Duke of Misfortune

by Blake, Whitney

  Mystified, he read it and the contents of his stomach nearly made a reappearance in the middle of the little space, which would have been unfortunate given the number of his peers who were present. The Duke of Welburn wished to see him.

  The duke would contact him presently.

  There was no need to respond until he was contacted.

  It was upon reading the words, written in Father’s familiar, neat hand, that Lee knew.

  Father knew.

  Through a haze, he’d returned to his set at the Albany and stared bleakly at his bedroom wall until morning. It was the end of Mr. Judd. He could see no way that things would continue as they had. Once the first editions of the papers were available, he feverishly scanned them for any reference to Lord Emilian’s shame. There were none. Whatever way Father had learned of what was underfoot, had been underfoot, it was fairly clandestine. Either no one else knew, or he’d ensured no one would tell.

  “How do you divine the severity?” snapped Father, bringing Lee back to the moment.

  “If you have set anything in motion, it must have taken some thought to accomplish.” Lee sat back in the chair and feigned serenity. Thomas had not uttered a syllable, yet.

  Lee wanted to know why, so he added, “Is it good, Tom? Good for you, I mean? You’ve always liked to see me get my comeuppance, even when I didn’t deserve it.”

  Before Father could answer for him, Thomas, never one to ignore being baited by his little brother, said, “You’ll be in the army by this time tomorrow.”

  The cultivated look of idle interest ebbed off Lee’s face to be replaced with one of horror.

  *

  Lee pleaded until his voice was hoarse, which was impressive given how much he normally used it. But there was nothing to be done.

  Father had called in some favors from a friend Lee neither knew nor had met. It was little consolation that, as Thomas unhelpfully reminded him, his service no longer had to be for life.

  As though Lee could count himself lucky for that.

  There was no concession to be made for Lee’s background. Unlike some aristocratic fathers who pressured their sons into the army, the Duke of Welburn had not seen fit to ensure his own was to be well-situated as a subaltern. As Lee pounded on the ducal study’s door, he reflected resentfully that the message was: better off honorably dead than indecently happy.

  But there wasn’t much honor in soldiering—at least not if one wasn’t prepared to rise to the highest echelons. Otherwise, one could look forward to frequent indebtedness and the snobbish pronouncements of the ton. Lee had never cared much about the latter.

  And it was true that he had not thought far enough ahead to the possibility that his secret might be compromised, but he’d always envisioned himself surviving comfortably. He’d made a small killing. It was nothing compared to a duke’s means, but it sometimes equaled his allowance depending on who paid him. As the realization that life as he knew it was coming to an end slowly overtook his usual optimism, Lee thought about what else he would be missing. He would miss the camaraderie. The feeling of an entire space waiting with stilled breath to see what you did next. Knowing that somewhere, even somewhere so unexpected, he belonged and was valued.

  He’d thought only just yesterday that if he played his cards sagely, he might end up in more respectable venues. That respectability meant little to him for its moral quality, but it could confer lasting means. He was no second David Garrick, but neither was he an amateur. No more, he thought, allowing his fist to fall back to his side.

  He could run away. He had nothing to lose.

  No, he couldn’t. Father seemed to take all of this as a personal slight, a strike against his family name. Chances were, he would send people to search for Lee—if you try to leave tonight. A fantastical plan of deserting whoever accompanied him on his journey tomorrow started to form, but it evaporated as soon as it came.

  Lost in the commotion of his thoughts, Lee did not hear Thomas’ footsteps approach from behind him in the dark corridor.

  “He won’t open the door. You had best give it up, you know,” said Thomas.

  “Why should I?”

  “How the hell are you going to worm your way out of it?”

  “I may have to acquiesce, but that doesn’t mean I have to go quietly.”

  “Is it so worth it to you?”

  “Is what so worth it to me?” Lee said. He rolled his eyes.

  “Being part of that demimonde?” The word dripped with disapproval.

  Thomas was always supercilious. But Lee had it on good authority that his brother was a secret gamer who liked the tables a little too much for it to be seemly. Their paths had never crossed in any nighttime establishments, which was something of a wonder. The number of patrons who drifted between them was considerable. London, though a big place, became surprisingly cramped when men were lusting after their vices. But Lee trusted Paul, who’d told him about Thomas’ gambling, more than Thomas.

  He felt far more like family than Thomas, anyway.

  How shall I tell him where I am going before I’ve gone? He didn’t even know if he would be able to return to the Albany tonight, although he wished to.

  “Yes, it is,” said Lee. Like many, Thomas would never understand. It was all too easy to dismiss his world, the nighttime rush of things he loved and would never trade for anything. Now, it was all to be torn from him. “You’ve never been good at anything in your life. No one likes you, either. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  Lee felt he was not being unjust. Unkind, perhaps. Thomas had never demonstrated much skill at anything at all. He was competent, and that was it. If Lee had still been depending fully on the estate for an income, he would be worried for what might happen when their father died.

  As it was now, it appeared he wouldn’t need to be worrying about things either way. Shipped off to the army, marching away to other countries—maybe even dying soon—he’d be one less financial consideration for the Valencourt patriarch. Lee knew that was not the bulk of his father’s concern, though. The man was simply being vindictive; he saw that, now. His father held him in deep spite, whatever all his motivations for doing so.

