Page 50 of The Duke of Deceit

“The direction to a property the duke owns. A small, secluded farm he’s let for years to an older couple named Mr. and Mrs. Porter. He visits there often, sometimes coming back on the same day, at other times spending the night. Occasionally he remains there for days. My men were unable to discover why, but evidence suggests he stays there to visit the Ealing races.” He nodded at the paper. “That is the only speck of darkness I was able to confirm about him—that he likes to attend the Ealing races.”

Her chest tightened, afraid to admit the truth to herself. She asked, barely above a breath, “So what you’re saying…”

“Is that the Duke of Crewe is kind, heroic, and generous to a fault,” he finished. He took back all the pages and returned them to his file, then held it out for her to take. “But he doesn’t want the world to know about any of it.”

Her hand shook violently as she took the file, then she reached into her reticule. She didn’t know how she kept fromdropping the bank notes on the floor as she put them onto the desk to settle her bill.

“Thank you, Mr. Stevenson.” She forced a smile for him as she stood on wobbly knees and made her way toward the door. Her body was numb, her mind roiling from trying to reconcile the man her investigator had uncovered with the one she knew—No, with the man shethoughtshe knew. Nothing about him was as it seemed. “I won’t be needing your services any longer.” She forced a tight smile. “You’ve been quite helpful.”

Once she left the office, her shaking legs forced her to give up the idea of walking, and she waved down a hired hackney. When she climbed inside and sank back against the squabs, she screwed her eyes shut against the stinging burn and pressed the file tightly against her bosom.

Oh, what fool she’d been! She thought she knew him. True, she thought he was nothing more than a blackguard, a heartless man who cared for no one and nothing but his own pleasures, a rake who had ruined her sister—

She hadn’t known him at all.

“Why?” she whispered to no one, letting her feelings of betrayal bubble unbidden to the surface. “Why would he do things like this? Why would Lucien Grenier, of all men, begood?”

Worse…

“Why would he lie to me about it?”

And if he’d lied to her about being a blackguard who was only one shade lighter than Lucifer himself, then why wouldn’t he have admitted to ruining Amanda, too, if only to make himself seem even worse? He should have reveled in it, then crowed his head off that he couldn’t be forced into marriage to right the wrong.

But he’d done no such thing. He’d always denied being intimate with Amanda.

Her head swam. With so much she thought she knew about him being turned on its head, was he lying or telling the truth? Was Amanda?

And worst of all, if he were truly a good man, why would he have humiliated her in the garden that way? What could he have gained from wounding her when she’d already declared a truce in their war?

She shook her head to clear it, but failed miserably. It was becoming harder to reconcile the heartless beast she thought had ruined her sister with the good man she was now discovering beneath the rakehell’s façade.

Harder? She stifled a laugh.Impossible.

She opened her eyes and looked down at the file in her arms.

All the good he’d done… Why? Was he attempting to find absolution for his part in the wars? Was he attempting to buy redemption for his black soul?

She had no idea. But was she determined to find out.

Chapter Fifteen

Lucien flicked theash off the end of his cigar and glanced down the crowded avenue in front of Lord Wrexham’s supper box, looking for any kind of entertainment to snag his interest.

Vauxhall was alive tonight. It seemed everyone who hadn’t yet left London for their country estates was crowded into the gardens. Gentlemen and ladies paraded in front of packed supper boxes from where friends and acquaintances called out to invite them to join in glasses of arrack punch and champagne. Musicians played from several bandstands scattered throughout the gardens, and acrobats and jugglers performed for the crowd, while overhead, a daring man walked a tight rope strung between two of the buildings. Couples had already wandered down the close walks into the darker reaches of the forested park where the lights had been extinguished—if they had ever been lit in the first place—to take pleasure in husbands and wives who were not their own.

God knew Lucien had partaken himself several times in those same shadow-filled recesses of the garden, with willing wives and widows who wanted nothing more than an evening’s fleeting pleasure. Oh, those encounters were physically pleasurable, certainly, yet they’d always left him feeling oddly hollow.

Maybe that’s what he needed tonight—an encounter that would drive thoughts of Jessamyn St Claire from his mind, witha woman who was everything she wasn’t…experienced, cool, and wanting nothing more from him than the use of his body. Someone not at all interested in saving his soul.

Instead, he was trapped here in Lord Wrexham’s box. How much would it take to bribe the attendant to bring him a bottle of good port to drink instead of that watered down punch the gardens served in all the supper boxes?

“Crewe!” Lord Wrexham came up behind him. “Haven’t had the chance to speak you yet about the latest round of corn laws. You’ve been away from the clubs.”

More than just the clubs. He’d been away from London for the past three days, dealing with problems in Ealing. He’d finally been able to return to his townhouse last evening, with assurances from Mr. and Mrs. Porter, the caretakers who ran the Ealing farm, that they would be just fine without him. Of course, they would be. They always were.

Until another incident there required his attention.

Sometimes, when things went wrong on the farm, he could easily set it back to rights and return to London by the end of the same afternoon; at other times, it took days. This was one of those times. Even then, he wasn’t sure if he should have stayed one more day to be certain all was well again. Phillip’s problems in Ealing bothered him. But so did his own in London, especially a particularly frustrating gel who refused to leave him alone. Maybe what he’d said to her at the garden party would finally put an end to all her attempts to reform him. After all, his cruel words should have irreparably broken her heart.