He didn’t, as it happened.
He’d lost any claim to proper human feeling when they’d reached Hermitage, and his flask of brandy had run dry. Why hadn’t he thought to bring two flasks? Or the whole bottle, come to that? He wasn’t given to heavy drinking, but a sojourn in the godforsaken village of Fairford could drive the soberest of men into his cups.
Was it any wonder his father had found his death at the bottom of a bottle?
But this was no time to think about his father’s disgraceful end. There was never a proper time to think aboutthat. He generally made a point of not doing so, but damned if the mere sight of Hammond Court didn’t set all those old ghosts free again.
He’d only just arrived, and already he was growing mawkish.
But he was here now, and the sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could leave and forget about Fairford for another two decades. He stepped up to the front door, seized the knob, and gave it a hard twist, but for all that the rest of the house was falling to bits, the iron lock on the front door appeared to be maddeningly intact.
He backed up and scanned the front of the house. It was early, not yet seven o’clock, but there wasn’t a flicker of light to be seen behind the windows, or a curl of smoke rising from any of the four soot-stained chimneys ranging across the lopsided roof.
Abandoned, of course, and just as well. The place was a bloody hazard.
Behind him, his coachman stirred. “All right, Your Grace?”
Max turned and glanced back at Bryce. He’d ordered him to stop halfway up the drive to save his carriage springs, which had been popping loose with every turn of the carriage wheels over the rutted drive. “Just a bit of trouble with the door, Bryce.”
He grasped the knob again and gave it a vigorous shake. The lock held steady, but the same couldn’t be said of the doorknob itself, which rattled in its setting, the wood around it cracked and shredding.
A hard kick would see the thing done. It wasn’t quite the dignified entrance he’d envisioned, but hehad, after all, been invited. He retreated a step, braced himself, and struck the knob with the side of his boot.
Nothing. The blasted thing held fast.
“Damn it.” He struck it a second time, giving in to a fit of temper utterly unworthy of a gentleman, and most particularly a duke.
Bryce let out a startled gasp. “Your Grace?”
Max sucked in a deep draught of freezing air until he was able to face his driver with his usual sangfroid. “It’s all right, Bryce. Remain with the carriage.”
It was just as well if Bryce wasn’t close enough to witness what he intended to do next. Kicking doors down was not proper ducal behavior, but this washishouse,hisdoor, andhisdoorknob, or they would be, soon enough, and he may abuse them as he pleased.
“Can I help, Your Grace?” Bryce called out again, clearly alarmed.
Help? No, he was well past the point of help now. If he hadn’t been, he would have returned to his carriage, ordered Bryce to take him to Grantham Lodge where a meal, a bath, and a comfortable bed awaited him, and return later with a few sturdy footmen in tow.
But where his past was concerned? He was a perfectly rational duke, run mad in the Cotswolds. “No. I’ve got it, Bryce.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Bryce cast a dubious glance at him. “If you’re quite sure, Your Grace.”
He wasn’t sure of a damned thing anymore, except that hewouldget into this house, one way or another. “I’m sure. Wait there.”
He retreated a few steps, then ran at the door, aiming a kick at the doorknob. This time he struck it dead on with his heel. A crack echoed in the frosty air as the wood splintered, and the knob and the plate that affixed it to the door dropped to the ground like birds shot from the sky.
Ah, good. That would do.
He pushed the door open and ducked through it, coughing as a cloud of dust rained down on him, ruining a perfectly good beaver hat. He paused on the threshold, but there wasn’t much to see with the dull gray sky above greedily hoarding what little light there was.
But he didn’t need any light to know the way. Even after so many years, and with half the furnishings shrouded in dust cloths, he moved easily from room to room, memory guiding him.
It was strange, how little things changed.
It had been nineteen years since he’d set foot inside this house—fifteen since he’d set foot in Fairford itself—but he knew it as well as he knew the lines intersecting the palm of his hand. Every decorative plaster cornice, every one of the hundreds of pieces of crystal dangling from the heavy chandelier in the entryway, and every inch of the wooden floorboards under his feet.
Time had taken liberties with the cursed old place, but otherwise, it hadn’t changed as much as he’d expected. It was still the same house in which he’d run wild as a small boy—or what was left of it, after nineteen years in Ambrose St. Claire’s careless hands.
It wasn’t surprising. Everything Ambrose touched, he ruined.
