The Dissolute Duke

by Sophia James

  An evening tipple? The single glass provided looked spotlessly clean.

  ‘There is a light meal set out for your lunch in the small dining room, your Grace, and dinner will be served at six. When you require a maid to help you dress you only have to ring the bell and she will come.’

  The bed was tiny, a child’s cot that gladdened her heart, for there was no possible way her large husband could share it with her.

  After the accompanying luggage was lifted into place she thanked the two men with a smile. Around the edge of the room stood many tallboys and wardrobes, the array of old furniture giving the impression that many of the unwanted accoutrements of the Ellesmere lineage had been dumped here, a last resting place before being disposed of or burnt.

  When the woman didn’t leave, Lucinda knew there was something important that she wished to impart to her. ‘The master has brought new life to Alderworth, your Grace. The house may not be as magnificent as it once was, but the farm cottages have been refurbished and the people here appreciate his endeavours. He is a good man despite all that might be said of him in London.’

  The woman hurried out after she had delivered her words, a swish of skirt and then gone.

  A good master who was appreciated here? Lucinda turned the words on her tongue, liking the endorsement.

  Nerves had taken away hunger, so she walked to the window to gaze down upon the gardens, the formal lines of hedges lost in the march of time. No one had tended to anything, it seemed, the wild and rambling roses climbing in a tangled heap of runners with the occasional misshaped flower blooming amidst green. The hand of good fortune had disappeared a long time ago from the estate of Alderworth, leaving disorder in its place. Her mind dwelled on the fact that her husband was a Duke who would make sure others were well housed before he turned his attention to his own living quarters and she smiled.

  A movement caught her eye in the very far corner of her view. Ellesmere was hurrying towards the stable courtyard a little way off, his demeanour brisk. He had dispensed with his jacket and his hat and the white linen of his shirt stretched across the muscles of his back, his dark hair trailing across it. Another came out to meet him, a small round man waving his arms madly as if in some important explanation. The Duke in contrast stood perfectly still, a quiet centre in the midst of all that moved about him.

  Taylen Ellesmere did that often, she thought, as though testing the air, like a deer might in the high hills of some undisturbed place just to make certain of safety.

  Then a horse came forth, a stallion of a height Lucinda had not seen before, the lines of Arabia in its form. She saw her husband run his hands across its flanks, quiet and gentle, before he mounted, easily managing the skittish response of the animal. The Duke of Alderworth looked as though he had been born there, the flow of man and beast joined in a languid and perfect balance as he turned towards the hills beyond the gardens and disappeared.

  Then there was nothing, only trees and leaves and the scudding clouds across the afternoon sky wending towards a dark forest in the distance.

  She wished she could open the doors that led out on to a balcony to see if she might catch more of a glimpse of them, but they were nailed shut—another oddity in a house full of neglect. Lifting her hand, she wrote her initials on the inside of the window. With a flourish she surrounded her name with the shape of a heart and then rubbed the whole thing out, her fingers made dirty by the dust on the glass.

  Falder, her family home, had the lines of love running through it, generations of Wellinghams enjoying the promise. Each day a legion of staff cleaned it from top to toe until it was polished and gleaming, the small decay of everyday living repaired before any damage had the chance to spread further.

  The sun broke out quite suddenly, enhancing the green in the fields behind. Here in the rolling hills of Bedfordshire and far from the expectations of London there was a certain peace and freedom she had not felt in years. It lay, she supposed, in the march of time drawn across a fading splendour. Once Alderworth would have boasted grandeur and sumptuousness, but there was a mellow truth about its present-day meagreness that was beguiling.

  Finding her satchel, she drew forth her drawing equipment and laid a parchment on the desk, liking the feel of charcoal, the dusty ease of a long-time friend calming in the face of the unknown. She drew, from memory, the house and its lines and Taylen Ellesmere on the horse, his hair against the wind, his forehead strong.

  She stopped after sketching his eyes and rested because the quickness in them was disconcerting, knowing, a question framed in them that held all her own fears naked in the afternoon light. She wanted to rub them out, wanted to scrawl across such eyes with a hard strong stroke, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t countenance destruction of such raw and angry beauty. His lips followed, full and generous, lips that had offered her the promise of liberty for the price of a child. Yet he had qualified such an unexpected option with salvation and loyalty and she believed he had meant it.

  Placing one finger across the drawing, she felt an easing of spirit, a lessening of tightness. A slight question of flesh? Revealing. Unforeseen.

  ‘Taylen.’ She whispered the name into the quiet and even as she watched his lips seemed to turn. Upwards. The black of charcoal moving in a way it never had before. Living. Breathing. Laughing. She did not dare to impart more form to his figure as she buried the sheet of paper in her sketchbook.

  A flash of some hidden thing ripped through Lucinda, beating at truth. The headaches she had had after the accident had largely gone, yet here they threatened to return in the same intensity as they had whilst convalescing.

  A room came through the fog, a room at the end of a long corridor and a man sitting in bed and reading.

  Spectacles. She had the vague idea it was Alderworth. She squinted her eyes to try to remember the title of the book in his hands because she thought it was important in some way. But no more memory surfaced.

