A Duke Changes Everything (The Duke's Den #1) Page 3

  Solving Enderley’s problems was where she excelled. It was her purpose, at least for a little while longer.

  Chapter Three

  “Stop!” Nick banged the wall of the carriage hard with the flat of his hand before the coachman heard his shout over the rattle of the traces.

  Admittedly, it was an odd place to ask the driver to stop. A mile, maybe two, from their destination. But he’d had enough.

  Enough of being trapped in the dark, cramped space. Enough of being jostled on unforgiving squabs as the coach navigated Sussex’s rutted country roads. Enough of the agonizing wait to be delivered to the hellish place he would have been content to never see again.

  The closer they drew to Enderley, the more determined he became not to arrive confined within the walls of a carriage. Whatever demons of his past lay ahead, he’d damn well face them on his own two feet.

  “Here, my lord?” the coachman shouted.

  “Here.” Nick jumped out before the driver could climb down. “Deliver my luggage to the estate. Someone will take the bags when you arrive.”

  At least, he hoped the staff would do their duty. He suspected some would dread his arrival. The longtime staff who’d served his father would recall him as nothing more than the duke’s despised second son.

  Now he’d proved himself negligent by ignoring his inheritance for months. His early arrival would earn him ire too. His sudden appearance would no doubt upend the daily routine of Enderley’s staff, but it would be nothing to how much they’d soon come to loathe him.

  He hoped his plan would take no longer than a fortnight. A neat entry and exit. Clear out the furnishings, see to a thorough cleaning, and dismiss some of the staff so that a future tenant could hire whom he wished. Nick had asked his solicitor to look into every possible means of abdicating a dukedom or breaking an entail. All to no avail. With no means of achieving either prospect, he’d settled on what was possible—putting the estate in a trust and leasing the property in the meantime.

  The carriage rolled on toward Enderley, and Nick yanked up the collar of his overcoat against a brisk wind. The air carried a bone-chilling bite and the salty tang of the sea. He drew in a deep breath, savoring the scent.

  Shock jolted through him. He hadn’t expected to find anything about Sussex appealing.

  Even now, he glanced over his shoulder, pondering the fork in the road. Behind him lay London and Lyon’s and the life he’d made for himself. Ahead lay only pain. All the ugliness of his past and all of the fresh misery he was about to inflict.

  He started forward, abandoning the muck of the road and trudging through tall field grass in a straight path toward the estate. With every step, his chest tightened a bit more, as if he was being slowly flattened beneath a millstone. Steeling himself, he ignored the pain. This place had tried to kill him once and failed. It wouldn’t break him now. He wasn’t a child anymore.

  Lord help him, he was the bloody Duke of Tremayne.

  By the time the battlements of Enderley’s towers came into view, he looked more like a muddy marauder. If not for a letter from the estate steward, Thomas Thorne, tucked in his waistcoat pocket, he doubted few would believe he was heir to any estate. Unless some of the old staff remained and recognized him.

  He was looking forward to facing down every single one of them who’d abetted his father’s villainy.

  As he started up the carriage drive, the lane turned drier, coated with pebbles that crunched under his boots. There were so many damn windows in the house, all glinting proudly in the sunlight. The entire house glowed, its gray bricks lit by the steady gleam of the November sun.

  He could almost convince himself the sunny-faced facade wasn’t Enderley’s at all.

  Every memory he possessed of the place was shrouded in murk and gloom. And always with one blot of darkness that colored every recollection. The old ruined tower. The structure still stood, more decrepit but still menacing, at the house’s western edge.

  He cast his gaze ahead as he strode toward the house, refusing to give the vile old tower his attention. Instead, he focused on the cluttered front steps.

  The coachman had arrived, departed, and left his luggage lying in an unceremonious heap at the front doors.

  Bloody hell.

  “What brings you to Enderley, sir?” A gruff voice sounded at Nick’s back, and a figure cast a giant’s shadow across the path at his feet.

