Cambertson gave a curt shake of his head. “She had some missish fears about the man she was meant to marry.”
“But…” He couldn’t think what to say, didn’t even know what to think.
The old butler shuffled in, offering a reprieve from the conversation, but Cambertson continued on.
“This family is in dire straits, and well she knew it. But still she carried on as if she were the toast of London. ‘I won’t marry him and you cannot force me,’” he mimicked in a crude parody of a girl’s voice. “We have nothing, Lord Lancaster. Nothing but Ewing here, who could drop dead at any moment—” The butler grunted an agreement. “And a deaf and dumb chambermaid whom no one else will employ. I could not even afford to keep my horses. Do you know what it’s like to ride to church in a mule cart? And yet she thinks she should be allowed to moon about, waiting to fall in love with some young man whose family likely wouldn’t have her anyway. The infuriating folly of youth.”
“I don’t understand,” Lancaster managed to say. Nothing intelligent but at least it was a full sentence. I don’t understand. Except that he was beginning to understand. His gut was telling him that he understood quite well. He met her stepfather’s eyes. “You were selling her off for money.”
Cambertson leaned forward, planting his elbows on the desk. “I arranged an advantageous marriage to a titled gentleman of considerable means. She had no reason to object. She certainly had no reason to become hysterical. The truth is simple. Cynthia did not like being told what to do, and so she deliberately ruined everything.”
“By ending her own life.”
“Yes.”
Lancaster couldn’t look at him anymore, so he glanced away, taking in the darkened room littered with papers and empty glasses, everything covered with dust. “And I thought you were in mourning,” he muttered in disgust.
“I am in mourning. We are ruined. And of course I did not wish her dead. Of course not.”
Unable to stop himself, Lancaster shot him a look of utter scorn.
“Ha!” The man’s laugh didn’t hold a hint of amusement. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a simple ‘mister,’ Lord Lancaster. Life is not so easy for men who aren’t born into such important status. She had a duty to her family and she refused to uphold it. So I am unhappy that she is dead, but I cannot find it in my heart to rend my garments and gnash my teeth. I am too occupied trying to find some other way to devise an income. Our sheep were hit hard with foot rot last year.”
A duty to her family. Yes, Lancaster understood quite clearly. But one detail nagged at his mind, and he finally pinned down the problem. “What kind of a titled gentleman can offer an ‘advantageous marriage’ but finds himself paying for the privilege?”
The man leaned back and crossed his arms. “There were certain circumstances…”
Lancaster narrowed his eyes and watched Cambertson’s chin jut out in defiance.
“Nothing more than rumors. Enough to make his marriage prospects a bit dim. Richmond assured me there was no truth to them.”
Richmond. Lancaster heard nothing beyond “Richmond.” His eardrums chimed like a bell. “No,” he managed to say, even as the air fell from the space around him and pooled like cool water around his feet. A vacuum formed, pulling the breath from his lungs and drawing all the blood in his body to the surface so that his skin heated all at once. A flash fire that burned away his nerves so he felt nothing.
Cambertson was still talking, saying words that thankfully seemed to need no answer, because Lancaster could neither hear nor respond.
Richmond. She had been meant to marry Richmond.
No wonder she’d killed herself. The man was a monster. A cold sweat broke out over Lancaster’s skin.
He’d thought Richmond under control. He’d thought the man incapacitated and impotent. And he’d clearly been disastrously wrong.
“She was being forced to marry Richmond,” he heard a voice say, hardly recognizing it as his own.
“Forced!” her stepfather scoffed. “Forced to marry an earl! Hell, the man would have been dead in ten years, I don’t doubt, and left her a countess free to do as she pleased. Forced, indeed!”
He could not meet Cambertson’s eyes. If he met his eyes, he would lunge at him, slap the arrogance off that hangdog face. “Those were not rumors. The man belonged in Bedlam.”
Cambertson sighed. “Of course I would not have granted permission if I believed the tales, but true or not, a little rough bed-sport never killed anyone.”
“Pardon me,” Lancaster bit out, pushing up to stand on stiff legs. “Please convey my respects to your wife.”
Cambertson was muttering something as Lancaster walked out, but he did not try to catch the words. He felt close to snapping, close to turning and throwing his fists against that man’s skull.
Rough bed-sport. How dare he. How dare he even think of sending a young girl into that man’s bed for the sake of anything, much less duty.
Duty. Family. Fear. And death. Death, or at least the desire for it. Lancaster was familiar with it all.
He slammed out of the study doors and rushed down the hall, wondering if every damned family in the empire was the same.
He hadn’t remembered making a turn as the butler had led him toward the study, but he was at the end of this hall and had to stop and look from left to right and back again. He couldn’t see much in this damned mausoleum, but he thought the entry lay to his left. As he turned in that direction, though, a flash of color caught his eye, a discordant scrap of beauty caught on an otherwise empty wall. Lancaster paused and turned, paying closer attention.
There. He touched a half-open door and the hinges gave way enough to reveal a painting on the far wall of a cozy room. A portrait, actually, of a young woman. It was small but vibrant, and the painter, whomever he was, had captured her likeness perfectly. Lancaster knew this because though he hadn’t returned once in the past ten years, he recognized the slightly mysterious smile and wise brown eyes, the stubborn jaw and wide-set cheekbones. He had suspected she’d grow up to be pretty, but Cynthia Merrithorpe had grown into a woman who wasn’t exactly pretty just…inexplicably compelling.
And he’d seen her last night.
The fury that had been working through his body stopped its coursing and then fell away, scattered like dust in the wake of his shock.
He had seen her last night. In his dreams. First in the library, and then again in his chambers, in the moonlight, standing over his bed. But how could he have dreamed her like this? Just like this? Perhaps…
Shaking his head, he swallowed hard. Ridiculous. She’d grown into an adult, but her features hadn’t changed. Of course he’d dreamed her like this. What else could she have looked like?
Lancaster stepped back into the hall, but not before he took one long look at that portrait. Her eyes were sadder than he remembered, it seemed.
With a soft curse, he turned and walked away, relieved he’d never have to set foot in this godforsaken house again. But there were memories awaiting him in his own home, and he dreaded the night to come.
“What did you do?” Mrs. Pell demanded.
Cynthia kept her face very straight. “Nothing.”
“Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ You think I don’t recognize that gleam in your eyes? The viscount looked exhausted this morning.”
Well, she hadn’t done much, honestly. Perhaps he had a weak constitution. Too many years of soft living would do that to a man, or so she heard.
“Cynthia!” the housekeeper