Chapter Three

With the abrupt force of cold water over a drunkard’s head, silence, blessed silence, descended over the roiling cacophony of the entrance hall. Endymion repressed the sigh of relief his body fought so violently to release. A Duke of Pendeen did not experience relief, and he certainly never displayed relief in public.

He let the quiet fill him, a skill he’d learned under his grandfather’s tutelage. In his determination to enter the house as if he’d never been away, he’d not noticed the massive medieval entrance hall. Until now. It had been changed. Or, at least, he believed it had. He had a vague idea of animal heads—dead eyes of stags, boar, wolves—staring at him from walls grey with smoke and ash above dingy oak paneling. The hunting trophies were gone. The walls had been whitewashed, the woodwork polished to a rich glow.

“Get out, whore, and take your bastards with you. There will never be a place for your sort here.”

The low, insistent clang of memories just out of reach had plagued him from the moment he’d crossed the river into Cornwall. Like the buzzing of bees angered by his intrusion where he had no business, the faint insistent hum of events he could not recall had crawled along his skin and filled his head nigh on to madness. His arrival at the Pendeen family seat had only made the howling specter of his amorphous nightmares worse.

He dug his thumbnail into his palm. The past had no place in the present. He’d made no attempt to retrieve those months before he’d been dragged away from this place and its haunting, faceless fears. Still, that voice, a voice he knew but didn’t know, reached out of the mist, ever seeking to claim him. Until he fixed his gaze on her, the single person in the stupefied multitude standing below him who refused to look away.

His own servants were trained to work quietly and efficiently so as not to intrude on Endymion’s ordered life. The servants in Cornwall had no such compunction. Apparently, the arrival of a duke gave cause for a great deal of shouting, a great deal of running about, and the sort of chaos he’d only endured at a ball when a young lady fainted dead away at Endymion’s request for a dance. A request he’d only made because the hostess, an elderly countess with a particularly shrill voice, had insisted. The ensuing riot had sped his departure from the ball, considerably shortening his scheduled one-hour attendance. He had no such departure planned here.

Voil’s damned pungent cologne announced his approach long before his sudden arrival on the first-floor landing, thereby spoiling Voil’s attempt to startle Endymion. “Two questions, Your Grace.”

“I will not brook complaints now, Voil. You would come, invited or not.” In spite of the momentary cessation of noise, Endymion flexed his hands against the steady thrum of clamoring ghosts.

“I suspect these next weeks shall be far more entertaining than anything happening in London,” Voil said softly, even as he nudged Endymion’s back with his elbow. “What the devil did you say?”

“Say?” Endymion said absently. He kept his gaze on the one person who dared look him in the eye in defiance and barely leashed fury. The person on whom he’d focused to calm the pounding in his head. And it worked. His hands relaxed. His shoulders, strung like a bow, settled beneath his coat.

“What did you say to them?”

“I don’t recall.” He did. She’d asked him a question. His response had infuriated her. And dammit, he saw at once the one thing he’d never given a moment’s thought to during the long journey from London. The gangly, barely fourteen-year-old girl he’d been forced to marry had grown into a duchess. His vision of the girl was blurry, at best. Rhiannon Harvey de Waryn, however, stood as the clearest image in an entire county of faded, swirling people and places.

“You don’t recall?” Voil asked in mock horror. “I take it the lady at whom you are staring like a lovesick schoolboy is your long-lost wife?”

“She was never lost,” Endymion murmured as he started down the stairs. As if by prior design, Babcock snapped his fingers at the footmen they’d brought from London, who immediately returned to the task of unloading the luggage and carrying it to the duke’s suite on the second floor. The Cornwall staff jumped into motion as well, with far more chatter and far less organization.

“Your pardon. Merely misplaced for seventeen years,” Voil replied. “You never mentioned she was beautiful. And armed.”

“Stay here,” Endymion ordered as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“She has a gun,” Voil observed. “Bon chance, mon frere.”

Endymion crossed the polished marble floor. His Hessians beat a clipped tattoo until he stood before the woman he’d recognized the instant she’d entered the hall. Voil had teased him mercilessly that he would not. Endymion had secretly agreed, for reasons that had nothing to do with the time he’d absented himself from Cornwall. The time before his grandfather had spirited him away to London to hide behind a thick curtain of pain and a deliberate desire to leave the past where it belonged.

Some things—some people—defied pain and deliberation.

