not thirteen now. She’s a grown woman. And sometimes …” He looked away. “Sometimes we all have to accept disillusionment.”
“Yes,” Garrick said. “If it was simply that …” He stopped. Could he trust Merryn when the lives of others were at stake? She was driven by a passionate desire for justice. She burned with the need to tell the truth. That very passion could see him hang and ruin lives a second time. The risk was enormous. Surely he would be a fool even to consider it. Yet the instinct to trust her was so strong.
“Twelve years ago I gave a promise never to tell,” he said. His father was dead now. Lord Fenner was dead, too. Of the original men who had made that bond only Lord Scott, Kitty’s old, embittered father, remained to hold him to his word and Churchward, of course. The lawyer knew everyone’s secrets.
“Break the promise,” Purchase said now. “If Lady Merryn is important enough to you, Farne, you will trust her with the truth.”
“Would you trust a woman who wanted to see you hang?” Garrick asked.
Purchase laughed and refilled his glass. Some liquid splashed, rich and deep, in the candlelight. “It gives a certain spice to the relationship,” Purchase drawled.
“I cannot wed again,” Garrick said. “I have—” He stopped.
I have nothing to offer, least of all to a woman as gallant and bright and brave as Merryn Fenner.
He had nothing but failure behind him in the marriage stakes, nothing but tarnished honor and the endless duties of being a Duke. Merryn, with her dauntless spirit, deserved better than a man whose soul felt as old and worn as his. She deserved a man who could love her, for a start, not one who had lost the ability to love when he had lost his honor.
“You’re a damned fool, Farne, if you let her go,” Purchase said, but without heat. “At least I tried to win Joanna—and failed,” he added ruefully. His eye fell on a redheaded girl who had drawn the curtain aside and stepped into the room. He put his glass down slowly.
“If you will excuse me,” he said.
Garrick followed his gaze. “Of course.”
As Purchase went out in response to the redhead’s come-hither smile, the curtain parted again to reveal another figure, tall, austere, long nose twitching with disapproval. Garrick stared. Pointer had come to find him. No doubt the butler, like Owen Purchase, thought he was about to relapse into his old, wicked, rakish ways and forget all about duty and service and obligation.
If only he could.
Garrick stood up. The room spun. The butler placed a hand on his arm.
“What the deuce are you doing here, Pointer?” Garrick demanded.
“Your grace …” The butler was keeping his voice discreetly low. Everyone was looking at them but then, Garrick thought that was hardly surprising. Pointer, in his coat, cane and beaver hat, looked about as out of place as a … well, as a butler in a brothel.
“Your grace, you have a meeting with the land agent from the Farnecourt estate in precisely—” Pointer checked his watch “—three hours. I did not think you would wish to be late. It concerns the pensions for the widows and orphans and the payments to be made to other staff on your father’s death—”
“Of course,” Garrick said. “Of course it does. Widows and orphans … Duty calls.”
A blonde harlot passed them, giving Pointer a luscious smile. The butler blushed.
“Tempted there for a moment, were you, Pointer?” Garrick said.
“No, your grace,” the butler said. “I prefer a lady to be more rounded and less angular.” He tucked his cane under his arm and politely held the curtain aside for Garrick to exit. “Mrs. Pond, the housekeeper, and I have an understanding,” he added primly. “We are to wed next year when she retires. I would not like her to hear I had visited a brothel, your grace.”
“All in the line of duty,” Garrick said, “but she won’t hear it from me, I give you my word.”
Garrick gave Mrs. Tong a staggering sum of money for the brandy and went out into the night, Pointer trotting along at his side like a bodyguard, or possibly a jailer. He felt tired, his body taut with unsatisfied desire. It had probably been folly to turn down the offer of a few hours’ forgetting in the skillful hands of one of Mrs. Tong’s girls. She would have been able to give him fleeting pleasure and physical release. But it was Merryn he wanted, not a courtesan. And he did not want an hour or so of anonymous oblivion. Yes, he wanted Merryn in his bed, her body naked and exposed to his gaze and to his touch, her mouth eager and sweet beneath his. But he also wanted her innocence and her passion to illuminate his life. He had lived in the darkness for a very long time.
He wanted what he could not have.
Merryn Fenner. He knew instinctively that one way or another she would surely be his undoing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MERRYN CAME OUT of the Royal Institution and shivered in the cold November breeze. The air had lost the last warmth of autumn and was cold today, the sky gray and sharp with an edge of sleet. She had enjoyed Professor Brande’s lecture on the chemical elements very much. It was the type of event that she loved: esoteric, intellectual, peaceful, a far cry from the ballrooms and entertainments of the ton. There were few attendees, just a small group of medical students and a sprinkling of gentlemen with an interest in scientific matters. Humphrey Davy, Brande’s predecessor at the Royal Institution, had been immensely successful and his lectures oversubscribed, but Brande was far dryer and less fashionable. Which was just the way that Merryn liked it. Her academic interests were, as she had told Garrick Farne, a refuge and an escape.
She did not want to return to Tavistock Street, where Joanna and Tess would either be out calling on their friends or entertaining guests and talking about something idle: the little season parties, the latest fashion in boots, the approach of Christmas. The thought of so much chitchat bored her. Her sisters had tried to take her shopping yesterday—for some reason they thought she needed some new clothes even though her current ones were not worn-out—but the idea of Belgrave House and the Bond Street emporia did not excite her. Instead she had spent the entire previous afternoon sifting through the Fenners estate papers, an exercise that was nostalgic but also practical. She knew it was folly to imagine that Garrick Farne would have overlooked anything remotely incriminating in the papers but she felt she had to look. Naturally enough she had drawn a blank other than to spot a reference to a meeting shortly after Stephen’s death between her father and someone called Lord S and the Duke of F. It had surprised her that Lord Fenner had met with Lord Scott and the late Duke of Farne. She could see no purpose for such a painful meeting at all. She took a hackney carriage to Grillons Hotel, an irreproachably respectable place where she had occasionally stayed when Joanna was out of town and wanted somewhere quick and easy from which she could come and go in her work for Tom. She ordered a luncheon of roast beef and watched the guests pass by. There was a clergyman with his wife and three pale, quiet daughters all dressed identically in sober gowns and dark bonnets. There was an elderly lady dripping with jewels who walked with a stick and raised a diamond-encrusted lorgnette to stare at Merryn for a full ten seconds. There were two country gentlemen who talked with their mouths full and drank copious tankards of ale, and there was a small, fair girl, governess or companion, Merryn thought, who looked anxious, as though she was nervous to be out on her own.
Merryn
