No Duke Will Do - Eva Devon Page 0,26

world so wild? Yes, it was.

And for a young woman, there was only one course: to find marriage. To find a role. She would do it, but she would not have to do it the way she would have just a few days before.

Now, she could choose. She would not be pushed and shoved about by her father. At the same time, she felt as if she had lost something. She’d lost the chance to be with Heath. A wave of pain rolled through her, so intense she nearly gasped.

Her mother cocked her head to the side. “Are you unwell?”

“No, Mama, I am perfectly well, given the circumstances. I am simply sad to see you in so much sorrow over the death of your husband.”

Her mother blew out a derisive breath. “I do not feel sorrow at his death. I feel sorrow at the life he has left us. Your poor brother, what ever will he do?” Her grip tightened on those papers. “A duke with no money. A duke who must bear his disastrous family reputation?”

“I am not afraid for Robert,” Mary returned truthfully. “He is a brave soul, and he shall bear up under this just as you and I shall.”

“We shall have to,” her mother said. “It is the only thing we can do.”

“And we will,” Mary said. “Mama, we will.”

Chapter 11

It was a strange feeling, rolling back up to his club.

Richard Heath climbed down from his coach, feeling far heavier than he’d ever felt, and that was saying a great deal.

He’d experienced more tragedy than most.

Seen hell, but somehow, his soul felt empty.

Leaving Mary behind had done something to him.

It was positively preposterous. She was not a woman for him. He’d known it in his bones, and fate had intervened, and he did believe in fate, because life would pick and choose who lived and who died, not just the people in it.

Oh, he could work away and he could endeavor, but there were certain things one could not control, such as the knock on a door, the letter from one of his men, the news the Duke of Blackstone was dead.

That did not mean he would not rail against the heavens.

He was glad for Mary that the old man was gone.

At least now, she would no longer be controlled by him, but her path would be one entirely other than the one he had imagined for her.

He strode in through the double doors of his club, walking through the people gambling and drinking their lives away. . . Feeling both understanding and disdain for them. He’s stormed through to his office and stopped dead in his tracks.

Another man sat there, his feet upon the desk, lolling back in Heath’s chair, a bottle of gin in his hand.

“There ye are,” that rough voice that had never been polished, that refuse to be tamed, cut through the air.

“Jamie,” Richard ground out.

Jamie lifted his bottle of gin. “Aren’t ye glad to see me, brother?”

Richard felt mixed emotions when it came to Jamie.

He loved his brother. One of the few people he did care about and love, but they were not close. Not in the way one would have imagined brothers to be.

They were not full brothers. Their mother had, as he’d come to understand, rarely had a regular partner. . . Only customers.

They’d found each other in the strangest of ways. In a Foundling hospital. The little information that had been left with Richard had matched him with Jamie. They’d clung to each other in the brutal, unforgiving place, where they were bastards, children of sin, children of whores, until they had been expelled onto the streets of London as small children.

They’d fought through rooms packed with other emaciated bastards. Children who were willing to kill, children who’d do anything they could to survive on the streets.

Jamie and he had fought together for so long. . . Until their paths had separated. Jamie, to a life of crime; Richard Heath, to a life of criminal organization.

There was a differentiation.

Jamie still lived by the sword.

Whereas Heath? He managed the swords.

“What the devil are you doing here?” Richard asked.

“Oh, Oi just ’appened to call upon me darling brother.”

“Be done with what you’ve come for,” Heath ordered. “I don’t believe you for a moment. Are you here for money?”

Jamie tsked, his dark brown hair shining in the firelight. Despite the lines upon his face that came with hard living, Jamie was a specimen to behold, a testament to their mother, who