The Broken Duke Page 18

  He glanced at Simon. The peacemaker of their group, he had managed many a rough encounter. “I don’t suppose you’d want to accompany me on this mission?”

  Simon’s lips parted. “You would want my help?”

  Graham nodded. “You don’t know how many times I wanted to talk to you in the past few months. But now more than ever I need your counsel.”

  Simon reached out and squeezed Graham’s forearm. “Of course. After all, how could this woman even think to turn down two powerful dukes? One of whom actually has charm.”

  Graham tilted his head back and laughed, and it was like that motion bled away all the remaining vestiges of his pain and his betrayal. It reminded him of how much he loved his friend. His brother.

  “Good,” he said, rising to his feet. “Then let’s go now.”

  “Now?” Simon repeated with a laugh. “You really do love this girl.”

  “I do,” Graham said, and each time he said it, the emotion grew stronger in his chest. “So help me win her, will you?”

  Adelaide had been waiting long enough for her aunt in the parlor that she was beginning to become nervous. Especially since the home had become increasingly quiet over the past half hour. The sounds of servants bustling had faded and no one had come to check on her or see if she required refreshments.

  She could only assume that was on her aunt’s order. Which meant Opal was still angry with her.

  She drew in a deep breath at the thought. What would she do if her aunt raged at her? If she refused to forgive or to accept the future that Adelaide would now pursue?

  “I’ll leave,” she said with a sigh as she scrubbed a hand over her face. “I’ll leave and go to Graham. I’ll accept that my future is where I belong.”

  She said the words and smiled, for in that moment the future felt very bright, indeed.

  The door behind her opened, and she turned to face Opal. Her aunt was wearing the same gown she had had on when she’d come to call at James and Emma’s home earlier in the day. Only now there were smudges on it, like she had been doing some kind of work in the outfit.

  Adelaide frowned. “Good afternoon, Aunt Opal.”

  She tensed as she waited for her guardian to respond. To get angry. To lash out. Instead, her aunt merely inclined her head. “Hello, Adelaide. I’m so sorry I didn’t come sooner. I wasn’t expecting you after that terrible scene at the Duke and Duchess of Abernathe’s.”

  Adelaide drew in a short breath at the softness of her aunt’s tone. She actually did look and sound regretful. That gave Adelaide hope. “Yes. It was terrible. I’m so sorry you were upset that I went to Emma’s home. You must know I never intended to stay away forever. This is the only home I’ve known for most of my life.”

  Opal’s lip twitched and she held Adelaide’s stare for what felt like forever before she said, “Why don’t you come up to your room with me?”

  Adelaide wrinkled her brow at the odd request. “Why?”

  “I want to show you something,” Opal insisted, motioning for Adelaide to lead the way. “And talk to you, calmly this time, rationally, about what we must do for the future.”

  Adelaide pressed her lips together. She was often ill at ease with Opal, especially in the past few years, but right now she wondered at the cause for the stirring in her stomach. Opal was being sensible, after all, even kind.

  Adelaide nodded at last. “Very well. Let’s go to my chamber.”

  She walked up the stairs with Opal beside her, passing by portraits of family members on the wall. Opal hesitated beside the one of Adelaide’s parents. “My dear brother,” she said with a sigh. “And his lovely wife. They cared for me so deeply. They tried to save me.”

  Adelaide wrinkled her brow. In the entire decade and a half that she had lived under her aunt’s roof, she could count on one hand the times Opal had spoken of Adelaide’s parents. When she had, it wasn’t with the wistfulness her tone presented now.

  “Save you?” she repeated. “That’s an odd turn of phrase. How did they do that?”

  Opal ignored her and started up the stairs again. “What happened today is very likely something we can’t cover up, Adelaide. Not like the last time.”

  Adelaide flinched at the comparison of Graham to a man who had left her after one unpleasant night together. “No, you are probably right,” she said softly. “But the circumstances are very different. You see…” She took a deep breath, uncertain how her aunt would respond to her next words. “Graham is going to marry me,” she pushed out at last.

