Mary, Madeline, and Margaret were each only one year apart in age. The late Duke of Wakefield had been desperate for another heir, and his disappointment and disgust had deepened with every girl born until by the time Margaret arrived he wanted absolutely nothing to do with his daughters. The best thing that could have happened to them, really, although Byron knew they didn’t see it that way if only because he had always taken great pains to conceal the beatings he’d suffered.
He’d done it to protect them. To shield them from the monster who called himself their father. And fifteen years later he was still protecting them, albeit in a different way.
“For the last time,” he said through gritted teeth, “none of you are attending the masquerade ball, and that is final. I don’t care if Lord Ascot is going to be there. It’s not appropriate, and that’s the end of it!”
Mary, the eldest of the three and self-appointed leader, narrowed her eyes – the same cerulean shade as his own – and jabbed a finger at his chest. “But you promised we could go!”
Byron snorted. “I did no such thing.”
“Well you implied it,” Madeline piped in. Small and delicately featured with blonde hair she’d cropped at her shoulders to keep up with the latest fashion straight from Paris, she was sweet as a lamb and tenacious as a bloody bulldog. “Don’t you remember? Two nights ago, at dinner?”
Byron lifted his gaze heavenward and prayed for patience. “What I remember is you three discussing our ball which you are forcing me to host, I suspect, because you secretly hate me and want to send me to an early grave.”
“Yes,” Mary nodded with a fluttering wave of her hand, “but after all that Margaret brought up the Countess of Edleton’s Masquerade and we all agreed it would be an excellent opportunity to practice our dancing, and you said we did need to practice. Didn’t he, Maddy?”
“He did,” Madeline agreed.
Byron dropped his chin and leveled his gaze at Margaret who had wisely refrained from leaping into the fray. A miniature of their late mother whom had passed three years prior to a wasting sickness brought on by a myriad of lifelong illnesses, she was the most level-headed of all his siblings. “Well?” he said sharply. “What do you have to say about it?”
Tucking a honey blonde curl behind her ear, she bit her lip and said, “While I don’t believe it was your intention to allow us to attend the Masquerade, you did imply our dancing would benefit from additional rehearsals. ‘Like three blind ducks flapping around on a sheet of ice’, I believe was your remark.”
The corners of his mouth tightened. “Then I’ll hire a tutor. One for each of you.”
“We already have tutors,” Mary exclaimed. “We want to go to the–”
“Say masquerade one more time,” he growled, “and I’ll cancel the ball.”
All three sisters gave a collective gasp.
“You wouldn’t,” Mary said.
“Please don’t,” Madeline begged.
“We’re so looking forward to it,” Margaret implored.
Faced with three sets of wide eyes brimming with tears – tears he was willing to bet every last shilling of his vast, immeasurable fortune were fake – Byron had no choice but to relent. What his sisters didn’t know (if only because if they did he’d never hear the end of it) was that he would have found a way to get the moon from the sky if they asked it of him. He loved them more than he loved himself, and there was nothing – nothing – he would not do for his family.
Except allow them to attend that damned masquerade.
“No,” he said gruffly, leaning forward to give Madeline’s knee an awkward pat, “I wouldn’t cancel the ball. I know how much you’ve been looking forward to it. Besides, all the invitations have been sent out. Even if I called it off now we’d still find ourselves under siege come next Thursday.”
“It’s a ball,” Mary pointed out, “not a battle.”
“Same bloody thing,” he muttered under his breath.
“All of this Season’s most eligible heiresses will be there.” Toying with the thin leather strap of her reticule, Margaret glanced up and give him a hopeful smile. “Perhaps you’ll meet someone.”
Stretching his arm across the back of his seat as the carriage rounded a turn, Byron smiled thinly in response. “That’s going to be difficult to accomplish from the inside of my study.”
“You’re not going? But you have to go!” Mary cried when he gave a curt shake of his head. “It’s your ball!”
“No,” he corrected, “it’s your ball. I’m merely emptying the coffers to host it. Which reminds me, why the devil do we need twenty peacocks?”
“Thirty-six,” Margaret corrected hesitantly.
