This was not the best way to start a meeting with the man who would be handling his affairs from now on, so Wesley drew himself up in his seat and made a profuse apology.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, affecting a look of deep contrition. “I was thinking about…” he trailed off, trying to find an appropriate pattern of thought which with to excuse himself.
Thankfully, he was saved from doing so by the waving of Mr. Tennant’s hand, followed by his saying, “Do not apologize, Your Grace. It is perfectly understandable for your thoughts to waver. It is a natural part of the grieving process as I understand it. I have seen it with a great many of my clients. Please know that you have my utmost sympathies. We will take things slowly today, so do not worry.”
This was followed by a brief and slightly uneasy smile, as though Mr. Tennant pitied him.
Right. Grief. Wesley was supposed to be grieving. He was supposed to be deserving of sympathy and pity. His father had just died, the man he ought to have looked to as a guide, as someone to emulate.
That is what this meeting is about, isn’t it?
Not grief, or death, precisely, but rather the consequences of the death that had caused his supposed grief.
And certainly, Wesley’s mother was grieving. She had hardly stopped crying since the men came and removed his father’s body from the house. Her wails echoed about the house, but try as he might, Wesley was finding it nearly impossible to feel anything about his father’s passing.
He was numb, in fact. He felt nothing. Not sadness, or its opposite. Just…nothing.
He missed his father, but not as a son misses the father he loves. Rather, he missed him as a servant might miss their master, feeling bereft when the person who had for so long ordered them about was suddenly gone. He felt confused, at sea, but he was not sad. He did not mourn.
Perhaps this was because of his father. After all, hadn’t the Duke told him in no uncertain terms that emotions had no place in a dukedom? “Never let your feelings get in the way of duty, my dear boy,” were his father’s exact words as he remembered them. They had first been uttered to him at the tender age of twelve, when his father had found Wesley crying over the loss of a long-time stable boy with whom he sometimes played.
Wesley had not considered just how deeply engrained in him this direction was until now. He didn’t feel anything because he was so afraid that if he did indeed feel sadness, loss, or any other emotion, he would fail. Failure was what his father had always schooled him against.
If Wesley grieved, felt sadness, perhaps even let himself shed a tear, he was terrified that he would not be able to go on. He would not be able to attend meetings with solicitors and talk with the steward and manage the properties. If he let himself feel anything, he would make a mess of the family name and business, disappoint his father, and prove to himself what he had suspected all along: that he was never meant to be a duke in the first place.
And yet you let yourself ponder Lady Sophia for a good five minutes earlier.
How Mr. Tennant must have looked at him, coming in here with his head in the clouds. It didn’t matter that he was grieving. This was business, and business was now his life. His duty. He couldn’t let ladies distract him, not even ones as beautiful as Lady Sophia.
Mr. Tennant cleared his throat again, and Wesley looked up to find him taking a large piece of vellum out of a pile on his desk.
The will, Wesley guessed. Little of their business could be discussed until this most important document had been read. Wesley knew what it would say, but he understood that symbolically, he and his mother needed to hear the words for themselves.
“I believe we ought to get on with the business of reading the Duke’s last will and testament, if it pleases you, Your Grace, and Your Grace,” Mr. Tennant said. Wesley and his mother both nodded their agreement, and waited as Mr. Tennant slowly began to read the page where his father’s last wishes were forever inscribed.
At first, it was all as they expected. Wesley was to inherit everything, and was additionally given the task of providing his mother with a small sum each year on which to live off. She was also given her choice of estates in which to reside, though she immediately requested to stay in Hertfordshire for the majority of the year, excepting the Season in London.
“I prefer the quiet of the countryside to London, as you know,” she told Wesley, briefly laying a hand on his arm. It was the first physical contact they had since…well, since Wesley could remember. They were not an affectionate family—it was not becoming or proper. Yet another one of his father’s rules to ensure that their house remained the coldest, least welcoming place in the world.
Mr. Tennant continued to read after his mother’s brief interjection, and Wesley nodded along at the predictable provisions. He was beginning to drift off into thought again when Mr. Tennant came to the last page.
“Further to these stipulations I request that my son, Wesley Fifett, The Marquess of Durham, my heir and, at such time as my death, the eighth Duke of Bersard, marry within one year of my death. The lady he marries must be English and high born, the daughter of at least an earl, if not higher in rank. She will also need to have at least ten thousand pounds as a dowry, and be from a family lacking entirely in scandal or intrigue. For this task I allow him one year, after which time the unentailed estate will split in half and a portion given to his distant cousin, Raymond Holborn. The portion he will retain in this event is listed below.”
At this, Wesley and his mother’s heads both shot up straight. “Pardon me, Mr. Tennant, but would you mind reading that part again? I’m not sure I heard you correctly,” Wesley said, sincerely hoping that it was his hearing that was faulty.
