Part 19 (1/2)

The vicar could scarcely conceal his joyous relief. ”There are worse things than having to marry a wonderful young woman who also had the excellent judgment to fall in love with you,” he pointed out.

Ian almost, but not quite, smiled at that. The impulse pa.s.sed in an instant, however, as reality crushed down on him, infuriating and complicated. ”Whatever she felt for me, it was a long time ago. All she wants now is independence.”

The vicar's brows shot up, and he chuckled with surprise. ”Independence? Really? What an odd notion for a female. I'm sure you'll be able to disabuse her of such fanciful ideas.”

”Don't count on it.” ”Independence is vastly overrated. Give it to her and she'll hate it,” he suggested.

Ian scarcely heard him; the fury at having to capitulate to his grandfather was building inside him again with terrible force. ”d.a.m.n him!” he said in a murderous underbreath. ”I'd have let him rot in h.e.l.l, and his t.i.tle with him.”

Duncan's smile didn't fade as he said with asperity, ”It's possible that it's fear of 'rotting in h.e.l.l,' as you so picturesquely phrased it, that has made him so desperate to affirm you now as his heir. But consider that he has been trying to make amends for over a decade-long before his heart became weak.”

”He was a decade too late,” Ian gritted. ”My father was the rightful heir, and that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d never relented until after he died.”

”I'm well aware of that. However, that's not the point, Ian. You've lost the battle to remain distant from him. You must lose it with the grace and dignity of your n.o.ble lineage, as your father would have done. You are rightfully the next Duke of Stanhope. Nothing can really change that. Furthermore, I fervently believe your father would have forgiven the duke if he'd had the chance that you now have.”

In restless fury Ian shoved away from the wall. ”I am not my father,” he snapped.

The vicar, fearing that Ian was vacillating, said pointedly, ”There's no time to lose. There's every chance you may arrive at your grandfather's only to be told he's already done what he said he meant to do last week-name a new heir.”

”There's an equally good chance I'll be told to go to h.e.l.l after my last letter to him.”

”Then, too,” said the vicar, ”if you tary, you may arrive after Elizabeth's wedding to this Belhaven.”

Ian hesitated an endless moment, and then he nodded curtly, shoved his hands into his pockets, and started reluctantly up the stairs, ”Ian?” he called after him, Ian stopped and turned. ”Now what?” he asked irritably. ”I'll need directions to Elizabeth's. You've changed brides, but I gather I'm still to have the honor of performing the ceremony in London?”

In answer his nephew nodded.

”You're doing the right thing,” the vicar said quietly, unable to shake the fear that Ian's anger would cause him to deliberately alienate the old duke. ”Regardless of how your marriage turns out, you have no choice. You wreaked havoc in her life.”

”In more ways than you know,” Ian said tersely. ”What in G.o.d's name does that mean?”

”I'm the reason her uncle is now her guardian,” he said with a harsh sigh. ”Her brother didn't leave to avoid debts or scandal, as Elizabeth evidently thinks.”

”You're the cause? How could that be?”

”He called me out, and when he couldn't kill me in a legitimate duel he tried twice more-on the road-and d.a.m.ned near accomplished his goal both times. I had him hauled aboard the Arianna and s.h.i.+pped off to the Indies to cool his heels.”

The vicar paled and sank down upon the sofa. ”How could you do a thing like that?”

Ian stiffened under the unfair rebuke. ”There were only two other alternatives-I could have let him blow a hole through my back, or I could have handed him over to the authorities. I didn't want him hanged for his overzealous determination to avenge his sister; I just wanted him out of my way.”

”But two years!”

”He would have been back in less than one year, but the Arianna was damaged in a storm and put into San Delora for repairs. He jumped s.h.i.+p there and vanished. I a.s.sumed he'd made his way back here somehow. I had no idea,” he finished as he turned and started back up the stairs, ”that he had never returned until you told me a few minutes ago.”

”Good G.o.d!” said the vicar. ”Elizabeth couldn't be blamed if she took it in her mind to hate you for this.”

”I don't intend to give her the opportunity,” Ian replied in an implacable voice that warned his uncle not to interfere. ”I'll hire an investigator to trace him, and after I find out what's happened to him, I'll tell her.”

Duncan's common sense went to battle with his conscience, and this time his conscience lost. ”It's probably the best way,” he agreed reluctantly, knowing how hard Elizabeth would undoubtedly find it to forgive Ian for yet another, and worse, transgression against her. ”This all could have been so much easier,” he added with a sigh, ”if you'd known sooner what was happening to Elizabeth. You have many acquaintances in English society; how is it they never mentioned it to you?”

”In the first place, I was away from England for almost a year after the episode. In the second place,” Ian added with contempt, ”among what is amusingly called Polite Society, matters that concern you are never discussed with you. They're discussed with everyone else, directly behind your back if possible.”

Ian watched an inexplicable smile trace its way across his uncle's face. ”Putting their gossip aside, you find them an uncommonly proud, autocratic, self-a.s.sured group, is that it?”

”For the most part, yes,” Ian said shortly as he turned and strode up the stairs. When his door closed the vicar spoke to the empty room. ”Ian,” he said, his shoulders beginning to shake with laughter, ”you may as well have the t.i.tle-you were born with the traits.”

After a moment, however, he sobered and lifted his eyes to the beamed ceiling, his expression one of sublime contentment. ”Thank You,” he said in the direction of heaven. ”It took You a rather long time to answer the first prayer,” he added, referring to the reconciliation with Ian's grandfather, ”but You were wonderfully prompt with the one for Elizabeth.”