“Thirty-six?” A vein above his right eye began to pulse. Unlike his sisters, who would have gleefully torn through their inheritances in six months if he let them, he’d always been mindful of his fiscal responsibility as a duke, brother, and landowner. His friends – what there were of them – called him a miser. When they weren’t calling him, among other less desirable names, ‘a miserable bastard’. And he was. To everyone but his sisters. Although now that he knew his lawn was about to be overtaken by three dozen bloody peacocks…
“No more,” he said sternly, taking the time to meet each one of their wide, innocent gazes in turn. “Do you understand? No more. No more guests, no more food, no more damned ice sculptures – it’s the middle of June, for the love of God! – and no more peacocks! Or I will cancel the entire thing and we’ll leave early for the country. Do I make myself clear?”
“As Grandmother’s crystal,” Mary chirped, batting her lashes.
His eyes narrowed with suspicion when all three of them nodded in unison – his sisters were many things but obedient wasn’t one of them – but there was nothing else he could do but pray he didn’t wake up one week from now and discover the entire house overrun with teal birds.
“Good.” Slouching, he tipped the brim of his hat down and squeezed his eyelids together. “Now be quiet, I’ve a wretched headache.”
For exactly seventeen seconds there was nothing but blessed silence, and then…
“You’re not really going to stay in your study, are you?” Margaret asked.
“It would be so nice if you met someone,” Madeline added.
“What about Lady Ames?” Mary continued, oblivious to the black storm cloud slowly overtaking her brother’s countenance. “She seemed rather smitten with you when you crossed paths at Rosemont Gardens last month. And she’s very beautiful.”
“Very beautiful,” Madeline echoed.
Like peas in a pod, those two. If it were up to them he would have already been married with children for them to fawn over. Of course they couldn’t have known of the vow he’d made all those years ago in the mud and the rain. A vow he was determined to keep, his sister’s matchmaking efforts be damned.
“I have no absolutely no interest in Lady Ames,” he said flatly. “Nor any lady, for that matter. We’ve been over this before. You are to leave my personal affairs–”
“Alone,” Mary interrupted. “Yes, we know.”
“Then were is nothing else to discuss. Step lively, now.” They’d reached their destination, a small tea shop at the edge of the park, and Byron alighted from the carriage to help his siblings down. Mary sailed by him with her nose in the air, then Madeline, with a tiny sniff, followed suit. Only Margaret lingered, her doe eyes filled with a sort of amused sympathy as she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and allowed him to escort her across the street.
“They don’t mean any harm, you know,” she murmured, flitting him a glance from beneath her lashes. “Mary and Maddy. They only want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.”
“You aren’t.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. One she punctuated with a sad little smile that tugged at something deep inside of his heart. The feeling was uncomfortable, and he pushed it away with a frown.
“I’m never going to marry, Margar
et.”
“Because you’re afraid you will end up like Father?”
He inhaled sharply. Ahead Mary and Madeline slipped inside the tea shop, a tiny bell ringing above the door as it swung inward. “I am nothing like Father.”
“No,” Margaret said gently, “you’re not. He was a cruel, cold man who wouldn’t have known love or kindness if it hit him upside the head. But you’re different, By. As much as you try to hide it, you are capable of love or else you would have shipped us all off to boarding school and washed your hands of your brotherly responsibilities long ago.”
“There’s still time,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting in a wry smile.
She patted his hand. “You know you’d miss us too much.”
“You, perhaps, but as to your sisters…”
Margaret bit back a grin. “They can be rather persistent, I’ll give them that. But only because they want what’s best for you, as do I. And we all agree that you need a wife. Someone strong enough to stand up to you, but gentle enough to soften your sharp edges. Someone intelligent, but also amusing. You need a wife who can make you laugh. You don’t do it nearly enough. And she should be pretty, but not beautiful. Beautiful women think far too highly of themselves and you already do enough of that for two people.” She nudged him in the ribs to let him know she was teasing about the last bit as they stepped through the door.
