The Duke of Dark Desires Read online

  “I knew that, almost from the beginning, but it’s not important. You never lied about anything that really matters.” He smiled faintly. “Except for a small sin of omission.”

  “Small?”

  “I’m glad you didn’t stride into Fortescue House and announce that you had come to kill me. We would never have known each other. If I die tonight I will be a better and happier man for knowing you.”

  “I will not be cozened with sweet words.”

  “I have too much respect for you to try. You will hear no more untruths and evasions from me. I ask only that you accord me the same privilege.”

  She sniffed fiercely and swiped her eyes with the back of her free hand. “What do you want to know?”

  “How did you escape?”

  She climbed to the floor and stood just out of reach, her knife still poised. He could have told her she had nothing to fear from him, but she wouldn’t believe him. Her eyes, wild and wary, never left his face as she told him a story about switched papers that made no sense to him.

  “We bribed the member of the committee for passports for your father, mother, and three daughters,” he said. “Your governess was never mentioned to me.”

  “She had left us a month earlier. I later discovered that my father arranged for her to be carried from Normandy to England by a smuggler, the same man who brought me over. That way she did not need her passport or her identification papers.”

  If this business with the governess’s papers had been part of Smith’s plan, Julian had been even more ignorant than he thought. “What happened next?”

  “We were ready to leave the next morning when the guards arrived.”

  “I had already left Paris with the pictures.”

  “I do not suppose you wished to stay once you had what you had come for.” Her voice dripped derision.

  “No,” he said. He scorned to offer a defense for the indefensible, yet he couldn’t help asking, “Did the marquis say who betrayed you?”

  “Until the last minute he insisted that you would not. ‘Mr. Fortescue is a noble Englishman,’ he said. But when the knock came at the door he knew.”

  “He was right,” Julian said hoarsely. “I swore on my honor that your family would be safe but I lied. Even if I did not inform on you to the committee, I might as well have.”

  She hardly seemed to hear him. Although she kept her dagger poised, her eyes were distant. “The company of guards marched into our beautiful house. Mathieu Picard was their captain and he asked to see our papers. ‘I was told there are three daughters. Who are you?’ he asked me. ‘I am the governess,’ I replied, just as Maman had told me.” Her cheeks shone with tears. “I denied them. I denied my family.”

  “You did what you were supposed to.” The truth, but weak, inadequate words against the searing pain of her confession.

  “We were marched to La Force, led through the streets with crowds jeering at us as filthy aristos. When we reached the prison, Mathieu grabbed my hand. ‘You’ve done nothing. You are a woman of the people and may come with me.’ I couldn’t even kiss them good-bye.”

  The last words were wrenched out through gusty breaths. Tears poured down her face and her body heaved with silent sobs. It was agony not to take her in his arms. Julian didn’t doubt that in her distress it would be easy to take away her knife but what was the point? He was the last person who could offer her any comfort.

  So he let her grieve and reflected on the supreme irony that when, for the first time in his life, he had fallen in love, it was with a woman who wanted to kill him. But he’d always known he deserved to pay for his sins. If Jane would let him, he’d make what reparation he could. Or he’d allow her to plunge her knife into his heart.

  Stifling her tears with huge, inelegant sniffs, she couldn’t be less like the elegant and self-possessed Jane Grey that he admired, and he didn’t care. He coveted every minute he had with her. There was so much more he wished to know about her, so many more times he wanted to make love to her. If all he had left was ten minutes with a weeping avenger, so be it. But perhaps he could persuade her to prolong their time together.

  “Why did you stay with Picard?” he asked, once he judged her composed enough to speak.

  She wiped her nose on her sleeve. The storm of grief had subsided and she seemed almost meek. “Mathieu knew who I was. I was too young to be a governess, but he wanted me so he pretended to believe me. What he did was very dangerous and could have cost him his life.”

  “A man with any decency would have let you go.”