  Rising, she picked up her cloth bag from the place she had left it in one corner and extracted the wrapped present that Beatrice had bequeathed her in the moments before her departure from London. A novel confronted her as she ripped off the bright blue paper and a note was threaded with ribbon around the cover.

  Lucy,

  The dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security can be underpinned with something far more wonderful. I have a suspicion that you will find what I allude to with Taylen Ellesmere.

  Anne Elliot certainly did in this story.

  All my love,

  Bea

  Jane Austen’s Persuasion. She had not read this book and was glad for the chance to do so here, though Beatrice’s note seemed more than odd. She knew her brothers hated her husband with a passion and had thought her sister-in-law might have felt the same.

  Something wonderful? Such hollow hope was layered with a reality far from any such truth, the unfamiliar environment here increasing her homesickness.

  When tears welled up behind her eyes she did not try to stop them as they ran down her cheeks and on to the small book across her lap, blurring the inked note in Beatrice’s handwriting.

  Taylen waded naked into the lake behind the house and waited as the icy water numbed his feet and his legs, the shadow of Valkyrie reflected in the silver before him, low in the water. He had named this dash of raised-up land as a boy and had used the island as a fortress many times, a stronghold against a coercive uncle and a place to assuage the remnants of betrayal.

  ‘Betrayal.’ He whispered the word to himself and watched how the warm air fogged. He had never had a chance against his mother’s brother with his corrupt tastes and easy smile. The fact that he was a child whose parents saw responsibility only as a nuisance and had gladly given up any claim on a son who was alternatively badly behaved or withdrawn aided such tendencies.

  Innocence was such an easily taken commodity and Taylen knew that his had gone a long time ago.

  Like the small hut he had
built on the rise, left to the birds and the ghosts and the wind. Only echoes in the inlets and silence in the few remaining trees, the black outline of wood sharp against the dusk where it had fallen at an angle against the sky. No longer a shelter.

  Picking up a handful of sand, he let it filter through his fingers—Alderworth soil, the mark of a thousand years of ancestry imprinted in the earth. His land now, to have and to hold as certainly as a wife brought from London under the dubious flag of obligation.

  He shook his head hard, the strands of wetness falling into his line of vision before he wiped them away. The air here strengthened him and gave him resolve. Lucinda would be sitting in the room beside his and wondering what exactly might happen next. He hated the fact that she would be frightened, but there was no other way of resolving this impasse, and he knew without a single doubt that had he left her in London her brothers would have made certain any access was limited.

  Lord, but was it any better here? The whole place teetered under a strange spell of melancholy, the staff left reduced to a bare handful of overworked servants.

  He had left it too long to return, he supposed, but the memories here had always repelled him, the child without rights struggling inside the man he had become, dissolute and uncaring. Swallowing, he fisted his hands hard against his thighs and lifted his face to the rain that had begun to fall in a mist.

  Back. Again. This time with a spouse who distrusted him and the threat of retribution from the Wellinghams should he ever hurt her.

  A flash of lightning above the hills to the east reflected in the lake. A sign, perhaps. A portent of battle.

  That evening Lucinda came down the wide staircase with a feeling of disbelief, her heart tight and her stomach filled with butterflies. The dress she wore was her newest, light-yellow silk shot through with gold, the décolletage on the prim side of fashionable heightened by a line of frothy Brussels lace, her arms covered by a shawl against the cold. Her hair was pinned to her head in a tall and elegant chignon, with a few curls left to frame her face, that had taken a maid a good hour to complete. On her feet were slippers of fine calf leather, the lacings drawn in tight.

  The Alderworth servant accompanying her stepped back as they came into the front salon. In the ensuing silence a bead of sweat traced its way between her breasts to fall across the skin above her ribs.

  Taylen Ellesmere was already there, dressed entirely in black, the collar at his neck open. A gentleman at home and at leisure or a man expecting a woman to entertain him?

  ‘Duchess.’ His teeth were white and even and perfect.

  Part of her wanted to run, wanted to lift the embroidered fall of silk and make for the safety of her room, negating any contract between them.

  I do not think he would stop me if I went! The thought came from nowhere but it was there in his eyes, soft velvet with a sort of pity.

  She did not wish for that. Raising her chin, she walked through the opened door and tried not to flinch as it shut behind her.

  His eyes took in her gown and her hair, his expression tightening. ‘I have something to show you,’ he said as the silence lengthened. ‘It is this way.’

  He did not take her hand or shepherd her forwards. He did not touch her at all, but walked in front through the long corridors of the place to a room filled with books. Two glasses sat on a desk with a bottle of white wine chilled in a bucket of ice.

  Intentions, she supposed, a heady amount of alcohol to loosen the restraints of almost thirty-six months of distance.

  ‘Please, take a seat.’

  She chose a chair with enough room for one person. Unexpectedly, though, he pulled a stool over to where she was and sat in front of her. A shaft of light bathed him, turning his hair to shining raven black. Like the cut sides of coal. He was the most handsome man she had ever met. She could not dispute that fact.

