Page 43 of The Duke of Deceit

He almost smiled at the way she’d so easily painted his character.Almost.

“What surprises me is that you bothered to go to university at all. Most heirs don’t.”

“I went to get away from my father,” he admitted. That was the God’s truth. It certainly wasn’t because he was the heir. “I got myself expelled for the same reason—to spite him.” He tore a leaf from the branch and tossed it to the ground. “Aren’t yougoing to ask me about the brothels? Your investigator put that in his letter, too. Didn’t that surprise you?”

“No.” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “You’re a peer. Visiting brothels and taking mistresses is what your sort does.”

His sort.She had no idea of the truth about him. “I don’t keep a mistress. Never have.”And never will.“I have no need of one.”

As a noted rake, he had his pick of dozens of bored society wives and convenient widows to satisfy carnal urges, although he rarely partook of their pleasures. And when he married, he planned on never straying beyond his wife’s bed. What society thought he did, he couldn’t care less.

Although whatshethought of him mattered, damn it. But he had no idea why.

“I do spend my evenings in brothels, but not at all for the reasons you think.” Her lips parted softly at that gentle correction, and he nearly groaned at the temptation she posed. “But I didn’t mean those brothels. I meant the other ones your investigator referred to, the two in Seven Dials owned by the Duke of Crewe.”

He heard her swallow and watched her slender throat undulate softly. He fought down the urge to place his mouth on her, rightthere. There would be time and opportunity for that soon, he prayed.

But right now, he wanted to wipe that look of distrust from her pretty face.

“That part is true.”

Her eyes widened.

“The Duke of Crewedidown two brothels,” he explained. “My father the duke, that is.” He had never told anyone that except for Devlin and Shay, and now that he had, the relief was nearly overwhelming. He hadn’t realized how heavy the weight of the past had been on his shoulders until it was gone. Partially,at least. Some of that weight would be carried to his grave. “Now you know why I was so eager to escape to university, and then on to the Continent when even Oxford wasn’t far enough away.”

He studied her face to gauge her reaction, looking for traces of pity anywhere in her eyes and expression. If he saw even one glimpse of that…Please, God, don’t let her pity me.

But she didn’t. What he saw in her instead was understanding. But of course she understood. After all, her own father had also abandoned his family. The fact that hers did it physically and his did it every other way imaginable made no difference. Their fathers’ ghosts still haunted them, and most likely always would.

“Is that why you became a mercenary?” Her voice was so soft that it was nearly lost beneath the dappled shadows falling over them. “Because of your father?”

“In a way.” Talking about his father agitated him, so he pushed himself to his feet even though the natural bower was too small for him to pace. “I became a mercenary because my father prevented me from buying a commission in the British army.”

“He didn’t want you to be killed,” she guessed.

“He didn’t wanthis heirto be killed,” he corrected wryly. “I don’t think he ever truly gave a damn about me.”

He leaned his shoulder against the tree trunk and gazed down at her. She returned his stare with grim empathy.

“I became a mercenary, first with Prussia and then in Spain, because I was good at fighting and uncovering information—No, I wasn’t good. I was thebest. The Prussians knew better than to waste my skills in the fray of battle, so they had me do reconnaissance missions when I wasn’t training their recruits. I did the same with the opposition forces in Spain. I returned to England after the battle of Toulouse because my father died.” He shrugged. “Someone had to take over the dukedom. Might as well have been me.”

He saw her frown at his odd choice of words, but that was as close to the truth as she would get from him.

“So go ahead and ask me whatever it is you want to know about my time in the wars.” He crossed his arms, once again assuming that position of casual indifference he’d learned to wear like armor. “How bad was the food? How deep the mud? Do horses really scream when they’re wounded? Do grown men beg for their mothers as they lie dying?” He shrugged a shoulder. “How many French and Spanish did I kill? How many women did I see raped and men tortured, and for no other reason than because it amused the soldiers who did it?”

His eyes fixed on hers. He wanted no misunderstanding about what he was offering.

“Ask me whatever you want about that time, Jessamyn, and I’ll answer truthfully. Then we willneverspeak of it again.”

Her blue eyes glistened softly even in the dim light beneath the willow branches. Deep silence stretched between them, neither one moving nor speaking, not even so much as a murmur.

Then she took a deep breath and whispered, “Did you find what you were searching for?”

Her soft question undid him, and the shudder that swept through him would have dropped him to the ground if not for the tree propping him up.

He was stunned.Searching…She understood why he’d gone to the Continent the way no one else in his life had, not even Devlin, Shay, or Chase. They all thought he’d been running away, so they’d simply run away with him, when the truth was that he’d been searching for peace in the hell fires of war.

But he’d never found it, there or in England.