Forever a Lord Read online

  “How much?”

  “A thousand.”

  “A thousand?”

  “Yes. Dollars. Not pennies. Consider it a bargain. You look like you can afford more.”

  “So you actually know something?”

  “Yes.”

  Lord Yardley lowered his shaven chin against his silk cravat. “You wouldn’t be the first claiming to know something. The question is, do you?”

  Coleman wasn’t about to trust either of these men to shite. “I need a thousand before I say another word.”

  Lord Yardley narrowed his gaze. “Keep at this and I will personally ensure you forget your own God-given name. The information comes first. Money last.”

  The Duke of Wentworth approached. “Yardley. Enough. Calm down.”

  Swinging away, Yardley threw up both hands. “These people are leeches. Every last one of them. All they want is money. What happened to humanity wanting to help others for the sake of goodwill? I’m going for a walk down Broadway. It’s the only thing that ever calms me down.”

  The duke pointed. “No. No walks. Not now. You will stay and finish whatever this is.” Brown eyes that were surprisingly intelligent, albeit solemn, observed Coleman for a moment. “We have been in New York, sir, for months making endless inquiries. We are beyond exhausted and are hinging a breath of hope on the possibility that you may know something. Do you?”

  Coleman shifted away from the duke, trying to distance himself from the eerie reality that the past was tapping on his shoulder. “It depends on what you want with the information.”

  Those features tightened. “If Atwood still lives, which we hope he does, inform him that his sister’s husband and her son are here to collect him. If, however, he is dead, we also wish to know of it. All we want is information that will lead us to resolve this matter and give it peace.”

  Coleman stared, his plan to claim the money crumbling with every word. This man was married to his sister? It wasn’t possible. Trying to keep his voice steady, he confided, “Allow me to speak to his sister first. I will decide then.”

  The duke swiped his face. “I cannot produce her.”

  “Why not?” he demanded, unable to remain calm.

  “She died.” That voice, though well controlled, bespoke a deeply rooted anguish.

  Coleman staggered, the marble floor beneath his boots momentarily swaying. For the first time in a very, very long time, tears connected to who he had once been pricked his eyes. Auggie was barely six years older than him. She couldn’t be dead. This had to be a trap. “I don’t believe you. Auggie isn’t dead. You’re lying.”

  The duke’s gaze snapped to his. “How did you know her name?”

  Lord Yardley watched Coleman. “Glass-blue eyes and black hair. And his accent. ’Tis anything but American.” He stepped closer, lips parting. “Dearest God. It’s him. It’s Atwood. It has to be.”

  Fuck. He’d stupidly outed himself. Coleman swung away and stalked toward the entrance of the hotel. He wasn’t staying for this. He didn’t even want to know what had happened to Auggie. He didn’t.

  Booted feet drummed faster down the lobby, after him.

  “Nathaniel?” the duke called out. “Nathaniel, stay. For God’s sake, stay! Atwood? Atwood!”

  Sucking in a breath, Coleman darted toward the entrance leading out to the street. Grabbing the oversize doors, he tried to shove them open, but his scab-ridden hands were too disconnected from his body to cooperate.

  “Atwood!” The duke grabbed his shoulders and yanked him away from the doors.

  Though his fists instinctively popped up to swing, Coleman knew pulverizing his own sister’s husband was not what he owed her. “Atwood doesn’t exist anymore,” he rasped.

  The duke slowly turned him. “I have stared at the painted miniature of you as a child so many times. No one has eyes quite like yours. I don’t know why I didn’t see it. The bruises on your face were very distracting.”

  Coleman couldn’t breathe.

  The duke leaned in. “Your sister devoted everything to the hope of finding you. And this is how you repay her? By running from her family when they come to you? Don’t you care to know what happened to her? Or how she died?”

  A warm tear trickled its way down the length of Coleman’s cheek. He viciously swiped at it, welcoming the pinching from grazing the bruise on his face.

