Dukes Are Forever Read online

  “Thank you, but I cannot accept it,” she refused gently. She never accepted money for her medical work. It would be an affront to God if only those who could afford medicine and care had access to it while the poorest were left to suffer.

  “You saved my arm, Miss Kate. The red streaks were already startin’ up t’ the elbow when ye tended it.”

  She grimaced. When he finally found the courage to come for help, that is. It had almost been too late, and cleaning out the infection had been more painful than it needed to be precisely because he’d waited so long. “Mr. Putnam, I cannot—”

  “Please. The missus would have a fit if’n I came home wit’ it.” He set the coin down on her table and moved toward the door before she could return it, doffing his hat. “Good day t’ ye, miss.”

  “And to you—and back in five days, you hear?”

  “Aye, miss!”

  With a frustrated sigh, she snatched up the coin and shoved it into her table drawer. Two other coins were tucked inside from payments made to her last week by other villagers who’d been hurt in the same accident as Mr. Putnam. She scowled. Apparently, no one was willing to follow her wishes these days, especially men who thought they had the right to—

  “So this is where you do your medical work.” The smooth, masculine voice curled through her.

  With a shiver, she glanced up and caught Edward leaning casually against the doorway, his tall body filling the frame. He glanced around the laboratory, taking in all her equipment, the rows of little bottles on the shelves, the herbs hanging from the ceiling. Then his gaze landed on her, and her body heated as his dark eyes took her in, too, lingering on her far longer than they had on the medicines.

  “For what it is,” she answered, suddenly nervous. Being in here alone with men from the village had never bothered her, but being alone anywhere with Edward unsettled her through to her toes.

  “It’s remarkable,” he acknowledged.

  He stepped inside, and a disconcerted twitter pulsed through her at the way his large body dominated the little space. Funny how the laboratory had never seemed so small before until he was there, when she couldn’t put more than a few feet between them. He stepped forward and turned his attention to the bottles on the shelves next to her shoulder…A very small laboratory.

  She moved back and bumped against her table, with no place to escape unless she wanted to run out the door. And that would be an even harder act to explain than nearly falling out of the hayloft.

  “I’ll introduce you to Dr. Brandon, our family physician in London. He’s very progressive.” Edward threw her a sideways glance. “I think he might enjoy discussing medicine with you.”

  Her chest warmed at his generosity. “Thank you.”

  “We can add that to our list of changes, too.”

  She eyed him warily. “What’s that?” He’d made enough changes already, thank you very much. She wasn’t certain she wanted any more.

  “A doctor for the village. Mrs. Elston says the nearest one is ten miles away. Apparently, that’s why you’ve had to step in.”

  She frowned. Apparently, Mrs. Elston was spending too much time chatting with the duke. “I do what I can.”

  “A real doctor would be able to assist you.” He turned his attention back to the shelf of medicine. “Then you wouldn’t have to help the villagers all alone.”

  He reached past her to pick up one of the bottles, his arm brushing against her shoulder and sending another shiver through her. Taking a deep breath, she found her voice and asked as steadily as possible given the inexplicable trembling in her knees, “What can I do for you, Your Grace?”

  He slid the bottle back into its place, and she swallowed hard, wishing he would move away from her and return to the house. Better yet, that he would return to the city and stop disconcerting her like this.

  “This arrived for you.” He reached beneath his jacket and removed a letter. “From London.”

  Her heart skipped with both hope and dread. She knew without having to look—her father’s letter about the guardianship. Whatever the answer, she knew her life would change once again, and she didn’t know if she had the strength to endure another upheaval.

  He frowned. “It’s from your father, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know—” His eyes narrowed, and Kate had the sinking feeling he suspected she would lie to him. Instead, she answered truthfully, “But I hope so.”

  He gave a slow nod, and she felt a pulse of relief that she’d apparently given the right answer. “You contacted him.”

