Duty and Desire

“Excellent!” Manning replied evenly. Speaking low to Miss Avery, he helped her to rise; and after making their apologies to Sayre, he escorted her from the room.

“Pardon me, sir, but you must remain quite still, with your head held so.” Fletcher nudged Darcy’s chin a degree higher and, taking the ends of the neckcloth once more in hand, began the first intricate fold of his masterpiece. Darcy rolled his eyes in frustrated submission but did not dare to reply for fear doing so would necessitate that the torturous procedure begin again with another fresh cloth. He had promised Fletcher, he reminded himself grimly, and tonight, his valet had declared, was the night that The Roquet should make its appearance.

He glanced quickly at the man before training his eyes once more upon the ceiling. Although Fletcher’s hands were going through the motions of tying his victorious white linen creation, Darcy could see that the valet’s mind was absorbed with Darcy’s account of his interview with Manning around the billiard table.

Lord Sayre had not been best pleased when Darcy had quietly informed him the next day that he would not be accompanying the party on the tour of the castle. His Lordship’s forehead had creased in irritation as Darcy gave his reasons and offered his apologies, but it cleared considerably when he mentioned billiards with Manning.

“Well, if you are to entertain Manning, that is all right and tight,” Sayre acquiesced with a forced smile. “We shall return from our little ramble just in time for the ladies to change for tea. Then we shall have a short round of cards with them, some music, supper, and later it will be off to the library.” Tapping a finger against his nose, he warned with a smirk, “I hope you will not bleed too freely around Manning at billiards, Darcy, for I believe you shall have an opportunity to raise quite a breeze tomorrow night.”

“Does His Lordship mean to put up the Spanish sword tonight then, sir?” Fletcher had interrupted.

“Quite possibly,” Darcy replied before looking him askance. “You know about —?”

Fletcher’s raised brow gave answer to his question.

“Of course you do! Why am I surprised?”

“I have no notion, sir,” the valet replied.

Darcy had waited until such time as he could decently expect Manning to be in the billiard room and then made his own way to their assignation. When he arrived, it was to the solid thwack of ball hitting ball as Manning sent the spheres speeding across the green baize.

“Manning,” he greeted him as he unbuttoned his coat and shrugged it off.

“Darcy.” Manning straightened and put aside his cue stick. The Baron advanced toward him and then, to Darcy’s surprise, passed him, proceeding on to the door, and looked carefully up and down the hall before closing it. “I find myself doubly indebted to you, Darcy,” Manning began when he turned back to him, “and I loathe being in anyone’s debt. I wish to settle, here and now!” Manning waited briefly for him to reply but then plowed ahead before he’d uttered any of the appropriate phrases. “Something is not right, Darcy, and has not been right ever since those women arrived.”

“Those women?” he repeated.

“Sylvanie and that serving woman she brought with her! This whole business is too smoky by half.” Manning scowled. “Yet Sayre will hear nothing to the contrary, do nothing to settle the matter, save continue his reckless gambling. Soon he’ll not have a feather to fly with.”

“Unfortunate, no doubt,” Darcy replied, “but what does Sayre’s imprudence have to do —”

“With you, Darcy?” Manning shook his head. “Monmouth was right on the mark. You are the ‘big trout’ Sayre hopes will snatch the bait and solve his problems for him!” He leaned across the table and fixed him with a solemn regard. “Darcy, you should know that with the leaving of Sylvanie from his house for yours, a heretofore unknown piece of property in Ireland belonging to the late Dowager Sayre will be sold and seventy-five percent of the proceeds will fall into Sayre’s profligate palm. That is what it has to do with you.”

“If I am satisfied with the lady, what is Sayre’s windfall to me?” Darcy returned, taking another page from Dy’s book and feigning boredom. “I have no need of any property in Ireland.”

Manning’s scowl deepened. “But Sayre does, or rather the money from it, and desperately. So desperately that he will not look into the circumstances surrounding the affair, which are more than strange.” He walked back to his cue stick and, picking it up, began sliding it back and forth between his fingers. “Earlier, you asked Sayre about his stepmother, and he told you that she had left England for grief of his father, did he not? That was a lie!”

“Continue.” Darcy nodded and picked up the other cue stick.

“Sayre and Trenholme hated the woman and her child. As soon as Sayre succeeded to the title and control of his father’s estate, he drove them out, sent them packing to Ireland with no more an allowance than would feed a mouse.” Manning pounded the end of his cue into the floor. “Yet, eleven years later, that same woman has, on her death, left the man who dispossessed her a tidy property on the condition that his half sister is brought back to England and married advantageously.”

“An admirably canny lady.” Darcy shrugged as he examined the disposition of the balls upon the table. “She played her cards well and secured for her daughter a chance for a future.”

“Rather too well, I should say,” Manning returned. “Think on it, Darcy! Ten years after ridding himself of his stepmama and sister, Sayre has succeeded in running his estate nearly into the ground and is in dire need of cash. Meanwhile, the cast-off sister has come of marriageable age. Then an unheard-of case in Chancery Court is decided, awarding the dowager a piece of land, and not long thereafter, the woman dies!” His eyes narrowed. “Everything is so very damned convenient.”

“Not for the dowager,” Darcy remarked, snapping the tip of his cue against the ball and sinking his call.

“Perhaps, even for her.” Manning looked at him sharply. “Darcy, Sayre has no real proof that his stepmama is truly dead or that the property even exists!”

“What! You are joking!” Darcy dropped the cue upon the table and faced Manning. “On what basis was Lady Sylvanie recalled from Ireland, then?”

“A copy of the dowager’s will and the testimony of her solicitor — a cousin of some sort, I believe.”

“And Sayre has sent no one to Ireland to secure the matter?”

“Oh, one was sent to deliver Sayre’s invitation and send Lady Sylvanie home to Norwycke,” Manning replied with a mirthless laugh, “but during his first two months in Ireland, he wrote only of delays and difficulties with the cousin and the Irish courts. The dowager’s family lands are particularly remote, it seems, making travel difficult and correspondence almost impossible. Then, all communication stopped. Sayre hasn’t heard from the man in weeks, nor will he send another to find what has become of the first.”

“Are you saying, Manning, that Lady Sylvanie has perpetrated an elaborate fraud upon Sayre, and he refuses either to see it or to do anything more to acquire the truth of the matter?” Darcy demanded incredulously. “It is beyond belief!”

“Is it, Darcy?” Manning met his skepticism with steely certainty. “It is what Trenholme suspects; although he, too, would rather believe that all will come right in the end and this phantasmal property will prevent his brother from ruining them both.”

Darcy took a breath to reply but held it instead while he searched the Baron’s countenance for any intimation of deceit. Manning had known exactly what he was about and had steadily returned his regard.

“I have not yet convinced you, I see.” Manning sighed. He laid down his cue and, clasping his hands behind his back, had stepped away from Darcy to one of the few paintings that still remained upon the billiard room’s walls. It was of the typical sort, a spaniel bitch serenely gazing out at the viewer as her litter gamboled about her. “What I tell you now, Darcy, I tell you only because of the exceeding debt your kindness to my younger sister has laid upon me. But in discharging it, I lay my other sister open to your derision and must have your word as a gentleman that no hint of what I will reveal to you will reach her ears.”

“You have it,” Darcy replied, extending his hand.

Manning took it in a crushing but brief grasp before looking away from him and establishing some distance between them once more. Then, he took a deep breath and began, “You know, of course, that Sayre and my sister have been married for six years now; and, as is very obvious, she has given him no heirs.” His jaw worked in grim