Darling Duke

by Scarlett Scott

  For now, here he stood, numb with a combined distillation of grief and spirits, on the precipice of hurting the brother he cared for more than another soul in the world. His vision darkened, a rushing sound roaring in his ears like the current of a flooded river. The glass dropped from his hand, landing at his feet.

  He looked down. At least it had been empty. The soft carpet had cushioned its fall. Nothing was broken or ruined, except for Spencer himself.

  “Damn it, Spencer, are you ill?” Harry rushed forward, entering his line of vision, expression drawn taut with concern. “Tell me what ails you, for God’s sake.”

  He forced himself to speak. “I compromised Lady Boadicea Harrington this afternoon.”

  There. He’d done it.

  Harry froze. “Lady Bo?”

  Ah, so his brother was familiar enough with her already to condense her name. For some reason, that revelation irked him, sending something needling through the haze blanketing his mind. He refused to believe it was jealousy. But he couldn’t help but wonder whether Harry’s tongue had ever been in her mouth. The notion made him ill.

  He cleared his throat, meeting Harry’s gaze. “The same.”

  Harry’s jaw clenched. “How can that be possible? She was going to take a rest in her chamber, read a book. Yesterday’s journey here left her in need of settling.”

  Damnation. Spencer closed his eyes for a moment. His brother imagined Lady Boadicea had been reading an innocent tome in her chamber when in fact she’d been closeted inside his library, devouring filth. The book was still in his jacket, seeming to burn a hole straight into his skin. Mocking him.

  “I’m afraid she did not seek out her chamber,” he managed with as much gentleness as he could muster.

  Harry seized his jacket, shaking him with surprising strength given his leaner form. “Don’t dare to suggest she went looking for you. She doesn’t even like you.”

  That rather stung. She had seemed to like him well enough when his hand had been up her skirts, but he refrained from offering that particular gem of wisdom.

  “She mistakenly came here. We were alone. Mother and the Duchess of Cartwright happened upon us, and I…she is ruined, Harry. I will rectify matters, but I wanted to grant you the dignity of informing you before I speak with the Marquis of Thornton to ask for her hand.”

  A frown furrowed his brother’s brow, but his grip on Spencer’s jacket hadn’t relented. “You were alone with her. I don’t see the concern. With our mother pressing her, I daresay the Duchess of Cartwright won’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Crisis averted. There’s no need for you to approach Lord Thornton or for you to marry Lady Bo at all.”

  Harry’s insistence upon calling her Lady Bo grated on him in a way that it should not. After all, he had been courting her, squiring her about, spending time in her presence. Spencer didn’t know anything else about her save that she read bawdy books and smelled like a lush bloom and her mouth was made to be ravaged by kisses.

  His kisses.

  No. He mustn’t think such thoughts. It was not where his addled mind was meant to head. First, it appeared he would have to explain his follies in enough depth to compel Harry that his courtship of Lady Boadicea was indeed at an end.

  He wished he had another whisky, but his glass remained on the floor, and his brother continued to hold him with the grip of a man caught between rage and denial.

  “Harry,” he said again, “there is need.”

  “What are you saying, damn you?” Harry growled, giving him another shake.

  He allowed it, accepted his brother’s rage, for it was well-deserved, and it was the least he could do. He would let Harry imagine anything he chose of him, if it could lessen the sting of what he’d done.

  “Her skirts were raised,” he elaborated with a cool, detached air he little felt. “The Duchess of Cartwright was correct in her outrage.”

  “You bastard.” Harry released his jacket, face going white. “Did you force yourself on her?”

  Good God. Even his own flesh and blood believed him a monster. He stared, unblinking. “Believe what you will. The salient fact is that I must meet with Thornton in half an hour’s time, and I will be asking him for Lady Boadicea’s hand in her father’s absence.”

  “No.” His brother shook his head, his fists clenching at his sides. “You won’t. I will. I don’t care what’s happened. I’ll marry Lady Bo before I see her shackled to you.”