  “Duty.” Nick turned to find an individual as large as his silhouette. A tall, broad, bearded beast of a man who was too young to have been in service when Nick was a child. A groundskeeper, Nick guessed, or perhaps the stable master. “And you are?”

  “Tobias, sir. I tend the horses and carriages at Enderley.” The man scrutinized him from his rumpled clothes to his dirt-smeared boots. “Who are you seeking?”

  “Wilder.” The name came unbidden. “Is he still in service?” He was old and gray-haired in Nick’s memories. He’d be ancient now.

  “Who may I say’s come to call?”

  “Nicholas Lyon.” He still couldn’t bring himself to use his blasted title aloud. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to embrace that inheritance.

  “Lyon? Heavens, you’re the man himself.” Tobias scraped his cap from his head and offered Nick a stiff bow. “Forgive me, Your Grace.”

  “Is he still alive?” Nick asked, brushing off the man’s obsequiousness.

  “He is. Shall I take you to him?”

  “I’ll find him.” Nick nodded at Tobias before starting toward the front door. The stable master noticed his bags and heaved a trunk onto his massive shoulders.

  Inside the entry hall, the house was eerily quiet, but Nick heard sounds belowstairs.

  He descended to find a busy staff, everyone occupied at cleaning some part of the enormous, high-ceilinged kitchen. One girl stood atop a rickety lean-to ladder, swiping at invisible dust on the ceiling. Another had her head buried inside a great blackened oven. A young man swept so fiercely, bits of twig flew up to join a cloud of dust above his head.

  “And who might you be, then?” A familiar voice, roughened by the passing of time, called from the kitchen corner. “If you’re one of those men coming around to politic or sell your wares, you’ll have to talk to the steward.”

  “Scribb, isn’t it?” The moment Nick turned to face her, the old woman feinted back. Her face drained of blood, except for two crimson stains high on her cheeks.

  “Mercy, take me.” The housekeeper gaped at him.

  Nice wasn’t sure if she recognize him or was reacting as others did to his eyes and scarred face.

  “We didn’t expect you today, Your Grace.”

  “But here I am. Don’t let me disturb your work.” The anger Nick expected to feel for whatever part she’d played in assisting his father’s machinations didn’t come. Now he saw only that she was an old woman, one who’d had the grit to stay in this godforsaken place after he’d gone. “I came down to find Mr. Wilder.”

  She pointed, and Nick noticed that her hands were shaking.

  He didn’t have to go far in the direction she indicated. The shuffle of footsteps sounded from inside the butler’s pantry and Wilder emerged, his gray hair now snow white.

  “Master Nicholas.” Rather than bow as the others had, he came forward and stood stiffly, his hands behind him. “You’ve come back.”

  There was a question in the old man’s gravelly voice. Nick was still wondering too. Why had he returned? “If there was any other way, I would have taken it.”

  “You must be tired after your journey.” Mrs. Scribb moved like an agitated bird, fluttering in his periphery. “We’ll see to your bags and finish preparing the ducal suite for you, Your Grace.”

  “No.” Nick’s bark was loud enough to make the old woman jump. “Prepare a guest chamber for me.” The notion of setting foot in any room used by his father or brother turned his stomach.

  After exchanging confused glances, all the other servants filed out of the kitc
hen.

  “There will be much to do.” Wilder remained in his stolid butler stance. Chest puffed out. Eyes straight ahead. The stiffness of his posture didn’t match the emotion in his voice. “You may rely on me, Your Grace, as long as I am able to serve you.”

  “I know that much.” For the briefest moment, Nick considered what job he might offer the old man at Lyon’s, and then immediately rejected the notion. What Wilder deserved for his long years of service was a nice cottage in the country. A bit of rest in his dotage. He would reward the man in that small way, at least. “You may start by never calling me Your Grace again. Of all the staff, you must understand how I loathe those words.”

  Wilder responded with one dip of his square chin. “But you are Tremayne now. Others will call you such.”

  “And my father would rise from the grave to stop them if he could.”

  “But he cannot.” The old man’s eyes flicked to his. “He is powerless now.”

  Powerless. The word loosened some of the tension that had ridden his shoulders since he’d left London.

