From that moment on, he’d shut the world out and attempted in vain to bury the demons of his recent past.
Only to find demons of a different sort.
With a growl, Val swung his leg off his horse, dismounting.
Usually there were just two gawkers peering out the window.
Earlier that afternoon, they’d doubled in number. With two sets of eyes becoming four, as the damned nosy busybodies followed his every move.
Beside him, Lady neighed, loud in his disapproval.
That disapproval, however, was not with the nosy chits, but rather with Val. “Forgive me, sir,” Val said, belatedly stroking the midnight-black mount on his withers as he did at the end of every ride.
Val glared blackly at the household across the street.
He’d some privacy . . . for now.
It wouldn’t prove long-lived.
They’d be back.
Staring.
One would expect that, as a duke, all eyes turned upon him was something he should have grown accustomed to.
It’d certainly been the case.
He’d been one of society’s greatest preoccupations: the whispered-about rake with both one of the oldest, most revered titles and a fortune.
His attraction had only redoubled when he’d become a reformed rake, a young gentleman whose wild ways—and heart—had been tamed by Lady Dinah Astley, the Diamond of the Season.
And then, when she’d been his wife, the ton’s fascination had taken a macabre turn upon the sudden passing of that same lady.
Only, it hadn’t been so very sudden. There’d been piteous moaning that felt like it had gone on forever. And blood. There’d been that, too. Time, however, had existed in a blur on that day, where even with the passage of weeks, months, and then years since the event, he couldn’t recall how precisely long or short each moment had been.
There’d been a sharp, bloodcurdling scream—hers—but then quiet moaning. The faint whimper of desperation and suffering sounds which haunted him still, and always would.
That and a lone crimson stain had blended with the fabric of a red satin, turning the material black.
Val briefly closed his eyes, not to blot out the vision in his mind—that would always remain—but rather from a grief that would not quit.
A soft whining pulled him back from the edge of insanity that always threatened to claim complete control.
Suddenly very eager to return inside and pour himself a healthy brandy to chase away the chill and memories, Val went and gathered up more of the wood he’d cut that morn. Bracing it against his chest, he reached down with his spare hand to pat his faithful dog, Horace.
With a quiet click of his tongue, he urged the creature on.
The four-year-old hound had been a gift from his wife upon their marriage and had been like a child to them.
The child they would have eventually had . . .
Oh, God.
Agony sluiced through him, stopping him in his tracks. Clutching the wood close, he welcomed the sharp bite of pain as, even through his garments, it bit into his flesh.
He stared blankly ahead.
This future had turned out to be so very different from the life they had spoken of together.
A—
From the corner of his eye, Val caught a flash of movement.
What the hell? It’d been a flicker of light and movement so quick and so brief that for a moment he thought he’d imagined it.
He thought it was a flash of sun, attempting to peek through the heavy cloud cover overhead.
And then he spied her.
More specifically, he detected the curl of fingers along the bottom of the stone windowsill, as the lady ran the length of his townhouse, peering briefly into each window she could reach before she moved on to the next.
Val remained completely unnoticed by the oblivious prier.
The prier who spoke to herself, less than quietly at that, as she conducted her even less than stealthy search of his home.
A growl worked its way up his chest.
He tolerated their staring.
He tolerated their whispering and gossip.
But he’d be damned if he put up with their invading his privacy and looking directly in his windows.
The lady reached the end, and then with her hands on her hips, she backed away. “No servants . . .” That whispering came quiet as the young lady rubbed her gloved hands together briskly.
He folded his arms at his chest. “Can I help you?”
With a shriek, the young woman spun, her foot catching a slick patch of ice, and she went flying up, and then came down in what could only be a hard fall.
She landed with a quiet groan.
There’d been a time when he would have raced ahead and helped her to her feet.
He’d neither the energy nor interest in playing the role of gentleman in Polite Society—or for society on the whole, ever again.
“Only if you know what to do with bothersome brothers and sisters and parents,” the lady muttered.
He didn’t. His father was dead. His mother knew better than to come around. He’d no sisters. A brother whom, but for an occasional exchange when he came by at Christmastide, he’d otherwise not spoken to in several years. “I don’t.”
“That is unfortunate, because I certainly don’t know what to do with them. Marbles.” She muttered that last word under her breath, giving her head a shake.
And if he’d been one to lean toward the curious, he’d have asked what in tarnation she meant by the word “marbles.”
But he wasn’t so curious as to be asking eager questions.
The only thing he was eager to do was be rid of her.
Collecting Lady’s reins, he started for the stables.
“Are you the Duke of Aragon?”
Was he the . . . ? He turned back just as the young woman struggled to her feet; the way in which she winced as she brushed off her skirts suggested she’d indeed taken a hard fall. What in hell business could this one—or anyone—possibly have with him? As a rule he avoided all.
But especially strangers.
Apparently, no confirmation was necessary. “I have it on authority you are the duke,” the jabberpot continued on, “and as such, I was looking for you.”
In her fall, her hood had been knocked back, revealing a lion’s mane of midnight-black curls, a bold tangle perfectly suited to the audacious creature before him.
He’d never seen a lady possessed of so many tight ringlets.
Or if he had, they’d always been flawlessly arranged in an elegant coiffure, held back with jewel-encrusted hair combs, and not an untamed mass of tresses that threatened to swallow a slightly too-pointed, faintly freckled face.
“Are you?” she pressed him.
That question cut through his study of the peculiar creature, and it took a moment for Val to register.
“Am I what?” he barked, his voice rough from lack of use, and also from his fury and frustration with life.
Others had run; with the exception of his stubborn butler, all the loyal servants who’d remained on had invariably fled when presented with those fury-encrusted tones.
This one merely smiled. “The Duke of Aragon. Are you he?”
He was and wanted her gone. “I am,” he said coolly. Val opened his mouth again, prepared to tell her that latter part.
The lady beamed. “Splendid.” She punctuated that exclamation with a little clap, as if she truly meant it.
Which was bloody impossible. One, she was a damned stranger. Two, the people he did know and who did know of him, because of his notoriously surly reputation, hardly sought him out. Lord knew his former friends and family had learned to keep their distance.