  “To do what?” she demanded, with a flash of spirit. “I was fifteen years old and the daughter of a marquis. I would never have survived alone. Do you know how I found out he knew? He was kind at first, found me a room and asked nothing of me. The landlady said I could pay my rent by helping around the house. I knew nothing of cleaning or cooking or laundry and she became impatient. She was suspicious too, because she believed I was English and she knew I had worked for the nobility. One day she wanted me to come with her to see the latest executions. Things were becoming more violent, more dangerous in Paris, and I feared she would denounce me if I refused. But Mathieu came that morning and he said he would take me and find me a place with a good view. Instead he took me to his lodging. He told me that my parents were already dead and my sisters were to be killed that day and he knew I wouldn’t wish to see it. That was the night I became his mistress.”

  Julian couldn’t bring himself to admit that he had been there. That he’d made himself watch as the two youngest and most innocent victims of his mistake lost their heads. It had been the worst day of his life and haunted his dreams for years.

  Instead of making her cry again, recounting this terrible tale boosted her determination. “Call me a putain if you wish. I used Mathieu, just as I used Henri after Mathieu died.”

  “I would never think that of you,” he said softly.

  She scowled at him. “But always I was waiting and planning and saving money so that I could come to England and find Mr. Fortescue.”

  “I understand.”

  “No you do not. You know nothing. Perhaps you didn’t mean for us all to die. But you took what you wanted with no thought of the consequences.” She knew him too well, this extraordinary woman. In dead of night, in the cocoon of light provided by the sole flickering candle, she looked at him and saw through to his worthless soul.

  “It made me angry that you didn’t know your good fortune in having sisters who live and breathe with heads attached to their necks. But now I understand why. You always told me you were selfish, and you are.”

  Her words scourged him and he offered no excuse. She examined him stretched out before her, her eyes running the length of his body from the neck to feet and back again. She changed the way she held the knife so that she would stab upward instead of down, a more powerful grip and more lethal. He forced himself to remain still and closed his eyes. He wouldn’t even beg for his life by telling her how much he loved her or asking her to forgive him. He did not deserve the indulgence. His greatest regret was that she would pay for his death and he wouldn’t be there to protect her from the consequences of her crime.

  Leave as soon as the deed is done, Jane, and run far, far away, he silently urged her as his chest lay bare, a willing sacrifice to her blade. If his death afforded her a measure of satisfaction and future peace of mind, it was worth it.

  He felt her touch his hair—for the last time—then a tightness in his scalp. She must have seized a handful, pulling it taut. The first time they’d made love she’d told him she loved his hair. That whole night was a sublime final memory to accompany him to perdition.

  Expecting a stab to the chest or a slice across the throat, instead his ears were assaulted by a sawing noise and the pressure eased. His eyes flew open to find her brandishing a long coil of the black hair that hadn’t been cut short since the day he was sent down from Oxford. She laid down the lock and took up another. He sat up to giv
e her access to the back. Neither said a word until most of his hair lay like a dark nest on the white sheet, only the final strand clenched in Jane’s fist.

  “Why?” he rasped.

  “I love your sisters and I cannot kill their brother.” She held his hair to her cheek and his heart pounded. “And I find I cannot kill the man I thought I loved. I am too weak.”

  He took a deep breath. “Be strong and live. Marry me. Let me take care of you and atone for my sins.”

  She laughed without mirth. “Did you know that I was supposed to be a duchess? I was betrothed at birth to Comte Etienne de Fleurigny, heir to a dukedom. Perhaps I am still.”

  “I’ll make you a duchess. I won’t ask anything of you, only that you let me make meager reparation for what I did.” It was no way to propose marriage but he doubted a man had ever offered his hand with greater fervor.

  She cocked her head and pretended to consider his proposal. “I could make you very unhappy, but it would be too easy.” She waved his hair at him. “I am Delilah to your Samson and I will find a way to take away your strength and destroy you. I’ll enjoy your ruin more if you are alive to feel it.”

