Duke of Disgrace (Dukes of Destiny Book 3)

by Whitney Blake

  He tended to favor equality between the sexes more than other men of his station, with the notable exception of Wenwood, of course. This notion colored his view of the lower classes in some ways. So it felt very strange to him that in this question of fidelity, there might not ever be the same standards for both a duke and a duchess.

  “Your grace?”

  It took him several moments to realize that Miss Masbeck was speaking to him.

  “Hm?” he came out of his reverie and focused on her properly. How embarrassing. He must have been staring at her for however long he’d been mulling things over. His mother, no help at all, gave a soft huff of amusement.

  “There is a small suite of rooms overlooking the front of the grounds that should do nicely,” she said to Miss Masbeck.

  “They’ve not been used in years,” said Jeremy, thinking of the last time they’d been occupied. They had been Paul’s, and he did not occupy them on his visits, now, preferring instead a blue room that had a view of the mews.

  “With a bit of dusting, I should think they’d be fine. I’ll have a maid see to it and air things out. If Miss Masbeck resides in them, she will be away from any noise and situated apart from the servants—for she is not a servant, is she?”

  Distracted, Jeremy said the first thing that came to mind. “Perhaps the village might be a better option, after all?”

  Hurriedly, Miss Masbeck said, “I’ve a little saved from my employment with Lord and Lady Wenwood. It should be enough with which to secure modest rooms.”

  Jeremy glanced at his mother to see how she would react.

  “That could be for the best in the future,” she agreed at last. He knew that she valued her own privacy and independence enough to understand that Miss Masbeck might not want to be thrust into a strange household so intimately, especially at her age. She was not a young girl who expected to be made subservient. “But because you are going to be given something of a trial period, the least we could do is house you for the duration.”

  He nodded his consent. It was an elegant solution. And to be fair, if he didn’t have to live in a house with both his mother and Isabel together, he would jump at the opportunity.

  “I hadn’t really considered that point,” he said. “For that time, you can reside here. If you do well and I retain you, you may stay in the village if you wish.” He smiled. Again. For the life of him, he could not understand why he kept wanting to smile. “Living on your own as an unmarried woman may either help or tarnish your name depending on whose opinion you are seeking but, at the least, you would have more independence.”

  Mother watched his smile with open interest. He promptly tried to straighten his expression.

  “I’ve reached my majority, your grace. And as a spinster, I don’t believe anyone will judge me for being on my own,” Miss Masbeck replied archly. “Or spare me a second glance.”

  She said it like she thought she was not enticing and also shelved forever. Good Lord. Jeremy knew for a fact that as a married man he shouldn’t be actively thinking a woman other than his wife was beautiful. Even if his wife was making him a wittol.

  His own sense of honor didn’t abide by the thought that Isabel’s own sins might give him carte blanche. But Miss Masbeck was lovely. He couldn’t decide if her eyes were blue or gray, but they were deep and somehow restful. Though her attire was somewhat conservative because it was chosen for travel, it did not hide her figure, which was intriguingly—stop. Don’t even go down that road, Jeremy instructed himself.

  He thought about her mind, instead.

  Before they’d moved on to this current discussion of lodgings, he’d quizzed her on the best practice for filing documents. He inquired how she might handle an irate, flustered or upset visitor. He even asked small questions about the law.

  She never faltered nor did she give a bad answer. It was clear that she did not have a deep knowledge of the law itself, but she admitted that she at least kept up with contemporary discussions and debates about politics.

  Even that was attractive, somehow. Rare for a woman to be open about it, too, lest they be branded as “unladylike”. It was not that Isabel was stupid or insipid, but when it came to civic and philosophical matters, she was utterly disinterested. In the early days of their marriage, she had managed to pretend to be interested in his work. But the facade did wear off eventually.

  Unsettled, Jeremy did not want to consider the thought that if all it took was meeting Miss Masbeck to prompt this line of thought, perhaps his mother was right about sending Isabel away.

  “Nonsense. I am sure you have had your share of suitors, Miss Masbeck,” she said.

  If Jeremy was not mistaken, a shadow crossed Miss Masbeck’s face. Interesting. What was it that Wenwood had mentioned to Mother? Miss Masbeck was itching to get away from London, but still cared about her parents enough to stay close.

  Despite trying not to, Jeremy wondered why she wanted to flee so badly she considered taking a position that was in uncharted waters.

  *

  The next morning dawned far too quickly for Charlotte’s liking. She had never been one to rise on time and on account of being in a new place, she found it difficult to fall asleep. She’d tossed and turned nearly until the sun rose, glowing through the slightly faded red curtains. She knew that the rooms, one bedroom and another small dressing room, had once been used by Lord Hareden’s younger brother. But there was nothing overtly masculine about them now. He had moved all of his personal belongings out, leaving only evidence of a penchant for crimsons of various types. It was disconcerting. She imagined fancifully, still half-asleep, that residing here was rather like being inside a poppy flower.

  Yawning and trying to summon the impetus to leave the bed, she thought through yesterday’s first interview and this ensuing day. She was to report to Lord Hareden’s office at ten this morning.

