Chapter Twenty-Eight

H art stood next to Lucy, his hand on her lower back as she spoke with a small group of people around them. The sun beat down on them, making him sweat and increasing his displeasure. It wasn’t that the conversation was all that boring but rather that he found himself supremely annoyed that he had to share Lucy with anyone at all. His new wife had proven to be as much of a distraction as he had feared. His obsession with every detail of her consumed him. The way she moved across a room, the many moods reflected in her expressive eyes, every inch of her lithe body, and the myriad of thoughts that tumbled randomly out of that beautiful, filthy mouth. Her clever brain was sharp and intuitive. Keeping up with her in conversation was a challenge he enjoyed every day.

This morning’s conversation reminded him that he hadn’t thought about his mission to find his family’s murderer in more than a week. Guilt lodged in his chest. He needed to get his focus back to where it belonged. Lucy glanced up at him with a smile, which melted some of that guilt. She had promised to help. Surely, it was okay to take a small reprieve from his task. His thirst for revenge had pulled him from the mire of melancholy he had fallen into after the accident, giving him a purpose. And it still was his purpose, but maybe it didn’t have to be the only thing in his life that was important.

The couple that Lucy had been conversing with wandered away. She turned to him. “Are you all right? You seem a million miles away.”

Hart nodded. “Yes, sorry.” He scanned the people crowded on the stone terrace where they stood.

The cream of society was all here to celebrate the Hollins’s anniversary. The crowd of elegantly dressed people made him uncomfortable but less so than he had felt at the Bartleby’s ball. Perhaps it was the outdoor setting. Large gardens extended out from the terrace. Landscaped in the formal French style, small boxwoods arranged in neat squares outlined cheerful flower gardens. White pea gravel paths intersected the bushes and led down to a long pool with colorful fish swimming amidst green lily pads. Guests dotted the lawns and paths everywhere he looked.

“You weren’t wrong about the party being well attended. It is very crowded out here, isn’t it?”

“It is a grand house. Although, it doesn’t have the same gothic atmosphere as Belstoke, which I prefer.” She shaded her eyes as she looked up at the house’s brick fa?ade. “The ivy climbing the walls does give it some charm.”

Despite her wide-brimmed hat, which shaded her face, Hart saw a droplet of sweat slide down from her temple. And then he noticed that the hair at her nape was damp as well. “Are you too hot?”

She opened her fan and flicked it back and forth. “It has become quite warm, hasn’t it?”

“Let’s sneak inside. Maybe it will be cooler in the shade.” He guided her through the throng of guests across the terrace toward the house. They managed to make it the whole way without more than a few polite nods in passing. The back doors were propped open, and they escaped into a shadowed hallway.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Let’s explore,” Lucy whispered conspiratorially. She took hold of his hand and Hart followed her down the corridor. They passed by a stone staircase that descended belowstairs. The noise of voices and the clatter of pans led him to believe it went to the kitchens. Further along, the hallway opened to the center of the house. A carpeted grand staircase climbed up to the first floor. Lucy gave his hand a tug and continued down to the right.

This corridor was lined with windows that looked out the front of the house. In between each window, statues sat atop identical white pillars. They stopped in front of one that was a bust of their host, Lord Hollins.

Lucy scrunched her nose in distaste. “Why would you want a likeness of just your head? It’s a bit gruesome, in my opinion.”

“His lady is the next one down.” Hart pointed.

They walked down and peered at Lady Hollins’s head. The casting was eerily accurate, and it felt as though Lady Hollins was glaring disapprovingly at them for wandering through her home. “Maybe it is to deter bad behavior among the servants,” he said. “She certainly is scaring me.”

“Come, let’s see what’s in here.” Lucy turned and opened a door behind them. “Oh, it’s the ballroom!”

Hart followed her inside. The ballroom stretched in a long rectangle, about three hundred feet at least. Three sets of double doors would open to the corridor they had just come from. Along the opposite wall, tall mirrors hung every few feet down its length, giving the illusion of the room being wider than it actually was. Above those mirrors, small square windows lined the upper half of the wall, letting in some natural light. The room was gilded from top to bottom. Mirrors, molding, and chandeliers all done in gold tones.

Lucy raced out into the middle of the patterned wood floor. Spreading her arms wide, she twirled in circles. She laughed as she came to a stop. “I’ve always wanted to do that in the middle of the dance floor, but there is always the pesky problem of the other guests.”