  “Yes, the day you arrived. I had to be certain the guardianship wasn’t a mistake.” Drawing on all her resolve, she held out her hand. “May I?”

  Slowly, he placed the letter on her palm, but he didn’t leave to give her privacy to read it. Instead, he leaned back against her worktable and watched her closely as she popped open the wax seal and unfolded the letter. Her eyes darted across the few lines of scrawled handwriting, and her chest sank—

  “It’s true,” she whispered, blinking hard to clear the blurriness from her eyes as she read it again, not believing that her father had willingly handed over control of her life to a stranger. “He agreed—he made you my guardian…But why?” She choked back the tears as her fingers tightened around the letter. “Why would he do this?”

  He tensed. “He doesn’t say?”

  “No.” She swiped at her eyes and crumpled the letter in her fist, not knowing whether to be hurt or angry, to cry or scream, and wanting desperately to do both. Instead, a bitter laugh tore from her, “But he asked for money!”

  “Kate.” Tenderness softened his face. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head, the desolate heartbreak rising inside her, and she felt broken, like a glass shattering from the inside out.

  “You were right,” she rasped and pressed the letter to her chest as if she could physically keep back the despair of what her father had done to her. Oh God, how much it hurt! So much she could hardly breathe. “He doesn’t love me. He signed me away…He signed me away…” A drop of water landed on the letter, smearing the ink, and only then did she realize she was crying.

  “Katherine.” Edward pulled her into his arms, holding her close.

  But she couldn’t stop. All the emotion she’d kept locked inside poured from her now, from all the years when she’d wanted so desperately to believe her father loved her, all the lies she’d told herself about how he would someday take care of her as a good father should. All of it ashes now, all her memories of him and all her hopes for the future crumbled into dust. She wept for the loss, grieving nearly as hard as when she’d lost her mother.

  “Kate, please, don’t cry,” Edward murmured achingly as the sobs overtook her, his hands soothingly stroking her back. She buried her face against his neck, and her hot tears soaked into his shirt as she cried so inconsolably that her entire body shook against his. “I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

  But she’d had enough of empty promises from her father, and she wanted none from Edward. How could she trust him? “Why?” She gulped for breath to force out the words through her cries. “Why you?”

  When he hesitated, she suspected he wouldn’t tell her. But then, quietly, “Because I bought up all his debts,” he explained solemnly.

  “What do you mean?” She raised her head to stare up at him, her hands clenched around his lapels. She barely knew him; she’d never even heard of him until he arrived on her doorstop. How could Papa have known he would care for her?

  He wiped the tears off her cheeks, his touch surprisingly tender. “Your father asked me for the guardianship as part of the debt arrangements. I think he wanted me as your guardian because he wanted me to spend my money on you and Brambly.” His mouth drew down into a frown. “His form of petty revenge.”

  Her puzzled eyes searched his face. That sounded exactly like something her father would do, and yet…“You agreed willingly?”

  “Yes.”

 
Her throat tightened. Behind the stoic mask he showed the world, there lurked a kindness in him that he would take on such a burden. But she could see more in his eyes, on his face—guilt. What was he hiding from her? He wanted to comfort her, and even now he ran his hands up and down her arms to console her. Yet there was so much more he wasn’t confiding, she could sense it.

  “Of course, when I agreed…” He blew out a deep breath and admitted, “I thought you were five.”

  Despite the tears still clinging to her lashes, she gave a small bubble of laughter and pressed her hand against her mouth, her suspicions easing. “I’m not a child.”

  His lips twisted grimly. “I know that now.”

  She sniffed. “That’s why you brought the doll?”

  “Bribery,” he admitted, tucking a stray curl behind her ear and caressing her cheek as he drew back. “I’ve never known what to do when children cry.”

  But the way his fingertips trailed over her cheek and the responding shiver that swept through her told her that he very much knew what to do with grown women, and heat stirred low in her belly. The amusement dissolved from her, replaced by a warm yearning. “Well, you don’t bribe them with gifts.”

