"Did she say where she was going?" he asked.

"No, your Grace. She did seem rather in a hurry."

"A hurry?"

The butler hesitated before adding quietly, "I should not say this, your Grace, but I was rather concerned about the d.u.c.h.ess. I wondered if she might be ill. She looked very pale, and she did rush out so abruptly. She did not want the carriage called."

"She seemed ill?" Nicholas asked in rising alarm. Could she be with child after all? He had been careful, but nothing was certain. Or perhaps she had bad news from her family, or had heard some disturbing bit of gossip from Lady Arnold and her flock. She had not yet learned to shrug such things away, as he and his siblings did. As they had to.

He remembered how she had run to him yesterday, holding on to him so tightly. He should have pressed her then to tell him her worries. He hadn't wanted to frighten her, to press her before she was ready to confide in him. Before she really trusted him. Their marriage had a surprisingly promising beginning, but he had to take it carefully, day by day. He had to be careful with her, to curb his usual impatience.

Now he regretted that caution. Emily had run away somewhere.

"Did she have a message of some sort before she left?" he asked urgently. "Or give any indication at all where she was going?"

"She did have a caller. A Mr George Rayburn. Her Grace left very soon after he departed."

Rayburn. Why did that d.a.m.nable man always seem to be appearing in their lives? What was his strange effect on Emily?

Nicholas was done being patient. Emily was his wife, and he needed the truth from her. He would not allow Rayburn to help her. And he would not hurt her himself, if she was in love with Rayburn.

He took his hat back and dashed out the door to the crowded street. He had to find Emily, right now, and discover what was amiss with her. He wasn't sure where she would go in the wide city-to her parents' house, to track down Rayburn's lodgings-he would go any place to find her.

As he hailed a hackney, he remembered the day of their betrothal, when he followed her to that quiet brick town house. Whatever that place was, could she have gone there again? Even if she hadn't, surely they would know something about his mysterious wife. They could give him one more piece of the puzzle that was his Emily.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

"Yes, sir? Can I help you?"

Whatever Nicholas had expected from Emily's mysterious house, it wasn't this. A perfectly ordinary housemaid in a crisp white ap.r.o.n and cap opened the dark-painted door at the top of the immaculately swept front steps. Curtains were drawn closed over the windows, and the only things that set it apart from its neighbours was a small bra.s.s plaque by the door: Mrs G.o.ddard's School for Disadvantaged Females.

The maid's face was polite, but wary. She looked as if she would shut the door in his face at the least sign that he meant mischief.

"I am very sorry to disturb you," he said, holding out his card. "But I am searching for my wife, and I wondered if she might have called here today."

The maid gaped down at the card. "We haven't had any d.u.c.h.esses here today, your Grace, I'm sure."

Nicholas glanced again, carefully, along the row of narrow houses. He was quite certain this was the dwelling Emily went to that day. "Perhaps you know her as Lady Emily Carroll?"

"Miss Carroll? She's a d.u.c.h.ess?"

"She hasn't been for very long. We are newlyweds." And he had never felt that newness quite so acutely as at that moment. He felt as if Emily had tugged him down into some new, topsy-turvy world.

There was nothing a Manning liked better than an intriguing mystery to solve. And he had the feeling his whole future happiness rested on this one particular mystery.

"Won't you come in, your Grace?" the maid said, opening the door wider. "I'll send for Mrs G.o.ddard to see you. She hasn't been well, but I'm sure she would want to meet with you."

He was left in a small sitting room, spa.r.s.ely but comfortably furnished with simple dark-upholstered chairs, seascapes on the walls, a piano under the windows and improving books on the shelves. Occasionally from above came a burst of female laughter, a rush of light steps across the floor. Once he thought he heard the door open a crack, a soft giggle, but when he turned it was gone.

He wasn't alone for long. Soon a tall, respectably dressed and capped older lady swept into the room. A small bunch of keys dangled from the sash of her grey silk gown, and she a.s.sessed him with calm, careful eyes. She seemed pale and red-eyed, as if she was recovering from a cold, but she was impeccably dressed and coolly polite.