Byron snorted. “You forget, the ladies of the ton have been hunting me like a pack of wild wolves all Season. If a woman existed like the one you described I would have met her already.”
“Or maybe she’s been waiting to meet you.” With a serene smile she went to join Madeline and Mary, leaving him scowling after her.
Chapter Two
When Kitty was twelve years of age she met the man of her dreams.
Or so she thought at the time.
Tall and strikingly handsome with piercing blue eyes, a chiseled jaw, and wavy blond locks, the Earl of Galveston had sauntered into her parent’s drawing room and her little heart had immediately gone pitter-pat. Or pitter-splat, to be more accurate, as the organ had plummeted straight to her toes as she fancied herself completely and irrevocably in love.
Never mind the earl was twenty years her senior, already engaged, and didn’t have the faintest idea who she was. Kitty may have been young, but her stubbornness had been ingrained since birth, and when a challenge arose she didn’t rest until it was met.
For the rest of the house party she followed the earl around like a little lost puppy. He barely gave her a second glance, but that hadn’t mattered. Not when she’d already convinced herself they were meant to be together. He was perfectly perfect in every way…or so she’d believed until she discovered him in a broom closet with one of the scullery maids. She may not have known everything there was to know about bedroom affairs, but she knew enough to realize that a man did not do what the earl had been doing with a woman who wasn’t his fiancée.
The Earl of Galveston had become the first name to be added – and subsequently scratched off – her Perfect Husband List. And while her heart had been broken, she’d learned a valuable lesson. No matter how perfectly perfect a man appeared on the outside, it behooved a woman to always see what was on the inside. And the left side. The right side. The top and the bottom side. Men, fickle creatures that they were, had more sides than an octagon. And the earl wasn’t the only one who had come up short on one of them.
Occasionally she wondered if her standards were a bit too high. But she had only to look at her parent’s miserable marriage to know that her fastidious nature would serve her well in the long run. Her mother and father had gotten married after one dance together and look at them now. A more ill-conceived pair she couldn’t imagine if she tried.
From her seat at the pianoforte – she’d been responsible for the after dinner entertainment for the evening – Kitty watched as her mother resolutely ignored her father and her father ignored her mother. They sat side by side on a velvet backed chaise lounge, their spines impossibly erect, their right hands clenching their glasses of wine, their faces forming identical smiles that didn’t quite reach the corners of their eyes as she played the final note of Pleyel’s newest sonatina. From across the room Aunt Tabitha erupted into rousing applause that dimmed considerably when she found herself the recipient of her sister-in-law’s icy glare.
Expelling a short breath of exasperation, Kitty pushed back her chair and stood up. “Would you accompany me upstairs, Aunt Tabby? I want to make sure Agnes remembered to pack my favorite shawl. The one with the blue lace and gold thread you gave me for my birthday last year.”
Tomorrow morning, bright and disgustingly early (the only thing Kitty loved better than sleeping was a handsome man and a good crumpet, and the only thing that could possibly be better than those was a handsome man holding a good crumpet), she and her aunt were departing for the countryside where she would visit her dearest friend Regina, the newly wed Duchess of Glenmoore, while Aunt Tabitha continued on to Scotland to call on a cousin she hadn’t seen since they were young girls. Ordinarily they would have both spent the summer at the family estate, but her parents were – for reasons that baffled – traveling abroad. They wouldn’t be back until the next Season began, which meant Kitty and Aunt Tabitha were essentially on their own until everyone reconvened in London four months hence.
“Of course, my dear. Brother,” Aunt Tabitha nodded at Kitty’s father. “If I do not see you before we depart tomorrow, I wish you good travels. Alice.” Her smile vanishing, she executed a stiff curtsy. “The same to you.”
Kitty’s farewell to her parents was no less impersonal. After awkwardly trying to embrace her mother and being met with a strained, tittering laugh as Lady Dower tried to push her own daughter away, she settled for a peck on the cheek. Reaching past his wife the marquess gave her an absent pat on her shoulder, an embrace the likes of which she received from the dressmaker when she bought silk fabric instead of cotton.
