Scandalous. Part 22

His son grinned. "A woman. Priscilla Hamilton. Your future daughter-in-law, I believe."

The Duke's jaw dropped. "You're joking. Are you serious? You have been caught at last? Is that what delayed you?"

"Not exactly. I shall explain it all to you in a moment." His brows drew together darkly. "We have quite a number of things to discuss, in fact. But first I have to find Priscilla. I have to tell her who I am."

"You have to what?" Ranleigh repeated in astonishment, but Bryan had already turned and was walking away, searching all around him.

It took him a good fifteen minutes of fruitless searching before he found someone who remembered seeing Priscilla and Lady Chalcomb going down the stairs right after the new duke walked in. He headed downstairs, as well, only to find no trace of either of the two women. Finally he went outside, where a footman told him that Miss Hamilton and her father had left the party with Lady Chalcomb and Dr. Hightower.

"What the devil-?" Bryan murmured, confused. Why would Priscilla have left so suddenly? Especially after the strange and startling things that had occurred?

He stood for a moment, gazing out into the dark night, faintly troubled. He could not understand Priscilla's disappearance, and he wanted to go running after her. But if she was with her father and Lady Chalcomb, surely she would be all right...and, first, he had a mystery right here that needed to be resolved. He turned around and went back to the party, looking for his father.

It was not hard to find him. There was a huge knot of people cl.u.s.tered around him, all eager to reacquaint themselves with the new Duke of Ranleigh. His father was chatting happily with Mr. Rutherford. The man who had saved him from being a suspect, Bryan realized with some amazement. He found it hard to connect his father with the lad Priscilla had said had run off years ago, under suspicion of murder.

Bryan, taller than most of the people surrounding his father, was able to look over their heads and catch his father's eye. He jerked his head emphatically, indicating that they should leave the room, and Ranleigh, with a knowing grin, nodded back and began to make his way through the crowd around him. Bryan waited impatiently for him by the door. Even after Damon had succeeded in working his way free of the clot of well-wishers and curiosity-seekers, he could not seem to take a step without someone else coming forward to greet him.

Finally he reached Bryan and took his elbow, saying, "Come along. I know where we can escape them all."

He led his son quickly out into the same hall that Bryan and Priscilla had taken earlier. However, he took Bryan past the room where they had eavesdropped on the d.u.c.h.ess and down a set of stairs to a large room. In the dim light cast by the wall sconces in the hall, Bryan could see that it was a library, with shelves of books lining the walls and a ma.s.sive desk squatting in the center of the room. The wall opposite the door was a bank of windows, their drapes now drawn against the night.

Ranleigh went to the desk and lit a lamp, and the room was suffused with a golden glow. Bryan watched his father as he looked slowly around the room. The older man shook his head. "Exactly the same," he said, his voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion. He cleared his throat. "Father always was one for tradition. I remember he sulked for a month when my mother redecorated the dining room."

He turned back to Bryan, who was watching him, arms crossed over his chest. "I presume you have some questions for me."

"A few," his son retorted sarcastically. "Mainly, when in the h.e.l.l did you become a duke?"

"When my father died, a year or so ago," his father replied calmly, and walked over to a large wingback chair by the fireplace, motioning to Bryan to sit in the chair across from it.

Bryan sat down with ill grace. "Then you really are the Duke of Ranleigh?"

"Of course. Did you think I was deceiving those people out there?"

"I don't know what to think. Why did you never tell us? Does Delia know?"

"She does. I told her as soon as I heard of his death. You, as I recall, were in Malaya at the time."

"That's where I was when I got your telegram telling me to go to the attorney's office in London. They refused to tell me a d.a.m.n thing except to come here to Elverton and wait for you."

"I thought it was something that needed to be explained by me in person, not by a set of strangers."

"Why did you not explain it some time ago?"

The older man shrugged. "I'm not sure. When I first left England, I was so furious with my father, so...unhappy, that I wanted nothing to do with my family or this house or the t.i.tle. I washed my hands of the whole thing, started a new life. My t.i.tle didn't help me much in the United States. It seemed pretentious to use it. It was strange when I arrived in New York. For the first time, I was on my own, without my father or his t.i.tle to pave the way for me. It was hard. I had no skills to speak of, no idea how to take care of myself. I didn't even have a valet. It was frightening...but it was freeing, as well. When I married your mother and had you and Delia, well, I didn't see any reason to burden you with the family heritage. I thought it was better for you to grow up an American, to make your own way, not to have everything planned out for you as I had. I had made a good life for myself and my family. It seemed to me that the name Aylesworth was enough. I never even told your mother about it. She accepted me as I was, without a past. I had no intention of coming back and taking over the t.i.tle."

He paused and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. He gazed down at the floor for a long moment, then went on. "But a few years ago, after your mother died, I began to think about things here...about Ranleigh Court, and my father, and...people I had left behind. Finally I engaged a solicitor in London, and he made inquiries for me. He wrote me that my father was still alive, that he had remarried and had a child. I decided then that I would forget about the t.i.tle and the estate, just let the boy have it. Still, I could not stop thinking about Ranleigh Court, and my father, and...the cloud I had left under. I hated knowing what my own father thought about me, what everyone who had known me thought. I told myself it did not matter, but I couldn't get it out of my brain."

