Blood Secret by Sharon Page

lady. At midnight, he took his leave and visited several gaming halls.”
    She arched a brow. “Several? Could he not lose enough money at one?”
    She didn’t expect an answer but to her surprise he gave her one. “It appears he was not engaged in deep play but in the pursuit of a duke,” he said.
    “A duke? And this was on the night he disappeared?” Normally her brother stayed out all night, but returned in mid-morning, where he would collapse in a drunken stupor on his bed. But on that particular day, he had not appeared. He had gone out the night before and he had not come back. “Which duke?” Though, really, what other duke would it be?
    “The Duke of Greystone,” Armstrong confirmed. “They encountered each other in a tavern near the London Docks. According to several witnesses, they left together.”
    “They did?” And the wretched duke had said nothing about it. Did he know what had happened to Jack?
    “I take it, my lady, you wish to know what they spoke about? They were overheard.”
    “Yes, of course I do!”
    “They spoke of the duke’s nephew. The duke accused the earl’s father of kidnapping his young nephew.”

5
    The Pleasure Room
    T he Duke of Greystone possessed an enormous house on Upper Brook Street—one crafted of severe gray stone and rows of sparkling windows. A footman in sapphire-blue and silver livery escorted her past the drawing room in which she had first encountered the duke.
    Inside Lucy was ready to explode. And not with desire. Had Greystone done something with her brother? Had his words frightened Jack so much they had forced him to run? Had the duke hurt her brother over this bizarre accusation?
    How could her father have kidnapped the duke’s nephew? It was impossible. Father never would have done such a thing. The accusation was utterly insane.
    Was Greystone insane? He had not seemed so when she had ... oh God, when she’d had intimate relations with him. He had been astonishingly kind to her. He had comforted her about Allan Ferrars, soothing her, telling her she was brave. Had he done all those things while knowing what had happened to her brother?
    And she, the utter fool, had been seduced by his words and by his wonderful touches and the thrusts that had made her whole body quiver with pleasure.
    But then a memory struck her, one that made her halt on the stairs. She clutched the banister to keep her balance. Father had rescued children who were shape-shifting dragons. He had taken in many orphans or abandoned children, and had supported them, and helped them understand what they were. Just before he had died, Father had been distraught. There had been a child he had taken in ... one he said he had tried to protect ... but that he had failed to do so.
    How could that have been the duke’s nephew? Father only took in children who had no family or who had been cast off and rejected by their relatives.
    “Where is the duke?” she demanded of the servant, when they reached the stairs that swept up to the next story of the house. “Where are you taking me?”
    The footman bowed. “His Grace wished to meet you in the Pleasure Room.”
    “The what room?” She stared. The servant, an elderly man, with bushy gray eyebrows and crinkled blue eyes beneath his powdered wig, held his face without expression. He did not even blush.
    “It is a special room used by His Grace,” the man replied. He began to mount the stairs.
    “Indeed.” Lifting her hems, she followed, rolling her eyes. Only the Duke of Greystone, scoundrel and libertine that he was, could have a room of such a name. A normal gentleman would have a library, a study, and a bedchamber. He would not openly call a room the “Pleasure” Room.
    She had been a fool to come here and offer herself to him. The duke must have been laughing at her all the while.
    The footman stopped at the end of the hall, at double white paneled doors. “Do not announce me,” she said. She intended to take His Grace by