  Lee hoped that if his mother could see what was transpiring, she was turning her head away in shame.

  “I wouldn’t say such things if I were you,” said Thomas. He sneered, “One day, I’ll be the duke.”

  “We both know that I could be dead well before then.” The prospect of fighting was so abstract to Lee that it did not scare him. Yet. The knowledge that everything was about to change, and he had no choice in it, was more terrifying in the present moment.

  “Pray you are.”

  “Or what? You’ll cut me off?”

  Thomas came toward him until he had no choice but to back into the heavy door. “I won’t need you. The family line won’t need you. I shall have a wife; I shall have heirs. You are superfluous and you always have been.”

  Scoffing, Lee said, “I wish you all the best in finding a woman to marry. I shall pray she has the stomach to withstand you.”

  “Insolent to the last.”

  “The right one of us is heading off to die for the country. It’s not insolence. It’s backbone.”

  But he did not feel as brave as he sounded. Not nearly.

  *

  July 1812

  Salamanca, Spain

  When he awoke from the artificial sleep created by drugs, Lee knew he’d dreamed of the stage. He heard its echo and looked around for a crowd in a pit that was not there.

  Raising hands that felt as heavy as stone, he traced the stitches along his throat. They were still sore, set in angry red flesh. But if he’d lived through this, he was sure he’d pull through. Not that much awaited him on the other side of things.

  He didn’t mind knowing there’d be scars, but he minded that his voice would be damaged. Before now, he’d entertained fanciful but pleasant dreams of returning to the theater when he returned to England.
Thomas wanted little to do with him, and ever since their father had passed, he’d merely reinstated a small allowance for Lee’s use and left things at that. There was no affection between them, no sentimentality to hold them together as brothers.

  Staring up at the ceiling dappled with sunlight that came from a nearby window, Lee mused that his brother must be, above all things, lonely. He still had not secured a wife, and what relations they had were neither closely related nor situated near to Whitwell or London.

  Perhaps Thomas had grown something like a conscience, too, if he was allowing his disgraced younger brother some money. It wasn’t much, but it made things a little nicer and allowed for a few creature comforts. God knew Lee was not a talented soldier. He’d not advanced out of merit or his connections, that was for certain. This business with his neck was awful, but it would not end an illustrious career.

  Thus, Lee could not find it within himself to be as upset as he’d been when his father had declared he was joining the army. That had felt more startling, more terrifying.

  Above all else, this had him feeling sour.

  Not only had he been ripped from his friends and a bright future—even if it was unorthodox by the ton’s standards—now he was also doomed to sounding like a sad invalid. If the doctors were correct, his voice would not recover fully. Right now, he could not speak at all. It pained him too much, and only a macabre rasp escaped like a death rattle. But as time passed, they said, he would probably be able to speak just above a hoarse whisper.

  He hadn’t known how deeply he held the hope he might be an actor again until it was assuredly denied him. This time around, he’d thought, he wouldn’t care who found out his true origins. And if Thomas wished to cast him out, then he could do so. Lee would not have minded. He had a place enough not to mind that he was no longer a Valencourt in anything but surname. If Thomas died childless, which was entirely a possibility, some cousin could inherit for all Lee cared.

  Now, even the faint sparkle of such a return, however it might work out, was tarnished.

  Maybe an infection will kill me, Lee thought. That would not be pleasant, but it would be preferable. He knew some would care if he died. Paul, for one. He’d been so worried about both Lee and his brother in his last letter. That was weeks ago. He was probably even more beside himself now than he had been. The prior Lord Hareden had been about as alienated from his boys as the prior Lord Valencourt was from Lee. But unlike Lee and Thomas, Paul and Bowland were close.

  Lee sighed. He did not have a sweetheart in England. Despite the assumption that he might have, he had not made many conquests. Belle held him in esteem. But that was different, and she had to make a living. He couldn’t support both of them and neither would desire that kind of an arrangement, anyway.

  He couldn’t imagine it.

  He was still smirking a little when a surgeon bumbled in. It was too late to feign sleep.

  “Good afternoon, Lord Emilian,” said the man, a ginger creature who had seen far too much sun or habitually indulged in too much to drink. “You appear to be in better spirits today.”

  Lee might have replied with something witty had he been able to but, as things stood, all he could manage was a tight, little shrug.

  “Good, that’s lovely, my lord.”

  What in the world is lovely about this? Lee wanted to ask. What trite nonsense people said to you when “my lord” was attached to it. He preferred the way the theater managers spoke to him. Which was to say, often curtly. But always, in his experience, with genuine intents.

  “Now, I just need to take a peek at the stitches.”

  Obligingly, Lee bared his neck as much as he was able to without rousing the shooting pains that accompanied quick or protracted movement.

  He had a feeling his unfortunate contract was coming to an end earlier than his father might have predicted, and not in the way that either he or Thomas anticipated.

  “This was quite a challenge, you know.”

