Page 43 of The Duke and the Darkness

When she finished, they applauded.

“Sing, Meg!” Teddy called out. “You promised.”

Margaret’s cheeks flushed slightly, but she did as requested and accompanied herself in an old song about unrequited love.

“Lovely,” Devlin said as she finished.

She hunted through her music portfolio. “Come join me.”

Teddy set down her chocolate and jumped to her feet to run forward to the pianoforte. She gestured excitedly back at the others, and Devlin reluctantly came forward with his mother, leaving Peyton on the settee. Devlin shot her an apologetic glance. She didn’t deserve to be caught up in this. Hell, neither did he. But he loved his sisters and would do anything to make them happy, including embarrassing himself by singing.

Embarrass himself he did, although Meg had always claimed he had a good voice. They sang together, with his mother harmonizing with Meg and with Teddy and Devlin left to carry the main melody. But soon, the teasing and baiting from dinner overcame them, as it always did, and the sing-a-long became a free-for-all, with Meg finally throwing up her hands in surrender.

Across the room, Peyton stood stiffly. A white pallor gripped her face, and even from so far away, he could see the glistening in her eyes and the trembling in her limbs.

“I…I can’t…” she mumbled. “It’s all too much…I thought—but I can’t!”

She turned and hurried from the room, leaving his family staring silently with confusion and concern. Devlin chased after her.

He stepped into the entry hall just as she snatched her cape from the footman’s hands at the door and raced out of the house, down the front steps, and toward her waiting carriage. He chased after and caught her on the footpath, his hand on her elbow stopping her.

She wheeled toward him, and for a split second, he worried she’d hidden a knife in her skirt. But it wasn’t a weapon in herhand that ripped the breath from his lungs. It was the startling look of anguish on her face.

Dear God…He laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Peyton, are you all right?”

“I couldn’t bear—I couldn’t stay.” She glanced over her shoulder at the house as if expecting a monster to emerge and devour her. “I need to leave.”

“What’s happened?”

“You—your family—all this!” Her eyes turned dark in the shadows of the dimly lit street, and the clouds of her breath against the cold air made her seem even more vulnerable. “The way you are with them, the way you all interact with each other—the way you love each other…” A tear glistened in the light of the door lamp as it slid down her cheek. “Why would your father risk his family and all their love and happiness?” Her shoulders slumped in confusion. “Why wouldyou?”

Her eyes searched his face, and he knew the time had come to tell her the truth.Allthe truth, no matter how much it hurt both of them. She would never be able to heal until the entire wound had been revealed. And cauterized.

He gently took her arm and led her toward the carriage, calling back over his shoulder to Jennings as the butler stood on the steps in the cold evening drizzle. “Jennings, inform the duchess that Miss Wentworth has taken ill. I’m escorting her home.” He was breaking all kinds of propriety and not giving a damn that he was. “Then I’m going on to the clubs. She isn’t to worry. I’ll see her in the morning.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Devlin helped her into the carriage and climbed in after her. The door closed, and he knocked against the roof to signal to the coachman to drive.

The carriage swayed on its springs as the wheels splashed through the puddles left on the pavement by earlier rains.Outside, the night was cold and wet, and the light of the scattered lamps on the main avenues reflected in the shimmering black water. There would be heavy fog by midnight, but now the gathering whiteness served only to cocoon them together and muffle the sounds of the nighttime city around them.

Devlin studied Peyton through the moving shadows. He was certain her face was still as pale as it had been in the drawing room. But there was no help for that, not now. Not when what he was about to say would only make her pallor worse.

“When my father and the Duke of Crewe became business partners,” Devlin began quietly, his low voice matching the depth of the shadows around them, “they kept what they were doing secret from everyone. They’d been partners for years, ever since I was a boy at Eton, and no one had any idea how far their ventures ran or what comprised them.”

“Not even you?” she asked quietly.

“Not even.” He’d certainly punished himself over the years for not investigating sooner. “I had suspected my father was skirting the edge of legality, but what peer doesn’t influence peddle in Parliament or use Whitehall connections for his own financial gains? But I had willfully turned a blind eye to my father, avoiding him whenever possible and tolerating him only for my mother’s and sisters’ sakes. Truthfully, I didn’t want to know what he was doing and did my damnedest to treat him as if didn’t exist.”

“But that night…” Her voice faded into the darkness.

“That night I stumbled into a viper’s nest. I was too late to stop the attack, but I made certain they wouldn’t be able to harm anyone else ever again. Lucien Grenier happened to be on leave in London. I told him what happened and what I’d learned about our fathers, and together we decided to put an end to their criminal enterprise.”

“You let them get away with all they’d done,” she accused in a rough whisper.

“Because we had no other choice. Publicly bringing them to justice would have destroyed both our families, both dukedoms, and all the lives of countless innocent people who depended upon those dukedoms to survive. Servants, tenants, farmers, villagers…Iftheir fellow lords in Parliament would have found them guilty in the first place. We had no certainty of that.”

He still lived with the guilt of that decision, even knowing he’d made the right one. So did Crewe, although he had even more to lose than Devlin if their fathers’ secrets were uncovered.