"So you are Emily's husband," she said. "We did not know she had made such a grand marriage, or at least she did not tell us herself. I saw the notice in the papers."

Nicholas gave her a bow. "I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, ma'am."

"I am Mrs G.o.ddard, of course. I own this school."

"And may I ask what your school has to do with Emily?"

For the first time a hint of doubt crept across Mrs G.o.ddard's handsome face. "She has not told you about us?"

"I fear my wife speaks little about herself," Nicholas said ruefully. "I want so much to make her happy, and I don't have the slightest idea how to do that! She won't think of herself. And now I know something is amiss with her, but I can't help her fix it if I don't know what it is."

Mrs G.o.ddard gave a little laugh. "Oh, your Grace. I am not surprised Emily won't speak much of herself to you. She has always wanted to make others happy first. I fear she is not here at the moment, though."

"How do you know her so well, Mrs G.o.ddard?"

"I was her governess. Please, your Grace, sit with me for a moment."

"I must find her..."

"And I think I can help you with that. But you must listen to me first."

Nicholas was aching to run out in search of Emily again, but he knew that would be futile. He would be more likely to learn of her whereabouts if he listened to Mrs G.o.ddard now. She ushered him to a chaise by the empty fireplace and settled herself across from him. She clutched a handkerchief in her palm.

"I will confess," she said, "I was worried when I saw Emily was to marry you."

"Worried? Because of my family's reputation?"

"No, because-well, because of her own nature. You see, your Grace, by the time I came to work for Emily's family I had been governess to many young ladies of high rank. I could see right away Emily was different. She was so quiet and shy, but so very eager to please, to be of use to everyone around her. She worked so hard at her lessons. I must confess I came to love her as I would my own daughter. I wanted to help her see her own worth."

"That is what I want, too, Mrs G.o.ddard," Nicholas said eagerly. "I have never known anyone as sweet and serious as my Emily."

"Your Emily?" Mrs G.o.ddard said with a smile. "Surely you have seen this eagerness she has to please, to always do the right thing?"

"Yes. She has often told me she wants to be the perfect d.u.c.h.ess. I try to tell her a d.u.c.h.ess is always perfect just as she is, that others will be eager to follow her lead and she need only be herself."

"I doubt she would believe you. I was worried that just this sort of thing would happen when I saw she had married a duke. That she would try to change herself rather than find who she really is. The fact that she could not tell you about her work here only confirms my fears."

"What is this place, exactly, Mrs G.o.ddard? Why would she not tell me she came here?"

Mrs G.o.ddard hesitated. "This is a school, and Emily teaches here whenever she has a chance, usually every Tuesday. But our pupils are not the usual young ladies. They once worked in brothels or walked the streets of Covent Garden. When they wish to make a change in their lives, we train them to be milliners or ladies' maids. Emily works hard to help them, and they care about her very much. It is worthy work."

"But it's not hard to see that someone could persuade her otherwise," Nicholas said tightly.

"Yes," said Mrs G.o.ddard. "They could have told her a perfect d.u.c.h.ess would never a.s.sociate with such people, even in a charitable way, and poor Emily would probably believe them."

"Blast it all! I don't care who she a.s.sociates with. I don't want her to be perfect, I just want her to be Emily," he said, furious with whoever had made Emily feel so unsure of herself. Furious with himself, and whatever it was he had done to make her believe she could not come to him.

"You do care about her," said Mrs G.o.ddard.

"I love her," Nicholas said, startled by the stark truth of those words that spilled out of him without thought. He loved her, his sweet, selfless, serious, beautiful wife. And he would kill whoever had hurt her.

"I see that you do." Mrs G.o.ddard rose to her feet, her keys rattling. "Emily was here earlier. She spoke with one of our pupils, Sally. They are friends. Perhaps she could tell us where Emily has gone."

"Sally?" Nicholas remembered the Sally Emily spoke of on their wedding night, the friend who advised her so disastrously on the marriage act. "Are they good friends?"