She narrowed her dark brown eyes, blew a strand of hair from her face, and tapped her foot twice. Endymion fought a smile. Her hair, so rich a brunette as to appear bronzed gold in certain lights, had ever been unruly, but never so silky as it shone now. She was still short and petite of frame, although with new curves, poured into a serviceable kerseymere walking dress, that provoked some surprising physical reactions in him. The gold flecks in those changeable dark eyes flashed fire. He’d been standing there staring and it provoked the devil out of her. That much was clear. Very little else was, save that concentrating on his previously ignored duchess held the encroaching walls of the house at bay.

“Did you come all this way merely to upset my household and stare at me like some overdressed looby?”

“We both know why I am here, do we not?” he replied.

“Because, in spite of receiving the finest education that the best tutors and the dons at Oxford had to offer, you have yet to learn the meaning of the word No?”

Several snickers whispered around the cavernous entrance hall. Endymion cut his gaze sharply to survey the servants, her servants, pretending to be about their work. He received solemn faces, curtsies, and a few pulled forelocks in return.

“Perhaps a private conversation is in order,” he suggested.

“What could we possibly have to say to one another, Your Grace?” She cocked her head, the mutinous set of her jaw so familiar as to tilt Endymion’s hard-won dignity. The light of the setting sun reached through the tall windows behind them and glanced off the barrel of the gun slung across her left arm. An armed duchess did not do a great deal for his dignity either. Especially this duchess.

“We have much to discuss once we dispense with this.” Endymion reached for the Manton. A far away roar echoed in his ears. He shuddered. Ice crept from his fingertips up his arm until he simply froze, mid-reach. Waves of sound, a noise he often heard in his dreams, broke over him. His lungs refused to draw breath. Oh, God. Not now.

“Tall William?” Rhiannon said, her voice miraculously breaking the spell.

“Yes, Your Grace?” A lanky, raw-boned footman in stark black-and-white livery hurried to her side.

“Take this and put it away.” She handed off the weapon without a glance in the footman’s direction. Instead, she fixed on Endymion, her eyes liquid and soft. She sighed, a sad sound, and suddenly Endymion regained the ability to breathe.

“Are you sure, Your Grace?” the footman asked as he conducted a disdainful perusal of Endymion’s person.

She smiled. “For now. Come along, Your Grace.” With a wave of her hand, she started down a long, paneled corridor that passed under the staircase to the right.

Endymion watched the cheeky footman walk away. Something about a man in black livery, the precise tap of his footsteps across the marble entrance hall, pushed past the walls of indifference he rushed to bolster. For a blink of a moment, a weight of sorrow and fear struck him a glancing blow. Out of here. He needed out of here.

Halfway down the corridor, his duchess peered over her shoulder at him. “You aren’t afraid to be alone with me, are you, Your Grace?” In any of the women who’d wasted their time pursuing Endymion nearly from the moment he’d arrived in London as an awkward, sickly youth, her expression might be considered flirtatious. He’d been married to her for seventeen years, knew her not at all, and yet he’d wager his life she did not flirt. Ever.

“Terrified,” he assured her as he followed her down the corridor. “I shall, however, endeavor to be brave. Returning to my home after such a long absence might prove problematic if I cry craven on the first day.”

She snorted. “Invading my home after such a long absence may prove more than problematic. This way.”

 

Rhiannon steadied her steps. She refused to hurry simply because his long legs allowed him to cover the distance between them in a few strides. She’d not look back again either. No need really, as his tall, muscled body loomed behind her near enough to touch. She breathed in his clean, masculine scent and immediately chastised herself for her folly.

She’d been infatuated with the handsome lad, as everyone had called him, a harmless girlhood fancy. The man who’d finally returned to Cornwall was anything but harmless. His was the austere, striking sort of male beauty destined to break hearts. His heart had been broken long ago and it was not her place to repair it. Indeed, she’d almost decided he no longer had one to break. Until today.

His reaction to the gun had done it, dash it all. For a moment, Endymion stood before her—fifteen years old, in the throes of a confused anguish and fear he didn’t understand. Or, perhaps it was all for show, to gain her sympathy. He’d been his grandfather, the duke’s, creature for ten years and then the grandfather’s brother, Lord Richard de Waryn, had taken over the task of ensuring her husband acted the perfect, all-powerful peer. Rhiannon did not trust her husband’s uncle. She dared not trust her husband. Not until she learned who Endymion the man had become and why he’d finally returned to Cornwall.

“What did you do with the heads?” Endymion breached the silence to ask as they reached her study.

Rhiannon, her hand on the eight-panel oak door, looked over her shoulder at him. “The heads?” Seventeen years away, and he asked her about…heads?

“The duke’s trophies in the front hall. They’re gone.” His face was unreadable, but his voice gave him away. The depth and richness that time had added did not deceive her. He was puzzled, and he did not like it.

