The Scandalous Love of a Duke. Jane Lark

what Wareham was up to.

      The office door was shut. John gripped the handle and turned it without knocking. It was locked.

      Ill temper flared. John was too tired and impatient. He rapped on the door harshly, angry at being excluded from a room in his own property.

      A chair scraped within, and a moment later the lock turned. Then the door opened.

      Wareham’s expression was insolent – antagonising. Like the other day, there was no deference.

      John had an urge to grip the man by the throat and shove him up against a wall. “Must I remind you of your place again…”

      Wareham turned his back and crossed the room, returning to his desk. “You need not remind me. I am well aware of it.”

      John wished to hold him with one fist and punch him with the other. He’d not used John’s title, again.

      Wareham looked at John and barely bent his head, as though that would suffice. “Your Grace, pray, to what do I owe this honour?” Then he sat.

      It was insupportable for him to do so. John’s servants should always be standing in his presence. Wareham was deliberately insulting. His entire manner expressed rebellion, and his expression said he wished to make John angry. He had. Was John a damned bull to be pulled by a nose ring?

      “I have come for the key to the tower.” John held out his hand. Let the man bring it to him.

      “And why would you want that, Your Grace?”

      “That is none of your business. The key, Wareham.”

      The man rose again and moved to fetch it from a tall narrow cupboard.

      John waited, but when Wareham held the large iron key out and came towards John, when John reached for it, Wareham pulled it back.

      John’s façade of calm evaporated. “Give me the key and stop these games!” His loss of control made him even angrier.

      “Games, Your Grace?” Wareham taunted with a gleam in eyes. “I am a bit old for games. It is not a game I am playing.”

      “The key, Wareham.” John’s voice was bitterly hard, his patience having fled. Blast the missing money, he wasn’t short of that. Let Wareham have it. He would rather be rid of this problem and rid of Wareham.

      Wareham lifted the key and John snatched it from his hand.

      “Did you truly think I would tolerate these insults?” John was calmer now, back under control. His voice was no longer angry. This would be an end to it. “You are dismissed. You will leave immediately. I will have you escorted.”

      For a moment, Wareham just stared at John. There was not a single flicker of emotion which showed in his eyes or on his face. He was far better at holding his emotion in than John.

      “Now,” John pressed.

      “Do you think I wish to serve you?”

      “You need not. Go.”

      “While you have idled abroad, I have built up these estates.” Wareham sounded as though he thought he had a right over John.

      John glanced back towards the hall and yelled. “Finch!” He had seen the butler a moment ago.

      “Your Grace?” He was there in an instant.

      “Mr Wareham is leaving. Immediately. I wish him escorted from the grounds. You may pack his things and send them on, but he is to take nothing which belongs to my estates. Have some of the grooms escort him.”

      John looked at Wareham. “You may send Finch your address when you have found somewhere to stay.” Then John turned away and left the room.

      The key cut into his palm as his fist clenched, while the maids and footmen bowed and curtsied as he walked along the corridor. John would be known as a tyrant now, for dismissing his steward simply because it took too long to find a key. John felt his prison cell slam shut. He was trapped in this life, he had not chosen it. Darkness and isolation engulfed him as he stepped into the courtyard and felt sunshine on his skin.

       I want Katherine.

      At least he could have her, and she was his choice.

      ~

      John was breathless with exhilaration when he reached the tower, having ridden hard to get there.

      It was a square, red-bricked building, which stood in a clearing, on the brow of a shallow hill, and it reached fifty feet upwards, stretching towards the sky like the tower of Babel.

      He’d come here often as a child, though he was sworn never to play in it. He’d stolen the key to come in secret and be alone. He would climb up to the square room at the very top and look down onto the world like God, imagining what he would do if he could rule and order it as he wished: he’d turn back time and know his mother from his birth, he’d long to change fate and stop his father dying. No one had known he’d come here, not even Phillip; he’d never shared this space.