  “I suppose this is his worst nightmare.” A little grin pulled the edges of Nick’s mouth upward. “I survived him and the heir he groomed for the dukedom.”

  “And you’re here at Enderley.” Wilder spoke softly, tentatively, like one attempting to gentle a dangerous beast.

  “Direct me to Thorne.” Nick cleared his throat to shed the gruffness from his tone. “There’s much to do, and I want to make a start.”

  “You were not expected until tomorrow.”

  “I presume the estate steward does his job every day. Now where is he?”

  “Sir—”

  “Just direct me to him, Wilder.”

  The butler pointed toward the kitchen’s service door, where milk and food were delivered. The door exited onto a yard that contained all of the work buildings on the estate—the granary, bake house, and stables.

  “Out back, sir. Most likely in the stables.”

  Nick wasn’t sure why the steward would be wasting time in the stables, but it wasn’t nearly as important as getting out into the fresh air. He yanked open the kitchen door and immediately breathed easier. Even a few minutes in the house felt tight and confining.

  On the threshold, something held him back. A task left undone for decades.

  “Wilder? There’s a great deal I don’t remember. Much I’ve forced myself to forget.” He should face the man, but he couldn’t. The memories would come back too sharply. “If I didn’t say it then, I owe it to you now.”

  A hand. A key. Bursting through the door. Running for his life. He couldn’t hold them back. Memories washed over him, a flood of vivid images.

  “Thank you. The sentiment is long overdue.”

  “Where is she?” Mina stood with a hand on each hip, narrowing one eye at Gleason, the senior stable hand. The man usually did his job well, but he tended to attack trouble with a maul, never considering that a less blunt tool might do the job.

  “The copse,” he said churlishly, swiping at an ugly bleeding scratch on his chin. “Quite a ways up the tallest oak. Tobias sent me out and I couldn’t get her either.”

  “And how did she get up there?”

  Gleason cast Mina a beseeching look. “The wee devil was into the feed bags, miss. Shooed her off. A bit o’ shouting. Flapping me arms. Didn’t mean the Ole Scratch any harm.”

  “She’s not the devil, Henry. She’s a cat, and she needs to eat now more than ever.”

  “I’ll go and try again.” He started for a roughhewn ladder they used to reach the storage level of the barn. It was a rickety old thing, and Mina doubted it would ever hold his weight.

  “You’ll only make it worse. I’ll go. Give me the ladder.”

  “Let me carry that for you, miss.” Gleason viewed her as Hardbrook did. A feminine flower to be protected and treated with delicacy. “It’s not work for a lady.”

  “I’m not a lady, and I don’t need help. Surely you have enough to keep you busy before the new duke arrives.”

  “Will he be as rotten as the last two?” Gleason called as she started out of the stable yard.

  “There’s every reason to think he’ll be worse.” Mina turned back to face the young man. “But if we show him we can be relied upon to run Enderley efficiently, perhaps he’ll spend as much time in London as his brother did.”

  “Leaves a good deal on your shoulders,” Gleason retorted.

  Mina lifted the ladder and hefted a rung over her shoulder before starting off toward the tree line.

  She knew Gleason meant well, but she bristled at the implication she was too fragile to be a proper steward. She hadn’t chosen her post, but she couldn’t imagine giving it up. If she could gain the trust of the new Duke of Tremayne, Mina prayed she wouldn’t have to.

  Near the rise where oak trees stood, she stopped for a moment and took in the view. She’d never been to London, never set foot out of Sussex in her entire life. But she doubted she’d ever see anything as stunning as the way Barrowmere’s ribbons of fields stretched out to meet the horizon.

  She heard Milly mewing miserably from a high branch. A summer ago, the feline was a fleet-footed hellion. Now her belly swelled with kittens that Mina had expected to arrive last week.

  “I’m coming for you, Millicent. Don’t do anything daring.” Mina braced the ladder against the trunk and started up the first rung. The wood and rusted nails protested, but she continued up. “Did you have to go quite so far?”

