Chapter Two The Duke Comes Home #2
Sebastian had spent the engagement abroad on estate business that did not require his presence nearly as urgently as he claimed. When he returned, there were three days until the wedding. Then Adrian vanished. Sebastian’s hand tightened around the edge of the table.
“Your Grace?”
He looked up. Fane was watching him.
“Was Adrian in contact with Miss Whitcombe recently?”
“I have found no correspondence.”
“Search again.”
“I intended to.”
“Search every box.”
“We will.”
Sebastian looked back at the draft. Forty thousand pounds.
Bellamere. Why Clara? Guilt was the obvious answer.
Adrian had owed her a debt no money could satisfy.
But Sebastian had known his brother too well to accept the obvious answer without question.
Adrian’s guilt had always been erratic. He could regret an action deeply at midnight and repeat it by noon if convenience required.
Yet six weeks ago he had taken legal steps to leave Clara a substantial property and fortune.
That suggested more than sentiment. It suggested purpose.
“Who knew of this draft?”
“Adrian. Myself. My junior clerk. Possibly Lionel Harcourt if Adrian spoke to him, though I have no evidence he did.”
“You prepared it?”
“My office did.”
“And the later will?”
“Yes.”
Sebastian’s gaze sharpened.
“You did not notice Clara’s clause had disappeared?”
“I noticed. I queried it.”
“What did Adrian say?”
“That he had reconsidered.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“Did he seem himself?”
Fane paused.
“Not entirely.”
Sebastian waited.
“He had become unsettled during the past two months. More private than usual. He canceled several appointments. Twice he came to my office without sending notice, which was unlike him because he generally preferred everyone else to arrange themselves around his convenience.”
“That sounds like Adrian.”
“Exactly. Which is why the change stood out.”
“Was he afraid?”
Fane considered.
“Yes.”
The answer landed differently. Sebastian straightened.
“Of what?”
“He would not say.”
“Did you ask?”
“Repeatedly.”
“And?”
“He told me that if certain old matters were uncovered, several people would suffer unnecessarily.”
Sebastian regarded her in silence.
“What old matters?”
“He would not tell me.”
The old Duke of Ashcombe had left behind enough questionable business practices to populate several unpleasant possibilities.
Sebastian had spent the past eighteen months untangling them from Vienna to London.
Loans made through intermediaries. Land purchased through proxies.
Investments shifted between family accounts.
Nothing plainly criminal so far, but too much had been concealed for comfort.
“Bellamere,” Sebastian said.
Fane nodded slowly.
“That may be one of them.”
“Find everything.”
“I will.”
“And Lionel?”
“Do you want him informed?”
“No.”
Fane raised an eyebrow.
“Not yet.”
“He will learn soon enough.”
“Then let him learn from somebody else.”
Sebastian folded the draft.
“I want to know what he knew before he realizes I am asking.”
Fane looked approving. There were moments when Sebastian suspected the solicitor enjoyed family disaster provided it arrived in sufficiently complex paperwork. A knock came at the door. The butler entered.
“Your Grace, the footman has returned from Brook Street.”
Sebastian looked toward the clock.
“Miss Whitcombe will receive you at eleven.”
The hour was twenty minutes away. He had crossed Europe to settle matters involving diplomats, estates and men who considered threats a normal method of negotiation. Nothing in Vienna had unsettled him as completely as the thought of spending half an hour in Clara Whitcombe’s drawing room.
“Thank you.”
The butler withdrew. Fane began stacking the papers.
“You might take the earlier draft with you.”
Sebastian looked at him.
“You expect me to wave a disputed will beneath her nose before she has offered tea?”
“I expect you to tell her enough that she understands why you are there.”
Sebastian did not answer. Fane tucked the document into a leather folder.
“You cannot protect her by withholding facts.”
The sentence struck too close to something older. Sebastian’s gaze cooled.
“I did not ask for moral instruction.”
“No. But you pay me very well, and it would be wasteful not to provide some.”
Sebastian almost smiled. Almost. He took the folder.
“Continue without me.”
“I had planned to.”
“And Peter.”
“Yes?”
“If you find anything concerning Clara, send word immediately.”
Fane’s expression became unreadable.
“Of course.”
Sebastian left before the solicitor could say anything else.
