The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

‘Surely you are not frightened of a lot of Whitehall clerks, are you?’ She opened her eyes wide and was rewarded by his grin at her tactics. Wheedling was not going to do it.

‘I thought you understood the concept of duty,’ Jack said mildly.

‘I do. But would it matter so much if I were one day late arriving in London?’

‘Yes.’ Jack produced a travelling chess set. ‘This will wile away the time.’

‘No, thank you, I have no desire to play chess. Please? Take me to my son, Lord Sebastian.’ That got his attention. Jack placed the box deliberately on the seat next to him and leaned back into the corner of the chaise.

‘So that was what you were doing up a ladder in Mr Catterick’s library.’ Eva nodded. ‘I do not use my title when I am working.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it makes me more of a target, less invisible. I am two different people, Eva. You have not met Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst, and I doubt you will.’

‘Why not?’ she demanded again, kicking off her shoes impatiently and curling up on the seat facing him.

‘Lord Sebastian is a rake and a gamester and does not mix in the sort of society that grand duchesses, even on unofficial visits, frequent.’

‘Is that why you fell out with your father?’ That would explain it, an estrangement between the duke and his wild-living son.

‘Actually, no. My father rebuffed my efforts to be a dutiful younger son, learn about the estate, make myself useful in that way. He supplied me with money beyond the most extravagant demands I might make and sent me off to London to become, in his words, a rakehell and a libertine.’

‘But why? I do not understand.’ Jack’s face was shuttered. Eva leaned across the space that separated them and put her hand on his knee. ‘Tell me, I would like to understand.’

‘I think because he was disappointed in Charles, my elder brother, and he did not want to admit it. I am very like my father, probably very like what he expected Charles to be. But Charles was—is—quiet, reclusive, gentle. My father maintained he was perfect in every way and dismissed me so he would not see the contrast proving him wrong at every turn.

‘By the time I was ten—and my brother twenty—I was careering round the estate on horseback, ignoring falls and broken bones. I was pestering him to teach me to fence, to shoot. Charles was stuck in his study, reading poetry. By the time I was sixteen I was in trouble with all the local light-heeled girls, Charles had to be dragged to balls and virtually forced to converse with a woman. And so it went on. Eventually the contrast was too extreme, but my father’s sense of duty to the family name, the importance of primogeniture, was too strong. He could not admit he loved me more, so he had to pretend the opposite. I had to go.’

‘How awful,’ Eva said compassionately. What a mess people got themselves into with their expectations and their pressures. Why could they not accept each other for what they were? ‘Did you miss your family and your home very much?’

Jack shrugged. ‘I was eighteen, the age when you want to get out and kick your heels up. He didn’t show me the door, I still came home, saw Charles, my mother, Bel, my sister. But for a few days, every now and again. And my father got the constant comfort of people comparing his sober, quiet, dignified elder son with the wild younger one.’

‘Then why aren’t you drunk in some gaming hell now?’ she asked tartly, to cover up the fact that she felt so sad about the young man he was describing. In nine years Freddie would be that age.

‘Nothing was expected of me,’ Jack went on, gazing out of the window as though he were looking back ten years at his younger self. ‘Nothing except to spend money and to decorate society events. I did my best. I can spend money quite effectively, I scrub up quite well, I can do the pretty at parties—but I was bored. Then I found myself helping a friend whose former valet was blackmailing him over indiscreet love letters. One thing led to another and I found that I liked Jack Ryder far more than I did Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst.’

‘Aren’t they now the same person, just with two different names?’ Eva asked. ‘Hasn’t Lord Sebastian grown up with Jack Ryder?’

‘Perhaps.’ He shifted back from the window to regard her from under level brows. ‘It makes no difference to you and me. The Grand Duchess Eva de Maubourg does not have an affaire with a younger son any more than she does with a King’s Messenger.’

‘That was not why I wanted to know.’ Oh, yes, it was, you liar. It was curiosity, certainly, but something was telling you that this man was an aristocrat and that would make it all right. ‘It was curiosity, pure and simple. I dislike secrets and mysteries.’ She said it lightly, willing him to believe her.

The way the shadow behind his eyes lifted both relieved her and hurt her. He did not want their affaire to continue. Why not? She thought he would be as sad as she at its ending. But then, by his own admission, he was a rake. Loving and leaving must be as familiar as the chase and the seduction. Only he had neither chased nor seduced her, when he very well could have done.

‘What do I call you, now we are back in England?’ she asked. ‘Mr Ryder, or Lord Sebastian?’

‘I am Jack Ryder. As I said, you will not meet my alter ego.’

‘You are not invited to the best parties?’

‘Duke’s sons are invited everywhere, even if fond mamas warn their sons against playing cards with them or their daughters against flirting. I do not chose to accept, it is as simple as that.’ He looked out of the window again. ‘And here is Greenwich. Another hour and you will be almost at your London house.’

Eva sighed. Even if she could persuade him, it was too late to set out to Eton now—there was the whole of London to traverse before she could be on the road to Windsor.

‘Don’t sigh—it is a very nice house.’

‘How do you know?’ Eva sat up straight and found her shoes. Time to start thinking and behaving like the representative of the Duchy in a foreign country, not an anxious mother or a sore-hearted lover.