The less cheerful but still personable Mr Dent managed all the swathes of London property which were rented out for eye-watering sums but which could easily be sold on, and Mr Waterhouse, the least personable and most supercilious of the three was in charge of the stocks and shares, of which there were hundreds, and they apparently made most of the money. Those were the biggest mystery and the thing he knew the least about.
Luke’s head was spinning with the scale of it all and he suspected he had barely scratched the surface. Perhaps he should do as the solicitor suggested and leave it all to the three men who had managed it all very competently for his brother while he hotfooted it back to Cornwall and forgot about it, but that didn’t sit right. His own business back home might be small by comparison, but because he had built it, he understood every nut and bolt of it, and he would understand this too, damn it!
One day.
Maybe.
This place, this new life which fate had foisted upon him, was suffocating him and he already felt like an old man under the weight of it all. A very tired, very burdened and very overwhelmed old man.
He stood with all the energy of an arthritic octogenarian, feeling every single one of the unwanted and heavy burdens resting upon his shoulders, and wandered to the window intending to open it and let some of that elusive fresh air in, but as he lifted the gauzy lace curtain he saw her.
Hope was arm in arm with another young lady chatting amiably. Both were wearing pretty summer dresses and enormous straw bonnets which hid their faces, but he knew it was her by her statuesque height, the curvaceous shape of her body which filled the demure dress so perfectly it rendered it effortlessly seductive, and simply by the way that she moved. Even flustered, as she had been yesterday on the balcony, she moved with overtly feminine grace. Those generous hips undulating in a manner so sensual, she would probably work hard to alter her gait if she knew the alluring effect they created.
She was uncomfortable with her physical attractiveness. He understood enough about her already to know she would much prefer not to be a living, breathing, walking male fantasy—and who could blame her? If the behaviour of that oily, panting lecher Harlington was any gauge, she must be sick to the back teeth of being treated so superficially. Although how that idiot had missed her fascinating intelligence and dry wit was a mystery to him, as they were even more alluring than her obvious physical enticements. But then everything seemed superficial here in the capital and people only cared about the finished, polished surface of the diamond and not the clarity and purity beneath.
He watched her walk towards the little park that was Russell Square before turning back to stare mournfully at his pile of correspondence again—his never-ending pile of unwanted correspondence and ledgers and papers—and spontaneously decided that for now at least, it could all go to hell. Instead, without analysing the overwhelming and compulsive need to get to her, he grabbed his coat and shrugged it on as he dashed out of his new front door. Then skidded to an abrupt stop on the bottom step when she miraculously appeared right in front of him.
‘Hello, Hope.’ Instantly, the world was brighter. Especially as she appeared to have misplaced her companion and he had her all to himself. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’ Although she didn’t seem the least bit pleased by it. Or comfortable.
‘I absolutelydo notknow you!’ The low hiss came through obviously gritted teeth.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You—me—we’venevermet.’ Her panicked eyes darted to her front door. ‘At least that is what my family think.’ Then she rose herself up to her full height and pasted a bland expression on her face as the door flew open and the blonde tumbled out of it doing up the ribbons of a different bonnet.
‘See! I told you the blue would suit this...’ The blonde paused mid-step and smiled at him, her expression instantly curious as her eyes boldly swept him up and down.
‘Charity, this is our new neighbour.’ Hope gestured towards him with a stiff wave of her hand. ‘As you can see, we just this second collided on the steps.’ An unnecessary clarification when they were both standing parallel to their own front doors. ‘This, sir, is my sister Miss Charity Brookes and I am Miss Hope Brookes. We live here with our parents.’
‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, ladies.’ Feeling his way and desperately trying to read the stark warning message in Hope’s lovely eyes, he inclined his head politely. ‘I am Lucius Nathaniel Elijah Duff.’ Or at least he had been until a few months ago, but actual names here weren’t as important as titles. ‘The Seventh Marquess of Thundersley.’ The ill-fitting addition felt awkward on his tongue. Probably because he still felt like an impostor in the role and would much rather be plain old Luke Duff again.
Miss Charity’s eyes widened. It was the typical reaction he had come to expect, though he couldn’t say he blamed everyone for reacting with disbelief at the news when he scarcely believed it himself. He most definitely was not marquess material and likely never would be.
‘LordThundersley?’ Her eyes slanted to Hope’s, amused. ‘What an intriguing coincidence. The same Lord Thundersley, I presume, who took a dip in the Earl of Writtle’s fountain the other week?’
As there was no denying that, he nodded and offered her his best sheepish smile. ‘Guilty as charged, Miss Charity... Sadly. Though in my defence, while not my finest hour, it was an accident.’ At least the kissing had sort of been accidental even if his subsequent swim had been deserved. Of their own accord, his eyes wandered to Hope’s lips before he ruthlessly dragged them back to the young lady he was talking to. A very pretty young lady indeed, beautiful if your taste ran to fashionable blondes, but nowhere near in her sister’s league. Even suddenly mute and doing her best to blend into the railings, Hope dazzled.
‘The same Lord Thundersley that the gossip columns linked to my sister?’
Hope stiffened and then quickly forced her shoulders to relax a split second before Miss Charity glanced at her, the unconvincingly baffled expression on her lovely face as hollow as the flimsy lie they were apparently constructing.
‘They did?’ He had to work hard not to allow his pasted smile to slide off his face under the blonde’s suddenly intense scrutiny. She smelled a rat.
‘Hope is the MissH.from Bloomsbury. MissHopeBrookes...the exact same woman they suggested was responsible for your being in that fountain in the first place, my lord. Isn’t that a strange coincidence?’
‘Good gracious? Is she really? Then I am doubly pleased to finally make her acquaintance as I did wonder who the notorious Miss H. was.’ And now he was over-explaining things too. ‘Alas, as I hail from Cornwall, Miss Charity, I am grossly unfamiliar with the capital and its inhabitants. Where I come from, gossip is so thin on the ground, the newspapers make no attempts at disguising the names of those being gossiped about with complicated secret codes. There would be no point, as everybody knows everybody anyway.’
‘It is much the same here, my lord, because the code isn’t that complicated any more than it is secret.’ He couldn’t tell if the blonde was convinced of his sincerity or not. ‘Whenever theMissis followed by the pertinent wordsfrom Bloomsbury, the entire world and his wife knows they mean one of us. My sisters and I tend to feature in them with alarming regularity.’
An interesting titbit Luke would have explored further had another, older woman not appeared at the doorway.
‘Is everything all right, girls?’ She eyed him dubiously as if he were some sort of pillaging marauder come to kidnap her daughters.
‘Mama, this is our elusive and mysterious new neighbour... LordThundersley.’
‘Oh...Oh!’ The older woman’s defensive expression instantly turned curious as she glided down her steps, as she doubtless recalled every bit of rot written about him in the last few weeks and was deciding if he were capable of it. Which clearly she did. Her eyes narrowed as they wandered to her daughter. ‘I thought you had never met him, Hope?’
‘Until this moment they hadn’t.’ It was Charity who quickly answered. ‘So this bizarre coincidence has caused them both quite a shock. Poor Lord Thundersley wasn’t even aware that the Miss H. from Bloomsbury was even a Brookes. Isn’t that funny?’ The sunny smile she shot him suggested that while she was determined to have her mother see it as coincidental, she wasn’t similarly convinced.