  “Then what do you do?” Another slow caress of her cheek…

  And another tingling shiver. “You hold them,” she whispered. “And you tell them they’re safe, that everything is going to be all right.”

  His dark eyes stared deeply into hers. “You’re safe, Katherine,” he murmured as his arms tightened around her and drew her against him, “and everything is going to be all right.”

  “But I’m not a child,” she protested softly, although she desperately wanted him to keep holding her, despite knowing no good could come of it. And he wasn’t comforting her as much as making her nervous. Very nervous. Shaking her head, she released her hold on his lapels. “And you don’t know that it’s going to be all right.”

  Then she stepped back from him, sliding away along the table to put the length of the laboratory between them. And thank goodness, he let her go.

  Her heart sped from just the caress of his fingers across her cheek. If she stayed in his arms a moment longer, she would be just weak enough to kiss him. And that she simply couldn’t do. She’d already lost control of Brambly to this man. If she lost control of her body to him, too, then…then she would lose everything. Just as her mother had.

  “No, I don’t,” he agreed, running a hand through his hair as if he didn’t know what to do with it now that he couldn’t touch her.

  “And Papa…he’ll never be able to repay you—”

  “I know.”

  His eyes turned cold, the heat she’d seen in their depths just moments before disappearing at her concern about her father, and her breath hitched as a warning prickled up her spine.

  He reached down to pick up the letter she’d dropped at his feet. “I want him indebted to me.”

  “Why?” she whispered as worry swelled inside her chest. Oh heavens, what had Papa done now?

  “So I can keep him in London under my watch.” With a grim look of determination, he held out the letter to her.

  But she stayed right where she was, not daring to come close enough to take it. If she did, she might very well find herself right back in his arms. “Edward, what aren’t you telling me?”

  His face was somber and harsh, and the way he looked at her made her stomach knot with dread. “Your father is dangerous, Katherine,” he told her quietly. “He’s hurt people, and I don’t want him anywhere near you, not even at the other end of a letter.”

  Her eyes widened in disbelief as she stared at him. Dangerous? Impossible! Edward was wrong. Her father wasn’t a criminal. He could be emotionally cruel, she’d seen that with her own eyes, but he would never physically harm her. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone, not like you’re suggesting.”

  His eyes flashed black, and she gasped at the icy intensity in him. “More than you know,” he bit out coldly. “He hurt my family, and now that you’re part of all this, I won’t let him harm you, either.”

  Hurt his family? But that…that couldn’t be! She felt the blood drain from her face, and her hand reached out for the table to steady herself. Her throat tightened. Dear God, had he hurt Edward? “What did—”

  “You are not to contact him without my permission, understand?”

  “He’s my father, Edward. If he’s in trouble, I have to help—”

  “You can’t help him now, Kate. It’s too late.” When she refused to accept the letter, he set it down on the table beside her, then reached to take her chin and hold her still as he stared into her eyes. “I want your word that you’ll not contact him without my permission and that you’ll tell me if he tries to contact you again.”

  She wouldn’t agree to that. Edward was her guardian, but he didn’t have the right to control her like this. No right to tell her whom she could or could not contact, especially when it came to her father. Papa had never cared for her, she knew that now, but he was still her only living relative and the man her mother loved. There should be some loyalty in that, in her duty as a daughter…shouldn’t there?

  If she refused to help him when he needed her most, then wouldn’t that make her as hardhearted and indifferent as he was?

  “I want to be able to trust you, Katherine.” At her answering silence, Edward added quietly, “And I want you to trust me.”

  But it was mistrust that swirled through her. And confusion. How could she trust a man she didn’t know, when she no longer trusted even her father?

  “Do not contact Phillip Benton,” he ordered quietly. “Nothing good will come of it.”

  With no other choice but to do as he said, she nodded, turning her face away at the stab of guilt that sickened her.

