Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Caldwell, Christi Page 0,12

to that truth.

As if she’d caught Dare’s notice of her name, Lady Kinsley jutted her chin out, anger burning from her eyes.

“Now,” the duchess said when Lady Kinsley, her cheeks flushed red, reclaimed the seat beside her. “No one takes advantage of your grandfather, dear. No one.”

The younger lady jabbed a finger in Dare’s direction. “But one such as him is not—”

“Enough,” the duke commanded. “Now, if I may resume.” His wasn’t a question. “The cousin to claim Perrin’s”—he grimaced—“your and your father’s title was a distant, distant cousin. The young man squandered all the funds your brother had managed to restore to the estates—”

“Whoring,” Lady Kinsley spat.

The duchess gasped. “Kinsley.”

“It is true,” the girl said defensively, with more of a world-weariness than Dare would have expected of a lady of her situation. “All men are the same.”

“Yes, well, it is true, but we needn’t speak of it,” His Grace said, ending the debate between his wife and granddaughter. “My title isn’t yours. Nor will my entailed properties pass to you. However, what I do have . . .”

Dare’s ears pricked up. “I’m listening.”

Kinsley Greyson scoffed. “Of course you are.”

Dare ignored the young woman’s mutterings.

“You’ve not had an easy life, Darius. I don’t know what your struggles have been, but you deserve more than the bankrupt estate that some spendthrift scoundrel left you. Of course, your father would have been wiser to have his fortunes secured in a way that they were better protected.”

Kinsley stiffened but kept quiet through the old duke’s blunt insult of her late father.

Their late father?

“Do not blame Papa. He couldn’t have imagined Perrin would die.”

“A nobleman is always prepared to look after generations of descendants, dear, and had your father done so, we wouldn’t be where we are now,” the duke said in gentle but insistent tones meant to end any further debate.

Lady Kinsley, however, proved her stubbornness once more. “That isn’t true. You’ve not even given proper time to see the outcome of the investments Perrin made. These matters . . . They take time.”

“The debt is enormous, and the creditors have begun calling,” the duke said flatly in frosty tones. “Whatever it is or might have been or wasn’t matters not.” He motioned about the room. “Here we are.”

The duke thumped his cane. “Leave us, Kinsley.”

Fire lit the woman’s eyes, and her tense mouth moved as if she fought the challenge there, but then, with a sharp glare in Dare’s direction, she sailed from the room.

After she’d gone, the duke turned to his wife. “If I may speak to the boy alone, dearest?”

And without any of the same obstinance of the granddaughter who’d preceded her, Her Grace filed out.

When Dare, the duke, and his servant were alone, the greying gentleman focused his gaze on Dare.

Dare tensed. Now that the women were gone, the duke didn’t have to bother with sensibilities or pretend niceness. Dare knew exactly how the nobility operated.

Or rather, he thought he did. The duke spoke and threw that all-knowing assumption into question.

“I want you to know, Darius,” the duke murmured, “I never believed you were dead.”

“Why, thank you for that faith,” he said dryly. Of course, it begged the question why, if the old duke had been so very confident, he’d certainly not gone out of his way to find him. Dare was unable to tamp down that bitter resentment. Except . . . resentment would have to mean he cared. Which he didn’t.

“Each year,” His Grace went on, “I set aside funds for when you returned, Darius.”

And yet the duke had been more wrong than he’d known. The grandson he recalled, the one he’d held out hope of again seeing . . . Darius Greyson was as dead as if he were gone and buried. And accepting that was easier than thinking that there might have been people who’d actually wished for his return.

In the end, it was far simpler to ask about the money awaiting him than to think about the duke longing for the return of his missing grandson. “How much?”

“Twenty thousand pounds.”

And Dare, who’d long been a master of concealment, dissolved into a fit, choking and strangling on nothing more than his own swallow.

Twenty thousand . . .

Dare couldn’t even complete the remainder of that amount in his mind.

Leaning over, the duke banged him between the shoulder blades.

It was a fortune.

The kind of funds that would ensure countless men and women and children saved and comfortably set up in situations different from the miserable ones in