  Now that he knew who she was, it was no surprise that she could curtsey with both grace and insolence when armed and clad only in a nightgown. “Good night, Your Grace. Until we meet again.”

  The door closed, just as the candle sputtered its last drop of wax. He smiled into the darkness.

  Jane/Jeanne had made a big mistake in letting him live. The passivity with which he had offered her his breast on the altar of penitence had vanished. Perhaps she could ruin him, and she was welcome to try. But someone else, maybe Radcliffe, maybe another, was even more to blame than himself. Here and now he appointed himself Jane’s avenger. He would hunt down and kill whoever betrayed the Fallerons.

  And then he would convince her that they belonged together forever. Anything less was unacceptable.

  Chapter 19

  After a sleepless night, Jane crept down the passage, past Denford’s rooms, to the other end of the wing where most of the guests were housed.

  Half expecting the room to be empty, its occupant sleeping with Lady Belinda, she saw the shadow of a single body in the bed and heard a gentle snoring. “Louis,” she whispered. He stirred. She opened the curtain a crack, drew near to the bed, and shook his shoulder. “Réveille-toi, Louis.”

  “Belinda?” he said drowsily, rolled over and grabbed her.

  “Non, non.” She beat him off and stepped out of reach. He sat up abruptly, rubbing his eyes. “Je ne suis pas Milady Belinda. C’est moi, Jeanne, ta cousine,” she said, hoping that hearing her speak French would jog his memory.

  “Mon Dieu! It’s the crazy governess.” Wide awake now, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Get away from me!”

  She stepped three paces back and raised her arms to show that she was harmless. “I know it is a shock to you,” she said, continuing to speak French, “but take a good look at me. Ask me any questions you want.”

  Apparently accepting that she hadn’t come to attack him, he lowered his arms and regarded her sullenly. While her opinion of him, colored by her mother’s attitude, wasn’t high, he surely couldn’t fail to delight in a reunion with a close relation. He was a French nobleman, after all, and a Falleron. As far as she knew they were the sole remnants of a great family.

  “If you are Jeanne, explain how you escaped the guillotine.” Louis’s brown eyes were hard and shrewd and she recalled now that they had never softened when he was apparently charming his young cousins.

  She repeated the story she’d told Julian, adding little details about the Fallerons to make her tale convincing. No one but a family member would know about the bichon puppy Mou-Mou, or where the dog’s basket lived, or be able to describe the secretary desk with the secret drawer in Maman’s private sitting room.

  Louis responded to a recitation that threatened her serenity with steely composure. “I find this business with the switched papers incredible. Why would your father make such an arrangement?”

  “The question has troubled me all these years. The only explanation is that someone else was supposed to come with us, pretending to be Antoinette.”

  “Who? Why would he go to such trouble to get another small girl out of Paris?”

  “I don’t know.” Jane rubbed her eyes, gritty from weeping and lack of sleep. “None of it has ever made sense, this bizarre chance that saved my life. But I tell you what I do know. It was the Duke of Denford who betrayed us.”

  Louis’s thick brows knitted. “Now I know that you are mad!”

  “No, listen! Denford was only a Mr. Fortescue then, and he was supposed to arrange to get us out of Paris. My father trusted him. The night before, Maman was very worried, but I heard him telling her that Mr. Fortescue would never fail them. In the morning, when the soldiers arrived to arrest us, he said that we had been betrayed by the man he trusted the most.” She came closer and took his hand. “You must help me, Louis. Denford must pay for his crimes. We will work together to disgrace him in the eyes of the world. I know things about him. He wants to sell his collection to the King of England. We can let everyone know that the pictures were stolen, that he is a man without honor. We can make his name a scandal. Together we can do this.”

