Indeed, their problems were piling up faster than she could solve them. It wasn’t enough that Hammond Court was tumbling down around their ears. Every day dawned with another new crack in a window, a new leak in the roof, or a new rut in the front drive, and that was to say nothing of the battered front door and the sizable hole in the kitchen floor.
If that hadn’t been enough to drive her to despair, now they also had an angry, vindictive duke who appeared to have come all the way from London for the pleasure of seeing them tossed out into the snow.
Banished, from the only home she’d ever known.
Worse, he might just have the means to do it.
That note he’d shown her was no counterfeit. She’d know Ambrose’s hand anywhere. If he’d sent that note—and it appeared as if he had—the twisted game Ambrose and the Duke of Grantham had been playing for the past two decades might not yet be over.
If it had only been the note, she might have been able to convince herself nothing would come of the duke’s threats, but there was something else, as well.
In the hours before he died, Ambrose had made a desperate effort to tell her something—something about Hammond Court, and the Duke of Grantham. He’d been so weak by then, all she’d been able to gather from his frantic mutterings was that the duke would come here once Ambrose was dead and that he’d try to . . .
Well, she hadn’t any idea what he’d try to do. Ambrose had tried to tell her, but he’d been too incoherent for her to make sense of his ramblings. She’d understood only that the duke would try to do something, or take something, and that she must do everything in her power to stop him.
Then, before she could say a word, Ambrose had lapsed into unconsciousness, and he’d never woken again. There’d been no time to ask him anything—no time even to squeeze his hand.
He’d taken one last gasping breath, and then he was gone.
Now here was the Duke of Grantham not even a week later, note in hand, strolling about the house as if it already belonged to him.
“Hammond Court? But that’s absurd, Rose! I’m sure the Duke of Grantham fancies himself an important personage indeed, but even he can’t simply appear on the doorstep and order people from their homes.”
No, not under ordinary circumstances, but when had Ambrose ever done anything in the ordinary way? He’d always been a gamester, a magician, a man who delighted in sleight of hand. He might yet have one final card up his sleeve. Was it so difficult to imagine he intended to play it from beyond the grave?
“Rose?”
“Of course, he can’t, Abby.” Rose patted Abby’s hand, but a thousand misgivings were crowding into her head at once. There was something amiss here. She could feel it. “Still, I think it might be wise of us to send for Sir Richard and see if he can provide some illumination on the subject.”
Sir Richard Mildmay was Ambrose’s oldest and dearest friend and the executor of his will. He’d urged her more than once this past week to sit down with him to go over Ambrose’s papers—but the weather had turned foul, and between the leaking roof and damp floorboards, she hadn’t had a spare moment.
So, she’d put it off. Now it was beginning to look as if that had been a mistake.
A grave one.
“Yes, that makes sense.” Abby straightened her shoulders. “Very well, then, we’ll summon Sir Richard, and see if he can make sense of it, but you must promise me something first, Rose.”
“Of course, Abby. Anything.”
“If the Duke of Grantham does come back here, promise me you won’t shoot him.”
Rose snorted and squeezed Abby’s hand. “Not a single shot. I swear it.”
Goodness knew they were in enough trouble already without her firing upon the Duke of Grantham.
Again.
No matter how tempting it might be.
CHAPTER5
Asound night’s sleep was meant to reassert one’s nobler nature, to push back into place whatever higher principles had been knocked askew the day before. Max was meant to wake in the morning refreshed, the cobwebs cleared from his mind, a better man than he’d been the day before.
Or some such bollocks as that.
He was as wicked today as he’d been yesterday, his heart as black and shriveled as it had ever been. He hadn’t forgiven that fair-haired chit—whose bloody name hestilldidn’t know—for nearly blowing his foot to bits, nor was he any less determined to have his way in the end.
So, when he called Townsend, his land steward, into his study after he’d breakfasted, he was in no mood for prevarication. “Some murderous vixen has tucked herself into Hammond Court tighter than a mouse in a hole. It’smyhouse, and I want her out, Townsend, as quickly as the thing can be managed.”