  Strangely enough, Lee did know. He’d been there, after all. He’d passed out after the first two stitches, thanks in part to the laudanum but mostly to the pain. It was a miracle, they muttered, that he hadn’t bled out on the field. To be fair, he had been woozy as they retrieved him. Everything had a slight, bright halo, the barest amount of a tilt.

  He was a shite soldier, so he supposed he’d put himself into harm’s way through some preventable error of his own. Once they got a proper look at him, the surgeon and his helpers realized why Lord Emilian hadn’t bled out: shrapnel. A piece of metal lodged into flesh that was, perversely, holding back lifeblood.

  When it was pulled out, the effect was almost like an uncorked bottle of spirits tipped over a glass. Nothing popped or exploded, but there was a stubborn, gurgling spurt of blood. Lee wasn’t sure if he remembered it correctly, but he seemed to recall looking down just quickly enough to catch the sight. And thinking, somewhat outlandishly, that his brother would have fainted at the sight of that much blood.

  It was amazing he was thinking at all, which was why he thought that perhaps he’d fabricated the memory and only thought about Thomas now, adding it to something he misremembered. But he took fiendish satisfaction in the thought that Thomas could not have handled this, because he knew he was right.

  Lee might not have wanted to be a soldier, but he found that he had a surprisingly robust constitution.

  Perhaps it was reading and seeing all those melodramas, he thought.

  Then it was all over. He’d woken up minutes ago with the ghosts of past monologues running in his head. He leveled his focus on the surgeon and debated asking him if the shrapnel had truly been there.

  But Lee recalled, midway through wondering about the shrapnel, that he was incapable of speech. Bollocks, he thought.

  But the surgeon, it seemed, could divine what he was thinking. “My lord, do you recall the operation?”

  Lee shrugged. A little. Perhaps.

  “What of the advice you have been given?”

  Considering, Lee nodded. He was still trying to wrap his head around how much his life had shifted course. This lack of talking was agonizing, especially because he’d always prided himself on his quick tongue and shrewd mind. Wordplay had always come so easily to him, and that would amount to naught.

  “It will take time to know what will be recovered.”

  Scowling, Lee nodded and, with the deepest strength of will, motioned with his right hand as though to say, “Yes, but do go on.”

  “Personally, my lord, and I am not telling you this to curry your favor, I do think you will be able to talk again.”

  Curry what favor? Lee was not one of the darlings of the regiment. He plainly possessed no connections and no means of helping any man beyond the present time. No one knew the reasons for his entry into the army, but then, so few men truly wished to enlist that it was not questioned that he appeared to be on the outs with his family’s good favor.

  Everyone was needed. No matter the reason why they were there.

  Putting all of this aside for later examination, Lee nodded again.

  “I have seen similar wounds. The effects that you are experiencing will not last forever.”

  That was little consolation, but it was marginally better than having a lifetime of this to look forward to. His only skillset had depended on his voice. It seemed like fate had been veering in a direction which meant he would have to rely on himself to make his way in the world. Either that, or he would have to marry as soon as he got home while he still had the appearance of wealth. He knew men did that, but it did not appeal to him in the slightest. An enormous part of what had drawn him to the theater in the first place was a love of romance. A love of love, certainly, but a love of the sensory and sensual as well.

  If he were to marry, Lee thought it would be because he was in love. As he grew older, he found he fantasized about love at least as much as women seemed to, or at least as much as he was given to believe they did. It did not make him feel unman
ly—he was aware of the ties between his adoration of performance and his adoration of the idea of love.

  Yet, when it came down to it, he did not believe it existed. It was a lovely fever dream, a wonderful fantasy to contemplate. But it wasn’t real. Unlike performing.

  He was handsome, he knew that. If he wanted to apply himself to the task, he could have any woman in the Empire—provided he told some white lies about his past. Not about soldiering, perhaps, but the reasons he began it. He did not want to. It wouldn’t be fair to the art of entertaining, and no matter what all the heated little squabbles said about the unlicensed theaters being a thorn in the side of real art, he had witnessed enough beautiful creations in them to know better.

  There was always the bawdy and the different there, too, but that just mirrored life. He adored it all. If given the chance, he would have returned to it in a heartbeat. Now, even the shadow of a chance was being denied him.

  A baleful look must have lingered on his face, for the surgeon said sympathetically, “Thinking of a woman?”

  Lee shook his head.

  “Forgive me, my lord, I only ever see that kind of a look on a man’s face when he is thinking of his wife… or his mistress,” said the surgeon with a grin, before recalling to whom he was speaking. “Oh…”

  He went red as he finished fiddling with the dressing around the stitched wound.

  Lee found he could only smile at that, at the man’s earnest discomfort, and yet again, he shook his head in response. No, there was no wife, no family awaiting him at home. He could imagine the shock that would cause—for Papa to return with no voice, or the phantom of what used to be a voice, wheezing something that would scare the children and turn his wife cold.

  And if the theater was a mistress, as some often spoke of it, she was always accommodating so long as one could bring something to her table.

  Lee feared that there was little he could bring to anyone’s table, now.

  Chapter One

  1813

  London, England

  It had been months and months since Lee returned home, and he still couldn’t speak normally. He probably never would.