Straightening, she stared down at her parents and couldn’t help but feel a pang deep inside of her chest. They wouldn’t see each other until the end of October and this was how they wanted to part ways. Coldly. Efficiently. With nary so much as an ‘I love you’ spoken between them. But then such was the Dower way, and with only a small degree of difficulty she managed to shove her feelings of disappointment to the wayside before she lifted her chin and followed Aunt Tabitha out of the room.
“They do care for you, you know,” Aunt Tabitha said kindly once they were in Kitty’s bedchamber. “In their own way.”
Kitty smile was one size too tight for her face. “Of course they do.”
“Your father was never very demonstrative with his emotions, even as a child, and your mother…” The corners of Tabitha’s mouth pinched. “Well, I’ve always been told if you have nothing nice to say it’s best to say nothing at all. But they do love you, Katherine. Even if they have difficulty showing it.”
“Of course they do.” This time Kitty snapped the words and instantly regretted her waspish tone when her aunt’s countenance crumpled. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching out to squeeze Tabitha’s hand. “I don’t mean to take out my feelings on you. Let’s agree not to discuss it any longer, shall we? We’ve a long day of travel ahead of us tomorrow, and I don’t know about you but I need my beauty sleep.”
“It’s too late for me, I’m afraid,” Aunt Tabitha sighed, patting her chin which had begun to noticeably sag as she crept closer and closer to ten and five. “But you’re right, we should get some rest.”
“Auntie,” Kitty said mildly as Tabitha walked towards the door.
“Hmmm?”
“I had my lady’s maid remove the wine from beneath your bed.”
“Oh.” Aunt Tabitha blinked. “Oh, I – ah, of course. I forgot it was even there.”
“And from behind your wardrobe.”
“Well, how that got to be there I haven’t the–”
“And the two small f
lasks from your desk.”
Aunt Tabitha smiled weakly. “Indeed. How – how thoughtful of you, Katherine.”
Kitty folded her arms. “I’ve also already written to Cousin Agnes, who delightfully informs me she does not drink spirits and hasn’t had any in the house since her husband passed ten years ago.” Crossing the room, she unfolded her arms and placed her hands on her aunt’s trembling shoulders in a rare moment of genuine emotion.
Gone was her easy smile. Gone was her witty flair. In that moment, stripped bare of all her dramatic airs, she was just a girl looking after the only mother she’d ever known. “I lost my parents a long time ago, if I ever even had them at all. I refuse to lose you as well. You’re all I have left, Auntie.”
“I – I know, dear,” Tabitha said haltingly. She squeezed her eyes shut and a single tear ran down her cheek. Brushing it away with an errant flick of her wrist, she opened her eyes and managed a watery smile. “I shall endeavor to be on my best behavior while we are apart.”
“I’d make the same promise.” Kitty’s mouth curved in a mischievous grin. “But we both know it would be a lie. Do you suppose Regina’s new husband has any ducal acquaintances?” She still couldn’t believe her quiet, bookish friend had landed one of the most sought after dukes in all of England. It had all happened so unexpectedly – and quickly – that it had caught everyone in the ton off guard, including Kitty. She was looking forward to hearing all of the details, as well learning firsthand what it was like to be a duchess.
“I am sure he does,” Tabitha nodded. “Aren’t they like geese? Always flocking together in the same pond.”
“Then I suppose I know what I am going to be doing this summer.”
“And what is that, dearest?” Tabitha asked fondly. Wetting her thumb, she rubbed away a tiny smudge above her niece’s left brow as Kitty’s eyes took on a determined gleam.
“Goose hunting.”
Chapter Three
Wakefield Park sat in a valley with acres of forest on one side and sprawling fields on the other. Built nearly two hundred years ago when the House of Stuart still ruled over England with an iron fist, it was an architectural marvel that heralded back to the days of kings and conquerors. For his part, Byron had never liked the main manor. The grounds upon which it sat, yes. But the house itself where he’d suffered the worst of his beatings in a small room on the third floor out of hearing distance of his mother and sisters…no, of the house he had never been overly fond.
The Autumn Duke (A Duke for All Seasons Book 4) Page 2