He sighed and gazed at the drapes, as if he could see through them to the landscape beyond. "It was odd. I realized that I missed Ranleigh Court. Without your mother, New York no longer felt like home. I wanted to come back. I wanted to make my peace with my father. Then my solicitor informed me that Father had died. I realized how foolish I had been to hold off returning. Now I can never make things right with him. But I could come back. I could at least clear my name, and maybe that would make it up to him a little. It occurred to me that I had been wrong all these years to deny you and Delia your true heritage. You had a right to know, to be the Duke of Ranleigh when I'm gone. It was selfish and unfair of me to decide for you. So I had my solicitor contact my father's solicitors, and I wrote to you to join me here."

Bryan gazed at him for a long moment. He shook his head in amazement. "I find all this hard to take in at one time. What did Delia say? Did she come with you?"

"No. She laughed and said that her friends would be green with envy now that she could be called 'my lady,' but she is far too interested in her babies and Robert to think of coming here. Her life is in the United States."

"So is mine."

"Is it?" Ranleigh smiled quizzically. "I had gotten the impression that it was all over the world for the past ten years."

Bryan smiled, admitting, "I suppose it has been. But...Father, I am no English gentleman."

"I know. Neither am I, anymore. However, one doesn't have a choice about one's name or family. It is something you will have to learn to accept."

Bryan looked down at his hands. There was a long silence, then he said quietly, "I've heard that the Marquess left England because he had killed a girl." He looked up squarely into his father's eyes. "Is that true? Did you kill Rose Childs?"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

HIS FATHER STARED BACK STONILY AT HIM. "You have to ask me that?"

"I cannot believe that you would kill anyone, let alone some girl whom you had...been intimate with. But, you see, the man I know is Damon Aylesworth. Not the Marquess of Lynden. Were you a different man then?"

"No. I was the same. I ran away because my father and I quarreled bitterly. He believed that I had committed murder, and I could not bear knowing that. But I did not kill her. Nor had I had an affair with Rose. I barely knew who she was."

"Were you with Rutherford that night? Playing cards, as he said?"

"No. He came forward and said that simply to save my hide. I had no alibi."

"Why not?"

"I was out of the house. One of the grooms had seen me ride my horse out earlier. That was one of the more d.a.m.ning things against me. I was not at home, and I could not say where I was nor who I was with."

"You were alone? Did no one see you at any time?"

"No. I was not alone. That was the problem."

"You're not making sense. Who were you with? Why did they not speak up?"

"I cannot say. It concerns someone's honor."

Bryan quirked a brow. "You said you wanted to clear your name. How can you clear your name if you cannot prove you were elsewhere?"

"I will have to do it some other way. I'm not sure how. But revealing who I was with is not an option."

"Father! You cannot even tell me?"

"It concerns a lady. I could not compromise her."

"You were meeting a woman? Someone other than Rose?"

"Of course someone other than Rose. I told you, I barely knew her. She was just one of the chambermaids. And I was in love with someone far more beautiful, far more..." He stopped. "She was married, Bryan. I was a lad head over heels in love with a married woman. It would have meant the ruin of her reputation if I had revealed I was with her. Moreover, her husband would have beaten her if he had found out about it. I could not do that to her. She wanted to tell the authorities where I had been, but I would not let her."

Bryan stared at him. "You were having an affair with a married woman? Who was it?"

Ranleigh quirked an eyebrow at him. "You think I am going to tell you that? No. Not even you."

"You must have loved her very much."

"I did." His words were a heavy sigh. "I loved her more than anything."

Bryan sat still for a moment, trying to absorb yet another secret he had learned about his father. "I am beginning to think that I don't know you at all."

"What a man does as a barely grown lad is rarely part of the stories he tells his children. It was a different life. It had nothing to do with you."

"Did you love her still when you married my mother?"

"Yes. I won't try to deny it. I loved her long, long after I knew her. Your mother was a good woman, and I loved her. Don't think I didn't care for her. But...it was not the same way that I loved-the other one."

"I see. Did Mother know?"

"I did not tell her. She may have guessed. I don't know. She was always a canny one. But she did not ask about the women in my past. She told me that she preferred not to know. She knew that I was never unfaithful to her."

"Except in your heart."

Ranleigh sighed. "I suppose so, if you want to look at it like that. But your mother was content. She was happy. She knew that she had all the love I had to give. I did not sit around and pine after...her. I didn't compare your mother to her. I did my best to be a good husband and father."

Bryan looked away, shaken by his father's revelation.

"Bryan, it was your mother's choice. She was happy with what she had. I was happy, too."

"Without the woman you really loved?"

"I could not have her. She was married." His face darkened. "She would not leave him. Should I have spent the rest of my life mourning her?"