  They had reached the top of the stairs then, and her aunt froze and turned on her, her eyes wide. “Is that what he’s said?”

  “Yes. He asked me after you left, and I agreed. So you see, it isn’t as bad as you thought it was in the parlor this morning. This time I have found myself with a very decent man. One who will not abandon me.”

  Her aunt nodded slowly and continued into the bedchamber. Adelaide looked around. It was a simple room, yes. Her aunt had never encouraged her to decorate it overly much. But it had been hers for a long time, and she didn’t hate the place.

  Opal paced to the window and looked down over the garden in the back of the house. “When you marry, he will want heirs. Spares.”

  Adelaide found herself smiling at the thought of starting a family with Graham. Of him becoming the father he had never had. Of looking into her children’s eyes and seeing all the echoes of the man she loved. All the best of both of them.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m certain we will. He has obligations, of course. And I would want to be a mother.”

  Opal pursed her lips. “Then it will not stop.”

  Adelaide wrinkled her brow in confusion. “Will not stop?” she repeated. “Aunt Opal, I came back here today to tell you of my impending marriage, but also to ask if you will support it. You are my only living family, after all. I know we’ve had our differences and that I’ve let you down with my behavior, but I do want your blessing.”

  Opal moved toward her a step. “Your only family,” she repeated with a shake of her head. “My, how right you are. More right than you even know.”

  The hairs on Adelaide’s neck began to prickle as she stared at her calm aunt. Far too calm considering the morning’s outburst. Suddenly her room didn’t feel as safe as it once had, and she began to question if coming here was so very wise.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” she whispered, looking toward the door.

  Opal sighed. “I know. And I thought I might not ever have to tell you. But it seems I must. To end this, I must have it all out.”

  “What all out?”

  Opal motioned toward the settee. “Sit.”

  It was an order, not a request, and her aunt was blocking her way to the exit. Adelaide had no choice, it seemed, but to obey. She sank into the settee and folded her suddenly trembling hands in her lap.

  “I was like you,” Opal began. “When I was young. Foolish and headstrong. And I met a young man and I thought he was a knight in shining armor. That he would sweep me away.”

  Adelaide’s lips parted in surprise. “I’ve seen your portraits from when you were young. You were so beautiful. I’m not surprised that you had suitors, but we’ve never spoken of them.”

  “This man was not a suitor,” her aunt spat, a flash of anger to her tone and her eyes. “He was a thief in the night, come to seduce an innocent girl and steal what she should never have given.”

  Adelaide straightened. “Are you speaking of the young man who took my virtue?” she asked, utterly confused.

  “No, the one who took mine,” Opal replied. Her lips began to tremble. “I did not give, but he took.”

  Adelaide shut her eyes, understanding at last. She thought of Melinda, her battered face, her haunted eyes. She thought of a dozen other women she knew who had been subject to such abuse. She thought of Sir Archibald’s fat hands on her, of that moment when she’d known her fate before Graham burst through the door like some hero in a stor
y to save her.

  “I’m so very sorry, Aunt Opal,” she breathed. “I had no idea you suffered such a thing.”

  Opal’s gaze was far away, years away. “Oh yes, I suffered. My father cut me off, as I presented no more hope for a good match. And when I began to swell with that bastard’s child, I was forced to go into seclusion in my brother’s home.”

  Adelaide stared. This was not a story she knew. Not a story anyone had told her. “You had a child?”

  Opal jerked out one nod. “I did. No one knew. My brother and his wife hid what I’d done from the world. And when the baby came…they pretended.”

  Her aunt’s words sank in, and Adelaide rose from the couch, her hands shaking as all the blood rushed from her face and made her dizzy with horror and understanding. “Pretended? Are you saying…are you saying that your brother and his wife took in the child? Pretended the baby was their own?”

  “I didn’t want you,” Opal hissed, rising as well and glaring at Adelaide. “I looked at you and I saw that horrible night. A reminder of him.”