"They seem close. Emily has been teaching her French, in the hope that she can find a better position than most. They were together a few days ago. I am sure she can help us."

Mrs G.o.ddard summoned the maid who had answered the door and sent her to fetch Sally. When she arrived, she seemed most reluctant to say anything about Emily. But Mrs G.o.ddard's quiet urging, and Nicholas's pleas about how worried he was for his wife, softened her. Her pretty face turned uncertain and she twisted her hands in her ap.r.o.n.

"I'm not sure where she was going when she left here, your Grace, I swear it," she said, tears in her eyes. "I told her to tell you what had happened, to not pay off that bast-that man. I told her worms like him would never go away, but she was so worried you would be angry."

"What bast-man?" Nicholas said, a fury growing inside him.

Sally let out a ragged sob. "Mr Rayburn! He saw her with me on the street, and I knew he would pester her with it, just from the way he looked at her. He ain't- isn't a gentleman."

"Rayburn," Nicholas growled. "Of course. He blackmailed her about this place?"

Sally nodded. "He said he wanted money to go abroad. That's what she said. But I bet that's not all he wanted from her. He wanted to marry her once, your Grace, until you s.n.a.t.c.hed her away from him. And he doesn't like to lose, he'll want revenge."

Revenge. Nicholas would like some of that himself, taken right out of Rayburn's cowardly hide. "And she did not say where she was going from here?"

"I don't know for sure. But she did ask me if I knew a p.a.w.nbroker. I gave her the name of someone who wouldn't cheat her, but I did tell her she should go home instead. Miss Emily is sweet, but she's also the most stubborn lady I have ever seen."

"So she is. And where might this p.a.w.nbroker be?"

Only moments later, Nicholas was on his way to the establishment of a certain Mr Green, and there he found Emily's emerald pendant, his wedding gift to her which she always wore, and the pearl earrings Justine had given her as a wedding present. He redeemed them, and set out in search of Emily once again. Mr Green had said he was worried about the lady, who seemed to have been crying, and his apprentice had followed her to Hyde Park to make sure she was quite well and did not do anything like throw herself into the river.

And that was where Nicholas found his wife, sitting on a bench in the spot by the Serpentine where he had saved that child on that long-ago day. It was quiet there today, all the fashionable crowds dispersed. Only a few children played on the pathways with their nursemaids, a few couples walking along together as they talked quietly. It now seemed a place to hide, to think, to not be seen.

At least Emily seemed to think so. She stared silently at the water, her hands twisted in her lap, her face white and expressionless. She didn't notice anything around her, and the wondrous laughter he loved was nowhere to be found. He found himself terribly sad, and angry, too-angry that she had lied to him, had not trusted him after everything they had been through in their short marriage.

But he would not just turn and walk away, leave her to her worries. He couldn't go back to Manning House, and greet her as if he knew nothing, as if her secret was safe. He could easily dispatch Rayburn on his own without her knowing, and they could go on for ever living on parallel planes that never quite intersected. Two lives joined, but never meeting in truth. So many people did that, married for convenience or family or property, and they rubbed along contentedly enough-as long as they didn't have to see each other too often.

That was what his own parents had done-until it all exploded in their faces. But most people with such marriages did not fall apart as the duke and d.u.c.h.ess did. Most people kept up their facade and got on with it.

At first, he thought that was all he could hope for with Emily Carroll. A proper society marriage, maybe a partnership of sorts. The love matches his siblings had made could not be for him. That had all changed as he came to see Emily, the real Emily, the hidden heart of her. The shyness, the fear, melted away and her laughter glowed-only for him. It changed his whole world.

She was a pa.s.sionate woman with a good, kind heart. Seeing the school where she worked, meeting the people there who loved her, whose lives she had touched and changed, showed him that even clearer. The fact that some brute would dare to hurt her, to use her tender heart against her-it made him burn with a raw fury he had never known before. He was angry that she felt like she had to lie to him.

He forced that anger down, erased it from his expression and relaxed his curled, hard fists before he said gently, "So here you are, Em."

A startled tremor went through her, and he thought she might not respond, would not turn and look at him. But then she slowly stood up and spun around to face him.