The rain had eased by the time his carriage turned into Brook Street, though the sky remained low and silver over the rooftops.
Sebastian sat back against the squabs and watched London pass through the glass.
He had returned to England many times during the past decade, but never for long.
Duty had provided convenient distance: Vienna, Paris, Brussels, estate negotiations in Scotland, weeks at Ashcombe lands in Derbyshire, winters occupied by diplomatic dinners in rooms too hot and conversations too careful.
London had become somewhere he visited rather than lived.
Clara had remained here. Not always, he knew.
There had been months in Gloucestershire, seasons spent with relatives, one long winter after her mother died.
He knew more than he should. Not because he had followed her.
He had not. But news traveled through families and drawing rooms. A name overheard once could remain in a man’s mind for years.
Miss Whitcombe has gone to Bath. Miss Whitcombe’s mother is ill.
Miss Whitcombe has brought out a cousin.
Miss Whitcombe does not appear likely to marry.
That last remark had irritated him for reasons he had refused to examine.
Sebastian glanced down at the folder on the seat beside him.
He had no idea what Clara thought of him.
Probably very little. That would be safest. She had every reason to dislike the Harcourt family.
His father had treated the broken engagement as an embarrassment to be buried.
Adrian had fled. Sebastian had left England shortly afterward following a confrontation so violent in tone, if not action, that he still remembered every word.
He had wanted to go to Clara. His father forbade it.
Sebastian had ignored him. Then other matters intervened. Threats. Finances.
An argument he had never fully understood at twenty-four.
He had gone abroad believing it temporary.
Temporary had become years. By then, approaching Clara would have meant reopening a humiliation she had perhaps managed to survive.
So he told himself. The carriage stopped.
Sebastian looked through the window at the Whitcombe house.
It was narrower than he remembered. The paint at the upper windows needed work.
One shutter sat slightly crooked. Small details, but Sebastian spent too much time managing estates not to notice them.
Financial strain. He filed the observation away. The footman opened the door.
Sebastian stepped down. For one irrational second, he considered returning to the carriage. Then the front door opened. Mr. Marsh, older but recognizable, bowed deeply.
“Your Grace.”
“Marsh.”
The servant looked startled that Sebastian remembered him.
“Miss Whitcombe is expecting you.”
Sebastian entered. The hallway smelled faintly of beeswax and rain-damp wool.
Nothing dramatic happened. No memory assaulted him.
No ghost of eighteen-year-old Clara crossed the stairs.
And yet the house felt more familiar than it had any right to.
He had once called here repeatedly during the months preceding Adrian’s engagement, ostensibly to see Sir Edmund or deliver some family message, though in truth he had accepted almost any excuse that brought him within the same walls as Clara.
He had been an idiot. A young one, which was not much defense. Marsh led him toward the drawing room.
“The Duke of Ashcombe, miss.”
Sebastian stepped through the doorway. Clara stood near the window.
For several seconds she did not see him.
She was looking down at a document in her hands, one shoulder turned toward the door, morning light falling across her dark hair.
She wore a gown of soft gray-blue, simple compared with the elaborate fashions he had seen in Vienna, and the absence of ornament made him notice everything else.
The line of her neck. The intelligence in her profile.
The steadiness of her posture. Eleven years had changed her.
Of course they had. He had remembered a girl because memory was lazy.
It preserved faces at the age when they mattered most and refused to update them without permission.
The Clara before him was not eighteen. Her face had narrowed slightly, losing the softness of youth, and there was greater composure in the set of her mouth.
She seemed more self-contained, less likely to offer emotion merely because someone wanted it from her.
Sebastian found her more beautiful. The realization was immediate.
Inconvenient. Entirely unsurprising. Clara turned.
Their eyes met. Something moved across her expression, gone too quickly to identify. She set down the paper.
“Your Grace.”
Not Sebastian. Of course not. He bowed.
“Miss Whitcombe.”
Not Clara. They stood in a silence that was not quite awkward because both of them were too practiced to permit awkwardness openly. Clara recovered first.
“Please sit.”
“Thank you.”
She gestured toward the sofa. Sebastian took the chair opposite instead. He did not trust himself to sit beside her. A tea tray stood ready, though untouched. Clara sat.
“You arrived in England yesterday?”
“This morning.”
Her brows lifted.
“You came directly from Dover?”
“More or less.”