Chapter Eight

For many years King Heartless ruled his kingdom with courtiers tiptoeing around him and his advisors startling if he coughed. Once he offered for the hand of a neighboring princess, but the girl cried so much when she arrived that the king sent her back home again.

All agreed she was lucky to have been spared marriage to the king without a heart.…

—From King Heartless

“Fuck your rules, Father,” the Duke of Montgomery’s voice rasped in the dark, odiferous bedchamber.

Bridget paused in the wearying task of attempting to get some sort of liquid down Val’s throat. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard the words in the last two days—by any means at all—but they were just as shocking each time.

She and Mehmed were taking turns nursing him in his rooms. They’d told the other servants that he’d decided on an Oriental course of fasting and hermitage. Mehmed said such things were sometimes done in his religion and it was just mad enough to be believable for the duke. For such a fast he was allowed only invalid foods such as beef tea, which he wanted brewed to a secret recipe. This of course had to be made by Bridget’s own hand, which she explained with many apologies to Mrs. Bram.

So far the other servants had taken it as all part and parcel of the Duke of Montgomery’s eccentricity. As for Mr. Attwell, he was still missing, which Bridget found very worrying.

She shook her head and brought the cup of broth to the duke’s lips again. “Drink this, please, Your Grace.”

“Grace is as grace does,” he sang rustily, and his eyes opened, glancing around the room. “Hush. He’s coming and we mustn’t be caught here together. Back to the nursery with you.”

He’d taken her for his sister again, Bridget thought tiredly. She’d been able to piece together some of his feverish mutterings.

They’d made her feel ill.

“It would be easier to feed you if you didn’t talk so much,” she murmured.

“But then you wouldn’t like me as much, either,” he said quite plainly, his azure gaze on her.

She nearly dropped the mug of beef tea. “Val?”

Oh, good Lord, she had to get out of the habit of thinking of him by his Christian name. Sadly it was almost impossible not to become overly familiar when taking care of a person’s most basic needs.

“The very same.” He smiled a ghost of his famous smile. “Now listen very carefully, Eve. Whatever you do, don’t become a cat. You shouldn’t like what Father does with cats.”

“Oh, God.” Bridget laughed, for she didn’t know what else to do. She was caring in secret for a mad, dying duke who thought her his sister and she didn’t—oh, she really, truly didn’t—want him to die.

“Eve? Eve?” He sounded like a frightened little boy now and her heart nearly broke.

“I’m here.”

“No, you’re not,” he replied, very seriously. “I sent you away from Ainsdale. To be safe. It’s for the best, I think. And then I’ll…”

He trailed away, clutching at her hand.

“You’ll do what?” she whispered.

It was night and they were all alone. Poor Mehmed had staggered off to the dressing room to get some sleep. Pip slept, curled against the duke’s hip. He hadn’t seemed to notice the dog there—which was just as well.

“Shhh,” the duke murmured. “Mustn’t tell. Ever. Never, ever, ever.” He smiled a sweet, boyish smile. “That’s why I killed him. So he’d no longer have power over me.”

She stared at Val in confusion and horror. “Killed who?”

“Tiger.” His azure eyes slid half-closed. “If you love no one, Eve, then he can’t hurt you. So you must kill the thing you love. Simple. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.”

She sat back shakily. Had he really killed his beloved pet cat to stop his father from killing it instead? As a child? Did such depravity truly exist in the world?

She came from a small country village. Had been raised mostly by Mam, an affectionate woman. The rest of her foster family might not have been overly loving, but they hadn’t been truly hateful either—not even her foster father, who had considered her a cuckoo in his nest. The worst punishment her foster father had ever given her was three swats on the bottom for poking her fingers in the Christmas pudding. She’d cried and cried and then wiped her eyes and apologized to Mam, who’d kissed her and given her a slice of the pudding.

Mam had always loved her.

How could a boy survive a childhood with so little love?

What would it do to his soul?

Well. She knew what it would do to him, didn’t she? The result lay before her, rasping with every breath, a man who had fought his nightmares for the last two days. A man who trusted no one.

A man whom no one trusted.

Bridget put the mug of beef tea aside and went to the window. It was past midnight. That was the problem. It was a time of darkness, of despair and the loss of hope.

