Page 35 of The Untamed Heart

“I’m sure you would, Marcus, but as an honourable man, you fail to consider one salient fact. Keller is a coward, and cowards only ever approach from behind.”

Hatherley Hall, Little Valentine, East Sussex, 25th September 1816

The Duke of Hawkney sat pondering for some little time after Marcus had left. He had every confidence in Lucius’ ability to uncover the truth and to find the necessary evidence. If Keller was at the root of the letter, however, he did not strike Hawkney as the kind of man to allow himself to be disgraced. Certainly, he would not hang about waiting to face the music. If he could run from unpaid debts, he’d have no compunction about running from scandal.

Troubled by the turn of his thoughts, Hawkney took himself off for a walk to clear his head. The day was overcast and threatened rain, but he was too preoccupied to care.

Striding out, he tried to put his worries about Marcus to one side. The fellow seemed in good spirits. Indeed, he looked well. He’d certainly put on a little weight, and the gaunt, haunted pallor that had so worried both him and Sheringham seemed to have diminished. No doubt Miss Foxworthy’s company was proving to be a tonic. Hawkney wondered just where that association might lead his old friend. Possibly down a road Marcus had not expected to travel, he thought with a smile, though it would be good to see him settled. Hawkney had feared what might become of him after Waterloo.

Realising he was still fretting, he shook his head and turned his thoughts to his own affairs. This was less than satisfactory, however, as he recalled the scolding his grandmother had given him the night before. He was too old to be dilly-dallying. It was high time he settled down and started producing grandchildren for her to dote on. It was nothing he didn’t know—which only made it even more galling. She had threatened to invite every eligible lady of her acquaintance if he didn’t do something about it, and soon.

The ultimatum had made him positively nauseated.

Yet why? He did not dislike the idea of marriage. His affairs had always been discreet and carefully managed, but he was no libertine for whom the idea of fidelity was anathema. Yet he did not want to repeat the mistakes of his own family and marry for power alone. Gee-Gee had loathed her husband and, as for his own father… well, the less said the better.

He wanted a wife he liked, at least. Was that too much to ask? Yet the young women who were paraded before him—lovely as they were, not to mention accomplished and ideal for a future duchess—had left him cold.

It was a conundrum, and one he had little time to solve. He might break his neck tomorrow in some freak accident, and everything he had worked for, all his dreams for the kind of inheritance he wished to pass onto his son and heir, would be for nothing.

A rumble of thunder and the first scattering of heavy drops of rain overhead tore Hawkney from his troubles. He looked up, surprised to discover himself outside Willow House, and more surprised still as he heard a familiar yip and Benny launched himself at his knees, barking with delight.

Clara, arriving home at that moment, looked windblown and harried as the rain fell in earnest. She gave a little exclamation upon seeing him. “Hawkney! Whatever… oh, my, here it comes,” she said in dismay as the heavens opened.

Benny dashed through the gate as she opened it, rushing for the front door as rain fell in a deluge.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” she said impatiently. “Come in!”

Hawkney hurried after her, and they got inside in a flurry as a crack of thunder exploded overhead.

Clara gave a little gasp and then laughed as she looked up at him.

“I’m wet,” he said deadpan, as raindrops dripped from the brim of his hat.

“You are indeed. Come and sit by the fire and dry off.”

She was just leading him into a sparse little parlour when a querulous voice shouted from upstairs.

“Clara! Clara! Where have you been? I want a cup of tea, you wretched girl. Why are you never here when I want you?”

Hawkney frowned.

“She sent me out to buy her a new magazine, but she forgets everything these days,” Clara said with a sigh, unpinning her bonnet and setting it down. “Do make yourself at home. I’ll pop the kettle on and take her magazine up to her. I’ll be back presently.”

With this she hurried out and Hawkney slid off his coat, dropping it over a hard-backed chair to dry. Benny had settled down, curled before the fire with quiet content, but Hawkney felt none of the animal’s satisfaction as he looked about the room.

The house itself was old and rather elegant, and might have been charming, but the furnishings were sparse and a parsimonious air seemed to permeate everything. The two chairs before the fire were worn, the cushions thin and not at all inviting. There were no pictures on the walls, no clock on the mantel.

He waited, feeling uncomfortably like a visitor in a foreign land, and heard with relief the muted notes of Clara’s soft voice and her aunt’s sharper reply, and then the light patter of her steps on the stairs as she came back down.

Hawkney hesitated, aware he was prying when he had no right whatsoever to do so, but for once in his life he allowed curiosity to win out over good manners and left the parlour. Not being on the lines of Hatherley House, never mind any of the great estates he owned, it was not a difficult thing to find his way to the kitchen.

Clara looked up in surprise, caught lifting the tea caddy down from the top shelf of a painted dresser. He stared at her, wondering what the hell he was doing. He did not belong here, not in this house, certainly not in this room.

“I beg your pardon,” Hawkney said awkwardly, viscerally aware he was trespassing with no good reason for doing so, but Clara returned a wry smile.

“Come in. I do not doubt it is fascinating to you to see how the other half live. I felt just the same when I came to Hatherley Hall for the first time, as if I had entered another world. Though mine is a rather dull and confined space and you’ll have seen all the sights of interest with one swift glance about the room.”

Her voice was filled with amusement, as if she shared a wonderful joke with him, but Hawkney did not find it funny. That she should live like this… in this dull, colourless house, with only Benny for company, and at the beck and call of that nipcheese aunt. It made him furious.