Without a word, Peter took a chair across from the duke. He would not be forced to stand before the man like he had as a child.
“I did not expect to see you again,” Dane said.
“I cannot imagine why.”
But either the man had become obtuse owing to his illness, or willfully ignored the dry sarcasm. A small smile lifted his lips. “I’m glad you’ve come.”
Peter’s fingers convulsed around the arms of his chair. “You shouldn’t be.”
“Yet I am.” The smile, a weak thing at best, disappeared from his face. He studied Peter almost mournfully. “I know what you must think of me.”
“You have no idea what I think of you,” Peter bit out.
The duke sighed and seemed to shrink even more into himself. “No, you are right in that. But I’m happy you’re here regardless. For there is something I must say to you.”
“You have no right to say anything. You said all there was to say thirteen years ago.”
“There is no excuse for what I did. I know that—”
“You know nothing,” Peter spat. Feeling trapped in the elegant confines of the chair, he lunged to his feet and stalked across the room.
“I cannot begin to tell you how much I regret my actions,” Dane said, his voice thick.
Peter spun about, facing the man. “Youregret?You?” He stalked forward, his boots eating up the space between them until he stood directly before him. “You know nothing of regret. You know nothing of heartache, of seeing someone you love slipping away before your very eyes and not being able to do a thing about it.”
“Don’t I?”
The words, infused with such misery, cut through Peter’s rage like a knife.
“I know pain, Peter,” Dane continued. He swallowed hard, his eyes going distant, and Peter knew the man must be thinking of his own son. He’d heard all about the death, of course. How the young Marquess of Hillram had attempted a jump; how the horse had landed wrong, snapping its leg. The duke’s son had lingered a short while in acute pain before dying in his fiancée’s arms.
He started. Miss Hartley had been that fiancée. She had held that boy as he’d passed from this world into the next. Peter had not put the pieces together until now. And suddenlywhat had been a mere cold fact was given a horrible realism now that he saw Miss Hartley in his mind’s eye, sobbing and grieving over the body of that faceless boy.
Furious at himself for softening even a bit over the death of a man he neither knew nor cared about, Peter returned his attention to Dane. Leaning over, he gripped the arms of the man’s chair, forcing him to look him in the eye. “I know exactly why you wish to beg forgiveness now,” he hissed. “You are dying, and realize that your actions have forever damned you. You wish to meet your Maker with a clear conscience. I will not give that to you.”
Instead of anger or outrage, however, the man nodded, his eyes sunken and mournful in his thin face. “I deserve no less from you. But I will ask forgiveness regardless, though you have every right to refuse it.”
“You turned a desperate, frightened thirteen-year-old boy from your door,” Peter snarled.
“I did—”
“I came to you begging for help.”
“Yes—”
“You were my last hope; mymother’slast hope.”
Grief flared in the pain-dulled depths of the man’s eyes. “I would take it back if I could. If I had not been out of my mind with fear over your father’s blackmailing—”
His jaw closed with enough force to snap his teeth together, his eyes widening in what could only be described as horror.
Every one of Peter’s senses sharpened. His nostrils flared, and for a mad moment, he felt like a tiger getting its first scent of blood. He leaned in closer. “My father was blackmailing you?”
The duke pressed his lips tight, though he could not stem the desperate fear in his face.
Peter narrowed his eyes. “I have more reason than anyone to hate my father. He was a bastard of the first order, a demon spawned from hell. But even I know the man was far from stupid. He would not have chanced blackmailing a duke, no matter he was the man’s cousin, unless there was something powerful to hold over his head.”
The man let out a shuddering breath. “It matters naught,” he muttered. “It’s in the past. Suffice it to say, I did not cry when I learned of his death.” His expression turned pleading. “Perhaps that is something we have in common, both having been hurt by his machinations—”
