The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires (5 page)

“You might say that. He’s the reason I’m here.” His eyes narrowed on her. “I was hoping
Manton would reveal where the scoundrel is hiding in London. But I don’t suppose there’s
much chance that
you
will do so.”

A chill coursed down her spine. This wasn’t good at all. If Tristan had been fool
enough to come to England . . .

No, it was impossible. “You must be mistaken, sir. Tristan hasn’t visited London in
years. And if he did, we would be the first to know. But Dom and I have had no word
from him.”

He searched her face. “Which only proves me right about his character. I did think
it odd that a man of Manton’s sterling reputation would countenance Bonnaud’s actions,
but if he was unaware of them—”

“What actions, sir?” she asked, her pulse jumping
up a notch with the duke’s every word. “What has my brother done?”

“Forgive me, madam, but I prefer to discuss this with a more disinterested party.
Tell me where Manton is, and I will leave you in peace.”

After hinting that Tristan had done some awful thing? Not a chance. “As I said before,
I’m not at liberty to do so. But if you’ll reveal what it is you think Tristan has
done, I promise to be as impartial a judge of his actions as you have been.”

Skrimshaw let out what sounded like a laugh, which turned into a cough beneath the
duke’s withering glance.

“It seems that we have come to an impasse,” the duke told her icily.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “It does appear that way, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not leaving without the information I seek.”

“And I’m not telling you anything without knowing what’s going on. So you have two
choices, Your Grace. You may speak to me clearly and honestly of your grievance, and
I will help you resolve the matter. Or you can bed down in our parlor for the next
week or so until Dom’s return.”

“A week!” the duke exclaimed.

“As I told you, he is on a case. Sometimes they go on for a while.”

Lyons muttered an oath under his breath. “You realize I could bring half a dozen officers
in here to search the place for the information I seek.”

It was her turn to cast
him
a withering stare. “You
could. But you’ll find that such behavior will only make me more recalcitrant. By
the time you can return with officers, I will have spirited away any information of
use to you. And then you’ll have to toss me in gaol to get anything out of me.”

He blinked, then surprised her by letting out a harsh laugh. “You make a formidable
adversary, Miss Bonnaud.”

“I take that as a compliment,” she said archly.

“Of course you do. Very well, I’ll tell you what I know if you’ll tell me what
you
know.” He nodded at Skrimshaw. “But only if we can continue this conversation in
private.”

Now that she’d won the skirmish, she began to be worried about the battle. If he wanted
privacy, Tristan must have done something very bad indeed.

“Certainly, Your Grace,” she said shakily, then turned to Skrimshaw. “If you’d be
so good as to ask Mrs. Biddle to bring us tea, we shall take it upstairs in the study.
I believe this discussion is going to require it.”

“It will require something more than tea, I expect,” Skrimshaw muttered as he took
the duke’s hat and coat, then headed for the back of the house.

Lisette began climbing the stairs. “If you’ll follow me, sir, I’m sure we can sort
out this muddle.”

The duke fell into step behind her. “I damned well hope so.”

So did she. Because if she couldn’t handle this to the duke’s satisfaction, she had
a feeling the result would be disaster for both of her brothers. And she would do
just about anything to prevent that.

M
AXIMILIAN
C
ALE, THE
Duke of Lyons, followed the young woman, marveling that she’d called his bluff. And
his threat to bring in the authorities
had
been a bluff—he didn’t want them involved if he could avoid it. Given the enormity
of the situation and the gossip it would spawn if it were known, he was better off
dealing with it privately.

Still, he’d hoped to bully her into giving him Manton’s whereabouts. He stared at
the rigid back of the woman who climbed the creaking stairs before him, then shook
his head. Apparently he had underestimated Miss Bonnaud’s tenacity.

He dredged his mind for the little information he’d gleaned about the Manton and Bonnaud
families through the years, but could only remember that Tristan Bonnaud and his sister
were the illegitimate children of the Viscount Rathmoor by a French actress.

It showed. Her accent was tempered with a softness in the consonants that reminded
him of the French,
even though her word choice was thoroughly English. And though her forthright manner
and surprising height differentiated her from the delicately flirtatious Frenchwomen
who nightly populated the theaters, like them, she had a flair for the dramatic.

No doubt she would have a flair for something else, too. Her thinly veiled derriere,
displayed at his eye level, gave him an excellent view of certain feminine charms.
She moved with an economy of motion so fluid that he wondered if she would move the
same way in bed.

Holy God, what was he thinking? He wasn’t here for that, and she was the last person
he ought to be noticing in such a fashion. Though it was hard
not
to notice when she was dressed so . . . informally, her raven hair tumbling down
her back in a welter of black curls that shimmered and swirled with every step.

And the scent of some elusive French perfume that wafted down to him in her wake—

“Do you live here, Miss Bonnaud?” he asked in an attempt to keep his mind off the
seductive form ahead of him. “Or are you just visiting?”

“This is my home.” She reached the top and moved down the hall to stand before an
open door. “I manage the administrative portion of Manton’s Investigations for my
brother.”

“Ah.”

As he came abreast of her, she gestured into the room. “If you’ll wait in here, sir,
I’ll go make myself more presentable.”

He would prefer that. Even in the dim light, he
could see the ripe curves of her breasts outlined in semitransparent linen.

He suppressed a groan. “Of course.”

After she left, he shook off his absurd preoccupation with the woman’s appearance
and glanced about, noting the cheap but clean draperies, the battered oak furniture,
and the surprising touches of feminine color—a vase filled with lilacs and an elaborately
embroidered cushion. The place didn’t
look
sinister, but then, what did?