“Very observant of you, Your Grace.” Rhiannon stepped into her study and marched to the ornate, broad oak desk across from the massive fireplace. She perched on the edge of the overstuffed leather chair behind the desk and layered her arms along the intricately carved dragons that served as its arms. Spine erect, she adopted her duchess posture.

“You are the Duchess of Pendeen, my girl. Don’t you forget it and never, ever let them forget it. You act like a duchess, they’ll treat you like one.”

Her father’s words had burnt into her memory the morning after her wedding—the morning she awoke to find her new husband, his grandfather, his uncle, and every member of the duke’s London household gone.

Her husband’s return was no time to allow her father’s lessons to go to waste. Her duchess demeanor appeared to be working, as Endymion stood in the doorway and perused the study as if he surveyed a foreign country. Good. A man off-balance was a man who might reveal his secrets.

“This room is changed, as well,” he observed, still rooted in the doorway.

“So much so you cannot find your way inside?”

He frowned, clasped his hands behind his back, and strolled casually across the Persian carpets that covered the dark wood floor. Halfway through a circuit of the room, he stopped to study the painting over the fireplace at the far end of the study. “Turner?” he inquired.

“A gift from my father. It is Gorffwys Ddraig from the ridge above the terrace gardens.” What was he about? He had not come here to indulge in idle chatter and send uncomfortable tremors up and down her body.

“Gorffwys…” He mangled the old Cornish word. She nearly laughed at him, but it struck her. He truly did not remember.

“Gorffwys Ddraig,” she pronounced with care. “The name of this house in the old language.” He’d done it again. Made her pity him. Enough. “Sit down, Your Grace, and state the purpose for this visit. I have correspondence to answer and some accounts to look over before dinner.” Rhiannon had cowed many a man with her brusque demeanor and iron-laced tone. Endymion had never been the sort to be cowed. He’d paid the price for his defiance in the worst manner imaginable. She could not allow her memories of the boy she’d grown up with to shake her now. No matter the ridiculous hopes she visited from time to time.

“I hear and obey.” He inclined his head. A flitter of amusement crossed his face. He traversed the room with quieter steps and far more elegant grace than a man his size allowed. Once he’d subsided into one of the chairs before her desk, he leaned back and stretched his legs out before him, his fingers laced across the black and gold silk brocade of his waistcoat. Unfortunately, the taut muscles in his face, his neck, and his hands gave him away. An image of the easy, assured boy he’d been came unbidden to her mind. 

“You haven’t obeyed anyone since you were nine.” Rhiannon crossed her arms and took a deep breath. “Why are you here?”

“You have grown quite lovely, Duchess. More lovely than I remember.”

“I was fourteen when last you saw me. How fortunate for you I have not grown uglier. You are still too damned tall, but, at least, the food in London agrees with you. In addition to not having learned the meaning of the word no, you have also failed to learn how to answer a question.”

He quirked an eyebrow. What a strange pass they had come to after all these years apart. She’d envisioned his homecoming many ways, when her firm vow not to think on him gave way. Her visions had never been this cold, civil exchange.

He sat up and adjusted his waistcoat. “It is time, madam. We have both reached an age where we are mature enough to do our duty to Pendeen.”

“Our duty to Pendeen?” Rhiannon seethed, the heat of her anger pulsing in her veins. “I have been doing my duty to Pendeen these seventeen years, Your Grace. Whilst you have larked about London, made a name for yourself in Parliament, and danced at far more balls than I can credit for a man who once declared dancing a monumental bloody waste of time.”

The hard line of his mouth relaxed, but he caught himself before he actually smiled. Rhiannon kicked her foot beneath her desk. She’d said too much. Again. She, who’d learned the hard way to measure every word, had become a magpie.

“I cannot help but be flattered—”

“Don’t,” she snapped. “This is Cornwall, not darkest Africa. We do receive the London papers.”

“I see,” he said quietly, eyebrows raised.

“Do you? Part of my duties as the Duchess of Pendeen is to know what the Duke of Pendeen has been up to before the neighbors do. Unfortunately, the newspapers have been my sole source of information as you have never troubled yourself to write, and your grandfather’s brother only writes with complaints and requests for the estate’s receipts.” She swallowed hard against the lump around her heart rising into her throat.

“I charged Lord de Waryn with overseeing matters here at Pendeen.” Endymion’s face remained blank. They might have been discussing the weather.

“I am not a matter, Dymi. I am your wife, in name, at least. One wonders why you have bothered to come to Cornwall, at all. Why not simply send Uncle Richard to dispatch your duty to Pendeen?”