Bryan shook his head, studying the pattern of the rug beneath his feet. "No. But if you loved this woman, how could you bear to leave her? How could you live without her all your life?" His mind went involuntarily to Priscilla; he thought of how empty he would feel at the thought of never seeing her again, never again tasting the sweet pleasure of her body.

"I didn't feel I had any choice. You don't understand, and, frankly, I hope you never do. There is such frustration in loving a woman you know can never be yours. No matter how much you love her, no matter what you would do for her, she is another man's wife, and will remain so. Strong as the love is, there is an anger, a bitterness, too. Sometimes, lying in my bed alone at night, thinking about her with him, I hated her for being married to him-even while I was aching all over to touch her. I felt as if I paid in blood for every bit of time I spent with her. Every minute of joy had hours of pain to counter it."

"I'm sorry." Bryan surged to his feet. He hated hearing the pain that lay in his father's voice. "I did not mean to criticize. You don't have to explain or justify anything to me."

"No. It was a legitimate question, one I would probably ask in your place. Believe me, there were more than a few miserable nights aboard ship and in America when I cursed myself for having left her, when I called myself all kinds of a fool and told myself that it would have been worth anything-all the pain, all the jealousy, even living with my father's lack of faith in me and the hounds of the police baying at my heels, anything!-just to lie with her again." He let out a short, humorless laugh. "Indeed, if I had not been thousands of miles away and practically penniless that first year, I would probably have run straight back to her."

"Fortunate for Delia and me that you could not, I suppose."

"Humph. Fortunate for me, too. That kind of loving is a living death. It saps a man's pride, his strength, his honor. She was not a wicked woman-don't think otherwise. She was good and kind and wonderfully gentle, and she was married to a brute who did not deserve her. But what we did was wrong, and we knew it was wrong, and it tainted our lives. If we had gone on, I think it would have blackened my soul eventually."

Bryan was silent for a moment, then asked quietly, "Will you try to see her again? Now that you are back?"

His father looked at him for a long moment. Finally he said, "Yes. Though I don't even know if she is alive or lives here still." He stood up and walked over to the bookcase, staring blindly at the books' bindings. "After you went off tonight to seek out your 'future wife,' I looked all around for her. I couldn't see her anywhere. She was not in the throng of people who came up to talk to me. And I didn't want to make it obvious by asking about her first thing. But I will ask. If she is alive and here, I shall have to see her again, if only to find out what has happened to her, how the years have dealt with her. I have to know." He turned and faced his son, and there was a bleakness in his eyes that Bryan had never seen there before. "Beyond that, I do not know. But I must see her."

A heavy silence fell upon them. Finally the Duke turned away from the windows. "Enough of the past. Now, tell me what has happened to you. And what is this about a woman you want to marry?"

Bryan grinned. "She is a very special woman."

"Beautiful?"

"Very. Well, perhaps not in the common sense. But her eyes-gray as the sea, and she can fix you with a gaze that looks straight into your soul. The first time I saw her, I was on my last legs, and when she opened that door, with the light glowing behind her, she looked like an angel to me. The next time I saw her, she d.a.m.n near blew my head off."

His father's eyebrows vaulted up. "Indeed."

"Well," Bryan explained, "I was holding a knife to her throat, you see, so she had to defend herself."

"Of course," the other man murmured, his eyes dancing. "It makes perfect sense now."

His son had the good grace to grin. "I know; it sounds like a madman's story. But, you must remember, neither one of us knew who I was."

"I understand why she did not, but how could you forget your ident.i.ty?"

"It was the rogues who whacked me on the head and abducted me. That was how I met Priscilla to begin with."

"She was one of the ones who abducted you?"

"No. Of course not. Priscilla would never be involved in something like that. I met her when I escaped."

"Of course. Silly of me."

"She is the most exasperating person I have ever met. Stubborn, pigheaded, absolutely refuses to listen to reason."

"That explains why you have decided to marry her, no doubt," his father inserted dryly.

"No. I decided I wanted to marry her the other day, when she was kidnapped, and I was afraid I might not ever be with her again. I realized how awful life would be without her."

"She was abducted? I thought it was you."

"It was me-the first time. But this time the rogues took her, thinking to force me to surrender myself to them."

"Your life seems to have been rather active the past few weeks."

"It has. I had no idea why any of it was happening. I understand it far better now."

"I am glad someone does. I haven't understood any of it yet. I am afraid that blow on your head must have affected you more than you realize."

"Let me go back to the beginning. When I got your telegram, I set sail for England at once. I was fortunate to find an English ship leaving the next day. No pa.s.sengers. I had to sign on as a crewman, but it was a fast trip. When I got to London, I went straight to the lawyers, and they gave me instructions to travel here, to Elverton, and meet you at the inn. When I was almost to Elverton, two men stopped my horse. A robbery, I thought. But when I got down, they did not ask for my money. They simply knocked me over the head, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a hut, stark naked and with absolutely no idea who I was."

His father stared at him. "Bryan... Good Lord."