Page 54 of The Duke and the Darkness

“Why are you doing this?” She didn’t mean giving up his bed.

He knew that, too, based on his somber countenance. “Because we both want the same thing—Horrender brought to justice.”

Nodding slowly, the last of her energy draining away, she removed her stockings and laid them over the footboard. Then she slipped her hand into his and allowed him to help her into bed.

Her body tingled from the slide of the coverlet over her bare legs and up to her shoulders. She nearly laughed. No man had ever tucked her into bed before. That it was Devlin, a notorious rake and the man who now permeated her thoughts, made it all the more ludicrous. Deliciously, temptingly ludicrous.

When he moved away from the bed, she reached for his hand. “Where are you spending the night?”

He tossed a glance toward the battered leather reading chair. “I’ve done it before.”

Now knowing the ghosts that haunted him, she held no doubts that he’d spent many a tortured night here, training until he wore himself into physical exhaustion, then collapsing into the chair and hoping for sweet oblivion. She’d done the same countless times herself in France.

“Stay,” she cajoled. “You can sleep here with me.”

He didn’t move, except to stare down at her with the same expression as a child with his nose pressed against the sweets shop window—a desperate longing mixed with the grim realization that it would not be his for the taking. Not tonight.

Then, reluctantly, he nodded, and a quiet thrill darted through her. He pulled the bedding up to her neck, then blew out the candle and lay on his back on the mattress next to her, on top of the coverlet that separated them.

In the silent darkness, the small room lit only by the dim glow through the stove grill, they both stared up at the floor overhead. Neither moved, but Peyton could feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing, just as she could feel the weight of his large body sinking into the mattress and gravity slowly nudging her toward him.

With a grimace, she rolled on to her side, putting her back to him. There would be no more intimacies tonight. At least not physical ones.

“You said we’ll know more in the morning,” she whispered into the shadows, repeating his earlier words. Even with his comforting presence next to her, her worry returned with the silent shadows. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.” He turned toward her and slipped his arm across her over the coverlet to hold her close. He hesitated, then his deep voice tickled the back of her neck as he murmured, “Your father was willingly part of it, Peyton. You need to accept that, or you will always be in danger.”

She nodded against the pillow. He was right, she knew. But… “How could he have done something like that? He was a good man, a wonderful husband and father. How could he…”

When her voice trailed off, the deep silence once more enveloped them, until Devlin murmured, “He wasn’t evil. He was simply ambitious, and to his credit, he didn’t know all that Dartmoor and Crewe—and especially Horrender—had been doing. He was part of the smuggling, the brothels, the stolen goods, all of that. But he didn’t know about the children who were—” When his voice broke, she knew he was suffering just as much as she was over what their fathers had done, the liesthat had been told, the lives that had been destroyed. “Who were forced into slave labor and offered up to the highest bidders for…God only knows what exactly.”

That bit of self-censorship was meant to protect her, but horrifying images filled her mind of terrible possibilities until she had to bite her inner cheek to keep from crying.

Sensing her anguish, he nuzzled his mouth against her hair. “Dartmoor and Crewe had funneled those profits through the fencing operations and the brothels so Chandler wouldn’t know the truth. When he discovered what they’d been doing, he felt they’d gone too far. It was one thing to smuggle French goods and sell them to their friends or profit from prostitution that was already happening, but it was something else altogether to exploit children. In your father’s eyes, the entire enterprise had to be shut down.”

A tendril of hope rose inside her, and she clung to it, praying her memory of her father could still be redeemed.

“So Chandler gave them an ultimatum. He would inform the authorities if they didn’t stop their criminal activities by year’s end, changing the illegal operations to legal ones where possible, shutting down the rest completely.” Devlin’s arm tightened around her as he pulled her back against his front and nestled her against him. “He gave them until the night of the musicale to make their decision.”

Her mind raced back through the years to that night, and she fought to bring back into focus every detail she could, no matter how small. She could hear the music flowing around her, smell the floral scent of beeswax candles, taste the bitter-sweetness of sugared orange peels and the unexpected bite of her first glass of claret. In her mind’s eye, she could see the women in their fine dresses, the men in their kerseymere jackets, and all of them glittering beneath the chandeliers and floating along as ifin a dream. She’d had no idea that darkness lurked among such bright rooms.

At every moment of that night, her silly girl’s attention had been fixed someplace else. Somewhere not important. While her father had been dealing with matters of life and death, she’d sat in the corner and pouted because Devlin had never noticed she was even there.

“That’s what they’d fought about that night,” he continued quietly. “Dartmoor and Crewe refused his demands. Your father stormed out, collected you and your mother, and you all started for home.”

She rolled over to face him. Even in the darkness, she could see his resigned expression. But then, he’d had a decade to process everything that had happened that night, while she was still fitting together bits and pieces into a desperate puzzle.

“But Dartmoor and Crewe panicked.” Now facing each other on the bed, he brushed his fingertips lightly over her cheek, as if they were lovers sharing a tender moment rather than what they truly were—two people who barely trusted each other. “They were both peers and could have claimed privilege to have the charges dismissed—they hadn’t yet committed murder—but the scandal would have ruined them.” He tenderly traced his fingertips along her jaw to her ear, but she knew he wasn’t looking at her. He was lost in that night ten years ago. Just as she was. “Charles Chandler had to be removed as a threat. He knew how all the money had been earned, where it had been hidden, and exactly how to link it back to them. If your father was silenced, no one would ever be able to prove what they’d been doing.”

“So they sent Horrender after us.”

“Only as a warning.” He shook his head. “They didn’t think Horrender would kill any of you, just threaten your father. Horrender was supposed to have stopped the carriage, draggedChandler out and beaten him to within an inch of his life, then threatened to kill him and his family if he dared breathe a word of what he knew. But Horrender decided to issue his own kind of warning and attempted to murder all of you.”

She pulled in a deep breath, afraid of the answer yet needing to know. “And you? What did you do that night, exactly?”

“I walked downstairs into the study and straight into the hornets’ nest. The two dukes were arguing, and I overheard their plan.” He rolled onto his back and hooked his arm beneath his head. “I rode out after your carriage to stop the attack but arrived too late. Your parents were already dead, but I stopped the man who had gone after you. You were unconscious. I picked you up and raced with you to the nearest surgeon. When I was handing you over to him, you woke up for only a moment, grabbed at my waistcoat—that must have been when you ripped off the button.” He paused. “I left you there and went to your home, to inform the household of what happened. The next morning, I was told you had died. Lucien and I attended your funeral three days later.”

Slowly, fighting back tears, she slid her hand across the coverlet to take his as it rested on the mattress between them and laced her fingers through his. She now knew everything he could tell her about that night. So many pieces of the puzzled snapped into place that she could barely comprehend it all, yet she also knew some bits were still missing and most likely always would be.