Chapter 18.

It was nearly midnight four days later when Ian finally reached the White Stallion Inn. Leaving his horse with a hostler, he strode into the inn, past the common room filled with peasants drinking ale. The innkeeper, a fat man with a soiled ap.r.o.n around his belly, cast an appraising eye over Mr. Thornton's expensively tailored charcoal jacket and dove-gray riding breeches, his hard face and powerful physique, and wisely decided it wasn't necessary to charge his guest for the room in advance something at which the gentry occasionally took offense.

A minute later, after Mr. Thornton had ordered a meal sent to his room, the innkeeper congratulated himself on the wisdom of that decision, because his new guest inquired about the magnificent estate belonging to an ill.u.s.trious local n.o.ble.

”How far is it to Stanhope Park?” ”Bout an hour's ride, gov'ner.”

Ian hesitated, debating whether to arrive there in the morning unannounced and unexpected or to send a message. ”I'll need a message brought there in the morning,” he said after a hesitation.

”I'll have my boy take it there personal. What time will you be wantin' it taken over t' Stanhope Park?”

Ian hesitated again knowing there was no way to avoid it. ”Ten o'clock.”

Standing alone in the inn's private parlor the next morning, Ian ignored the breakfast that had been put out for him long ago and glanced at his watch. The messenger had been gone for three hours-almost a full hour more than it should have taken him to return with a message from Stanhope, if there was going to be a message. He put his watch away and walked over to the fireplace, moodily slapping his riding gloves against his thigh. He had no idea if his grandfather was at Stanhope or if the old man had already named another heir and would now refuse to see Ian in retaliation for all the gestures of reconciliation Ian had rebuffed in the last decade. With each minute that pa.s.sed Ian was more inclined to believe the latter.

Behind him the innkeeper appeared in the doorway and said, ”My boy hasn't yet returned, though there's been time aplenty. I'll have to charge ye extra. Mr. Thornton, if he don't return within the hour.”

Ian glanced at the innkeeper over his shoulder and made a sublime effort not to snap the man's head off. ”Have my horse saddled and brought round,” he replied curtly, not certain exactly what he meant to do now. He'd actually have preferred a public flogging to writing that curt message to his grandfather in the first place. Now he was being brushed off like a supplicant, and that infuriated him.

Behind him the innkeeper frowned at Ian's back with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Ordinarily male travelers who arrived without private coach or even a valet were required to pay for their rooms when they arrived. In this instance the innkeeper hadn't demanded advance payment because this particular guest had spoken with the clipped, authoritative accents of a wealthy gentleman and because his riding clothes bore the unmistakable stamp of elegant cloth and custom tailoring. Now, however, with Stanhope Park refusing even to answer the man's summons, the innkeeper had revised his earlier estimation of the worth of his guest. and he was bent on stopping the man from trying to mount his horse and galloping off without paying his blunt.

Belatedly noting the innkeeper's continued presence. Ian pulled his scowling gaze from the empty grate. ”Yes, what is it?”

”It's yer tick, gov'ner. I'll be wantin' payment now.”

His greedy eyes widened in surprise as his guest extracted a fat roll of bills, yanked off enough to cover the cost of the night's lodgings, and thrust it at him.

Ian waited thirty minutes more and then faced the fact that his grandfather wasn't going to reply. Furious at having wasted valuable time, he strode out of the parlor, deciding to ride to London and try to buy Elizabeth's uncle's favor. His attention on pulling on his riding gloves, he strode through the common room without noticing the sudden tension sweeping across it as the rowdy peasants who'd been drinking ale at the scarred tables turned to gape in awed silence at the doorway. The innkeeper, who'd only moments before eyed Ian as if he might steal the pewter, was now standing a few feet away from the open front door, staring at Ian with slackened jaw. ”My lord!” he burst out, and then, as if words had failed him completely, the stout man made a sweeping gesture toward the door.

Ian's gaze s.h.i.+fted from the last b.u.t.ton on his glove to the innkeeper, who was now bowing reverently, then snapped to the doorway, where two footmen and a coachman stood at rigid attention, clad in formal livery of green and gold.

Unconcerned with the peasants' gaping stares, the coachman stepped forward, bowed deeply to Ian, and cleared his throat. In a grave, carrying voice he repeated a message from the duke that could leave no doubt in Ian's mind about his grandfather's feelings toward him or his unexpected visit: ”His Grace the Duke of Stanhope bade me to extend his warmest greetings to the Marquess of Kensington. . . and to say that he is most eagerly awaiting your convenience at Stanhope Park.”

By instructing the coachman to address Ian as the Marquess of Kensington the duke had just publicly informed Ian and everyone else in the inn that the t.i.tle was now-and would continue to be-Ian's. The public gesture was beyond anything Ian had antic.i.p.ated, and it proved two things to him simultaneously: first, that his grandfather bore him no ill will for repeatedly rejecting his peace offerings; second, that the wily old man was still keen enough in his mind to have sensed that victory was now in his grasp.

That irritated Ian, and with a curt nod at the coachman he strode past the gaping villagers, who were respectfully tipping their caps to the man who'd just been publicly identified as the duke's heir. The vehicle waiting in the inn yard was another testament to his grandfather's eagerness to welcome him home in style. Instead of a carriage and horse he'd sent the closed coach with a team of four handsome horses decked out in silver trappings.