But when Mr. Tennant read the words again, it became clear that it was not Wesley’s hearing that was at fault. Rather, it was his father.
If Wesley did not find himself a wife in one year, the Durham, Cornwall, Essex, and Exeter estates would all fall to his cousin. Granted, these were the lesser of the family’s properties, but together they still totaled thousands of pounds in rent from tenants in the surrounding villages. Thousands of pounds that Wesley was quite certain his cousin, a dear but rather dull gentleman, would be ill-equipped to handle.
Why would Father do this?
Why risk the family’s good name this way, letting half of it fall to Raymond, a gentleman who had not even gone to school, who, the last time Wesley had seen him, cared for little else but gambling and shooting?
But then Wesley thought about his father and the way he treated Wesley. Like he didn’t quite trust him. Though he found Wesley the best tutors, sent him to the best schools, and dragged him along to countless business meetings, perhaps his father had seen what Wesley saw in himself. A reluctance to take charge, to take over the dukedom.
Wesley was not the only person who had doubted himself. Now, it would seem, his father was forcing him to prove his loyalty, or risk letting their vast holdings fall, for the first time in centuries, to someone outside the immediate family.
And of course his father would have rested all this on Wesley’s choosing of a wife. His father had tried to beat the idea of a love marriage out of Wesley with mentions of duty and connections and the need for a marriage to unite interest rather than passions. He had tried to make it as clear as could be that Wesley’s eventual wife would have to be a lady with adequate position and money.
“Find a lady who suits the family’s needs, and then marry her. Do not concern yourself with the development of affections. Rather, focus instead on the development of alliances that could suit you both. It will be far more fruitful in the long term,” he had told Wesley.
He had not mentioned that Wesley might need a wife imminently. But, then again, his father had said all that before, when they all thought he would live forever, when his father could still walk without a cane and attend his parliamentary meetings. Back when Wesley’s inheritance was a distant happening in the far future, many years away. Perhaps his fathe
r had hoped that in time, Wesley would come to terms with his fate. He would accept the dukedom and the sort of wife it required.
But his father must have thought as death approached, far sooner than he anticipated, that Wesley was not progressing fast enough. He needed a push to turn him into a gentleman onto whom his father would feel comfortable passing the family title and fortune. He needed something to stoke the fire inside him, the fire of loyalty to the family, loyalty to duty, to the ton and its crazed societal rules that governed his whole life like a puppet master.
Wesley bristled knowing his father knew him so well and trusted him so little. It was devilish indeed, but it would work. Because while Wesley hated the idea of entering into a courtship with a lady he did not love, he hated even more the idea of half the family property falling into the wrong hands. He might be reticent, but at least unlike Raymond, he knew what the dukedom entailed. He was born for it, bred for it, and all of it would be his. Of that, he would make certain.
“Oh, dear Marcus, what have you done?” Wesley’s mother said, shaking her head at the news. Wesley turned toward her and found her frowning and looking severely distressed. Her eyes were wet and her hand was shaking as she raised the handkerchief to dry the tears that had not yet fallen.
“Even in death he can’t bear to let all the responsibilities fall to your shoulders, dear Wesley,” she said with a sniffle.
It was one thing to know this, and another to hear it made plain, aloud, by his mother and in front of the family’s solicitor. It was humiliation, and it made Wesley angry, an emotion he did not often feel.
“When does the year begin, Mr. Tennant? From the day the will is read, or the day of his death?” his mother asked the solicitor. It was a good question, and Wesley turned his attention to the solicitor, hoping it was the former. It would give him a week more to find a wife, and that week might make quite a difference.
“Today, Your Grace. Your Grace,” he said, turning to Wesley, “you have until April 26th of 1819 to find and marry a lady. Your father has stipulated that I will need to be introduced to the female before a formal proposal is made, in order to ascertain that she is the right kind of lady for you. For the family. The marriage must take place by April of next year, which means you will need to present your wife to me by March, at the very latest, so that wedding arrangements can be made, banns can be read.”
Mr. Tennant must have seen the look of surprise on Wesley’s face, because he had the decency to blush and look a little cowed as he said, “He wants to ensure your choice is the right one, you understand.”
Wesley barely held back a snort at this. The humiliation was truly complete now that he would have to parade his future wife at Mr. Tennant and beg for the man’s approval. Surely his father knew how mortifying this would be.
And difficult, as well. The season was already half-way through, so it was going to be deuced hard to find a well-placed lady of good means who was not already associated with another gentleman.
Whoever she was, Wesley could be certain theirs would not be a love match. No love could ever grow under such strained conditions.
But can I find that person in so little time, and with so little experience?
He had hardly spent any time at balls this season, electing to spend the time at home with his parents, doing what he could to ease their suffering. How did one even go about finding a wife?
