Page 26 of The Duke and the Darkness

“Not anymore.”

“Not anymore,” he muttered, then gave up all pretense of control and submerged his entire face into the basin. But there wasn’t enough cold water in the world to shake the feeling of dread that consumed him.

When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, he flung back his head and let a spray of water fall across the floor behind him. Water dripped over his shoulders and off his chin and ran in rivulets down his chest, bare beneath the open banyan.

She held out a towel. “If you didn’t tup that woman, then why does all of Mayfair think you did?”

“Because it’s complicated.” He took the towel and wiped it over his head, then gave her his best no-nonsense paternal glare. “And where did you learn such language?”

She arched a brow. “From my older brother.”

He winced. That was most likely true.

“What happened, Devlin?” She leaned back in the chair, obviously with no plans to leave until she’d thoroughly interrogated him.

“Very bad timing.” He peered at himself in the mirror.Good God.The sight was worse than he’d suspected. “I saw someone I’d met at Barton’s.” There. That was vague enough. “We had a private conversation.”

“A woman?”

A ghost.“Yes.”

“And when you emerged from the box, you were both half-dressed, suspiciously rumpled, and had lost track of time enough to be stunned to see that the rest of the audience had emerged for intermission.”

“Something like that,” he grumbled. Somethingexactlylike that. So much so that his assurances to Northrop that the situation wasn’t at all as it appeared wasn’t enough to convince the earl. All hope of marriage to Lady Catherine was gone.

Oddly, though, except for guilt over the pain he’d inadvertently caused her, he didn’t care much that it was.

“Why do I think you did more with that woman than simply converse?”

He slid a sideways glance at Meg. “You’re not too old to be sent to boarding school, you know.”

“Yes, I am.” She grinned at that empty threat, only for her smile to fade. “You haven’t been yourself lately, Devlin.”

No, he was being exactly like himself. More than she would ever know. “I’m fine.”

Avoiding the concern in her eyes, he turned back to his reflection and caught his breath at the sight. No wonder she was worried. Lack of sleep and the weight of all the secrets he carried on his shoulders made him appear ten years older than he truly was, complete with dark circles around both eyes, lines edging his mouth, and wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. He raked his fingers through his hair to futilely brush it into a semblance of order.

“We’re all worried about you.”

He grimaced.Worried.That was the very last thing he wanted his mother and sisters to be, what he’d worked so hard for the past ten years to avoid. No. For longer than that. Even before he knew the full extent of his father’s crimes, he knew how viciously his father abused his mother, the curses and threats, the slaps and shoves. Even when he was a boy, he’d put himself between her and his father, hoping that Dartmoor would take his anger out on him instead. And he had. Brutally so.

Devlin hadn’t wanted to go away to Eton, fearing what would happen to his mother in his absence. But she’d insisted. She’d assured him that Father no longer struck her, that the beatings had stopped even while the ones given to him had only intensified as he grew older. As if the old man feared Devlin would someday grow strong enough to strike back and needed to prevent it by hitting him first. So he’d gone away to school at just thirteen, selfishly glad to be away, knowing Father couldn’t hit him all the way over at Eton.

What he didn’t know was that his mother had lied to him. The beatings hadn’t stopped. Worse—in his absence, Dartmoor had begun hitting Margaret.

She added softly, “I’mworried about you, Dev.”

He hung his head. “Meg…please.”

He couldn’t deal with the guilt of that right now, not on top of everything else that was coming at him. She thought he wasn’tbeing himself because he’d once used drink, gambling, and women as a way to survive being Dartmoor’s son and was back to doing that again, even at the ripe old age of thirty-two. That last night was simply another drunken incident on a downward slide back toward debauchery.

The farthest thing from it! God only knew how much control it took not to truly ravish that woman in the box when she’d thrown herself at him like that, or not to toss Northrop onto his arse and charge after her.

Just as Margaret had no idea of the truth of what happened all those years ago. She didn’t know how close he’d come to killing their father when Devlin came home after graduating from Eton to find the bastard had struck Margaret so hard against the side of her head that he’d ruptured her eardrum. She had been only ten years old. Just as she had no idea that Devlin had been forced to cover up their father’s crimes in the years since. Protecting his family was the very reason he’d gone to speak to that woman last night at the opera…and the same reason he’d not returned home until dawn.

But Margaret wouldneverknow any of that. He would protect her from that, too, until he drew his last breath, just as he’d protected Theodora from discovering exactly what a monster their father had been. The youngest of the three Dartmoor children, Teddy had still been in the nursery and under the constant watch of her nanny when Devlin had put an end to the abuse. She, alone, had escaped the old duke’s wrath.

He’d protected Teddy, but by then so much damage had been done, not only to his own family but to countless others across England, that the true extent of his father’s evil was simply unfathomable. He thought he’d finally buried those days along with his father.