  ‘I was not intimate with you three years ago no matter what you might say, Lucinda. I put you in the carriage before anything could happen between us and tried to take you home. If it had not been for the accident, I would probably have succeeded.’

  Lucinda felt her insides curl. Taylen Ellesmere had always used words well to suit his intentions.

  ‘You were in bed. I remember you … touching me?’

  ‘You ran into my room to escape from the Earl of Halsey. I kissed you once. That was all.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You lie.’ Her eyes flicked to the line of her breast though she could not bring herself to voice all that she remembered.

  His fingers at her nipples, the feel of him hard against her skin in places no one had ever touched before. The full naked size of him as he stood before her. Shocking. Thrilling. Forbidden.

  Reaching over to the wine, he poured her a glass, fine crystal, and the stem vibrated under the pressure of her fingers as she took it. As easy to break as her innocence had been?

  ‘Perhaps a drink might refresh your tangled memory,’ he toasted, shattering the bubble of détente completely. A sharp bud of shock took her breath as hard eyes gleamed, the warmth of his glance searing through silk.

  Her face was pale, the smile she had forced upon it tightly stretched.

  A small droplet of wine lay on her top lip. Once he might have leant over and licked it away, but he had never been a man to take a woman against her will and the wariness on Lucinda’s face was easy to read. Drawing back, he opened the folder on the table beside him. There was a file fat with the transfer-of-ownership documents tucked inside the front cover. He pushed the papers across to her.

  ‘I have signed the town house over to you already. The terms allow you sole use of the place until you die. Then it shall revert to our heir … or heirs if sins of the flesh are as enjoyable as I think you will find them to be.’

  Worry brought lines to her forehead and the tip-tilt of her nose against the light made him look away. He remembered running his finger down the gentle slope and on to the plump rose of her lips. Once she had watched him as if he were the only man in existence. Once she had taken his breath away with a single stolen kiss. Now suspicion and wariness were the only expressions that he could read and the disappointment was disquieting.

  ‘I have a pouch, too. A hundred pounds for the first time you lie with me and a hundred more for every time after that.’ The heavy thud of the leather purse sounded on the file, like the promise of Antonio’s flesh from the pen of Shakespeare. A pound for a pound. Payment for an heir.

  Her teeth worried her bottom lip and shadowed eyes perused the bounty, but she did not reach out, leaving the largesse exactly where it was. Then she lifted her glass and had a generous gulp of wine before chancing a second and a third. Tay wanted to warn her of the strength of the draught, but in the circumstances he refrained. A relaxed Lucinda would be so much easier to handle than an angry one.

  ‘So you are saying that when I become pregnant the bargain will be fulfilled?’

  The catch in her voice nearly broke his will and for a moment he thought to nullify everything and walk away. ‘A doctor will need to verify your condition, of course.’

  ‘Like a brood mare,’ she returned. Against the candlelight her pale hair shone and her eyes were back to flinty, fighting blue. During all his travels amongst the most beautiful women in the world he had never seen another like her.

  He did not want her subdued. He wanted her like this. In bed she would be magnificent.

  The thought had the flesh in his trousers swelling and he cursed, feeling like a boy again with no control over any of it. If he had any sense at all he would reach out now and strip her naked, demanding the rights all husbands received at the marriage altar and be done with any bargains. It was a God-given privilege, after all, and he had paid for her in blood and in gold.

  He knew she saw the thought, too, for her hands tightened.

  ‘I would never hurt you.’ It was suddenly important that at least she knew that.

  ‘Then let me go.’

  ‘I can’t.�
� Two words that stripped the life out of everything and his heart beat faster than ever it had during the bleak and lonely watches in the Americas when death could be forthcoming in one moment of inattention and often was. With care he reached out to gather a long curl of pale flaxen, turning it in his palm as the light caught wheat and gold and silver. ‘I can only hope for release from the demons that have hounded us for three long years. Will you be brave enough to trust me?’

  ‘Do I have any other alternative?’

  He shook his head and the pulse at her throat slowed marginally—small signs of surrender.

  To take the charade further he allowed her glance to escape from his own, falling out of contact. Eyes can take much from the soul, he thought, as she jammed her hands into the yellow silk of her skirt. He hoped dinner would be served soon. Eating would ease the tension that words were failing to do. How often had he plied an adversary with food and wine before picking the flesh of secrets clean away from the bone?

  The thought that he did not wish to hurt Lucinda in any way at all left him struck dumb with shock.

  Her innocence again and her goodness. He had had this same trouble in his bedchamber three years ago with the heady sighs of sexual release reverberating all around them—wholesomeness like some sharp-edged sword smiting evil with a conscience he had never felt so keenly before.

  She was very warm. A fire burnt low in the grate, sending out a glow of red, and she was too hot even in her light clothing. She loosened her shawl. The scent of herbs wafted in the air around her. Lavender. She would never again smell the bloom without thinking of this moment, the documents and money spilled across the table before her, sordid rewards of lust.

  ‘Marriage has left us both in a difficult position,’ he continued, ‘a no-man’s land, if you like, precluding any other relationships we might wish to pursue. But if we use the situation wisely, we may at least enjoy it.’