  Shackled to him. As if he were some sort of beast rather than one of the wealthiest men in England, bearing a title almost as old and as noble as the Queen’s. “I doubt she’ll find it a persecution. She will be a duchess.”

  “Your duchess,” Harry spat, bitterness underscoring his angry tone. “Have you forgotten what became of the last one?”

  The barb hit him with the precision of an assassin’s blade. He supposed he deserved that as well, but the reminder of Millicent’s death coupled with the tumult of the day undid him. The rushing in his ears returned with a vengeance. His gut compressed, a fresh wave of nausea assailing him.

  But he couldn’t allow the darkness to overcome him. Not now. He had to see this through first.

  “I have not forgotten.” He forced the words to emerge.

  “I’ll marry her.” Harry’s face twisted. “I’m in love with her, damn it.”

  Perhaps his brother did believe himself in love with Lady Boadicea Harrington. But a lady did not love a man when she kissed another as she had Spencer. She had burned in his arms, blooming for him. Perhaps she was inconstant, perhaps fickle, or worse, an unfeeling flirt. He didn’t know her well enough to determine the source of her overwhelming reaction to him, but he did know that he was equally afflicted, and he could not allow Harry to marry her in his stead.

  “No,” he said. “I ruined her. I’ll marry her.”

  Harry’s lip curled into a sneer, and for a beat, he swore his brother would raise his fist against him. But he did not. “I understand why Millicent was so desperate to escape you, Spencer. You’re bloody heartless.”

  Yes, he was. That sentimental organ had been torn from his chest long ago. It had no place in his life. Nor did emotion, though he knew a twinge of something foreign as he stared at his sibling. Remorse? Sympathy? Self-loathing?

  It little mattered.

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry, brother.”

  Harry recoiled as though he’d been struck. “Go to hell.”

  He didn’t respond as he watched his brother leave the library, slamming the door with so much force that the paintings on the walls shuddered. It was a matter of course that hell was a place he’d gotten to know quite well over the last few years.

  Spencer retrieved his glass and stalked to the sideboard.

  More whisky was in order.

  reckoning.

  That was what this was, Bo thought.

  “The Duchess of Cartwright was quite firm in her assertions,” Alex, the Marquis of Thornton, doting husband to her sister Cleo, informed her. His expression was grim. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  He wasn’t the first person she’d ever given a headache in her life, and she was reasonably certain he wouldn’t be the last. She got into scrapes. She got herself out of them. Surely this wasn’t any worse than the time she’d flung a forkful of aspic into the coiffure of the detestable Lady Thistledowne.

  “Her Grace was mistaken.” Bo kept her voice calm and unshakeable. The Duke had kindly granted them the use of the green salon for this unwanted and unnecessary meeting, presided over by her brother-in-law and sister.

  She loved the pair of them dearly, but everything about this was wrong.

  “Bo,” Cleo interrupted in her older-sister voice, “the duke was clear as well when he had his interview with Alex. Whatever happened in the library, the Duchess of Cartwright has no intention of keeping this secret unless you wed Bainbridge.”

  “Why should the Duchess of Cartwright care that the duke assisted me with a
n overturned ankle?” she asked, incensed at the woman’s self-righteous meddling.

  “Dearest, you haven’t been limping,” Cleo pointed out.

  Oh.

  Perhaps she’d forgotten to continue her act, given the flurry of nonsense that had assailed her from the moment she’d left the library. This was why she detested country house parties and sanctimonious prudes both. Not to mention the Duke of Bainbridge.

  Yes, this had all begun because the arrogant lummox had stolen her book.

  “I have a hearty constitution,” she argued. “I heal remarkably fast, you know. Why must my good fortune be suspect?”

  “Bo.” Cleo frowned at her. “This isn’t the time to be glib.”

  Fine. Bo sent her a frown of her own. “Well, it certainly isn’t the time to cow before the whims of the Duchess of Cartwright or the arrogant stupidity of the Duke of Bainbridge either. I’ll not be made a sacrifice for the sake of someone’s misguided sense of propriety.”

