“You do not need to pretend with me, Giles. I am the last person on earth who would judge you for being unable to grieve a father who didn’t deserve it. I doubt I’d shed a single tear for mine. In fact, I am convinced I shan’t. He would have betrayed us all to save his own slippery skin—no matter how low and despicable it was. He was the worst father in the world, and I have always loathed him.”
An understatement. She hated him with every fiber of her being, especially as she got older. As Alfred Merriwell had sunk further into moral oblivion and his life of crime, he threw hisdaughters into danger. Sometimes out of sheer carelessness and neglect, and sometimes on purpose.
“I see we finally have something in common.” He smiled without humor, clearly awkward at being vulnerable but more uncomfortable with seeming callous or unfeeling. “The duke was a difficult man to like.”
“Then how do you feel about his demise, beyond guilty that your heart isn’t affected in quite the way you think it should be?” If her journalistic experience had taught her anything, it was that sometimes the best questions to ask were the ones that went straight to the point.
His wry expression confirmed she had hit the nail on the head.
“I cannot deny I am still in the baffled and bewildered stage. It was all so unexpected after all, and still so fresh, I’ve had precious little time to contemplate the gravitas of the situation or what the blazes to do about it beyond arranging the funeral. The duke neglected to leave instructions for anything despite apparently knowing he was knocking on death’s door. Hence I am burying him in the family plot in Shropshire next to the duchess whether he likes it or not.” By his frown, he was obviously in two minds about that decision, reminding her he was decent to his core. Or at least she had always suspected he was. “It’s most likely the latter, to be honest, as there was no love lost between the duke and duchess. They loathed each other, too.”
First, she had noticed the distinction of “the duke” and now “the duchess.” Clearly he never mentioned his mother with any affection, either, a snippet that was both telling and sad. It plucked at her toughened, cynical heartstrings. There was a story there, she was certain, of a difficult, lonely childhood that had shapedthe fraught relationship he’d had with his father and likely the man he was today. A story he was determined to keep intensely private.
Something that they also had in common. Thanks to her own father, there were things in her own past—unpleasant and best-forgotten things—that Diana had never shared with another soul. Not even her beloved sisters knew about the most awful memories from their final year with Alfred Merriwell. They were just too personal. Too painful. The barely healed wounds too deep to ever seal completely no matter how much she tried to leave everything in the past where it belonged.
“If the duke did not want to spend eternity rotting beside her, he should have had the decency to tell you as much. It was most inconsiderate that he didn’t. If I were you, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.” He smiled at that. “You have quite enough on your plate without trying to read his twisted mind from beyond the grave.”
“Do you ever mince your words, Diana?”
“Do you want me to?”
He shook his head, his eyes amused now instead of burdened, and that pleased her. “Good heavens, no! One of theonlythings I like about you is your honesty.”
He took a tentative sniff of his ale. He wanted to talk, she could sense it, just as she sensed trusting didn’t come easily to him, so she made no attempt to fill the silence that stretched until he had no choice but to give in. He had sought her out, after all, not the other way around.
After an age, he sighed. “He’s barely been dead two days and already I feel as though I’ve been dealing with the aftermath for months. Since yesterday, the Grosvenor Square house has beenmore like Piccadilly Circus than the dour mausoleum the duke lived in. I’ve had to have meetings with the physician and the undertaker. This afternoon it’s his crusty old solicitor and the uncertainty of the will.”
“I hardly think his will is uncertain. You are his only heir, after all.”
An odd emotion passed quickly across his face before he shrugged. “I suppose so… but with the duke one never knows. I wouldn’t put it past him to do one last thing to punish me for existing.” He waved that strange comment away. “But that joy is for later. Besides, it gave me a good excuse to escape this morning, and like the lazy chap I am, I left the last dribs and drabs of callers to Olivia because I’d had quite enough of them.” Irritation dripped into his tone, and she couldn’t blame him. The majority of those visitors politeness forced him to receive were only there as voyeurs. Olivia and Jeremiah had had to watch them like hawks to stop the intrepid from wandering off and snooping about the house.
“She mentioned there were a lot of them yesterday.”
“‘A lot’ is putting it mildly. There was a huge influx of enthusiastic mourners who were insistent they all had to pay their respects to the duke now that he’s dead, when they all avoided the old curmudgeon like the plague while he was alive.” His nose wrinkled in disgust. “Which baffles me completely, as staring at the corpse of a distant acquaintance is not my idea of a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.”
“Humans are macabre and inquisitive beings.”
“They are indeed.” He slanted her a brief glance. “And poor Carruthers and Hugh have been fielding the hordes of journalists who demand all the gory details—and still loiter outside even though they have them.” Giles paused and stared into his tankard for a moment. “Thank you for not tipping the press off sooner, by the way. Your thoughtfulness on my behalf was much appreciated. It gave me the chance to break the news to Dahlia before anybody else did.”
“How did she take it?”
His brown eyes clouded as he gripped his drink tighter. His hands giving him away again as they hinted at an ordeal he would never admit to. “She was distraught. Genuinely distraught, the poor thing. I felt wretched for the girl. After all these years waiting for a fiancé willing to bite at her father’s well-baited hook, her decrepit betrothed up and snuffs it before she’s reeled him in. The only solace I took from delivering the bad tidings was that I knew, once she was over the initial shock, she was going to be much better off in the long run. His advanced age aside, the duke would have made the poor thing’s life a misery.”
Giles looked a little lost for a moment, until he covered it with feigned excitement as the pies arrived, making her wonder what miseries the duke had caused him over the years to warrant such a statement.
“I invited her to the funeral, though. Despite the inevitable awkwardness, it seemed the right thing to do. Thankfully, the Regises declined as Mr. Regis did not feel he could leave his business for so long—which I cannot deny is a huge relief. The man made no secret of the fact that he is still keen for his daughter to become the Duchess of Harpenden, and clearly believed I owed him the courtesy of stepping up seeing as the previous duke had so grievously inconvenienced his plans.” His eyes widened in mockhorror. “He was even prepared to renegotiate the terms of the marriage settlements while poor Dahlia was still weeping inconsolably in her nightgown! Can you believe that?”
“Do you suspect your father was marrying Regis’s daughter for his money?” She wasn’t asking for Charlie orThe Tribune, because she already knew she wouldn’t share Giles’s answer with anyone, but the unlikely alliance between a pompous and snobbish peer of the realm and a brash cloth merchant’s daughter was a puzzle that made no sense.
He cut into his pie and watched the escaping steam dance. “I genuinely haven’t the faintest idea. If it wasn’t for the money, then I am at a loss as to why he was shackling himself to Dahlia. Because it certainly wasn’t love. The duke didn’t know the meaning of that word.”
Yet another sad and telling comment that made her want to squeeze his hand again. In case she did, she sat on one of her own and sipped her drink with the other.
The pastry disappeared into Giles’s mouth and he chewed thoughtfully. “I am hoping the crusty solicitor can shed some light on his motives, because it was all very out of character.”
“Perhaps the duke simply wanted some companionship in his dotage?”
He looked at her as if she had gone stark staring mad. “The duke wasn’t enamored of people in general and always preferred his own company. All I know is he was—” He stopped abruptly, and something about the way he tried to appear nonchalant told her he chose his next words carefully. “Not himself… Something was amiss.” His dark eyes were troubled for a moment before he shrugged. “He was also in a dreadful hurry to get the deeddone—he had procured a special license, and the wedding was planned for Saturday.”