  “Good.” He moved toward the door. “I’m going for a walk to assess the boundary fences. I’ll see you at dinner, then.” He paused to glance back at her with a look of patient consternation. “And please don’t make me climb into the hayloft again to fetch you.”

  Then he was gone, and she sagged back against the table, hanging her head in her hands. Her entire body trembled. How had it happened so quickly? In just five days, her life had been upended, and she was now clinging to control by her fingertips.

  She’d lost control of Brambly, yet Edward promised to help her repair and restore it. She’d lost her father, too, with that letter, although she knew it was the loss of the dream of having a loving father in her life that she’d wept over. And when Edward held her in his arms to comfort her, she’d nearly lost her mind.

  Her shoulders slumped in hopelessness. She didn’t know whom to trust or what to believe anymore.

  Edward claimed her father was dangerous, that he hurt people, but how could that be? Phillip Benton was a bad father and husband, for all accounts utterly unsuccessful in everything he’d attempted. But to maliciously hurt someone…He simply didn’t have the spine for it.

  But she’d come to know Edward fairly well during the past week since his arrival at her doorstep and his intrusion into her life, and what she’d learned was that he was not the kind of man who entered battle lightly. If he believed her father had hurt his family, then…oh, God help him!

  She pushed herself away from the table and began to pace, chewing on her thumbnail as she circled the small room and tried to figure out what to think, what to do…

  Her father had signed her away, she had proof of it. But he’d also asked for the guardianship. Even if Edward was correct—and she wouldn’t have put it past Papa to suggest such a thing merely out of spite and his own gain—he’d still had the presence of mind to think of her at his lowest point. There had to be some kind of affection for her in that, no matter how perverse his rationale. There had to be! Because the alternative was that Papa not only cared nothing for her but also thought of her only as a pawn to be played. And that was simply unbearable.

  Biting her bottom lip, she glanced at the letter. He wanted money, and she�
�d always given it to him in the past. What difference would it make this time to give him what little she had left?

  Except that Edward had forbidden it.

  He’d wanted her to have no contact at all with Papa without his permission, and she knew he’d never agree to let her send even this last bit of money, certain that he believed her father had already taken enough from her, mistakenly believing he would hurt her. But he needed her now, and for the first time in her life, she could make a difference to him.

  She rubbed at her temples, not knowing what to do. To which man did she owe her loyalty?

  Her gaze drifted from the letter to the table drawer where she’d hidden the three coins. Edward didn’t know about those. She’d earned them herself; they didn’t come from Brambly, so they were hers to do with as she pleased. Including sending them to her father in one last attempt to help him.

  Her heartbeat sped. If she sent the coins, then she could let her father go from her life forever, without feeling any guilt. She would know that she had made her best, last attempt to love him as a daughter should. And Edward would never discover what she’d done.

  She hurried to the journal and tore out a blank page, then took her pen and scribbled, Papa, here is what little money I have to give you.

  She hesitated with the coins resting in her hand. It was more money than Arthur, Dorrie, and Mrs. Elston would have earned in a month, and she closed her eyes tightly against the pang of guilt at sending the money to her father rather than paying it to them. But at that moment, he needed it more than they did, and it would be the last she would ever give him. Three little coins…Not exactly twelve pieces of silver, yet she couldn’t shake the notion Papa had betrayed her by signing her away.

  She paused, the pen tip poised just above the paper—then impulsively dashed out, unable to completely banish the desire to make him love her, even now, What else can I do to help? Your loving daughter, Kate.

  She folded the letter, carefully sealing the coins inside, then hurried to the door and called for Tom. The boy trotted out from the stable where he was undoubtedly once more brushing Edward’s horse. For the past few weeks, he’d been a stable boy for a barn without any horses, and now that one was finally stabled there, he didn’t want to leave the colt alone. If that horse wasn’t bald by the time Edward finally left for London, it would be a miracle.