  For the first time, Jane felt she had given him pause. He stroked his chin and looked at her with greater attention. Soon, she was confident, he would match her features to his recollection of his eldest cousin. “Hand me my dressing gown, please. I am not convinced, mind you. I have some more questions.”

  “Anything.”

  He drew the curtains to flood the room with morning light and stared at her hard, without giving any sign of recognition. “What have you been doing since then?”

  This was the part she had been dreading. “I lived in Paris as Jane Grey.”

  “What did you live on?”

  She held her chin up and told herself that she had nothing to be ashamed of. “The captain of the guard who arrested us looked after me.”

  Louis smiled unpleasantly. “So you spent almost nine years as the mistress of a sans culottes pig?”

  “Three. He was killed in the invasion of Italy.”

  “And then?”

  “I had a new protector, an official of the Directoire and later the Consulat.”

  “Putain.”

  The word was such a slap that she put her hand to her cheek. “I had to.”

  “A true Falleron would never have whored herself to Jacobin peasant scum. She would have died rather. I suppose you are Denford’s whore too, but you have turned on him and want me to help you get back at him.”

  Jane narrowed her eyes. She knew now that it was a mistake to expect Louis to do anything that wasn’t in his interest. He’d make no real effort to establish if she was his cousin because he didn’t care. “Think, Louis. I can help you bring suit against Denford to win back the pictures. I can testify to his fraud.”

  “Even if you were Jeanne de Falleron, I wouldn’t need you. Radcliffe has legal matters arranged and he’s going to pay me a good sum for the collection.”

  “You would sell them? Our patrimony?” she asked, outraged.

  “My patrimony. You bear a slight resemblance to Jeanne, but that is all. I believe you met the real Miss Grey somewhere and she told you all about our family and lent you her name.”

  “No, that is not so! I never saw her again. I don’t even know if she is in England. She may be dead.”

  “Perhaps you are a servant from the Hôtel Falleron who managed to escape to England. Who knows? Truly I don’t care. I am the last of the Fallerons, and by pretending to be my cousin you prey on my grief.” Louis quivered with self-righteous indignation and crocodile tears.

  Jane could have asked what he’d been doing for the last nine years. Not starving apparently. Perhaps he had been living off his good looks and the affections of wealthy women like Lady Belinda. So much for his moral indignation over
her survival.

  Before she committed the crime of assaulting a French marquis, she left his room, reflecting that one can make plans for years and discover it is all for naught because nothing is the way you expected.

  Jane had always imagined that when she discovered the identity of Mr. Fortescue, no one would know who she was and how they were connected. With any luck she’d be able to take him by surprise, use her knife, and get away without anyone suspecting her. She’d known it wasn’t perfect and there was a good chance that she would be caught, but she had been prepared to take the risk.

  She hadn’t expected to make the discovery in the presence of a dozen or two people, and proceed to give them all her real name. She hadn’t expected the target of her revenge to be an important man, a duke no less. Without knowing much about English law, she guessed the authorities would regard the murder of a duke with deep displeasure.

  She hadn’t expected, when she contemplated the insertion of her lethal blade into Mr. Fortescue’s black heart, that she would know him well, let alone have made love with him on several occasions.

  She hadn’t expected to love him.

  For a few weeks she hadn’t been alone in the world; at Fortescue House she had found a home. Even with Henri her emotions had been disengaged, knowing that her life with him was only an interlude. She hadn’t resented him as she had Mathieu, but ultimately she’d been able to leave him without an ounce of regret.

  Now she had lost Julian. And while her hopes that Louis would be her family were short-lived, their demolishment left her chilled and truly alone, as she had been in the days after her family’s arrest, fruitlessly scrubbing the landlady’s steps and waiting in terror for news of her parents and sisters. Alone as she had been in her recurring nightmares.

  Her physical solitude was immediately dispelled, for the Osbournes had invaded her bedchamber. The three girls, almost filling the small room, looked wary. In some ways to be rejected by them would be even worse than Louis’s rejection. She cared about them.