  Since they had left the breakfast room yesterday, she hadn’t seen him and was at her leisure. Since she did not want to risk running into the duchess again, either literally or metaphorically, she’d asked the dowager duchess if it would be possible to make use of a parlor until her room was readied. Obligingly, the older woman had instead shown her the way to the library. It was as though she understood the unspoken fear of crossing paths with her daughter-in-law.

  Unsurprisingly, the library was impressive, a vast room almost as big as a great hall with exposed crossbeams. The room was stuffed with books on a great many subjects, including the law and English civic histories, which she assumed was due to the current duke’s influence.

  Charlotte tried not to let her thoughts linger overlong on the duke. Even some harmless, girlish infatuation would be beyond the pale. She was going to be working for him, for pity’s sake.

  He simply treated you fairly and did not scoff at your proclivity for “men’s” matters… and managed to be strikingly handsome while doing both.

  She’d noticed that he tended to gesture or emphasize points with his left hand more than his missing right one. What remained of the right was not as grotesque as she might have imagined, either. Charlotte thought, Well. His face and the rest of his body are seemingly unscathed, and he managed to catch you with his right arm despite having no right hand. She smiled to herself ruefully.

  That had been a meeting. He’d braced her quite firmly with his own body, which was strong and fully capable of keeping her steady. It was only her nerves that had been jarred.

  She’d been all but certain that she’d be sent back to London immediately upon almost injuring the Duchess of Bowland. So much for impressing her prospective employer.

  Yet instead of being chastised, she found herself gazing into eyes that were the color of bluebells in the cool shade. The bluebell-eyed man wore a grave, concerned expression, his chin more darkly stubbled than most men of the ton kept theirs. He didn’t grope her or shove her away, and he instead set her on her feet like she was actually a dignified human being.

  Even Charlotte, who
was well past the age of being impressed by male theatrics, had to admit that it was quite the show of both reflexes, especially given his lack of a hand, and chivalry.

  The truth was, she did not believe he was being theatric. Just decent.

  The duchess was another story. Far from reacting with any grace to their collision—and Charlotte could understand being startled, but she could not understand making a great fuss over not being hurt—Lady Hareden had shown no interest in civilized behavior toward an inferior.

  That wasn’t something Charlotte should think and she certainly would not give voice to it. None of this was permissible to be thinking, really. Her family was from the wealthier middle classes like Lady Wenwood’s. It was not low, exactly. Her mother’s people dealt in cloth, while her father’s had been either scriveners or, more recently, clerks for generations. Both of her parents had not strayed very far from their lines. Her mother still minded the shop that her own parents had established, though she did not directly oversee the production of goods.

  Charlotte still had no room to be awarding a duchess with criticism. Or to be growing warm when she thought of a duke who had not let himself go to seed and still had incredibly strong arms, for that matter.

  But both the duke and the dowager duchess had, in their own ways, come to her defense. It was not difficult to sense the tension between the three. One could have scooped through the air with a spoon. She now had no reason to believe the rumors about the duchess’ infidelity were just malicious gossip.

  Charlotte sat up in bed, her yawns becoming interspersed with frowns as she thought everything over. She’d never heard of a wife stepping out on a husband so brazenly.

  She was not naive. She knew they could and did. If or when it happened, it was just not generally so gleeful? Flagrant?

  She had a baker’s dozen of important things to be mulling over. A plan of attack for the duke’s study, for one. She shouldn’t be wasting time on this. But why was the duchess so unpleasant? Some people just were, supposed Charlotte. Or it was possible that the duke was conjugally violent, but she couldn’t really think he was. At least, she hoped he wasn’t.

  As she rose and dressed herself, she tried and failed not to think about anything that was not immediately secretarial.

  *

  A barrister’s business encompassed so much more than she’d expected, Charlotte realized. And a duke’s affairs extended even past that.

  Or perhaps that was just the way this duke did things. Lord Wenwood was kind and fair, but Lord Hareden seemed to be pulling himself into twelve different directions trying to ensure justice and the law were looked after. If she didn’t know better, she might say it was in the name of atonement. The numerous cases she saw reflected in his impractical filing system all had one thing in common: they were services performed gratis.

  She couldn’t begin to guess why a duke, any duke, and especially this duke who was not in need of bolstering his finances, would work as a barrister. Somehow it stymied her even more that he did it without compensation.

  He was also nearly obsessive about keeping detailed records of the estate and his own business ventures. Neither were necessarily in her remit, but he had a terrible predilection for mixing all of his records up regardless of theme.

  So, even if he did not wish her to, she was seeing many papers that were not exactly relevant to her new post.

  It was the one thing that riled her. She’d fast discovered that the only time Lord Hareden would snap at her, it was over some misunderstanding about the record-keeping or simple local knowledge.

  Of course, they were barely through one working day. It was only late afternoon. But she felt that if he had been more fastidious in showing which records pertained to his work, which to his estate, and which to more personal matters, she would not be so confused.

  “No, St. Margaret’s is in Aldbury,” he said in response to her asking for clarification about where an old churchyard was. A gravedigger had been due his wages for several months and gone to Lord Hareden for aid in procuring them.