  Adelaide lifted a hand to her lips. “You are lying,” she said. “You are deranged. They were my parents. No one ever hinted otherwise. I was theirs.”

  Opal shook her head. “No, you were mine. You stole my future and my hopes, and I loved you and hated you so very much.”

  Adelaide was shaking so hard, she was hardly able to stay upright. She stared at her aunt. Oh, she’d always seen the similarities between them. The faint reminder that her aunt’s hair had been blonde before she went gray. The hands that were the same. The lips.

  But she’d always chalked those things up being family. She’d never thought, not once, not ever, that the woman who raised her, who held her at arm’s length, who gave her only the bare minimum of support, was her mother.

  “If that is true, why did you take me when they died?” she whispered, her voice cracking on every word, because the truth of what was being said was starting to sink into her body, her skin, her soul.

  It was tearing her apart piece by piece.

  “Because no one else wanted you. And I knew that their deaths were my penance being forced back on me. So I took you. And I prayed you wouldn’t be like him.”

  “Him?” Adelaide’s stomach turned as she comprehended what Opal meant. “How can you compare me to a man who forced himself on you?”

  “You are a wanton, Adelaide!” her aunt roared. “You were for that boy, that boy who came mooning about. I saw what you were then. I thought I could stop it by stopping him.”

  “Stopping him,” Adelaide repeated, backing up a step. “What does that mean? How did you stop him? He left.”

  Her aunt shook her head slowly. “I let you believe that, hoping that you would recognize your true nature and work to better yourself. To rise above your natural tendencies.”

  “What did you do?” Adelaide asked.

  “I killed him,” Opal said. “I killed him.”

  Adelaide staggered backward, as far as she could from her aunt. Until her back hit the window, until there was nowhere else to run. No way to hide from the horror that her aunt spewed at her.

  “No,” she said. “No, that isn’t possible.”

  “It very much is.” Her aunt was nodding and nodding, like her head was on a hinge. “You pay a man enough and he’ll help you get rid of a body and make it look like he left London of his own volition. So I did.”

  Adelaide covered her mouth with both hands, praying she wouldn’t cast up her accounts then and there. She thought of that man, Charlie, who she had taught herself to hate. Taught herself to forget because she’d believed he’d used and discarded her.

  Now she knew better.

  “Poor Charlie,” she sobbed. “Oh God, Aunt Opal, how could you?”

  “So you would stop!” her aunt burst out. “I had to make you stop. And you did, for a long time. You wore the clothing to cover your shame, you stood along the wall as you should. You hid away as was your destiny. But then he appeared.”

  “Graham,” Adelaide whispered, and came forward a long step. “You will not hurt him, Opal. I’ll not let you. You will not hurt a hair on his head.”

  “No,” her aunt agreed, walking across the room. She picked up a small statue that she’d given Adelaide years ago. A figure of Persephone, forever torn between two worlds. Forever punished by both her lover and her mother.

  Now Adelaide stared at it, and everything made such perfect sense.

  “I’m not going to hurt him,” her aunt continued as she moved forward. “Because I realize that it is you who must be silenced. Stopped. Or else you will make more spawn like you who will only do worse. We are damaged women, Adelaide. And the only way to stop it is to die.”

  She swung the statue, and Adelaide lifted her hands with a scream. But she couldn’t block the heavy statue as it hit her in the side of the head. She slid down the wall staring up at her aunt, her mother. The world was spinning, going black. She had to fight it, had to stop it, but it was too powerful. Too strong.

  And she slipped into unconsciousness with one thought in her mind.

  Graham.

  Chapter Twenty

  Graham and Simon were laughing as they turned their mounts into the drive of Lady Opal’s small but fine London home. Graham couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so light. He loved Adelaide, he had reunited with Simon and if all went well, he could even find a way to manage Opal so that Adelaide could still have some family. But as they approached the house, his smile fell.