Hart smiled at her enthusiasm, and not for the first time, he wondered how she lived with so much joy inside her. It never seemed to dim. He walked to her, reaching out, needing to see if some of that joy would transfer to him if he held her tight.

She continued to smile up at him, when he wrapped his arm around her. “Hart,” she fluttered those lush eyelashes at him.

“Yes?”

“Would you dance with me?”

He stiffened. “I can’t dance anymore.”

“I know that usually you are afraid to bump into anyone. But there is not a soul here but the two of us. You do remember how to waltz, don’t you?”

Of course, he remembered how to dance. He glanced around the empty room. Could he still lead a woman gracefully across the floor without stumbling? His gaze returned to his wife’s hopeful expression.

Lucy reached up and pulled the pin from her hat, removing it. She held out her hand. Her blue eyes sparkled irresistibly with mischief. “Dance with me, Hart?”

Since when had he ever turned down an opportunity to seduce a beautiful woman while dancing? He’d be damned if he let his blasted eye stop him now. He handed her his walking stick. She took both it and her hat to a chair on the edge of the room and set them down. When she returned, he was ready for her. He scooped her up against him tightly, one hand splayed at her back, and the other clasped her hand out in the ready position. He bent to nuzzle the spot behind her ear that always made her shiver. “Since there are no society matrons watching, I shall hold you indecently close, like they do in the French court.”

“Lovely,” she murmured. “Now, for some music.” She began to hum.

Hart’s instincts kicked in, and he led them around the floor. One, two, three… one, two, three. After accomplishing the first couple of turns without stumbling, he began to relax. He would never be able to do this on a crowded dance floor while people danced around them and through his blind spot, but Lucy was right. There was nothing wrong with his dancing skills. He twirled them in wide circles, enjoying the freedom of movement the empty room afforded. Holding her in his arms was a pleasure. She let out a small sigh and laid her head against his shoulder. Another thing they would never be able to do in public.

“I always had fantasies about you waltzing me around a glittering ballroom.”

“You did?”

“Of course. You were the most sophisticated gentleman I knew. Well, except for your brother, perhaps. When I was sixteen, the two of you were like golden gods to my eyes.”

He chuckled. “That was the old me. I used to think I was quite the catch.”

Lucy lifted her head. “I think you were. You always had plenty of women to dance with, especially after you became the duke. I didn’t stand a chance against your harem.”

“I didn’t have as many women as you seem to think.” Hart frowned; that wasn’t entirely true. He had had his share of affairs. Didn’t every young man? Perhaps he’d been too casual in his attitude toward women. But when there were always ladies willing to vie for your attention, it was hard to say no. It made him uncomfortable to think maybe he was more like his father than he would like to admit.

Glancing down at Lucy, this woman who had become so dear so quickly, he felt the need to reiterate, “That was the old me.” He pulled them to a stop. “You are the only woman that I want to dance with now,” he admitted.

“Good, because I don’t like to share.” She planted a possessive kiss on his lips.

And as he sank into her kiss, he found that he quite liked being possessed by this one lady. “Me either,” he said against her lips. “If we were at a ball surrounded by people on the dance floor, I would spirit you away to a dark corner and try to convince you to let me pleasure you until you were breathless and begging for more.”

“I would let you. I have become addicted to your charms, husband.”

Good. He pulled her hard against him with every intention of charming his way right under her skirts. A glance around the room showed a decided lack of furniture, save for a few chairs left along the wall. He briefly considered one, but the lack of privacy if someone else were to wander in was not acceptable. He gripped her hand and walked over to gather their things. “Let’s get out of here.” He shoved her hat into her hands.

“Are we going back to the party?”

“Hell, no. I’m going in search of a dark corner.”

He pulled her from the ballroom back out to the corridor. One of these rooms must be empty. Halfway down the corridor, past the ballroom, they heard male voices coming from a room at the end of the hallway. The door to that room was cracked open a couple of inches. Hart paused to listen when he recognized Lord Blackpool’s voice.

“Gentlemen, let’s all calm down.”

“I cannot.” Another voice, which Hart couldn’t quite put his finger on, rang out. “That girl out there is living what should have been my daughter’s life.”