  Aldbury is the village nearest here, isn’t it? she wondered, utterly lost. She sat most unladylike on the rug, papers strewn across her lap and scattered around her person like they were the plucked feathers of an enormous goose.

  Narrowing his eyes, the duke said, “Aldbury is the village closest to the manor.” He was just across the room, standing near floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that she knew were crammed with double rows of books and ledgers.

  Praying for more patience, she said, “I didn’t pass through it on my way here, so forgive me for not knowing the geography yet. Your grace, has this always been the primary Bowland residence?”

  “In my lifetime and my father’s,” he said, shrugging. “My grandfather uprooted his family.”

  “So, you are slightly more urban than many of your predecessors.”

  “Yes—why do you ask, Miss Masbeck?”

  She let her eyes fall to one of the nearest sheaves of paper. “Your cases—many of them originate in Aldbury, yet it does not belong to you as such.” She sighed. “I mean to say, it is not yours in the sense that you are entitled to its revenues and resources.”

  “I have invested in several ventures there, as you can see. In the traditional sense, the village itself is not part of the estate,” he said crisply. “We need not discuss this. I have a steward for these matters.”

  Charlotte felt herself go pink at the ears and considered herself rebuffed. She did not bring up his woeful organizational system, although she dearly wanted to. She might not be a steward, as he pointed out, but she was seeing almost everything a steward would see due to the way Lord Hareden “organized” his affairs.

  Why would he help the people of a village that was not technically part of his estate? He had told her that he engaged in his cases as a matter of estate management.

  Some of them did have direct ties to it. There were some issues originating in Oxfordshire in another small village—more of a hamlet, really, on her brief inspection—whose taxes went directly to Lord Hareden. She surmised that Oxfordshire, then, was the ancestral seat of the Bowland family.

  But she was seeing that many cases simply did not have these pragmatic links. It was none of her business, but she was intrigued about why he was lying. Or, more aptly, that he was reshaping the truth a little bit.

  “I apologize, your grace.”

  “It isn’t necessary.” He turned away from her and looked at his books. “You are learning. I would do well to remember that.”

  “How long were you a barrister before you went away?” She didn’t want to say “to Salamanca” or “to Spain”.

  He did not seem to mind this question. “I wasn’t. I read law at Oxford, but then my father suggested that I enlist. He did not see the point in my prior education, but he had indulged me.”

  “Was he a soldier?” Belatedly, she added, “Or an officer?”

  Mostly she wanted to know if soldiering was a family affair for the Bowland men. She knew that aristocratic men could find social acclaim or personal glory as officers. Like anything, even that could be fragile, though. Just look at the Duke of York and all that business, she thought wryly.

  “Neither, but he did romanticize it,” said the duke with a little, subdued laugh. “I think he always wanted to be. I could have told him it was nicer not being in the line of fire at all.”

  She thought about that. It was an understatement, and not just for men who had been visibly injured.

  Sorting a group of notes about a Mr. Tomlin and a fire in his public house so that they were all together, she said, “I’m sure he was proud of you.” As soon as she said it, she cringed and was glad his back was turned. How trite it sounded.

  “Thank you, Miss Masbeck. I think he was, but I don’t know for sure. We did not speak much of those things.”

  You mean you did not speak of your feelings, your grace? she thought. He said it without much emotion, but it still struck her as rather
sad. She had always known when her parents approved or disapproved of her. Thankfully, they had never disapproved of her interests or encouraged her toward a more womanly path. Her father had obviously even encouraged her in the less traditional direction. She’d been stubborn, though, so there had sometimes been moments of chagrin toward her quick temper or harsh words.

  Largely, she’d grown out of that.

  “What of you, then?” The duke turned around and eyed her with those impossibly beautiful, dark blue eyes of his. He crossed his arms and leaned against the shelf. “I may be a fool for not having asked before setting you to a task.”

  “What of me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know your father ‘apprenticed’ you, so to speak, but what kind of schooling have you had?”

  “I did not go to Oxford, if that is what you mean,” she said, somewhat jokingly, wishing she did not know what it felt like to be resting against his chest as she stared up at him.

  “That would have been incredibly impressive, as you are both a woman and younger than I am, I presume.”

  He smiled. Heavens above, it was like the sun breaking through storm clouds.

  “My parents taught me to read and write alongside my older brother, Ethan,” she said, thinking about how to tell him without sounding utterly inadequate. “The same with sums, although I did less of them as time went on. There was not as much of a need.” Pausing, she elaborated, “I don’t know, your grace, it is so informal and certainly nothing like your own.”

  “I admire education however and wherever it is to be found. I am only curious, not looking for a way to back out of our agreement.”

  It was Charlotte’s turn to smile. How inscrutable this man was. He appeared so formidable, yet he was seemingly one of the most open-minded individuals she had come across.

  “I read everything I could get my hands on and my brother shared what he got his hands on—” Then she went absolutely, flaming red. She knew she did from the heat in her cheeks. What a thing to say to a man with one hand! “I mean to say…”