  “That’s James’s carriage,” he said, pointing at the stable, where a carriage was parked. There were no other servants around it, but he recognized the crest and his friend’s driver leaning against the wheel as he smoked.

  Simon looked at him. “Would James have a reason to come here? Perhaps to talk to Lady Opal as we’ve planned?”

  Graham’s heart had begun to pound as the two men swung down on the drive. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t think it’s James who had the carriage take him here. I think it’s Adelaide.”

  Simon looked up at the house. “By now we should have had footmen coming down, the butler opening the door. It’s awfully quiet.”

  “Too quiet,” Graham agreed. “Damn it, I hope she didn’t come here by herself. Her aunt is…troubled.”

  “Is she capable of hurting Adelaide?” Simon asked.

  Graham nodded and his chest hurt. “Yes.”

  “Come on,” Simon insisted, taking the stairs up to the door two at a time. “No time to waste.”

  Graham passed him at full speed and didn’t stop to knock on the door. He pushed at it and growled as he found it locked. He leaned back and kicked, once, twice, and the lock gave way, throwing the door inward into an eerily quiet foyer that was thick with smoke.

  “Christ!” Simon said, waving his hand. “The house is on fire! I’ll have James’s man call for the brigade, then I’ll come in to help you search.”

  But Graham didn’t answer. He leapt into the hazy foyer, ducking low to try to get beneath the worst of the cloying, choking smoke.

  “Adelaide!” he called out, panic gripping him. She was here. He knew it, he sensed it down to his bones. She was here and this fire was no accident, not if the lack of servants was any indication.

  “Adelaide!” he screamed, choking as the smoke filled his lungs. He rushed up the stairs, though he had no idea if she was up or down. But the smoke was filling the space, and he knew it would rise before it fully took over the lower levels. His best bet was to start at the top and hope.

  He came around the corner into the hallway at the top of the stairs and skidded to a halt. A fire had been set right in front of a door, and it licked up the walls and across the barrier.

  Adelaide’s room. He could have bet on it. He rushed forward, stomping at the growing flames as he tried to reach the door.

  “Adelaide!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

  For a moment there was silence, and then a weak voic
e on the other side of the door. “Graham! Graham, please.”

  He gave no more thought to the flames, to the danger. Adelaide was in that room and he rushed forward, ignoring the searing pain as the fire licked at his clothing and his skin. He kicked this door as he’d kicked the other, and it flew open.

  What he saw inside nearly stopped his heart. Flames crawled along the walls, and in the middle of the room, tied to a chair, was Adelaide. Her blonde hair was down around her face, there was a huge cut across her temple that left trails of blood through the soot from the fire. She lifted her head, her gaze bleary from smoke and her injury.

  “Help me,” she whispered, her voice almost not carrying in the hot room.

  He leapt to her, untying her from the chair before he gathered her up against his chest and ran through the room, where the beams above creaked under the weight of their disintegrating wood, through the flaming door that was hot as hell. He ducked low, racing down the stairs and out the front door where he took in a gulp of air.

  Simon was already outside helping neighboring servants as they fought the flames with a bucket brigade. Graham rushed Adelaide away from the house and set her down on the grass beyond the drive gingerly.

  “She’s not breathing!” he screamed as the truth of it became clear. “Help me!”

  Simon dropped down next to him, staring at the motionless body of the love of Graham’s life. He looked as helpless as Graham felt. “Lucas wrote to me once,” Simon said, his gaze lighting up. “About sharing breath with an injured person. Put your mouth on hers and breathe into her.”

  Graham lifted her, positioning his mouth over hers as he gently blew air past her lips. Once, twice, but she didn’t stir. Three times as tears stung his eyes, dripped down his cheeks.

  “Please,” he begged before he gave her one last long gust.

  To his pure relief, she coughed, turning her head as she gasped and dragged in great gulps of clean air. He collapsed down next to her, pulling her against him, pressing kisses to her bloody and grimy face as the fire burned behind them and destroyed everything but the most important thing in the world.