  Never mind that the duchess had not been wrong about what she’d witnessed. Bo still wasn’t about to marry Bainbridge. She had agreed earlier as he stood there, stricken by thoughts of his dead wife, because she felt compassion for him. But compassion was not enough to warrant the loss of her freedom forever to a man she didn’t like.

  To a man like Bainbridge.

  Even if he kissed better than any other man who had ever set his mouth to hers.

  “I’m afraid these aren’t whims, Bo,” her brother-in-law said next, interrupting the inappropriate bent of her thoughts at the right time. “You will be ruined. And as your sister’s husband, I cannot countenance such a thing happening while you’re beneath my protection.”

  When she’d paced in her bedchamber earlier, parceling out what she would say and how she would avoid having to marry the insufferable duke, she hadn’t thought about how her actions could affect those around her.

  How dreadfully selfish of her. Cleo and Alex’s love was old and true, but they had been torn apart in their youth and reunited while Cleo had been married to her scurrilous husband. Only upon the blackguard’s death had Cleo and Alex been free to marry, and they’d weathered a great deal of scandal to maintain good standing in the ton and Parliament both. Alex was a vaunted politician, and if he were deemed responsible for her lapse in judgment, she would never forgive herself.

  She sighed, and the knot in her stomach that had begun as small as a thimble tangled and grew within her. The chamber seemed suddenly robbed of air. Her cheeks went hot. Her corset was laced too tight. Even her silk stockings itched. She wanted to be free of every encumbrance, free of this room, free of propriety and duty and the repercussions of her own foolishness.

  “But you aren’t responsible,” she told Alex needlessly. “I am my own woman, capable of making my own decisions, regardless of however stupid they may prove.”

  His expression remained impassive as Cleo chimed back in. “Whilst we’re speaking of decisions, perhaps you’d care to explain how you found yourself in the duke’s private library when you pleaded a headache and asked to return to your chamber for a rest.”

  Bo’s brows snapped together and she gave her sister a did-you-truly-just-dare look. Cleo had once been notorious for pleading megrims at fashionable gatherings. Now that she was the Marchioness of Thornton, with Alex’s political connections and responsibilities, she could no longer employ her clever subterfuge. But that didn’t mean Bo couldn’t. “Where do you think I learned such a strategy, dear sister?”

  Cleo flushed. “You lied to me, you little scamp?”

  She grinned, the heaviness of the situation dispelled for a moment. “I prefer to think of it as offering a creative suggestion.”

  “God save me from Harrington women,” Alex gritted. “Boadicea, may I remind you that you swore to me that you’d behave for the duration of the week? And yet here we are, not a full day into our stay at Boswell Manor, and the Duke of Bainbridge has been witnessed compromising you in his bloody library?”

  She winced, her levity fading in the face of her brother-in-law’s thunderous scowl. “I had every intention of behaving. My sole goal was to convince Lord Harry to aid me with the Lady’s Suffrage Society.”

  “By allowing his brother to compromise you?” Cleo asked slyly.

  She supposed she deserved that.

  Alex scrubbed a palm over his face. “Hell.”

  Cleo leaned forward, lips compressed in disapproval. “What happened, Bo? If we are to extricate you from this mess, you must be honest with us. No more prevaricating or evasion.”

  Another sigh escaped her. She didn’t like being told what she must do, and she never had. Nor did she particularly care for rules. She was a perverse creature, she knew, but if she was told a lady ought not to do something, she wanted to do it. If someone said to walk, she decided to run. If she was told to stay, she strayed. Her mother had wanted a wardrobe for her made of ruffles and pastel, and she’d chosen the boldest colors she could find instead. It was her nature.

  But this was different. Rules were made to be ignored unless doing so would hurt someone she loved. And she loved her sister and Alex.

  “I intended to read,” she said at last into their expectant silence. “I wandered a bit—Boswell Manor is so frightfully large that I’d wager one could get lost in it for three solid days. And at last, I came upon a library with no one about. It seemed the perfect place to spend a few hours alone, until the duke interrupted my solitude.”

