Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden. Nicola Cornick
Churchward shook his head. “Sentiment,” he said, “has no place in business, your grace. Your late father understood that.”
“My late father,” Garrick said, his tone hard, “did not set an example I wish to follow in any area of my life, Mr. Churchward.”
“Well, perhaps not.” The lawyer placed his glasses back on his nose. His pale eyes gleamed at Garrick through the thick lenses. “Your late father,” he admitted, “could lack compassion.”
“You have the most marvelous line in understatement, Mr.Churchward,” Garrick said. “My father could best be described as an unfeeling bastard. I speak figuratively,” he added, “lest you should be worried that someone might challenge the legitimacy of the Dukedom.”
There was a knock at the door and the senior clerk poked his head around. “Lord and Lady Grant, Lady Darent and Lady Merryn Fenner,” he announced somewhat breathlessly.
Garrick stood up. He could feel tension in his shoulders, the strain making the back of his neck ache. He rubbed it surreptitiously. He had known that he had to be present for this meeting. Mr. Churchward could hardly be expected to bear the responsibility alone. But he was also acutely aware that it might cause Lady Grant and Lady Darent distress to be confronted by the man who had killed their brother. Merryn’s reaction he was fairly sure he could accurately predict.
There was a commotion in the outer office and then Lady Grant and Lady Darent swept in. Garrick could understand why Churchward’s clerks were behaving like chickens when a fox got in the henhouse; both women were extraordinarily beautiful, perhaps not in the classic sense, but they both exuded style and charm and warmth that could set light to a room. It was difficult not to stare. Apart they would have been considered incomparable. Together they were dazzling.
And then Merryn walked in. Her eyes met Garrick’s and he found that he could not look away. Where Joanna Grant and Tess Darent had a cool, empty beauty, Merryn was all fire and passion. She stopped dead in the doorway so that Tess Darent almost walked into her.
“What the devil is he doing here?” she exclaimed.
Her loathing of him was completely unconcealed. It blazed from her blue eyes. There was antipathy in every line of her slender body. Garrick thought she was about to turn on her heel and walk out.
“You might have warned us, Mr. Churchward,” Joanna Grant said, with what Garrick thought was admirable restraint.
“And then we need not have come!” Merryn snapped.
Garrick smiled at her and was rewarded with a glare in return. He knew that it was not simply dislike that motivated her. If he chose to reveal anything of their previous meetings she would be in a very difficult situation indeed. He raised his brows in quizzical challenge and saw her blush before she looked away. Her lips set in a tight, angry line.
“Lady Merryn,” he said. “A pleasure to see you again.”
That brought him another fierce snap of anger from those blue eyes.
“I was not aware that you had met his grace of Farne recently, Merryn,” Joanna said mildly.
“We met at the library yesterday,” Merryn said.
“And a couple of days before that,” Garrick put in, “in my b—”
“Bank!” Merryn said loudly. Everyone looked at her.
“At the bank?” Joanna sounded surprised.
“Acre and Co. in the Strand,” Merryn said. Her gaze, equally as challenging as Garrick’s own, held his for one long moment. “I was admiring the architecture. Such a fine design.”
Tess Darent gave a little yawn, hiding it behind one languid hand. “Lud, Merryn, how very like you,” she said.
Merryn smiled. Garrick saw the flash of triumph in her eyes.
“I bank at Coutts and Co.,” he said gently, “for future reference, Lady Merryn.”
“Then perhaps you were admiring the architecture, too,” Merryn said sweetly. Her look dared him to go further, to expose her. He could see the defiance in her eyes. He could also see the pulse that fluttered in her throat. Merryn Fenner was nervous, he thought, for all her daring.
“I was certainly admiring something,” he murmured. “I found our encounter most stimulating.”
He dropped his gaze to her mouth. Merryn blushed, biting her lip, a gesture that only served to emphasize how full and luscious those lips were. Garrick felt a punch of lust, which was not, he thought, the appropriate physical or mental state to be in for a meeting with his lawyer.
Churchward cleared his throat. “Ladies, Lord Grant …” He ushered them all into their seats. Tess and Joanna arranged themselves prettily. Merryn sat bolt upright, her gaze pointedly turned away from Garrick. A glacial silence fell.
“If we might proceed …” Churchward said. “I must thank you all for coming at such short notice.” He fixed his dusty spectacles more firmly on his nose. “And for your forbearance, ladies. I asked you here today because the Duke of Farne—” a thread of disapproval entered his voice “—wishes to make you an offer.”
“Not of marriage, I hope,” Merryn said shortly.
“Not unless you desire it, Lady Merryn,” Garrick said smoothly.
“I’d rather you gave me the plague,” Merryn snapped.
“Merryn,” Joanna Grant said reproachfully, and Garrick saw Merryn grimace. A shade of pink came into her face and she fell silent.
“Let us not be too hasty.” Tess Darent was sitting a little straighter in her chair and showing some interest in the proceedings for the first time. Her gaze inspected Garrick thoroughly. “I might be happy to add a Duke to my collection,” she said.
“Not this one, Tess,” Joanna said dryly. “He looks too healthy for you. He could not be relied upon to die within a year of your wedding.”
“More is the pity,” Garrick heard Merryn murmur.
“Besides,” Joanna added, even more dryly, “he is too virile for your taste.”
Garrick saw Merryn’s gaze jerk up to his face and a wave of hot color stung her cheeks. For a second they stared at one another, captured in a fierce blaze of awareness, and then Merryn turned her head away again and her eyelashes flickered down to hide her expression. Garrick saw her knit her fingers tightly together in her lap.
“Ladies …” Churchward sounded reproving. Evidently, Garrick thought, he had had some previous experience of the shocking ways of the Fenner sisters. “No one,” he said severely, “is offering to marry anyone.” He turned to Garrick. “If you permit, your grace?”
“Of course,” Garrick said. “Please proceed, Mr. Churchward.”
Once again he felt Merryn Fenner’s gaze on him. Her expression was dark now, unreadable. For a second, though, Garrick thought that she looked frightened and he felt a tug of emotion inside; he wondered what this meeting must be like for her, stirring up as it did feelings and memories she had clearly never overcome. Then she raised her chin, scorning the tacit sympathy he realized that he had offered, rejecting every vestige of comfort he might give. Her dismissal felt like a slap across the face.
“This is a deed of gift made on the eleventh of November in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fourteen,” Mr. Churchward said precisely. “By this gift his grace Garrick Charles Christmas Farne, nineteenth Duke of Farne—”
“Christmas?” Merryn said, quite as though she could not help herself.
“I was born on the twenty-fifth of December,” Garrick said, smiling at her, “to a very devout mother.”
“How unfortunate for you,” Merryn said politely.
“It could have