  The duke held his gaze. “She died in childbirth. Many years ago. It would have been a girl. Our third. Neither survived. I just lost our eldest son, as well. Typhus took him. Yardley here is all I have left of her.”

  Coleman stumbled outside that grasp and leaned back against the door, feeling weak. He had been running and running from the past to the point of delusion, and now, it would seem, he had become that delusion. At least he had protected Auggie’s good name to the end.

  Dearest God. None of this seemed real. “And what of my mother? Is she dead, too?”

  The duke shook his head. “No. She is very much alive.”

  He drew in a ragged breath. “I’m glad to hear it.” He nodded. “She was good to me.” He swallowed, trying to keep his voice steady. “And my father? The earl?”

  “Still alive.”

  Coleman set his jaw and tapped a rigid fist against his thigh. “Of course he is.” He pushed away from the door, knowing his father’s face had replaced so many faces in the ring since he took up boxing at twenty. His pent-up hatred for the man was but one of many reasons why he’d never sought his family out. Because he would have smeared his father’s blood across every last wall in London. “Is he here in New York?”

  Yardley approached. “No. He doesn’t know we have been looking for you.”

  Coleman raked long strands of hair from his face with a trembling hand. “And why doesn’t he know?”

  The duke sighed. “Augustine always believed he was responsible for your disappearance. And I have seen more than enough to believe her. I therefore opted to never include him in whatever investigations we conducted. Including this one. We feared he would impede.”

  These men clearly knew his father.

  Yardley leaned in. “Come upstairs and have a brandy. Talk to us in the privacy we all deserve. Please.”

  Coleman half nodded and drifted across the lobby alongside them, submitting to the request. He followed them up, up red-carpeted stairs until he was eventually ushered into a sweeping lavish room graced with windows facing out toward Bowling Green Park.

  It was like he was ten again and looking out over New York City for the first time. It was eerie. He awkwardly sat in the leather chair he was guided into.

  A glass filled with brandy was placed into his hand. He could barely keep it steady. The amber liquid within the crystal swayed. The last time he had touched crystal of similar quality was when he had smashed a decanter against that cellar wall he was being kept in and screamed until he could feel neither his body nor soul. He felt like a freak then. And he felt like a freak now. For here he was sitting with his long hair and butchered face holding an expensive tonic meant to be sipped by lace-wearing fops. He’d never felt like he truly belonged anywhere. He was neither fop nor street boy. His boxing was the only world that made sense. Fight or fall.

  Yardley slowly sat in a chair across from him. “My mother had a dream you were still alive. It induced her to create a map of your whereabouts which I had kept since her death. That is why we are here. Because of her. Her soul was clearly connected to you. She was never able to let you go.”

  Coleman drew in a ragged breath. He had dreamed of Auggie on occasion, too. She had once appeared in a boxing match beside him, startling him into missing a swing. She never said a word in his dreams. Only smiled. And now, he knew why. She’d been smiling from beyond.

  The duke brought his chair closer and sat. Leaning forward, he whispered, “What happened to you the night you disappeared? Can you speak of it at all?”

  Coleman stared into his glass of brandy. The boy he once knew insisted he say som
ething. In the name of his sister. “I spent five years confined to a cellar after my father had crossed a man he shouldn’t have.”

  Yardley dropped his hand to his trouser-clad knee. “Five years? By God, what was done to you?”

  Coleman continued to stare down at his brandy.

  The duke leaned in closer. “Were you beaten?”

  Bringing the brandy to his lips, Coleman swallowed the burning liquid. “I wish I had been. I take physical pain incredibly well.”

  Both men fell silent.

  Coleman sensed they wanted him to say more. But in his opinion, he’d already said enough.

  The duke searched his face. “How did you escape?”

  Coleman took another quick swig. “I didn’t. One day, my captor opened the cellar door, put a wad of money into my hand and told me to start life anew. So I did. And you’re looking at it.”

  Yardley observed him for a moment. “After holding you hostage for five years the man just let you go? Why?”

