Chapter 16 #2
“Harland was merely looking for a scapegoat.” Templeton’s voice rose an octave. “Everyone knows he was the one obsessed. He used the debt to secure a place in her bed.”
Mr Ramsey moved like a striking viper, clasping Dominic’s arm as if he feared he’d lash out.
“I met with Eric Moseley. He knows of every debt and seedy transaction that happens in the city.” Dominic shrugged out of Mr Ramsey’s hold and approached the desk. “My mother wrote to him. I have the letter.”
Templeton leaned so far back the seat threatened to topple. “I don’t know what she said, but it has nothing to do with me.”
“But it does.” Dominic’s words carried a sinister edge. “You’re the lord who made her life so unbearable she wrote to a notorious moneylender. She’d rather deal with the devil than suffer you.”
“It’s not true.” He was on his feet, hands raised. “It was a mutual arrangement. I gave her a ruby parure when we parted. She sold it to a broker on Oxford Street. He may still have the receipt.”
Dominic’s mouth hardened. “You bought her.”
His eyes darkened to the heavy green of a hemlock grove. There would be no reasoning with him now.
“You were fifteen years her junior,” he barked, flexing his fists. “Not much older than I was then.”
Templeton lurched away and darted behind the throne chair where she sat, gripping the carved rail as if it might shield him. She could feel the warm panic of his breath against her neck.
While the men glared at one another, she slipped a hand beneath the desk and slowly raised her skirts, easing the blade from her garter and hiding it in the folds of her gown.
“It was a brief affair. I’ll not be hounded like a dog for it.”
Dominic must have seen something in the lord’s eyes. He stopped prowling. “Step away from the desk.”
“Don’t test his patience,” Mr Ramsey added.
“His patience? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Dominic drew a slow breath. “Step away. I won’t ask again. Touch her and it will be the last thing you do.”
Her palm grew clammy beneath the hilt.
This wouldn’t end well.
“Enough.” The word cut through the room as she rose slowly from the chair, gripping the blade against her skirts. “Backing a man into a corner isn’t the way to get answers.”
Fury burned in Dominic’s eyes. “We have his answer.”
“We only have part of the story.”
Her mother had been desperate too. She had died with a secret. There were too many coincidences to ignore.
“I’ve told you everything.” The lord remained behind the chair.
“My mother needed money,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt as she turned to face the lord. “And she knew Mrs Flavell.”
Templeton blinked. “Half the ton knows Mrs Flavell.”
“But not every woman goes there looking for help.” She lifted her chin. “She also wrote to Mr Moseley, asking for a loan. To escape the same unbearable suitor. You, Lord Templeton.”
“Me?” he stuttered. “I barely knew your mother.”
“Yet you visited the house.” She invented that part.
“I gambled with your father, but we were barely acquaintances.” He dared to step from behind the chair. “I don’t know anything about these loans. When you find the real culprit, I expect an apology.”
Dominic’s attention snapped to his quarry. “Was it you?”
“What are you accusing me of now?”
“Were you responsible for my mother’s condition?” The question tore its way out of him, stripped of his usual control. “Was my mother carrying your child?”
The room went still.
Templeton’s face drained of colour. “What?”
Dominic’s fists clenched until his knuckles blanched. “Answer me.” His voice cracked on the last word.
“I told you. It was a brief affair. It ended a year before she died.”
“I don’t believe you.” Dominic rounded the desk. “She’s dead because of you. The unborn child along with her.”
Daphne caught her breath. It made sense now. The two white roses. The rage that drove him to control every debauched lord in the ton.
Templeton didn’t stagger back. He squared his shoulders, determined to stand his ground. “You’ve got the wrong man.”
“You forget I know what you’re capable of. You see a woman you want and prey on her weakness. Use money to buy a place in her bed.”
The lord’s mouth thinned. “I offer a solution to their problems. You make it sound as though I force them.”
Daphne cleared her throat. “You do make it hard to say no.”
“Careful,” Mr Ramsey warned quietly when Dominic muttered a curse. “Give his lordship a chance to explain.”
Templeton’s gaze flicked between them, calculating now rather than afraid. “If your mother was with child, it was not mine.”
Dominic’s breath shuddered. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Believe what you like,” the lord shot back. “I thought her willing. If you want the man who ruined her, look elsewhere.” He drew a hand down the fur trim of his coat. “Ask yourself. Do I appear more terrifying than Moseley?”
The comment gave them all pause.
“Perhaps Harland was your man,” Templeton added. “The devil agreed to sell his own daughter to save his neck. He knew both your mothers intimately, and the timeline fits.”
“Harland couldn’t father a child,” Dominic countered. “I have his physician’s report. It’s why Miss Harland has no siblings.”
Daphne thought of Mrs Flavell’s letter. Her mother had feared falling with child. She despised her husband. Which meant there had been another man.
Templeton scoffed. “Physicians are not infallible. Perhaps it was a temporary injury. Or the man made a mistake. Speak to those closest to him instead of dragging me over the coals.”
Daphne’s mind flicked to Mrs Foster, the woman her father had kept in London for years. And to Aunt Augusta, who knew every sordid detail of the household. If anyone knew the truth, it would be them.
Yet the lord’s newfound courage raised suspicions too.