When the sun came up it would all be better.

She glanced back at the still man in the bed.

If he survived this night.

The terrible convulsions had stopped yesterday. The fever seemed to have peaked this morning. And yet he was still delirious. He was still weak.

And getting weaker.

If he died without seeing his sister, Bridget knew she would forever regret it. Not only for the duke, but also for Miss Eve Dinwoody, who was a good woman.

He loved his sister—no matter what he might say aloud. He did love Eve.

Bridget strode to the dressing room. She hated to do it, but needs must. She shook Mehmed awake.

The poor boy sat up, his black hair sticking out at all angles. “What is it?”

“You must go to the servants’ quarters, Mehmed. You must wake Bob, the footman. Ask him to go to Miss Eve Dinwoody’s house—the duke’s sister—and deliver a note. Tell him it’s important. Can you do that?”

“Yes. Yes.” Mehmed stood swaying and looked around groggily.

Bridget left him to dress while she wrote a hurried note to the duke’s sister.

By the time she was finished, Mehmed was dressed and looked much more wide-awake.

She handed the note to him. “Try not to wake any of the other servants. We still don’t know who poisoned the duke.”

He nodded soberly and quickly left on his errand.

She returned to the bedside and sank into the chair that had been placed there. For maybe half an hour she merely sat there and stared. Val was sleeping deeply. He’d lost weight in the last two days, unable to keep anything down. The flickering light of the fire gave the illusion that his skin was stretched directly over bone. If he died…

Bridget shuddered, looking away, and swiped at the tears running down her face with the back of her hand.

He would hate to be seen this way. Such a vain man.

She inhaled shakily, glancing at the bed. This big bed, where he’d caught her just three weeks before, with Miss Royle’s miniature. It had been in the secret compartment just to the left of the swirl there.

Bridget stared at the swirl in the headboard a moment. She’d looked in all the other rooms since that night.

He wouldn’t have…

In a second she’d kicked off her slippers and carefully climbed on the bed.

Pip rose and stretched, front paws outthrust, bottom in the air, as she lifted her skirts and crawled toward the headboard on her knees. She knelt and felt with her fingers. There was the small hole. Her finger slid in and…

The panel popped open. She looked inside and there was the miniature.

She reached in and picked it up. “You devil.”

“You saint.”

Bridget nearly dropped the miniature on Val’s head at his words. She shoved it in her pocket instead and looked down to find him bemusedly eyeing her legs—her skirts were still hiked nearly to her hips. “Why are you in my bed, Séraphine?”

“I…”

His gaze lifted to her eyes, his lips curling slyly. “Oh, Mrs. Crumb, if you could see your face.”

A knock came at the door.

Bridget nearly startled off the bed.

Pip started barking, stiff-legged, from his position beside Val.

The duke turned his head and raised an incredulous eyebrow at the dog.

Hastily Bridget got off the bed as gracefully as she could—which she had the feeling wasn’t very gracefully at all—and went to the door. The dog sprang down from the bed and ran over to help.

Bridget opened the door to find Miss Dinwoody and Mr. Makepeace with Mehmed behind them.

“Where is he?” Miss Dinwoody said, stepping inside the room.

Bridget pointed mutely to the bed.

Tears ran down Miss Dinwoody’s cheeks as she started toward the bed. “Oh, Val.”

“I told you not to tell anyone, Séraphine!” he said, glaring accusingly from his pillows.

Bridget merely closed the door behind her and the dog.

And burst into tears of relief.

THREE DAYS LATER Bridget flung wide the curtains in Val’s bedroom.

Behind her he said, “There is still a dog on my bed.”

She turned to look.

The duke was sitting up in bed, looking much better than he had the night his sister had come to visit. His hair was clean and clubbed back with a black silk ribbon and he wore his purple banyan. He really was the vainest man she’d ever met, insisting upon a full toilet before he was truly well. He frowned down at Pip beside him, who in turn was staring at Val’s breakfast of fried eggs and sausages. “I don’t like dogs.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Bridget said briskly, coming over to fluff his pillows. She might’ve done it a bit vigorously, since the duke, once he’d begun to feel better, had immediately become the world’s worst patient.

“I like dogs!” Mehmed said cheerfully.

