He grunted as he adjusted himself, his cockstand desperately uncomfortable when he was riding a horse. He deserved that. He deserved worse, truth be told.
He turned up a lane and realized where he was guiding his horse without even meaning to. To his cousin’s home, the ducal estate where he’d been given his orders and turned into a vile spy what let like a lifetime ago. And of course that was where he needed to go. To end this.
She deserved that.
He rode the remaining distance and pulled to a stop in front of the large, beautiful home. He looked up as he swung down and handed over his reins to the stablehand who raced to greet him.
He’d never had many thoughts about this place. It was just a big house where he’d visited his aunt a few times as a young boy. Then, after the death of his father, the decline of his mother’s health and his own foolish fall, it had become a prison where he had no choice but to come to beg for money from his cousins.
But now he looked up and up and saw the place where Flora had lived. Flora had stood at these windows and looked down at arriving friends and family, probably smiled before she came down to greet them. Flora had arranged the parties and balls, Flora had walked with her late husband through the gardens. Flora had lost his uncle here, setting her on the path where she now stood. Where she now looked at Roarke with a trembling need that called to him so loudly and keenly.
One he couldn’t respond to. She didn’t know who he was, not really, she didn’t know how he was related to her sad past. She didn’t know that he had been sent as a infiltrator and a betrayer. He didn’t want her to know.
So he’d end this now. Sharp and firm and in a way that would cut his cousins’ machinations off at the knees. He only hoped they would all be here.
His cousin’s butler met him at the door and frowned. “Were you expected, Mr. Desmond?”
Roarke pursed his lips. “No,” he admitted. “But if you tell the duke that this is about the dowager, I’m sure he will wish to see me.”
Both the butler’s brows raised slightly and he inclined his head rather than simply dismissing Roarke as it was clear he’d been about to do. “I will ascertain if His Grace is in residence.”
“And the others,” Roarke said sharply. “If my other cousins are here, I want to see them, too.”
The man looked irritated to be ordered around so by a man with no title, but didn’t argue. He simply pointed Roarke to a parlor off the foyer and went down the hallway toward the back of the house. Roarke entered the room, rubbing suddenly sweaty palms against his trouser legs.
He knew what he had to do. But he also knew these actions might…probably would…have consequences. Potentially life-changing ones. But there was no going back now.
CHAPTER 8
In a few interminable moments, the door to the parlor opened and Roarke turned to watch his three cousins come in. They looked a bit windblown, and he realized they must have been out on the veranda or in the garden together.
“Good Lord, Roarke, you could have sent word,” Thomas snapped as an abrupt greeting, even as he slammed the door behind the three of them. “We were in the middle of a garden party and there are important guests to get back to. What could you possibly want?”
Roarke arched a brow. “I thought you were desperate for news of the dowager.”
He was careful not to call her Flora, even though her name was on the tip of his tongue. They would pounce on that like rabid dogs and he was in no mood to explain himself to them.
“Thomas, let him speak,” Gertrude insisted, stepping forward. Her eyes shone with excitement, with cruel glee. “Tell us what you’ve learned, not that we haven’t already guessed.”
Philip’s eyes were just as bright as his sister’s though Roarke thought for a different reason. “She’s been whoring around, hasn’t she? She has lover, kept secret so that she may claim what is not rightfully hers. Tell us everything, spare no detail.”
Roarke winced at the harshness of his tone, and because when Philip said lover, Roarke couldn’t help but picture Flora staring up at him in the gallery, her breath short as he fought the wave of desire between them. Whatever man would one day be Flora’s lover was truly lucky. Roarke tried not to hate him.
Thomas glared at his brother. “Christ, Philip, enough.” He stifled a yawn. “Do go on with it, though, Roarke. I’d like to get back to drinks and fine ladies, not waste more time on our father’s concubine.”
Roarke clenched his hands at his sides. God, but they were like vultures, waiting for him to deposit a carcass to pick. But he would not feed them. Not even if it meant denying his own supper. He could starve a little. He could find some other way to protect his mother.
“I’ve investigated the dowager extensively,” he said. “And despite what you three think of her, she is not doing anything untoward or secretive. There are no gentleman callers, let alone clandestine lovers who darken her hallways. She is just as she seems, an independent woman living her life as best she can.”
For a moment the room was dead silent as his cousins digested his statement. The three of them stared at him, color leaving their wretched cheeks all at once. He almost smiled at their horrified expressions, as they fully grasped that they couldn’t steal the inheritance her husband had rightfully set aside for Flora, after all.
“You’re lying,” Gertrude whispered at last, her lips trembling and her eyes filling with tears.
“She must be doing something,” Thomas hastened to add, shaking his head as if he were thoroughly confused by the news.
Philip, though, began to pace the room, almost like an animal. “She’s a manipulator and a thief and a…a whore who…who spins men around her finger—those truths will not change.”
It took everything in Roarke not to snap at the assessment and the cruelty that went with it. He shook his head. “Just because you all would deceive in order to obtain an inheritance doesn’t mean she would.” Gertrude let out a gasp, but he didn’t allow her or Philip to speak again. Instead, he glared at Thomas. The new duke was the one who mattered. The other two would just follow along with whatever he said. “Now I did what you asked, Your Grace. This is over. Leave her alone.”
Thomas stepped closer, tilting his head to look closer at Roarke. “You are defending her rather strenuously, cousin. I wonder why that is.”
Roarke had wanted to punch his cousin multiple times over the years. Mostly when they were children and Thomas had bullied him or those around them. But he never had. And he couldn’t rise to the bait and do it now, either. It would only make things worse, even if the crunch of his fist against Thomas’s cheek would be infinitely satisfying. But he had more than just himself to think about.
Through gritted teeth, Roarke said, “I found Her Grace to be charming and honest. And it’s clear that she truly loved your father, which is what one would hope you would have wanted for him in his last few years. You waste your time plotting against her when you should just move on with your lives.” He shook his head. “God’s teeth, you three have everything you have ever wanted, don’t you? The title, the money, the entail, the homes? Move on. And I shall do the same.”