Page 4 of Taken By the Broken Duke
Now, fury flared through Horatio. He heaved free of his father’s grip. A year or two earlier, it would have been nigh on impossible. But now, at the onset of his twentieth year, his shoulders had broadened, as had the musculature of his chest. He was not the Hercules that his father was, still slender and graceful rather than sturdy and imposing, but he was no weakling either. His father’s eyes widened at the brazenness.
“She lied! I did not touch her. Nor would I want to. I love Jane,” he growled back.
William’s brows furrowed. “Jane? Ainsworth? Of the Darnleighstone Ainsworths?”
Horatio nodded, impassioned, taking out a silk handkerchief and dabbing at the blood. “Now you know.”
William threw back his head and laughed.
“Daughter of the Viscount Darnleighstone? He would dearly love to see her married to my heir. May even be prepared to overlook the scandal. Both of them. But… he will not see her married to a penniless adventurer, bereft of title or prospects.”
Horatio frowned, a chill running through him at his father’s words. The handkerchief came down slowly.
“What… what do you mean?”
“I am cutting you off. You are no longer my son and no longer Marquess of Woolstone.”
“You cannot do that!” Horatio shot back.
“That title is a courtesy. A courtesy given byme!” William roared, “I gave it and I can take it at my pleasure. I will have Woolstone torn down and the ground salted before I let you live there. You and your reprobate friends! I should have stepped in before now when I saw the ilk of people you were associating with… This is where their path has led you.”
“Reprobates? They are good, decent—”
“A Frenchman? An Italian? A commoner?Pah! These are the people you choose to associate with? You were born to a Dukedom and you besmirch your name? No more! I will not see the Templeton name carried by a ravisher of women and courter of blackguards.”
“I told you that is a lie!” Horatio roared again, stepping up to his father, eyes ablaze with rage. “I came across her foxed and went to her aid. She fell on her own and that silly young girl saw me trying to put her back on her feet, and she—”
“Thatsilly young girlis a respectable member of a well-known family. Larkhill is an ancient English baronetcy with its own seat in the Lords and a lineage traced back to the Conquest. Why would that girl lie?”
“I don’t know! I wish I did,” Horatio replied desperately, “perhaps you should give your only son the benefit of the doubt over some slip of a girl!”
William turned away, sneering. He stormed to a sideboard where he took up a decanter of brandy and poured himself an unhealthy measure.
“And why would Lady Meredith lie?” he asked after taking a draught.
To that question, Horatio had no answer.
He was familiar with Lady Meredith, wife to Lord Hugh Kimberley, son of the man Horatio had killed. She had attended a number of social events that Horatio had hosted at Woolstone. Never with her husband, who always refused his invitations.
The lady had engaged in flirtatious behavior with Horatio before, despite being married. He had always tried to steer clear of her games. She was almost predatory in her sultry, alluring act, and it made him uncomfortable.
Jane, on the other hand, was fair-haired, with a heart as clear and pure as her blue eyes. As beautiful as a Renaissance sculpture and as innocent as Eve before the expulsion. She was the paragon of female virtue and it ate away at him that she might now reject him.
“You have no answer,” William muttered slowly into the deafening silence. “For there is no answer that can be given. You gave in to your base desires and have now mired me in scandal.”
Horatio ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.
“I did nothing of the sort. The Duke of Marlingford would not be denied. He called me out and I had no choice but to meet him or dishonor our family name even more. Truly, I tried to aim wide but did not expect him to be ready to fire first—”
William laughed with heavy scorn. “Duncan Kimberley was a marksman from childhood. And a fighter of duels in his youth. Of course he fired first, boy! It is a miracle that he did not shoot you dead. Perhaps that would have been the better outcome.”
That ill-conceived comment had Horatio’s heart lurching, but he did his damnedest to ignore it. “He hit me in the shoulder and threw off my aim,” he countered instead, knowing that it would do no good now. “I did not mean to kill him. I would have conceded.”
William poured another brandy. He drained the glass and then strode to the colossal mahogany desk that dominated the room. Thumping into the seat before it, he opened a drawer and took out a large pocketbook. Dipping a pen into an inkwell on the desk, he began to jot.
“I am writing you a promissory note that can be redeemed at my bankers in London, Glasgow, or Bristol. It is the last penny you will ever get from me. You can leave here with your horse and the clothes on your back. The rest of your property is forfeit. You will leave here as Master Horatio Templeton. Nobly born but reduced to the status of a commoner.”
He tore off the note and held it out for Horatio without looking up. Horatio gaped at it in horror.