  Coleman shrugged. “It might seem difficult to believe, but we became incredibly good friends. He knew he had kept me long enough and wasn’t interested in taking me to Venice. He was getting married and people in his circle would have started asking questions. They were already asking questions.”

  “You befriended this man? After he— Did you not go to the marshals after you were released?” the duke demanded. “To press charges?”

  Coleman shook his head, his breath almost jagged. “I didn’t want what I knew of my father touching my sister or my mother. It would have destroyed their lives if I had resurfaced.”

  The duke held his gaze. “How many were involved in your disappearance? Who were they? And when were you smuggled out of New York?”

  “There was only one man involved in my disappearance. A Venetian. And I never left New York.”

  “You never…? All this time, you’ve been…?” The duke closed his eyes and grabbed his head with both hands. “Jesus Christ.” He rocked against his hands for a long moment.

  Coleman set aside the brandy on the small table beside him and rose in a half daze. “I appreciate that you shouldered my sister’s plight, even after her death. I know if she had been the one missing, I would have fought for her to the end, as well. My only regret is that I didn’t get to see her one last time. I would have liked that. She and I didn’t part on the best of terms and I—” He swallowed hard, trying not to give in to emotion. With his sister gone, what more was there to return to? Nothing. Their mother had always lived for their father. Who was he to break her delusions of a man she loved? “I should go.”

  Yardley rose. “Go? No. You can’t. We are here to take you home with us. To London. Where you belong.”

  Coleman walked backward toward the door and swept a more than obvious hand to his beaten face. “Do I look like I belong in a ballroom, gentlemen? Too many years have passed for that.”

  The duke rose. “Atwood. You can’t leave when we’ve just now found you. We have yet to know you and genuinely wish to assist you in making the transition back into our circle. It will take time, mind you, but—”

  “No.” Coleman shook his head. “I abide by my boxing name, not my titled name, and want no other life than the one I have now. People depend on me. I have a purpose other than living with regret.”

  The duke swung away, placing a hand to the back of his neck. “Yardley, speak to him. Because I am not thinking clearly. And neither is he.”

  Yardley quickly strode toward Coleman and leaned in, his rugged features tightening. “To take on any other name than the one you were born unto, knowing everything you and my mother have suffered, would be an insult to her and you. By God. You have allowed a lifetime to pass. If you cannot face this now, when will you ever?”

  The boy didn’t understand. This wasn’t about being unable to face the past. He’d faced it. He’d lived it. This was about facing the anger he had yet to unleash on the only person he’d ever wanted dead: his father. Not his captor. His father.

  Coleman widened his stance. “If I return to London, I’ll do more than face my father. I’ll kill him.”

  Yardley pointed. “No you won’t.”

  “You don’t know me,” Coleman said between clamped teeth. “I’ve beaten people into bloodied pools of unconsciousness for far less.”

  “Killing him isn’t going to change what happened.”

  “Neither will letting him live.”

  His nephew touched his arm. “Setting aside all that has come to pass, surely you understand that you owe your mother a breath of peace. A peace my own mother never got in her lifetime.”

  Coleman released a breath. Yes, he did owe his mother peace. But if the poor woman were to ever know the truth—Christ. What a mess. It was obvious he couldn’t walk away and pretend he didn’t want to go back. “I need time.”

  Yardley lowered his shaven chin. “You’ve been gone for almost thirty years. How much more time do you need?”

  Coleman pointed a finger at that mouth that dared mock him. “What you don’t understand, nephew, is that I have a life separate from the past. I’ve got people depending on me. Thirty-nine, to be exact. They were there for me when no one else was and I’m not about to pull their teeth out of their skulls by up and leaving. I can’t. I need time to make the transition.”

  Yardley hesitated. “How much time do you need?” he asked more gently.

  Coleman shrugged. “I don’t know. A few months. I share in a lot of responsibilities. Until I can shuffle off those responsibilities to people I can trust, I suggest you both return to London and let it rest.”

  Yardley’s eyes widened. “We’re not about to leave without you.”