"How did you find me?" she said softly. Her whole body seemed tense, as if she was poised to flee like one of Stephen's more skittish horses.

Nicholas remembered how his brothers treated such creatures, with slow movements and a quiet, rea.s.suring tone. He didn't want her to run from him, not now. It felt as if this moment was so important for them, as if their whole future together depended on their connecting now.

He took one slow step towards her, then another. "It was a lucky guess. And also you were not in the other places I looked."

"Where did you look?"

"Well, Manning House, of course. Your parents' house. And then I went to Mrs G.o.ddard's school." He held out her jewellery boxes. "I wanted to return these to you."

She stared at the boxes, her face turning even whiter under the brim of her bonnet. "You know, then."

"About your teaching work, and that piece of dirt, Rayburn? Yes, I know. I wish you had told me yourself." He forced himself to speak quietly, gently, to not frighten her with his own anger and confusion. He wanted to be a good husband to her, but how could he if he did not even really know her? If she didn't know him well enough to see that she could trust him?

Emily sank down on the bench. "I didn't want you to worry. I just wanted to take care of it myself, to-to make it all go away."

"Emily, why?" he demanded. He sat down beside her, very close, but not quite touching. She felt so tense he feared if he touched her she would snap. "I am your husband. Why would you think you could not tell me, come to me for help? I thought maybe you were in love with Rayburn, that our marriage separated you from the man you truly wanted."

Emily gave a bitter laugh. "Quite the opposite. I never wanted to marry him, even when it seemed he was my only possible suitor. But I never imagined he felt as he did, that he would do what he did. And as for why I did not tell you, Nicholas-I had promised you and your family I would always do my best, that I would work hard to be your perfect d.u.c.h.ess. Being blackmailed for a.s.sociating with former courtesans didn't seem the way to keep that promise."

"Oh, Emily." You precious, silly girl, he thought. She thought she was protecting him. That anger faded away, leaving only a bitter sadness. "You know my family. We have come through far worse sc.r.a.pes than this intact."

"But I did not want to be one more 'sc.r.a.pe' for you! You have enough to worry about, without a scandalous new wife. I want to help you, not be a burden, even after the way we had to marry. I never want to be a burden."

"Oh, Em." Nicholas set down the boxes and gently took her hand in his. "How could you ever think you are a burden? You are the furthest thing from that to me."

"You mean-you are not angry?" she said doubtfully, staring down at their joined hands.

"Oh, no, I am certainly angry. But not with you."

"Oh." She frowned, turning to look out at the river as if she was trying to fathom something totally new and unexpected.

He knew the feeling very well. He had been trying to do the same ever since they married and he found this unexpected gift in his life.

"You are not angry about my work, about the way I kept it secret even from my parents?" she said. "Or that I tried to sell the jewellery you and your sister gave me?"

"It was wrong of Rayburn to take advantage of your kindness, Em," he said. "I am only angry you did not think you could tell me about it. I am your husband. We're together in this now, in all things." And to his surprise he realised just how true that was. They had begun with much against them, and they were working hard to build a life together. But they had to learn to trust from now on.

She nodded, but he could tell from the shadows in her eyes that something was still bothering her. If he had learned one thing about his wife, it was that she could not be pushed. She was as stubborn as the rest of his family.

"You must continue to work anywhere you like, and a.s.sociate with anyone you like," he said firmly. "You are the d.u.c.h.ess of Manning. These cursed t.i.tles are mostly a lot of hard work and a complete nuisance, but at least it gives us that freedom. Gossip can't hurt us, not you and me, my dear. Do you see?"

She looked him right in the eye and smiled. "I am beginning to think I do. And I'm glad you don't want me to give up Mrs G.o.ddard's. She was my governess, you see, and one of my dearest friends. She's been doing such good work with her school, and made such a difference in those women's lives. I haven't been able to help her very much, but I do what I can, to repay her for what she gave me."

"Now you can help her as much as you like. Maybe she'd like a bigger school, in the country somewhere? More teachers?"