Page 75 of Duke of Iron
The night was very still. The city slept. But May did not.
Twenty-Two
Logan stood in the shadow of a well-bred holly tree, the morning’s fog dampening his coat and the address from Abel Forge dampening his spirits still further. Number 14 Green Street looked like any other in this quarter of Mayfair—brick in immaculate repair, ironwork without a spot of rust, knocker polished to a dangerous shine.
He would never have believed that this was the den from which his entire life had been upended. It did not look like the sort of house that left infants on ducal doorsteps. It did not even look like the sort of house that had secrets. But then, neither did Irondale.
He dismounted, tossed the reins to a waiting groom who materialized as if he’d been stationed there for centuries, and strode up the walk. The brass knocker struck with a sound that reverberated up Logan’s arm.
The butler who answered had the jowls and carriage of a minor clergyman and, like all the best butlers, betrayed no sign that he recognized the Duke of Irondale. “May I assist you, sir?”
“I am here to see Mr. Beamond,” Logan said.
The man’s brow quirked. “Mr. Beamond is not expecting callers at this hour.”
“Inform him that the Duke of Irondale requires a word.” Logan did not raise his voice, but the air thickened just the same.
The butler blinked, recalibrated, and stepped aside. “If Your Grace will wait in the receiving room, I shall inquire at once.”
Logan entered the house. It was suffocatingly warm and redolent of orange blossom, the sort of scent that suggested recent grief. He had seen enough mourning houses to know the signs—heavy drapery, lilies in vases, a hush deeper than that of mere good breeding.
He waited, hands steepled behind his back, and stared into the fire. It was so meticulously laid that even the flames obeyed a code of conduct.
A minute later, he was ushered into a drawing room. The curtains were half-drawn against the day, and two people rose from the settee as the butler announced, “The Duke of Irondale.”
Mr. and Mrs. Beamond had the look of people perpetually startled by life. He was tall, spare, with thinning silver hair and eyes that darted from the carpet to Logan and back again. She was short, with hands clasped so tightly they shook, and the black of her dress suggested that her heart would be in mourning for the rest of her life, regardless of fashion.
Logan bowed. He did not sit, nor did he wait for an invitation. “I will not waste your time. Several weeks ago, a child was left at my door with instructions that he was to be raised as the Duke of Irondale’s heir. The claim was made that he is mine.”
Mr. Beamond drew in a long, juddering breath. “I had heard something of it, but I confess I did not believe it until you appeared in person.”
Logan’s jaw set. “I have never met your daughter, nor have I ever—” He stopped, measured his words. “I have no knowledge of a Rebecca Beamond or her son.”
Mrs. Beamond’s lips tightened to near invisibility, but it was the man who spoke. “Rebecca is… was… our only child. We received word, a fortnight past, that she died in Italy. She had gone there to recover her health. She wrote, near the end, that the child would be sent ‘home to his family.’ We did not think she meant yours.”
Logan felt a chill start at the nape of his neck and spread, quickly and efficiently, down his spine. “You are saying the boy is not mine?”
Mr. Beamond’s gaze met Logan’s for the first time. “She never once claimed that you were the father, Your Grace. The letters…” He fumbled in his coat, then produced a folded page with trembling hands. “I will show you, if you wish.”
Logan waved this away. “If not mine, then whose?”
Mr. Beamond hesitated, as if the answer itself were a kind of betrayal. “The previous Duke of Irondale.”
It was a minute before Logan spoke. When he did, his voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else. “My father.”
The word hung in the room. Not even the fire dared to pop.
He wanted to laugh, but the machinery of his face would not cooperate. “The previous Duke was a married man. He would not have…” But then, of course, he would. Michael Blackmore had believed himself above every law of man and nature. He had made a career of flouting decency.
Mr. Beamond’s voice shook. “Rebecca was very young. We did not know until she was nearly gone. It was all arranged, out of our hands.”
“And you did not think to keep the child?” Logan asked, surprised by the coldness of his own question.
The woman spoke at last, voice a thin silver wire. “My daughter was ruined. Our name…” She choked, wiped her eyes with a handkerchief already sodden. “We could not.”
Logan’s vision narrowed. He saw, in dizzying succession, the child’s face—the eyes, the chin, the line of the brow that matched his own in the family portrait above Irondale’s hearth. “William is my half-brother,” he said.
Mr. Beamond nodded once and said nothing more.
