat down on the edge of the
desk. “I know. Pour me a whiskey, will you, my boy?” He looked at
his hands that were not steady.

Jules poured it, and one for himself. He took
it over and handed it to his father. His own, he carried to the
French doors, now needing air and feeling a kind of sinister finger
touch his spine. “I knew she lied, because I’d seen the letters you
exchanged with Raith’s uncle. But I had my own reasons for not
defending you—or enlightening him.”

“I don’t blame you, Jules. You had no more
except titles and wealth than your brothers did. Matilda did her
best to drive any joy, emotion, or warmth, out of all of our lives.
And, I let her get by with it. I do not blame you. If not that lie,
she would have driven him away by other means. She was furious that
he inherited anything. She loathed the sight of him. Of us all, I
suppose.”

Jules shrugged but inwardly mused that he was
being blackmailed—possibly on the brink of ruin, if not scandal,
and any prospect of marriage would certainly vanish with that sort
of implication. Raith’s wife had been murdered. Blaise might well
be blind for the rest of his life. Bloody hell. What curse was upon
them all, that they could not escape that remoteness and
darkness?

With whiskey still burning his throat, Artis
said at last, “I would not blame you, of course, if you simply
chose to wed and get on with your life. Make more of it, than those
before you have. You’ve certainly the sort of rep and esteem among
our peers that few can achieve.”