  “You overturned your ankle while reading a book in Bainbridge’s library?” Alex’s eyes narrowed.

  Her cheeks went hot. “I didn’t overturn my ankle.” She paused, wondering how to phrase what had happened after the duke’s unannounced arrival. “He took exception to my choice of literature, and stole my book from me. When he refused to return it, I…I kissed him.”

  Cleo and Alex stared at her, apparently united in their loss for words, before sharing a telling look. They were the sort of husband and wife who required no words to communicate. Bo found it both adorable and nauseating.

  When they glanced back to her, she was sure she was red as a beet from the tips of her ears to her toes. “He still has my book, the arrogant oaf,” she said, for she wasn’t about to elaborate on what had occurred in the wake of her ill-advised kiss.

  No, there was honesty and then there was futility. She was sure Cleo and Alex—whom she had once witnessed emerging from a carriage all flushed and misbuttoned—could surmise as much without her confession.

  “You kissed him,” Cleo echoed at last, her voice weak as she shared yet another troubled glance with her husband. “Oh dear. This is worse than I feared.”

  “Did Bainbridge take liberties?” Alex demanded, sounding like a protective older brother.

  Yes, of course he had. But she had encouraged them. Had allowed them. Heavens above, she’d started the entire string of unfortunate events by kissing him. And liking it.

  She considered her response with care. “He still has my book in his possession, and I’d like it back.”

  “Oh dear Lord, Bo.” Her sister’s gaze was knowing, disapproving. “Please tell me it wasn’t one of those books.”

  Drat. Why did her sisters—every sainted one of them—always know her so well? It was a blessing and curse all at once. Cleo had caught her reading one of the bawdy books she’d pilfered from their brother Bingley’s stash and had forced her to turn it over like spoils of war. Her elder sister hadn’t known, of course, that Bo had about ten more volumes, all surreptitiously removed from their brother’s chamber over time, to which she could turn for further edification.

  But she was no fool when it came to the protection of her cache of lewd, outlawed books, and she wasn’t about to reveal that she had more to a sister who wouldn’t be above scouring her chamber and confiscating the rest. Not to mention informing their parents. Bo was curious. She had much yet to learn.

  She blinked. “Poetry, do you mean? Truly, Cleo, marriage has turned you into
a dreadful prude. What can be the harm in Lord Byron?”

  Alex took in the exchange between the two of them.

  Cleo glowered. “Boadicea Harrington. You know what I refer to.”

  Bo pursed her lips. “It was the Bible, if you must know, and it’s most vexing because I’d only reached halfway through Genesis when he thieved it from me. I am clamoring to know what happens next.”

  Her sister made a sound low in her throat. “Bo.”

  Well, and what did Cleo expect? That she would own to reading a journal whose printing had landed the publisher in jail? That she would admit she’d been reading about the lord of the house’s swelling member in the presence of his sister’s comely governess? That she’d eagerly learned new, wicked words like slit and pearl and tumescence? That she would never again think of walks in the woods in the same manner ever again?

  Or libraries, for that matter.

  A frisson of something unwanted and curious simmered through her and settled between her thighs, rather like the aches she’d read about. She banished it.

  “I won’t marry the Duke of Disdain,” she insisted. “He is cold and arrogant and unfeeling. I have no intention of marrying any man, let alone one who would insult me, look down his nose at me, and then kowtow to the sense of propriety of a vicious old biddy.”

  “I’m afraid you may have no choice,” Alex interrupted gently, his tone stern but his eyes flashing with sympathy. “Bo, what you’ve described to me, taken in consideration with the duchess’s words and those of Bainbridge himself, convinces me that this was no innocent tableau. It must be rectified.”

  Rectified.

  The blood leached from her face. “You intend to force me to marry Bainbridge? Alex, how could you?”

  “I’ll not force you into anything.” Caution steeped his voice. “But marrying him may be the only way to squelch the impending scandal before it’s unleashed. You are not the only one who will be affected, Boadicea. Keep that in mind.”