“Drinking away your troubles?” the gravelly voice of a man pondered as he sat next to him at the bar.
Darius looked up and groaned long and loud. “I should have known you wouldn’t leave without a fight.”
“I’m not looking for a fight,” the Earl of Wickham said with a shake of his head, small veins popping out on his ruddy cheeks. “Just the money owed me.”
“And you think threatening young ladies is the best way to go about it?”
“I wasn’t threatening the chit. I only need an audience with that no-good duke. I bet he isn’t even sick at all. Probably hiding behind her skirts all this time.”
Darius clenched his fist around his mug and wondered what would happen if he took the man down right there in front of a dozen witnesses. Could he make the ship before the magistrate was roused? “The duke isn’t in the house. Miss Penfold was telling the truth.”
Wickham sighed. “I know he didn’t go to Bath. Harold just sent word this very morning.”
Darius shrugged and drank as though he hadn’t a care as to the whereabouts of a lost duke.
“What do you hope to gain here?” Wickham finally asked.
“What is owed me,” Darius answered easily.
“And with the Penfold girl? What have you to do with the eldest daughter of a duke?”
Darius chuckled and then lied, “I could do much worse than Eliza Penfold but no. She has nothing to do with any of it.”
“Then why did you stand by her? To get at me? To get to her? Are you taunting her father out of hiding?”
“That is none of your business.”
“You won’t tell me then?”
“Not yet.”
“Cryptic beggar you are. Harold was right, we should have killed you rather than letting you go.”
Darius unclenched his teeth and then drained the ale with more than a little effort and restraint. “Let me go? You threw me away like a useless three-legged hound you couldn’t bear to look at. Was it because I reminded you of my mother? Of the betrayal to your own wife? Or was it because you simply have a heart of stone and are incapable of compassion?”
“Compassion is for dandies and women, not for children who should never have been born. Your mother should have got rid of you before you ended her life and shamed mine.”
Darius kept his head down and his voice low as he replied, “You forced yourself upon a maid and then blamed her corpse for the child she bore you. There are no words for men like you. I’m glad you never claimed me as yours. I’ve never detested you more than I do right this very moment.”
“Why was it you who came then? Not Montrose?”
“If it had been Deklin, would you have repaid the money?” He had the answer to the question before he’d even finished the sentence. It was there in Wickham’s eyes, in his stance, his supreme arrogance. Darius was starting to realise the three men of the ton had likely done business with a foreigner for exactly this reason. They truly believed they owed him nothing because he wasn’t English. They were con men, each and every one. “Deklin happens to be twiddling his thumbs in Boston waiting for a ship. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”
Again, the only emotion reflected in his sire’s eyes was the knowledge he’d already gotten away with his misdeeds. That as long as he was protected by other gentlemen of the ton, he was untouchable. He’d be wrong about that too.
“Did you make enquiries with the harbourmaster?” Wickham asked after another gulp of ale. “Surely he would have made notes of the ship you’re after?”
“A more corrupt man, I’ve never come across.” How was it that men like that came into the positions they held? Oh, yes, he knew how. More than half of England’s breeches-wearing inhabitants were for sale for the right price.
“I’ll give him your regards.”
Darius ground his teeth. “As soon as you pay me my money, I’ll never lay eyes on you again. I’ll never think about you again as long as I live but I will have what is mine.”
“I’m not paying you anything, bastard. You have no rights here, no sway and no friends. Perhaps the only thing I owe you is a quick end? To put you out of your misery and wipe your existence from the earth?”
Darius pushed his stool back with a scrape, desperate to reach for a weapon but understanding it wasn’t the time nor the place. He rose to his full height, towered over his sire and said, “Try all you like, old man, but my blade will find your heart well before yours finds mine.”
“So you mean for war?” Wickham asked, fury blazing in his bloodshot gaze.
“It seems between you and I, that is all there has ever been room for. The victor will be the last man standing.”
“What have you to gain? Harold will wear the title and inherit what I have left should you win. You will still be a nameless, penniless cur.”
He straightened and smiled, the action humourless but full of promise. “I’ll have the pleasure of watching the life drain from your eyes, knowing this bastard was more powerful than an earl, than a man who thinks himself beyond the reach of vengeance.”
“So that’s why you came? For revenge?”
Darius shook his head and turned to leave. “You could have paid me the gold and I would have left you alone, ignored your presence as I have for more than a decade. You are the one who made it personal, milord, when you did wrong by the Persephone and
