Chapter One
Banshire House
St. James Square
Mayfair, London
God, Town is so dull. Even this brandy tastes off.
Michael Charles Banshire, sixth Duke of Darkemore, nursed his second glass of the amber liquor for a good hour while talking to a couple of friends, close acquaintances rather, from his club.
As much as he wished their intrusion to end, he was alternately grateful they had come to visit.
Didn’t matter how acclimated and sure he was in his own company, loneliness crept in occasionally.
He landed his gaze on the Duke of Ravenhurst. “How have you been keeping yourself? I’ll admit, I’m a bit out of the loop regarding news and gossip.” In fact, the longer he studied the other man, the more he was convinced that he wasn’t as haunted as he used to be a year or so ago.
The dark-haired man gave him a half-grin. “I can’t complain though I am a bit sleep-deprived. Having a six-month-old daughter with a touch of colic will do that to a man.”
Michael frowned. “Do you not have nurses to look after the babe?” To be honest, he knew very little about children; he kept his liaisons few and far between for a variety of reasons, least of which was making certain he didn’t leave by-blows.
“We do, of course, but my wife insists on nursing when she can as well as comforting the baby with her presence and mine, so the infant will bond with us.” A bit of ruddy color crept over his friend’s collar.
“We are trying to be better parents than ours were, when it comes to child-rearing, that is. I wasn’t given the opportunity to know them long, but my parents were truly outstanding in other ways. ”
Ah, right. Ravenhurst’s parents were brutally murdered when he was a young man of twenty, before being shanghaied onto a British naval ship or some sort of gammon. Michael wasn’t entirely certain of the full story.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said then promptly drained the contents of his cut-crystal glass. “Er, about your parents, not about your daughter’s colic.”
“Thank you. I knew what you meant.” Another half-grin curved Ravenhurst’s lips. “It’s been an age since we were able to sit down and talk.”
“We’ve seen each other socially a couple of times recently.” Which reminded him of why he despised London—there was far too much socializing.
“Yes, of course, but that was at balls and routs. No real conversations to be had there, especially amidst the other drama.”
“True. Men from Club Damnation do seem to attract trouble.”
The other man—the Duke of Averly—snorted. “Or perhaps we are the trouble.”
All three men chuckled.
As Michael set his glass on a small, round, rose-inlaid table at his elbow, he once more addressed Ravenhurst. “Let me ask you something. Do you ever regret being domesticated?”
“I do not.” The duke’s expression reflected surprise. “Though it is true, I had no intentions of marrying the woman who is now my wife. In fact, I was only using her as part of my plan for revenge against an enemy, the man who ruined my life and caused a twenty-year absence from London.”
“I’d heard a bit about that, yes,” he said with a nod. “What happened to change that?”
Ravenhurst’s shrug embodied the pure elegance that every gentleman in society wished to achieve…
even if the man insisted on wearing a close-cropped beard.
“I fell in love with her.” This time, his grin was full-fledged.
“But it was more than that, I think. She didn’t mind my demons.
Hell, she tried to evict them, not with anything that she did but merely by being a light. ”
A shiver of envy went through Michael’s chest. “Did it work?” Clearly, he’d shut himself away at his manor in Cornwall for far too long if he didn’t know the stories of his friends.
“Perhaps. Eventually, I found myself moving toward that illumination, and the thought of losing her to the blackguard to whom she was engaged nearly broke me.”
“So you stole her away.”
“I did, that, but then I had to plead my case with her. I rather think the revenge plan was easier.” He followed that up with a sip of brandy.
Averly laughed out loud. “What Ravenhurst means to say is that he shot his rival.”
“What?” Michael stared. “You shot him? Killed him?”
“I did not. In the leg, so he couldn’t run away. After all, he was a damned criminal and a murderer.” Some of the levity faded from Ravenhurst’s expression.
Damn, that was interesting. “Has he had his trial yet?”
“The powers-that-be have promised soon, if he doesn’t finally bribe his way out of Newgate. His crimes are vile and hefty, so they’ll probably want him hung, as a warning or a cautionary tale.” He frowned. “It’s complicated.”
“Damn, that is almost enough to bring me back from Cornwall to London permanently.” Almost, but he wasn’t about to give up his peace and solitude. “Will you go to his trial?”