  “You have no choice,” Coleman bit out. “Because when I walk out of here, you cease to exist until I find my way back to London. Why? Because I can’t have anyone in New York, or the United States for that matter, knowing I’m a fucking viscount. I’ll lose my credibility on the street and with the ward in half a blink and won’t be of use to anyone. It’s bad enough walking around this city with a British accent. It doesn’t earn you spit. Americans despise us Brits, and I can’t readily blame them the way our militia swept into their city and burned down Washington barely sixteen years ago. I was here when it happened and all of New York thought they were next. They were lynching Brits on the streets like they were rabbits.”

  The duke swiveled toward them. “I respect that you need to protect your current way of life and that you also need time, but you cannot leave us to worry. At the very least, let my valet tend to your face, whilst we also trim off that hair so we can take you to a good tailor and invest in some new clothes and boots for you.”

  Murder and hellfire. Did he look that pathetic? “Don’t talk to me about my face, clothes and shite that doesn’t really matter. I have clothes. I have boots. And I like my hair, thank you. I know how to take care of myself, gentlemen. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

  The duke gestured toward Coleman’s bruised face. “You call this taking care of yourself?”

  Coleman sighed. He forgot what it was like having a family. “I’m a pugilist. It’s how I earn a living. And it may not look like it, but I’m good at what I do. Hell, politicians and pub keepers alike have been trying to buy me out for bigger mills since I was twenty. And unlike most of these bare-knuckle hoydens, I get better with age because I know how to train. I’m now known in the sixth ward for knocking men out in ten rounds or less.”

  Yardley’s dark brows rose. “Ten rounds or less?” He let out a low whistle. “I would hate to get into a fight with you.” He shifted closer. “If boxing is truly your snuff, Uncle, London is the place to be. ’Tis incredibly popular with the masses. Especially the aristocracy. Many of the men I went to Oxford with were always betting on the fights. I never cared for the sport myself, per se, but you, as a pugilist, would feel like a horse at the derby.”

  “Yardley.” The duke glared. “You are digressing.”

  “I
am not.” Yardley glared back. “I am trying to get this man to London. What are you doing in your attempt? Grouching? Hardly helpful.”

  It was like listening to two butchers arguing over who had the better cut.

  “If he does come to London,” the duke continued with a huff, “it will be to take on his duty as lord. Not become the next champion of England by smashing in the faces of others. Whoever heard of such a thing? The aristocracy would faint.” The duke muttered something else, strode over to a sideboard and grabbed up a leather pocketbook. “How much money do you need, Atwood, until we see you again? Did you still want that thousand?”

  Coleman would have gladly taken a thousand but it felt wrong exploiting his sister’s family—his family—that way. “Twenty dollars will do.” That would at least buy enough informants to help Matthew hunt down those girls.

  “Twenty? Don’t be absurd. The cheapest ticket to cross the ocean to get to us will cost you almost ten.”

  “You asked me how much I wanted and I’m telling you. Twenty. There is no need to insult what I consider to be a lot of money.”

  The duke paused, pulled out a banknote and tossed the pocketbook onto the sideboard, his silvery hair glinting in the candlelight. Striding over, the duke also retrieved a small silver case from his coat pocket. Pulling out a calling card, he held it out, along with the crisp banknote. “You will find us at this address in London.”

  “Thank you.” Coleman tugged both loose. Shoving the banknote and card into his pocket, he held out a hand, knowing he ought to be civil. “I appreciate knowing I have someone other than my boys to depend on. I haven’t been able to say that in years.”

  His brother-in-law shook his hand and eyed him. “I have something else for you. Before you go.” The duke strode toward the four-poster bed on the other side of the room.

  Slipping a hand beneath the pillow and linen, the duke withdrew a leather-bound book which had been fastened closed by a red velvet sash. Fingering it for a long moment, the duke drew in a breath, turned and strode back. “It was Augustine’s diary. Half of it pertains to you. She ceased writing in it when we married. She tried to move on. Despite her trying, she never could. She never did.” The duke blinked back his emotion and held out the diary.