Free The Wicked Duke by Madeline Hunter

Gloucestershire to visit his brother, the Duke of Aylesbury. It is unknown whether the visit is a matter of business or is strictly familial, but locals have noted that Lord Ywain was not accompanied by his new wife, whose father, Hadrian Belvoir, had Newgate Prison as his domicile in the autumn, an incarceration that has now been described as an error. It is assumed that his wife remained in London to continue her studies with her tutors.
    Elijah Tewkberry, Gloucestershire
    â€œThere is no reason for both of you to be bored too.” Lance ended his explanation of why his brothers should leave while they handed their horses to the groom.
    That Ives dallied at Merrywood was bad enough. That Gareth had arrived yesterday did not bode well. It meant Ives had written and bidden him to come, in the hopes that Gareth could lure out of Lance that which Ives could not learn by badgering.
    Ives wanted to know who “she” was. His lawyer’s mind had concocted untold disasters waiting if Lance pursued a woman here in the county. Lance’s refusal to go up to London with him two days ago only solidified Ives’s view that something was afoot that required investigation.
    â€œJust tell me where you went the other day, and I will leave,” Ives said. “You took the carriage.”
    He referred to Lance’s absence on the afternoon he called on Miss Radley.
    â€œI told you I had the carriage take me to the lake so I could do some rowing. A man cannot live for weeks on end without exercise.” They strolled toward the house. “If you persist in prying, I may invite you to box for a few rounds, in order to release my irritation with your questions while I exercise more.”
    â€œHave you developed a fondness for the lake of late?” Gareth asked. He always smiled when he pried, and he now beamed his most amiable expression in Lance’s direction. Gareth’s notable charm had ingratiated him with many ladies of the ton prior to his marriage, and it served him well with men too. It had probably, Lance admitted,created the bond he and Ives felt for Gareth even if he was a half brother, and a bastard.
    â€œNot particularly. Why do you ask?”
    â€œWe visited today. We went out of our way to do so.”
    â€œWe were riding. One rides here and there. We had no destination, so we could not go out of our way.”
    Lance would not mind telling them about that ride with Miss Radley. If Ives had not turned into, well, Ives, he might have. Today’s visit to the lake
had
been deliberate, so he could take a good look at the bank of that lake near where Nora Radley had almost drowned.
    He had seen no evidence that she might have fallen in. No marks in the mud. No disturbance of the weeds or brush. The bank was not especially treacherous there. In fact it sloped to the water, making it easy to just walk in.
    Is that what she had done? Marianne’s dismay suggested as much. It disturbed him that he might have come so close to seeing one so young take her own life.
    He had mulled over the evidence frequently since he left Sir Horace that day. The outing’s bad ending had done much to remove from his mind the slow seduction of Miss Radley’s hand, and her apparent arousal from it.
    They entered the house by the library’s garden doors. No sooner had they done so than a servant stepped into the library and handed Lance a card.
    Gareth craned his neck to read it. “Sir Horace. That is interesting. Perhaps he has come to inform you that the coroner will finally be settling matters regarding Percy’s death.”
    Somehow Lance doubted it. An oblique reference to doing that, made by Sir Horace in the autumn, had yielded nothing yet. Little had changed since then. More likely Sir Horace was using the excuse of Lance saving his daughter to insinuate himself further into a friendship.
    â€œI should see him alone.”
    â€œCertainly,” Ives said. He and Gareth