“I won’t. I’ve laid the matter to rest, and even though he had my parents killed and ruined my life, that is in the past.” For long moments, Ravenhurst paused as he sipped his brandy.
“I will give a statement the barrister can present to the judge, but I don’t want my life as it is now stained by the past.”
“I can appreciate that.” Slowly, Michael nodded. “I also admire that resolve, for I don’t know if I could just walk away from someone who’d wronged me. I’d want to see justice served and feel that satisfaction.”
“Sometimes, there is no satisfaction. There is only closure, for you won’t have the time lost back; the people you lost won’t come back.” Ravenhurst sighed. “All of that to say, we are all different, my friend.”
“True.” And he’d struggled with that for years, ever since that terrible time when he’d received life-threatening injuries that forever marred him.
But that was neither here nor there. “What of you, Averly? You had problems from the first when you married your wife, didn’t you?
” In that story, he wasn’t certain either.
Things blurred together without him digging out the letters to refer back upon.
“Of course I did.” The red-haired duke shoved a hand through his tresses. “In my case, it was different; I’d been engaged to her since a young man and she a child. To be fair, I didn’t want any part of that, even had a mistress.”
“And she led you a merry chase,” Ravenhurst said with a grin.
“She did, indeed.”
Another round of laughter went through their group.
More interested than he wanted to let on, Michael leaned forward in his chair. “Yet you found a way to get on with her, fell in love with her.” It wasn’t a question.
“I did.” Averly narrowed his eyes. “It was a difficult path, I will say, and I don’t recommend conducting a romance like that. She dumped hot soup in my lap in those early days.”
Michael snorted. “Did it help taking the women out of Town? To concentrate on making a relationship work?” There was a history with them both, for Ravenhurst had kidnapped his wife while Averly married his then took her away from London straightaway.
The dukes exchanged speaking glances. They both nodded.
Averly shrugged. “There are certain… issues represented in London that would have prohibited concentrating on what I wanted to focus on.”
“Ha!” Ravenhurst chuckled. His jovial mood had returned. “Be blunt, Averly. You wanted sex.”
“I did.” The other man’s grin was wide. “As did you.”
“I’m not denying it.” Then Ravenhurst peered at Michael. “Why are you asking all these questions? You know our history. It was never a secret.”
“It is, as you say, complicated.”
Ravenhurst shook his head. “Everything is. Tell us.”
In the last few years of the war, he’d been a spy for England, sent through France, Portugal, and Spain to ferret out enemies of the King.
On his last mission, he’d tracked his quarry to earth in France just as he was escaping.
It was an Englishman who manipulated decisions from those high in government so he could invest and make loads of money on the back of the war and the men killed therein.
“I had one final mission as the war was coming to an end, had been so close to catching the man I chased…”
Averly nodded. “Was he the one who gave you that injury?”
“He was.” As he spoke, Michael stretched his right leg where the muscles in his calf hadn’t healed as they should have, leaving him with a limp.
His arm on that same side of the body basically didn’t work any longer, so he kept it in a sling that had been fashioned by his tailor.
In fact, he had more than a few to match waistcoats or jackets.
To say nothing of the jagged scar along the right side of his brow, all given to him by expert blows from a dagger, wielded in the hand of the man he would never forget.
“It was during our final fight. He left me to die on a darkened street in Paris. Hell, I nearly bled out in the rain.”
Surprise etched over Ravenhurst’s face. “How did you get out and back to England?”
“Fate? Luck?” Michael shrugged. “The memories are fuzzy. “I’d made ready to die. The next thing I can remember was being told by a nurse in a London hospital that I nearly died crossing the Channel, but that the surgeon refused to give up.”
One of Averly’s red eyebrows rose in question. “What is the name of the man who did that to you?”
A huff escaped him. “From what I’m able to tell, he is the best friend to the late Earl of Marklesfield.
Viscount Echerson I think.” In his mind’s eye, he could see every aspect of the man’s face as clear as crystal.
He remembered the hatred in the man’s green eyes and the exact way he’d parted his black hair.
“That is no shock.” Ravenhurst shook his head. “That man has a less than sterling reputation.”