No Family, No Friends, No Mercy: The Paralyzed Duke Waited for a Bride Who Never Cried Off

Chapter 14

He came alone, as he had said he would, which was itself informative.

At four o’clock precisely, Lord Philip Draycott was shown into the library at Ravenwood Hall, where the Duke of Ravenwood sat behind his desk and the Duchess stood at the window with her back to the light. The footman withdrew. The fire had been built up.

“An interesting house,” Draycott said, looking around with mild amusement. “It has not changed in fifteen years.”

“I have not been able to change it,” Adrian said. “You have.”

Draycott smiled and sat down, uninvited, in the chair opposite the desk, crossing one leg over the other with the ease of a man in his own drawing room.

“Well,” he said. “Here I am. The conversation you wanted.”

“Three things,” Adrian said.

“By all means.”

“First.” Adrian put a sheet of paper on the desk — a copy of the promissory note he had shown at the Fentons’ dinner. “You will not call in Lord Ashby’s notes. You will extend them at four percent for five years and you will let the man die in his own house. If he is turned out, I will see that every creditor of yours in the city is told exactly how the trades work and what the risk of doing business with you is likely to be. You make your money from men who do not know what you are. Remove the ignorance and you remove the business.”

Draycott’s smile did not change. “You have become bold.”

“Second. You will draw the mortgages on Vale House — all of them, every note, whatever the figure is — and you will convey them to me before the end of the month, at par, for a consideration of one shilling each. Sir Edmund Vale is dying. His daughter will not be hounded out of her father’s house while he is still in it.”

“And if I decline?”

“Then at eleven o’clock this evening, a servant of mine will lay a bundle of papers before a man I know at the Home Office who has wanted your affairs examined for three years and has never had a lever small enough to move them. You are too well connected for a prosecution — I know this; you know this. But a Home Office inquiry takes five years, and it freezes everything you own while it runs, and in five years you will be fifty, and you will have spent four of those years explaining yourself to clerks.” Adrian folded his hands. “You have never once in your life been asked to explain yourself to a clerk, Philip. I do not imagine you would enjoy it.”

For the first time, the smile slipped a fraction. Draycott’s eyes had gone hard and flat and very watchful.

“And the third thing?”

Adrian looked at him for a long, unhurried moment.

“The third thing is a question,” he said. “You sent me a horse in September of eighteen-fourteen. A bay gelding, six years old, bought from a dealer in Melton. It was a generous gift, and I thanked you for it. Two months later, that horse threw me on the Huntingdon Road and broke my back, and the boy who took my groom away that morning could never afterwards be found.” He leaned forward slightly, and his voice did not rise at all. “I want you to tell me, in your own words, what you did to that horse.”

The room was extremely quiet. The fire cracked and settled.

At the window, Lenora Vale did not move a muscle. She was not looking at the man in the chair; she was looking at the man at the desk, which was not what he had asked her to do, and which was in some ways more useful.

“Ravenwood,” Draycott said, and laughed, a light, easy, unbothered laugh that went on slightly too long. “You have been alone in this house too long. A horse is a horse. Animals fall. Men fall.” He spread his hands. “I am sorry for your accident. I have said so. But you are not the first man to be thrown, and you will not be the last, and if you have got it into your head that I — ”

“You have not answered the question.”

“I have declined to answer an insult.”

“Which is not the same thing.” Adrian sat back. “Interesting.”

Draycott rose. He was still smiling; he was, in fact, so perfectly and beautifully composed that a stranger would have said he was enjoying himself. But Lenora, watching from the window, saw that his hands, at his sides, had closed, and that when he set his glass down on the corner of the desk he set it down a fraction of an inch too hard.

“You have made two demands and asked a question,” he said. “Here is my answer to all three. I shall think about it.” He walked to the door. Then he paused with his hand on the latch and turned back, and his voice was quite pleasant. “One thing you should know, Ellsworth. There is a physician in London — a very respectable man, with very good letters — who has been examining your case at my request. He is prepared to swear before the Court of Chancery that your mind has been affected by your injury. That you are subject to fits of delusion. That you take a physician’s orders and forget them, and are not fit to manage the affairs of a great estate.”

Adrian did not move.

“I mention it,” Draycott said, “only so that when it comes, you will know that I gave you the chance to be sensible.” He opened the door. “I will send word about the mortgages. Good evening, Your Grace. Duchess.”

And he was gone, down the corridor, out through the hall, and the front door closed behind him with a soft, well-oiled click.

Lenora came away from the window.

“He was lying about the horse,” she said. “I have no doubt of it at all. When you asked him — his chin came up, and he looked at your left ear, and he laughed before he spoke instead of after.” She stopped beside the chair. “But there is something worse. When he spoke about the physician — the Chancery, the delusion — he was not lying at all. That part is true. He has it arranged already.”

“I know,” Adrian said.

“Your Grace — ”

“Lenora.” He reached for her hand and gripped it, and his own was steady. “This is what happens when you put your hand into a nest. The animal bites.” He looked up at her. “We have the copies. We have the deed box. We have a maid who will swear to what she heard in his study and a cook who heard it with her.” He smiled, and for once it was not a cold thing; it was almost eager. “What we need is the portmanteau. And I do not intend to ask him for it.”