Templeton gripped his wolf mask a little tighter. “The question you should be asking is this: where were you while your mother was being harassed? It’s a pity you discovered your courage so late.”
Dominic went still. His jaw tightened, but the shine in his eyes told a different story. Perhaps the person he truly blamed was himself.
Was Shadowmere his penance? A place where he forced himself to witness what his mother had kept hidden.
She felt the same prickle behind her eyes, a thickness in her throat. Not for his mother. For him.
But he didn’t crumble. He buried his pain and gripped the desk with a ferocity that threatened to splinter the wood.
“Take your mistress and get the hell out of my house. I’ll refund the price of your ticket. There’s little I can do to restore your honour.”
Templeton gave a harsh laugh. “You preach about honour, yet you bedded Harland’s daughter just to spite him. She’d have been better off with me. I merely wear a wolf mask.”
Dominic lurched forward, murder in his eyes.
Daphne stepped into his path before Ramsey could move, the blade still clutched in her hand. She braced her palm against Dominic’s chest, feeling the violent thud of his heart beneath her fingers.
“It’s not the same,” he rasped, fury roughening his voice. “I won’t discard her when the game grows tiresome. I’ll marry her. I know my duty.”
The room fell silent.
Her hand slipped from his chest.
Duty. The word her father had used when he bartered her future for coin.
She stared at him. Marry her? The decision had been made without her consent. No proposal. No declaration. Merely a convenient way to repair the damage done.
Tears filled her eyes, blurring the room into a smear of candlelight. The first drop slipped beneath her mask.
Dominic clasped her elbow. “Daphne.”
“Don’t say another word.” Each syllable came in airy gasps that betrayed her effort at poise. “Like every man I encounter, you’ve forgotten I have a voice.”
She pushed past him and hurried from the room, wishing for a carriage to take her anywhere but here. He might have followed, but she was swept into the stream of guests hurrying towards the ballroom.
A small platform had been erected beside the musicians. A masked gentleman stood upon it while a woman circled him, lifting his chin as though inspecting a horse at Tattersall’s, as the crowd shouted bids.
This was the world Dominic ruled.
A world she could never call home.
Daphne turned away. The heat, the noise, it all felt suffocating. Before anyone could stop her, she hurried through the terrace doors and into the cool night air.
She took a moment to stop and breathe.
But Shadowmere on the night of the Masque was no place for a lone woman to linger. A man prowled from the depths of the shadows, the beak of his mask long and obscene. He reeked of perfume and brandy.
“Just when I thought the night dull,” he said, arrogance etched into his stride, “you appear.”
“I’m in no mood for games, sir.”
“Neither am I, sweeting.”
She could have used Dominic’s name as a weapon, certain this wretch would cower. Instead, she drew the dagger from its sheath.
“One more step and I’ll gut you like a fish.” Moonlight caught the edge of the blade, the sudden glint making it all the more menacing.
The man only laughed and came closer, his gloved hand lifting as though he meant to take her chin. “Temper like that ought to be rewarded. Come claim your prize.”
“Back away from her.”
The command came from the terrace. Dominic stood there, broad-shouldered and immovable, his expression cold enough to chill the air.
The masked gentleman turned, his confidence collapsing like rigging in a storm. “Easy, Hawke. I meant no harm. Women who come to the Masque know the game.”
She didn’t wait for him to descend the steps. She hurried down the gravel path toward the gardens and her cottage.
Not her cottage.
Nothing about her life here was real.
By the time she reached the door, her breath was ragged. She fumbled inside her bodice for the key, her fingers clumsy with haste.
The lock clicked.
She slipped inside and slammed the door behind her, throwing the bolt just as footsteps pounded up the path.
Silence held for a heartbeat.
A heavy fist struck the wood.
“Daphne.”
She pressed her back to the door, her pulse racing.
“Go back to your guests, Mr Hawke.”
“Open the door. Let me in.”
That was the problem. She had let him in—a self-proclaimed scoundrel—and fallen prey to some foolish notion that he was different from other men.
“There’s nothing left to discuss.”
“There’s everything to discuss. Open the damn door.”
She couldn’t. One look at the dark torment in his eyes and she would stroke his brow, be the softness he didn’t even know he craved.
“I need something to wipe blood off my knuckles.”
“You have a handkerchief in your pocket.”
He cursed beneath his breath, but tempered his tone. “Let me in, Daphne. Don’t lock me out because of something I said in the heat of the moment.”
She imagined opening the door, falling into his arms, burying her face in his neck and breathing in the scent she was starving for.
“Are you saying you didn’t mean it?”
Nothing. Just the scuff of his boots on stone outside the door, the cries of sybarites and the haunting lilt of the violins.
“I suppose marrying me must seem abhorrent,” he said.
“Self-pity is beneath you. You have the strength to own your mistakes. Don’t disappoint me further.”
“Disappoint you? I’ve done everything possible to make amends.”
Did that stretch to touching her beneath the stars, making love in her bed? Did it include all the beautiful things he had said and done?
She threw the dagger to the floor and pulled the ribbons of her mask free, letting the disguise fall away so she could breathe again.
No matter how fiercely she felt for him, she could not remain here. Not in this house. Not with a man who let the past poison his future.
“I’d like to leave Shadowmere. You can do one last thing and I’ll ask nothing of you again.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, though it was her heart that ached. “Send for Charlotte.”