He strode to the desk to see what he could find, but Bonnaud’s sister must be a very
capable office manager indeed—nothing worthy of perusal lay on top. The drawers were
locked, probably to keep their contents from the prying eyes of servants, and the
bookshelves revealed only tomes with such titles as
Elements of Medical Jurisprudence
and
The Newgate Calendar
and
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey.
Clearly Manton took his duties as an investigator very seriously.

“Find anything of interest?” Miss Bonnaud clipped out from the doorway.

Returning the book he was holding to its shelf, he said unapologetically, “You know
I did not. You have everything in this office locked up tight. It makes a man wonder
what you are striving so hard to hide.”

“No more than you are, I imagine,” she said in that same throaty voice that had first
made him mistake her for Manton’s mistress.

Her gown did little to correct that misapprehension. Oh, it was respectable enough,
but its excellent cut showed her figure to good effect, and the blue and
green stripes set off skin as creamy as Sevres porcelain and a red mouth as lush as
it was unsmiling.

She was a French rose growing wild amid the hothouse flowers of London. And when she
sat down behind the desk and shimmied to adjust her billowing skirt, his eyes again
went inexorably to the impressive bosom that filled out her bodice.

“Now, what exactly has Tristan done to have you show up here at the crack of dawn?”
she asked bluntly.

He jerked his gaze up to meet the cool blue eyes glittering at him from beneath a
fringe of riotous black curls barely contained by hairpins.

“For one thing, your brother asked me to meet with him at a tavern last night, then
disappeared before I could arrive.”

The color drained from her cheeks. “Tristan really is in London? No, it’s impossible.
He wouldn’t come here.”

“Why not?” he asked as he approached the desk.

Her gaze grew shuttered. “Because . . . because he doesn’t like England.” She forced
a smile. “And he has a very good position working for the . . . authorities in France.”

That was so vague as to make him suspicious. “What authorities?” He leaned forward
to plant his hands on the desk. “Where? Doing what?”

Her gaze shot up to his, obstinate once more. “I’m not telling you anything until
you explain what he’s done wrong. I hardly think missing a meeting with you is a crime.”

Pushing away from the desk, Maximilian bit back a curse. How much should he say? At
the very least, he had to explain what the rest of England had known since he was
a boy. It was the only way to impress upon her the seriousness of the situation. “Tell
me, Miss Bonnaud, what have you heard about my family?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid,” she admitted almost apologetically, which made him inclined
to believe her. “I lived in France until recently, and I didn’t keep up with the English
papers. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had little time to do more than help Dom organize
his office.”

“So you’re unaware that I had an elder brother.”

“If that’s true, then why isn’t
he
the du—” She halted with a flush. “Oh, you
had
an elder brother.”

“Precisely. Peter was kidnapped very young, and we had no word of him until the year
of his seventeenth birthday, when he was found dead in Belgium.”

He could still hear Mother’s voice in the hours before her own death.
Where is my son? I want my son!
And she hadn’t been calling for Maximilian.

Shoving that painful memory back into the fortress he kept it in, he went on. “Last
night a boy came to my London town house while I was at dinner with friends. He bore
a note for me from a gentleman at a tavern near the docks, who turned out to be your
brother, saying he had information regarding Peter.” He fixed her with a hard gaze.
“He claimed that Peter is alive.”

She paled, clearly recognizing the ramifications of that.

“He knew that would draw me out,” Maximilian
went on. “He said he would wait for me at the Swan and Bull until three a.m. But when
I arrived before midnight, your scoundrel of a brother was nowhere to be found.”

“What did the messenger boy have to say about that?” she asked shakily.

“Nothing. He disappeared the minute he saw that the ‘gentleman’ was gone.” Anger roiled
in him again. “I waited until three, but neither the boy nor your brother ever returned.
Thinking I might have somehow missed Bonnaud, I went home to see if another note had
been left there. Nothing. So I remembered his connection to Manton, woke my friend
Jackson Pinter to learn of Manton’s whereabouts, and came here, hoping to find Bonnaud
here as well.”

He could tell from her agitation that he’d shaken her. Good. She needed to understand
how important this was.

“I swear to you that neither of my brothers is here.”

“I believe you.” If she were hiding Bonnaud, she would have tried to hurry him out
the door instead of inviting him upstairs for this chat. “But he must be somewhere
in London, or he wouldn’t have requested that meeting.”

“Are you absolutely certain it was my brother?” she asked, clear worry in her voice.
“There must be any number of Frenchmen with his name.”

“Ah, but none that I
know.
You see, I met Bonnaud once at a race when your father brought him and introduced
him around. Rathmoor said he was planning to
buy your brother a commission in the cavalry when he came of age, so he spoke to my
father about the regiment Father supported. While they talked, Bonnaud and I chatted
about horses. The note alludes to that.”

She swallowed. “You have the note with you?”

He hesitated but saw no reason to keep it from her. Drawing it out, he tossed it onto
the desk.

She snatched it up and read hastily. He knew exactly what she was seeing. He’d already
memorized every word.

Dear Duke of Lyons,

You may not remember, but we met on a hot summer day when I was fourteen. At the time,
I remarked on the handsome handkerchief you refused to use to wipe your brow, and
you explained that it had sentimental value, being a special one made just for members
of your family.

I recently saw another of its kind and realized that the man carrying it, whom I consider
a friend, bore a remarkable resemblance to Your Grace. Judging from things he has
told me, I believe he may very well be a certain missing relation of yours whom you
and I discussed briefly on that day years ago.