“Did you make this yourself?” the duke asked Bridget, and then, to Mehmed, “I thought you said you liked cats.”

“Yes,” Bridget said, as she said every time she brought up a meal.

She was beginning to worry that Mrs. Bram was never going to speak to her again, never mind that it was becoming increasingly hard to explain away the stuff she was making as some sort of fasting food. The problem was, the sorts of things she could make by herself and quickly and that the duke would eat made a very short list indeed.

Hence this morning’s fried eggs and sausages. Not her idea of sickroom nutrition by any means, but the duke had proved to be a very stubborn man.

“I like cats and dogs,” Mehmed clarified. “Do you?”

“I like neither.”

For a moment Bridget felt a pang as she remembered Val’s ravings. Of the pet cats he’d watched his awful father strangle as a boy. Of the one he’d strangled himself so his father would no longer have power over him. No, she wasn’t surprised that he no longer liked cats—but it did make her mourn for the child who had once loved cats.

The duke ate a sausage and then switched his frown to the boy, who was perched on a chair by the fire and not doing anything useful at all. “You can’t like both. It’s an either-or proposition. You must chose: cats or dogs.”

Mehmed looked confused. “What?”

“Don’t listen to him, Mehmed,” Bridget snapped. “His Grace is over-tired from being abed. You can like both cats and dogs.”

There was a short silence.

Then Val smiled slowly, like the uncoiling of an adder. “Oh, Séraphine. Tread carefully, my burning one, as if you danced on the shattered skulls of children, for I may lie abed, but I am a duke yet, and not just any duke, but the Duke of Montgomery, and my inheritance is death and mayhem.”

She stared at him, her mouth gone dry. He should be ridiculous, lying there in his gaudy purple banyan, sharing a bed with a little terrier dog, and tray of eggs and sausages on his lap, but he wasn’t.

He wasn’t.

“Your pardon, Your Grace,” she said, very formally, while a sort of storm began brewing in her breast. She’d nursed him for days, listened to his darkest secrets. She was no longer just a housekeeper to him.

He waved a hand, so elegant, so aristocratic.

That child who had loved cats was long dead and she was a fool for ever having felt a smidgen of sympathy for him—a duke.

“Do you like cats, Mrs. Crumb?” asked Mehmed innocently.

“Yes,” Bridget said through gritted teeth as she gathered the remains of the previous meal, “I do.”

She glanced at Val to see what he thought but he was ignoring her. The swine.

“Cats and dogs?” Mehmed questioned.

“Yes.”

“That is very good.”

“I think so, too.” Bridget moved toward the door. “I need to run an errand this morning, Your Grace.”

Val glanced up from his eggs. “What—?”

“Come.” Bridget snapped her fingers at Pip.

The terrier snatched a sausage from the duke’s plate and ran to the door.

There was a roar from the bed.

Bridget shut the door gently behind them.

She looked down at the dog as she strode down the hallway.

Pip had already gobbled the evidence.

“That was very bad of you,” she said to him in sugary tones.

They made their way to her rooms, where she donned her shawl and hat and gloves. Then she and Pip left Hermes House via the kitchens and through the gardens.

The day was overcast and rather dreary, and she walked swiftly, the terrier trotting busily beside her, as they made their way down the street. A big brewer’s cart rumbled past, loaded with barrels of beer, and a ragged band of boys made a dancing show with their brooms at the corner crossing. Bridget gave them several pennies to sweep the way clear for her. She hurried along the next lane and turned at the corner down a quiet street to find an unmarked carriage pulled to the side, waiting.

Bridget glanced behind her, and then tapped at the carriage door.

It opened to reveal Miss Royle, clad in a beautiful dove-gray velvet mantle lined with ermine fur. Bridget couldn’t help but think that it looked very warm as she pulled her gray wool shawl closer about her shoulders to ward off the morning chill.

She climbed into the carriage and sat down across from the other lady. Pip hopped inside.

Miss Royle smiled down at the terrier. “Oh, what a sweet little dog!”

Pip wagged his tail and placed his front paws on Miss Royle’s skirts for a pat and Bridget began to suspect he was a flirt.

The other woman looked up from the dog. “Do you have it?”

“Yes, of course.” Bridget withdrew the miniature from her pocket and handed it over.

