The Last Duke (Thornton 1)

“You’re wasting your breath, Chambers.” Regaining his balance, Tragmore dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief. “You can’t stop him from fighting like an animal. It’s in his blood; reinforced by years of living on the streets. Let him demonstrate the truth for all to see—that, title or not, he is and always will be a workhouse gutter rat. If Markham had possessed a whit of sense, he never would have acknowledged Cara Thornton’s bastard urchin as his son.”

“Shut up, Father.” Unnoticed, Daphne had left the bench and now stood, eyes ablaze, beside the men.

For the first time, Tragmore looked taken aback. “Well, well, what has happened to my meek little Daphne?”

“She escaped your poisonous grasp,” Daphne shot back. “And so did Mama. Now get away from my family and don’t return.”

Reflexively, Tragmore’s hand balled into a fist.

“Do it and you’re a dead man.” Pierce’s tone was lethally quiet. “And I don’t give a damn if the entire House of Lords convenes to watch me choke the life out of you.”

“You don’t, do you?”

“No. I’m a gutter rat, remember?”

“Harwick.” Elizabeth approached on quaking legs. “What is it you want? Why did you go to the trouble of hiring an investigator?” She glanced from Daphne to Pierce, her frightened gaze coming to rest on the vicar. “If my going back to Tragmore is the necessary price to keep you from harming the people I love—” Her voice broke. “Then so be it.”

Tragmore threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself, my dear. Your attributes are utterly replaceable. Frankly, I don’t give a damn whose bed you share. I don’t, of course, intend to tell that either to the Church or to Parliament. What I will tell them is that I’ve been abandoned by my beloved wife, the woman I’ve cherished for more than a score of years. Think of their outrage when they read my documents and learn you’ve taken up with a lover from your past—and under the roof of a truly violent and devious man.” Tragmore’s lips curled. “How quickly they will award me my divorce. And how sad for you and for Daphne.” He leveled his triumphant stare at Pierce. “Not only will I snuff out any chance Elizabeth has of initiating this divorce, but I’ll procure one on my terms, leaving Elizabeth with nothing.”

“Mama doesn’t need your money,” Daphne bit out.

“True. But does she need the vicar?” he returned smoothly. “Because she will never have him. You see, I quite agree with Chambers. Elizabeth is far too moral to bed down with a man who is not her husband. And remarriage will not be an option, not when I’m through.” His smile was malevolent as he delivered his final blow directly to Pierce’s soul. “And Daphne? Daphne will no longer be my daughter. In fact, the divorce will nullify her existence. And then, Thornton, your wife will be a bastard, just like you.”

A vein throbbed in Pierce’s temple. “How much?”

Tragmore’s brows arched in mock surprise. “Thornton, are you implying that you’re willing to negotiate with me?”

“I said, how much? You’ve had your fun. Now tell me what it is you really want. It isn’t your wife. Nor is it your daughter. It’s money. So how much will it take to convince you to abandon this sick scheme?”

All taunting vanished from the marquis’s face. “I want every one of my notes, marked paid in full, placed in the palm of my hand, along with that outrageous agreement Hollingsby drew up, shredded into pieces. And then, I want a reasonable allowance, say, twenty thousand pounds a month, to ensure my cooperation and my permanent withdrawal from your lives.”

“And what guarantee do I have that, once I’ve done as you asked, you won’t proceed with your contemptible divorce suit?”

“I’ll sign a document stating as such. Plus I’ll turn over all the reports my investigator provided me of Elizabeth’s meetings with Chambers.”

“What sort of fool do you take me for, Tragmore?” Pierce countered. “Your bloody henchman has copies.”

“Indeed he does. I’ll turn those over to you as well.” Tragmore gave Pierce a contemptuous sneer. “You have no choice but to take me at my word, Thornton. ’Tis true you run the risk of my reneging on my part of the agreement. But you also know that, given my incentive of twenty thousand pounds a month, that is highly unlikely. Conversely, what if you refuse my demands? Will you be able to endure the consequences? To live with yourself knowing it was you who’d condemned Daphne to the role of a bastard?”

Pierce’s fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

“How does it feel to be cornered, Thornton? To be locked in a cell for which only I hold the key, to be tormented as you once tormented me?”

The dam burst.

“You filthy scum.” Lunging forward, Pierce grabbed Tragmore by the throat. “What do you know of prison and torment? I merely bled your money. You bled my soul. Mine and all the other children you terrorized and thrashed every chance you could.”

“What children? What the hell are you babbling about?” Tragmore sputtered, struggling to free himself.

“The House of Perpetual Hope. Remember? ’Twas your thorough investigator who informed you of my roots. To you, it was a great revelation that the bastard who held all your notes was indeed a bastard, one who’d spent the first dozen years of his life in a workhouse. And not just any workhouse, mind you, but the one to which you’d paid so many lucrative visits. It never occurred to you that I’d remember you, did it? You assumed that you’d been as anonymous to me as I was to you. But you were wrong, Tragmore. Dead wrong. I remember you vividly—your beatings, your cruelty.” Pierce’s fingers dug into Tragmore’s throat. “And, of course, your private meetings with Barrings. The arrangement you thought was so cleverly covert. The money you pocketed in return for keeping that monster in office. I remember it all you vicious lowlife. Every week I watched you and my father, the distinguished Duke of Markham, slip into Barrings’s office when you thought all the workhouse trash were in bed. Every week I eavesdropped as Barrings handed you your money. And every week I vowed to make you pay for your cruelty.”

Tragmore’s eyes had widened, and he’d stopped struggling. “All this time you knew? So that’s why you’ve stalked me as a predator stalks his prey.” With renewed arrogance, he shoved Pierce’s hand away. “I always thought my little exchange with Barrings was most ingenious. The opportunity presented itself unexpectedly, to be sure, but all in all it evolved into a brilliant scheme. A surprising fact, given that Markham indirectly inspired it.”

Pierce swallowed. “So I have my father to thank for Barrings’s continued reign as headmaster.”

A crack of laughter. “Don’t be stupid, Thornton. Markham wasn’t devious enough to invent so splendid a plan. He was a weak man whose heart and conscience were in perpetual conflict with his head. What he proposed was a mere skeleton of my ultimate arrangement. He offered to pay me handsomely if I could devise a viable business venture that would necessitate his making frequent trips to the House of Perpetual Hope. Presumably, his real motive was to grant a favor to an anonymous friend by secretly keeping an eye on his bastard son—a son I recently realized was Markham’s. You.” Tragmore shrugged. “I always suspected there had to be more to the story than what he told me, but, quite frankly, I didn’t care. I did my part, inventing the idea of bleeding Barrings, something I knew Markham’s ethics would never permit—unless I were the one doing the bleeding. So I proposed doing just that

. I would accompany Markham on all his visits and personally handle the whole sordid matter with Barrings, thus providing Markham with the diversion he needed to verify the well-being of his friend’s bastard son. That suited Markham fine. As long as his true purpose remained unrevealed, he didn’t give a damn what Barrings paid me, nor that I was collecting funds from two sources, himself and Barrings. After all, Markham had more money than he could ever spend in a lifetime. So we all got what we wanted and no one was the wiser.”