Page 8 of The Duke and the Darkness

Since then, he’d guided Peyton as surely as if he were still holding up that lamp for her to see her way. He was her confidante, her dear friend, the man she trusted with her life—and one of only two people in the world who knew that she was still alive.

Wilkins followed her into her bedroom as he had done countless times in the past. Neither of them thought anything of that far-too-familiar intimacy.

She circled behind the Chippendale writing desk positioned next to the fire. As she set her pistol and knife onto the desk, she smiled at him. “Dartmoor is now thirty-one thousand pounds poorer.”

His eyes gleamed with delight. “Exactly as you planned.”

She pulled at the fingertips of her left glove to remove it and corrected, “Asweplanned.” The long glove dropped to the desktop. Then she started on its mate. “I couldn’t do any of this without you and Betty.”

Betty Proctor had entered her world more than thirteen years ago as her mother’s maid, but the woman had since become asecond mother to her. Her own mother might have given birth to her, but Proctor had pulled her back to life.

Wilkins protested modestly, “We do it out of love for you. Betty and I consider you—allof us—to be family.”

Her eyes stung with gratitude as she whispered, “As do I.”

Turning her face away before Wilkins accidentally saw any stray emotions, she reached to remove her earbobs. She paused, tingling at the unbidden memory of how Dartmoor had so audaciously removed them tonight, as if he had the right to undress her.

Unlike Devlin, Armand Marchandhadbeen given that right. A former soldier who had been forced to flee Paris after a failed assassination attempt on Napoleon, Armand had been hired to teach her to fight with knives, guns, and even her own hands so she would never feel defenseless again. Thanks to him, she had also learned how to be vulnerable and trust in men again in a way she never thought she could. Eventually, she gave her innocence to him. But Armand had always made her feel safe.

What had happened between them hadn’t been love, she knew that; theirs was simply a joining of bodies. Armand would never let it become anything more. After all, he had also been protecting her heart.

But Armand had been living on borrowed time. When he disappeared last year, with signs of a scuffle left behind in his room above the barn, she was certain Napoleon’s men had finally found him, taking his life for bravely attempting to stop a tyrant.

Devlin Raines wasnothinglike Armand.

She snatched the bob from her ear. “I want you to go to Barton’s tomorrow. Patton will have the money waiting for you.” Then she removed the other bob and set both on the desktop next to the knife. “He knows to expect you.”

“Of course.”

“Add it to the other winnings from Dartmoor.”

Winnings that amounted to a small fortune. For the past few weeks, she’d been setting hired men against Dartmoor at the tables, funding their stakes and paying them twenty percent of their winnings. Only one of them had disappeared with her money. The others were eagerly waiting to earn more.

That she was using one of Dartmoor’s greatest pleasures against him was a delicious bonus. She’d take that pleasure away from him, too, before she was finished. Just as she planned on taking everything from him…his money, his reputation, his fiancée and family. Just as he had taken away all that had been most dear to her that night ten years ago.

“He’s making you a very wealthy woman,” Wilkins murmured, unaware of the dark place where her thoughts had strayed.

“I’m already a very wealthy woman,” she reminded him grimly. She certainly didn’t want Dartmoor’s blood money mixed with hers. “As soon as it’s in the bank, I want you to start donating it as planned.”

He nodded, repeating her previous instructions, “No donations so large as to draw suspicion, all paid out to a dozen different charities.”

“All supposedly from an anonymous yet progressively minded society matron on the verge of death who has no surviving children on whom to bestow her money.”

A thin smile tugged at his lips. “And who cannot stomach the thought of giving it to the Church.”

Peyton arched a sardonic brow. “Who can?”

Wilkins laughed, although a bit stiltedly. He was the one who had suggested she return to London to make Dartmoor pay for his crimes. If her revenge failed, he’d blame himself. She couldn’t let that happen. Wilkins meant too much to her.

So far, though, all was going according to plan. She’d never believed that destroying a duke would prove so easy.

“You’d planned to speak with the new investigators.” She reached up to unpin her hair, needing to keep her hands busy as she broached the topic she had always hated. “Did they learn anything more about the attack?”

“Raines left Dartmoor House only a few minutes after you and your parents, apparently in a flustered rush after speaking to his father.”

Disappointment panged hollowly in her chest. “We knew that already.” With a deep sigh, she set down a hairpin and reached to remove another. “He went to a gambling hell in Westminster.”

The investigators she’d hired had discovered that the attack had not been a random act of violence but a targeted assassination, and all the evidence pointed to the late Duke of Dartmoor, Devlin’s father. The timing of events was still unclear, and she had yet to uncover a motive for her parents’ murder or enough evidence to prove that Devlin was at the scene of the attack.