Endymion rose and clasped his hands behind his back. “Don’t be vulgar.”

“Vulgar?” Rhiannon tugged open one of her desk drawers and fished out a letter. She tossed it across the desk. “Vulgar is asking your wife to come to London to be serviced by you like a broodmare until she is with child, at which point, she can toddle off home. And can she please do so before Parliament sits again in November.”

He glanced at the letter. A slight flush splashed across his sharp cheekbones for a moment. He cleared his throat. “I have been informed my letter was…not the most romantic of missives.”

Rhiannon snorted. “I have read ore quality reports more romantic.” She pushed herself out of her chair and walked around the desk. Once she stood toe to toe with him, she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “Why are you really here?”

He reached out, slowly, and ran a loose lock of her hair between his finger and thumb. “Your curls are not as wild as they once were.”

“It has taken all her considerable powers, but my lady’s maid, Beatrice, has tamed them.” The scar across his thumb had faded.

“Pity,” he said softly as he released her hair and quickly clasped his hands behind his back once more. “Rhee…Duchess, I—”

For a moment, he was almost the Dymi with whom she’d run the moors.

“My name is not Duchess,” she snapped, without knowing why. “I am not a spaniel dog.”

“You are the Duchess of Pendeen,” he declared, as if she was not aware of it every waking moment of every day.

“Your letter is not the only unromantic thing about you, Your Grace,” she said and stepped back. She bumped into the front of the desk, and this time he did smile.

“Perhaps you could show me how to be romantic.” He raised his hand toward her face.

Rhiannon rolled her eyes and batted his hand away. “The only thing I wish to show you is the way back to London.”

“Is there a reason you insist on my immediate departure? Perhaps I should”—he reached around her and plucked the open ledger book from her desk—“check the accounts.”

She snatched the book from his hand. “I am working on these. You may check them once they are complete.” The rough brush of his fingertips caused her stomach to flip.

A sharp rap sounded at the door.

“That will be my mines manager. If you will excuse me, he and I have business to discuss.” Rhiannon dropped the ledger on the desk behind her and tried to walk away.

Endymion thrust his hand out to stop her. His hand. Which landed on her breast. Rhiannon looked into his green eyes. Shock. Surprise. Chagrin. And something she recognized, but dared not name, flashed across those jade depths.

“In case you are wondering,” she started, “that”—she waved at his hand—“is even less romantic than your letter.”

He snatched back the offending appendage. “We have to come to some sort of agreement…Rhiannon. For the good of the title, and all of the privileges afforded us, there is a price to pay.”

A price to pay? If he said one more word, she would not be responsible for her actions.

Rap! Rap! Rap!

She took Endymion’s arm and, with a good deal of tugging and nudging, escorted him out the door. Josiah, with a nod and a Your Grace for each of them, took that opportunity to duck into the study and make his way to the window across the room. Rhiannon turned her attention back to her utterly astonished husband.

“Dinner is at seven,” she informed him. “We keep country hours. And unless you packed your French chef in all the baggage you dragged from London for a simple visit, it will be good Cornish fare. We have no taste for fancy food here.”

“French chef? How do you know I have a—”

Rhiannon shut the door and shot the bolt home to lock it.

“Madam, open this door. Open this door at once.” Something very like a kick from a Hessian boot struck the thick wood. Twice. “You are no spaniel, Duchess, you are a bulldog.” A series of raised mutterings accompanied his footsteps down the corridor. She distinctly heard the words stubborn woman and smiled.

“I wouldn’t smile, were I you, Your Grace. He’s well within his rights to knock the door down,” Josiah observed, his face not quite scowling, but close. “You will have to settle all of this eventually.”

Rhiannon collapsed into her desk chair and pushed absently at some papers. “He won’t kick the door down. He suffers from a fatal disease that precludes such brutish behavior.”

“What disease would that be?”

“More than half his life with his grandfather and his uncle have infected him with a tragic case of being a gentleman.”

“And if the Cornish air cures him of this disease?”

“I may be forced to declare open season on the ducal tarrywags.”

Josiah roared with laughter. When he was done, however, he wiped his face with his voluminous handkerchief and lowered himself into the chair her husband had unwillingly vacated. “Will you tell him about the tack…and the ruins?”

“Tell him what? I have no wish to remind His Grace of the clumsy girl he married.”

“A child falling from trees and into ponds is a far cry from a duchess being pushed from—”

“I was not pushed. I fell. Nothing more.” Rhiannon had far bigger problems to consider than a few random accidents.

“You have to show him the account books, Your Grace.” Josiah took the hint and changed the subject to the matter at hand.

“I know. The only question is, which set of books do I show him?”