  Milly’s meow grew less desperate. A bit high-pitched, almost defensive.

  “I suppose Tobias and Gleason can be fearsome when they shout.”

  The cat was so high, Mina realized she’d need to abandon the ladder and scramble up a few of the branches. They were low, not as thick as those higher up, and she prayed they’d hold.

  “If we both come out of this unscathed”—she gritted her teeth and heaved up, wrapping an arm around a branch—“I want a promise that you’ll never do this again.”

  Millicent responded with a slow blink.

  “And that you won’t teach your babies this trick either.” She pushed up toward a higher branch and crooked a knee against the one below to keep steady while she reached for the cat. “When I grab you, it’s to help. I mean you no harm.”

  The cat was already shifting in a less than helpful direction, retreating an inch on her branch. Below Mina, the ladder clattered to the ground, and Milly’s eyes bulged before she scooted back another inch.

  “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

  The cat narrowed her eyes to little jeweled slits, but her swishing tail announced how irritated she’d become.

  Mina reached out and just brushed the scruff of the cat’s neck. “Got you, girl.”

  Chapter Four

  The place was so bloody vast. In London, a square mile cost a small fortune. Here in Sussex, a hundred acres could be gobbled up by the railway and few would raise a brow.

  Where would a steward hide on Enderley’s endless acres? The man wasn’t in the stables, and the two irritable servants Nick encountered there directed him toward a clump of trees on the highest patch of ground on the estate.

  Oaks and maples heavy with autumn leaves—gold and orange and patches of crimson—made a spectacle at the top of the hill. The sound floating down from the rise wasn’t nearly as appealing. A growl carried on the breeze, like the warning cry a tomcat offered before scratching your eyes out.

  Nick detected a woman’s voice too. A gentle, cajoling murmur. Almost seductive. “Come closer, darling. Stop being such a stubborn creature.”

  A jolt of awareness rippled across his skin. He couldn’t recall the last time a lover had spoken to him in such an arousing purr. Hell, he’d been so focused on Lyon’s of late, he could barely recall his last lover at all.

  Scanning the horizon, he expected to spot a trysting couple. Perhaps a lusty tenant farmer and his bride. What he saw instead was a flurry of leaves and twigs
floating down from a single tree.

  Narrowing his gaze, he noticed something up the tree. A small figure with feminine curves but garbed as a man—black vest, white shirt, and dark breeches. Exceedingly snug breeches, Nick couldn’t help but notice, made more so from her odd position.

  “Hello?” he called as he approached.

  The role of hero had never suited him, but he couldn’t imagine the young woman getting down from the height she’d reached without aid.

  She didn’t seem to agree. He received no acknowledgment of his greeting.

  A bit louder, he called, “You look as if you’re in need of rescue.” He swung a discarded ladder up, locked it against a notch of bark, and started up one rickety slat.

  That caught her notice. The lady tipped her head to glare at him, and that odd sizzle of awareness skittered across his skin once more. Her eyes were arresting, a unique whiskey shade that caught the light like amber. He felt a twinge under his breastbone, as if one of his sparring partners had got in an unexpected blow.

  Her eyes widened, and he braced himself for the usual feminine reaction to his features. But she didn’t scream or blanch as if his visage repulsed her. Which was as odd as the unexpected pleasure of looking up a tree at her trouser-wrapped legs and lush derriere.

  “Kindly cease talking,” she whispered angrily. “You’ll frighten her.”

  “Her?” Nick spotted the lady in question. A fat orange feline with a glare as ferocious as the woman protectively cradling the cat in one arm. Nick lowered his voice. “Let me help you.” He wasn’t sure if he was attempting to reason with the cat or her mistress.

  “I got up on my own.” The lady huffed out an irritated sigh. “I can get down on my own.”

  “I’m sure that’s what your cat thought too.”

  More glares. A cool jade glower from the cat. Gold fury from the tree-climbing female. “I. Can. Manage.”

  She couldn’t. Not unless she possessed the power of flight or suddenly sprouted much longer legs than the shapely limbs above his head. He climbed another step on the ladder.