Miss Royle took it, gazing down for a moment at the little family: an English gentleman, an Indian lady, and their baby. She looked up and there were tears in her eyes. “Thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me. Not only because of the blackmail, but because…”

Bridget nodded, glancing down at her hands. She didn’t know much of Miss Royle’s background, but she did know her mother was dead. The miniature in her hands might be the only portrait she had of her mother.

For a moment Bridget thought of her own father. Not her foster father, the man who had mostly ignored her, but that shadowy man who had contributed his seed to her making. He’d been a footman, but that was all she knew of him. She didn’t know if he was fair or dark, tall or short, or even if he was still alive or long dead.

And with Lady Caire her only source of knowledge, she’d probably never know.

Bridget pushed the bitter thought aside and looked at Miss Royle. “I’m glad you have it again.”

“As am I.” Miss Royle placed the miniature carefully into a small box before glancing up. “May I recompense you for your time and effort?” She held out a small purse.

“Oh.” For some reason Bridget hadn’t expected this. “There’s no need.”

Miss Royle’s smile was wry. “I think there is. It was a dangerous job. Please.” She pressed the purse into Bridget’s hand. “And please know that you have a position waiting in my father’s household if you ever have need of it. I expect you’ll be leaving the duke’s service soon.”

“Thank you,” Bridget replied, “but no, I have no plans to leave His Grace’s service.”

“But you must.” Miss Royle’s brows had drawn together and she looked alarmed. “When the duke finds the miniature gone—and he will—he might suspect you, Mrs. Crumb. You’ll be in terrible danger.”

Miss Royle didn’t know the half of it—Val most certainly would suspect her. But Bridget couldn’t leave Hermes House without her mother’s letters.

And there was another reason she was loath to leave—a reason she didn’t wish the other woman to see.

So she gazed at Miss Royle with calm certainty. “There are others I still need to help. Others that the duke is blackmailing.”

“You are a brave woman.” Miss Royle shook her head. “And he is truly a wicked man.”

“Yes, he is,” Bridget replied. Unfortunately, Val’s wickedness no longer seemed to be a deterrent to her.

Probably that should concern her.

She made her farewells and departed the carriage as circumspectly as she’d entered it, but as she made her way back to Hermes House, Pip by her side, she finally acknowledged it to herself:

Wicked or not, vain or not, outrageous or not, she was falling in love with the Duke of Montgomery.

BRIDGET HURRIED UP the stairs to Val’s rooms that night, carrying a tray laden with an unopened bottle of wine and a beefsteak cooked to the best of her ability.

She eyed the beefsteak as she climbed. It looked rather… burnt. Well, she was a housekeeper, not a cook. It wasn’t her fault that she was being forced to perform in areas that simply were not her responsibility.

As she made the upper floor she thought she heard a door close. Bridget peered down the hall. She couldn’t be certain but it seemed the duke’s bedroom door had just shut.

Her heart beat faster. What if it was the poisoner, returned to try to kill the duke? She’d left Mehmed in the room with Val, but they were both apt to fall asleep and Pip had been confined to her bedroom since this morning’s theft of the sausage.

Bridget rushed down the corridor. “Mehmed! Mehmed, open the door!”

Oh, she was a fool. She set down the tray and reached for her chatelaine, rifling through the keys.

The door opened, revealing the Duke of Montgomery, clad in his purple silk banyan, his golden hair clubbed back neatly, and his face clean-shaven.

She drew a grateful breath at the sight of him, whole and unharmed, but then it strangled somewhere in her throat when she looked up into his azure eyes.

They swam with wild fury.

“You… you’re out of bed,” she said dumbly. “When—?”

He propped his arm against the doorjamb near his ear, his lips curving as he murmured intimately, “Ah, Mrs. Crumb. You’re just in time. Do come in.”

He held out his other hand. His left hand. The gold ring glinted on his thumb.

She looked down at it and even with the menace surrounding him like a shroud, all she could think of was the words he’d moaned in his delirium, his voice cracked and broken. His father’s words. Only peasants and abnormals use their left hands.

She took his proffered hand.

He curled his long musician’s fingers over hers, and drew her into his bedroom, shutting the door behind them.