“Your bad decisions coming back to haunt you, eh?” A different, deeper voice chuckled.

“If you hadn’t killed the boy, maybe I could have convinced him to honor the agreement!”

“Are you insane? After you killed his father?”

“It was a matter of honor.” The voice was filled with righteous indignation.

Another voice he didn’t recognize cut through the others. “Enough about the girl. We are here to discuss the journal. We need to know if he found it. What he knows. Each one of us is at risk.”

“Hartwick was a crafty bastard. He wouldn’t have left it lying around. I sent my man to look for it at both homes. And he came back empty-handed. I still think the boy doesn’t know anything.”

They were talking about his father. This was his chance to find out who killed his father. He started toward the room, but Lucy’s hand grasped his arm. “No,” she whispered furiously. “We don’t know who is in there. You can’t just walk into the lion’s den unprepared.”

He stared down at her hand clinging to him and tried to think logically. What risk would she be in if he went charging into a room? The men in there were all likely peers. The best he could do would be to challenge his father’s murderer to a duel. He flexed his right hand into a fist. He would be as good as dead with this blasted bad shooting arm. He raised his gaze to meet Lucy’s frantic one. He would not leave her unprotected. Revenge was best served cold.

She pulled him across the corridor. Opening the first door, she yanked him inside. They pushed the door almost all the way closed, leaving a crack to peer into the hall. “First, we need to find out who is in that room.” She kept her voice low.

“I recognized Blackpool’s voice. I just met with him, so it’s fresh in my mind. But I can’t place the other voices,” he whispered back as he tried hard to listen to the voices down the hallway.

“I tell you, he knows something.” Fear threaded through the man’s voice. “He wouldn’t be asking so many questions after all this time if Galey hadn’t betrayed us.”

“But does he have the journal? I say we tie up loose ends.”

“I forbid it, James. How many more of us are you willing to sacrifice? We have always protected each other, and we can continue to do so without taking such drastic measures.”

The slam of a door hitting the wall reverberated down the hall. Hart froze as he watched carefully out the crack. The Duke of Lavensham stalked past. After another moment, the Earl of Blackpool and the Duke of Fleming followed. Lastly, the Earl of Rawlings and Viscount Griffen, heads together, walked past their conversation low and impossible to decipher.

Hart waited several long moments before carefully shutting the door the rest of the way. He leaned back against the wall and stared across the room. His father’s murderer had been one of those men, one of his father’s closest friends.

“Everyone in that room seemed to know exactly what happened to your father and brother. They have been hiding the truth.”

“For five years.” He closed his eyes. “Galey said that they were powerful. He broke ranks to try to tell me what happened.”

When he opened his eyes, Lucy was pacing in front of him. “But we still don’t know which voices belonged to whom. Which of these men is the killer.”

“Two men, you mean. The first man reproached a second man for killing the boy. I assume he meant Robert,” Hart replied. Christ, why had they killed Robert?

“Yes, and what did he mean about his daughter? None of it makes sense.”

Hart tugged on her hand; her pacing increased his own anxiety. What secrets did these men keep at such a high cost of killing one of their own? Hauling her close, he wrapped her in his arms.

Panic began to claw at his chest. “I’m worried I have pulled you into something that is far larger than I thought. Perhaps I should send you to Belstoke. You would be safer there.”

She pulled back to look up at him. “And who will protect you? No, absolutely not.”

“But—” he began.

“No. Hart, your life has been endangered twice now. They are clearly worried you know some of the secrets they are keeping, so they will try again. I will not let you deal with this alone. You need me.”

He squeezed her tight. “I need to keep you safe. Why are you so fierce, sweetness? Let me take care of you.”

“I have lost every single one of the people that I loved in this world. I will not lose you, too.” Her eyes began to shine with tears again.

He could not stand to see the pain shimmering in them. He battled against his instincts to hide her away. To keep her from harm. A bead of sweat rolled down his back as his panic intensified. They needed to leave this house. They needed to go home.

“All right. But we will have a discussion about adding some extra protection when you go out.”

“For you as well.” Lucy raised an imperious eyebrow.

He sighed. “For me as well. For now, let’s get back to the party and say our farewells. I want to go home and tuck you into bed.” And never let you leave it. He sucked in a deep breath and prepared himself to walk back into the crowded party. He would master this tightness in his chest for her. He would get Lucy home safe.