Looking to his right, he saw his mother looking deep in contemplation, and wondered if she was thinking the same things as he. Whether she too was trying to figure out just how they were going to fill this last and most demanding wish of his father’s.
Thankfully, there was other business to attend to, business that, while boring, took their minds off the distressing matter of marriage and distracted them with more mundane topics. The last ten minutes of the meeting were spent attending to these small matters related to the Duke’s death, and this time there were, thankfully, no surprises.
Mr. Tennant informed them that Wesley would gain administrative control over his father’s bank accounts, though the whole of the fortune would not be transferred onto him until he was married. Still, he had access to a sum of money large enough to keep his mother comfortable, and his own account would continue to be funded from his father’s, providing him a tidy sum each month he would do with what he liked. Which was, in this case, buying a very large bottle of whiskey with which to drown his sorrows and anxieties. Not that he told Mr. Tennant that.
As Mr. Tennant was walking them out, Wesley turned his eyes back toward the row of chairs and found the delightful, delicious Lady Sophia still sitting there, looking as enticing as she had a half hour before. She was staring at him with an intensity that made the back of his neck feel overly warm, and it was all he could do to keep his balance as he bowed to her and her father.
“Your Grace,” the Duke of Wellingson said, causing Wesley to tear his eyes away from the Duke’s daughter as he straightened back up. “Now that you’re taking over from your father, I’d like to meet with you. Your father was on a parliamentary committee with me that dealt with some foreign investments, and we were working on a bill of a rather time sensitive nature.”
“Of course. I can meet you tomorrow morning at ten, if that suits you,” Wesley said. He spoke to the Duke, but his eyes stayed on Lady Sophia’s, and as he and his mother left the solicitor’s, he found himself desperately hoping that the Duke’s daughter would be in residence when he came to call. Seeing her face would brighten up even the dullest of business meetings. It was a face he was quite certain, in fact, could brighten up anything. A face he would very much like to look upon for the rest of his days, if he had his druthers. Which his father had made quite certain he did not.
Chapter 6
On the day of the Duke of Bersard’s visit, Sophia was dressed in her finest red morning gown and ensconced in the library well before ten o’clock.
She was normally a late riser, especially on dreary days like this one, when it pleased her to languish in bed for most of the morning. There was no time for languishing today, however. Not if she wanted to catch a glimpse of the Duke, and she most certainly did. She had in fact thought of little else since their meeting.
Indeed, she had practically jumped for joy when her father had asked that the Duke pay him a call the next day. Sophia had been in such good spirits afterward that she even let her mother share the day’s gossip with her, telling her who was engaged, who was ruined, and who was nearing spinsterhood. Normally, she abhorred such things, but she had found that with the prospect of another glimpse of the Duke on the horizon, she was perfectly capable of bearing her mother’s nattering.
Now, she eagerly awaited such a glimpse, and was seated near one of the library’s windows, which faced out onto the street below, allowing her to watch for the arrival of the Duke of Bersard’s carriage.
She wondered how he had been occupying himself since their meeting. Was there much to do when one assumed a title higher than one’s current title? She imagined so, but she was curious about how the gentleman spent his free time. Did he read?
I hope so. He would be truly perfect if he were to enjoy literature even a little.
These and other questions had run rampant through her mind since last night. He had in fact so occupied her thoughts that she could not even focus on the serials she had been practically begging her father to leave her alone with only the other morning. Indeed, the work, A Necklace of Diamonds, though filled with the exact sort of romantic plotline Sophia loved, could hardly hold her attention. Not when she could make up her own romantic story with the Duke as the hero.
She knew it was wrong to be fantasizing about a stranger when she was being courted by another. Why, Lord Montrose was due to visit later that very day. He might even decide to finally propose to her, and Sophia would have to accept, because she had no other choice.
At least the proposal would be in private. Lord Montrose had promised her a ride in the park, but with th
e weather looking so wet and dreary, she knew they would be sequestered to the drawing room. They would be alone with Erin and the tea set. He would propose, and then perhaps they would discuss his wedding outfit. Sophia was certain he would pay it great attention, certainly more so than he did his bride.
If only it was the Duke calling on me, the Duke having tea with me.
The thought made her smile, and she turned back toward the window. Just then, her eyes caught sight of a carriage coming down the road. On its side was a crest with a falcon and a large B. Presumably, for Bersard. Hoping that was the case, she plastered herself to the window, even going so far as to press her cheek to the glass so she could get a better look at the Duke as he alighted from the carriage.
Even on a dreary day he is beautiful.
He was taller than she remembered, and his hair was slightly wet, clinging to his forehead in small curls she imagined tracing with her fingers. The thought sent heat racing down her belly and made her legs feel wobbly, and she had to grip the windowsill tighter to steady herself.
Addicted to a Rascal Duke: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 5