Inside she saw Cal the footman, standing by the fireplace, looking partly defiant, partly scared out of his wits.

Mehmed wasn’t in sight.

“Where is Mehmed?” she asked quietly as Val led her toward the fireplace.

This felt like a ceremony somehow.

He shrugged. “I sent him away to sup with the other servants tonight so that he could learn about the true depths of both English cookery and English prejudice. He’s quite excited.”

She frowned at that and then hissed, “This morning you told me you couldn’t get out of bed. What are you doing, strolling about your room now?”

He stopped and turned to her, taking both her hands as he leaned very close and whispered hotly in her ear, “I may’ve lied to you.”

She glared as he stepped away and winked before turning and gesturing to the footman. “You see I had reasons to conceal my health. Whilst I was ill my enemies grew complacent. If they thought me well again, they might flee.”

She looked from him to the footman. “Cal? But what about… I thought… Attwell is the one who disappeared?”

Val tutted. “Attwell has a mistress called wine who entices him away from his duties every so often for a week or more. He slumbers in her arms who knows where and when he awakens comes stumbling back, shamefaced and empty of pocket. In short, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less me.”

He turned slowly, gesturing with outflung hand, the purple silk rippling from his arm. “Now Cal on the other hand doesn’t mind hurting, do you, Cal?”

The footman seemed to try to throw back his shoulders, despite what looked like near-paralyzing fear. “You’re the one who hurts, Montgomery. You’re the Devil.”

“I?” Val smiled, an angel fallen to walk the earth and tempt mere mortals. “But I wasn’t the one who made you service an old woman.”

Bridget’s eyes widened in surprised comprehension.

Cal flushed a mottled red. “That’s not true. I loved her. I—”

“You were fourteen when she first took you to her bed.” Val tutted. “I doubt very much it was love when you saw her withered teats. Though why you should blame me for my mother’s venal ways, I don’t know. We were the same age. I could hardly have stopped her if my father didn’t care to.”

“You were jealous!” Cal shrieked, spittle flying.

Val arched an incredulous eyebrow. “Is that why you tried to kill me?”

Cal’s lips drew back, baring his chalk-white teeth. “I’ll not hang for you.”

“Won’t you?” asked Val gently. He might’ve been crooning to a tired child. “Poisoning a duke is considered quite bad, even by those who might not like said duke. They’ll drag you to Tyburn through the baying crowds and hundreds will watch and cheer as you dance at the end of the rope. It’ll be a very ugly death. Tell me, Cal. Did you poison me?”

Cal stared at him, his chest heaving.

Val smiled. “Did you pour something noxious in that glass of wine and take it, balancing it carefully through the crowd that night, until you found me, and offered me that glass of death? Did you, Cal?”

“It should’ve killed you,” the footman said, low and viciously. “I put enough in there to fell a horse. You should’ve died in your own vomit and shit that very night. Only a witch or a demon could survive that glass of wine. Your mother knew what you were. She cursed the day you were born. She cursed you. She told me what you did. She told me—”

“Enough,” Val roared over the string of spiteful words falling from Cal’s mouth.

He flung open his banyan and let it fall. Naked, he advanced on the cowering footman and only as he reached the other man did Bridget see that he held the gold-hilted curved dagger in his left hand.

“No!” She started forward. “No!”

He moved swiftly, like a striking snake. Once. Twice. Thrice.

So fast his hand was blurred.

Blood spurted from the footman’s side, but his eyes were still open.

Slowly he looked down at the mortal wounds.

And almost lazily Val slit his throat.

The thing that had been Cal thumped to the carpet.

Bridget gasped, her hands covering her mouth. Oh, God!

Val turned, still naked, still impossibly beautiful. Only the gore spattered on his belly, chest, and arm, marred his perfection.

He walked toward her and she couldn’t help it. She backed away from him.

He smiled.

Sweetly. Like a boy. The dagger still in his left hand. And caught her arm with his right hand.

“This is who I am, Séraphine. Naked, with blade and blood. I am vengeance. I am hate. I am sin personified. Never mistake me for the hero of this tale, for I am not and shall never be. I am the villain.”

And he laid his lips over hers and pushed his hot tongue into her mouth and kissed her until she couldn’t breathe and it was only later that she found the bloodstains on her dress.