Duke of Disgrace (Dukes of Destiny Book 3)

by Whitney Blake

  His and Isabel’s conversation would not go well. So few of theirs did that he couldn’t imagine a world in which broaching the universally disapproved subject of divorce would be any better than discussing something so mundane as the dinner menu for a party.

  And everything about the pursuit itself would be arduous. There would have to be a separation between them, and first he would have to find a lover of hers to involve in a suit. It wasn’t about being awarded damages—Jeremy didn’t care about getting money out of any of the rakes his wife had bedded. He just wanted to be free. He wanted both of them to be.

  Maybe if he made sure Isabel knew that he wasn’t expecting anything from any of her lovers, it would make her more compliant? Was there even a way to hold a criminal conversation without money being part of things? He scowled. He doubted it. Some would have to change hands to lend verisimilitude. It would be highly irregular or even unheard of for a duke to be disinterested in being awarded damages. Besides, it didn’t really matter if he intended to give the money right back to the man coughing it up. He could not see anyone really agreeing to such a scheme.

  He was sure Isabel had good points that he did not witness, so it was not necessarily that she could not elicit such devotion. He just did not know if any of the men she had taken up with had either the means or the gentility to make such an agreement with him.

  After all of that, then the actual divorce trial, he would have to petition Parliament. Everything would lead to the absolute assassination of her character. Whatever there was left of it. He could not see her being amenable to losing her status, or her ability to frequent the balls and musicales and events she so enjoyed. As a divorcée, it was certain that she would be ostracized, if not forever, then for a considerable amount of time.

  He was less concerned with his own reputation, though he was not so naive to think that it would improve if he went through with this.

  To get what he wanted, he would have to assure Isabel that she would be well-kept. Unless she found someone to marry her—provided they even could remarry—supplying her with an income would be the only way, really, that she could subsist at a level to which she was accustomed.

  He could do as the whispers said other husbands had done: simply not tell her anything at all until he tried to begin the processes. But the truth was, he knew everyone of the ton talked. Even enemies ended up knowing exactly what their enemies were up to. If someone noticed him trying to sneak around London trying to get everything taken care of, she would find out about it.

  He wanted to control how she found out and when.

  So far, he had not even glanced at their marriage contract. He already knew that nothing within it would signify some aspect had ever been broken. That would be much too easy, as it would mean he could try for an annulment.

  Scotland is looking better and better by the day. Though not, perhaps, in regards to the weather. He rubbed at his face. God, maybe it would just be easier to just get Isabel to cease her ways. I don’t know if that would be enough for me, he thought. It wouldn’t.

  Miss Masbeck’s serendipitous arrival into his life had shown him that he wanted more out of marriage and family than what his mother and father had modeled for him. Indeed, what many people of his acquaintance had modeled for him. He wanted more out of life than he was getting, overall.

  It was, perhaps, shockingly romantic and laughably silly. The stuff of a play or a song, and certainly nothing most men would ever admit to—even if they felt the same. Before her, things felt bearable. Or, they might not have, exactly, but he could act as though they were. He’d thought the worst thing that could happen to him would be courting more scandal, but if more scandal was the way in which he might find happiness, then he could endure it.

  The day he’d arrived home and overheard Isabel sniping at Paul, their mother, and Miss Masbeck, it took Miss Masbeck some time to look at him properly again. He didn’t want to corner her, so he did have to wait until they were in his office alone before she would speak.

  The first thing she said was about those bloody farmers. “I believe both Mr. Corbett and Mr. Smith are available at the time you specified, your grace.”

  Jeremy stared at her, wondering how much of her no-nonsense calmness was a front for feeling humiliated or even just put out of sorts by his wife.

  “At least that will be one thing taken care of properly,” he said, a little woodenly. But he could not expect that she’d say anything out of the ordinary simply because he was back in Rosethorpe.

  She was looking through a massive ledger that she’d propped up on the windowsill. Or, no, it wasn’t a ledger—it was a map of the surrounding lands. Chances were, she would not speak to him directly about anything of import at all.

  “I might suggest that you remind them that there’s actually a brook running between their properties. I think it could serve as a natural boundary marker. The fence isn’t at all necessary.”

  “Well, those of us with sense and without grudges knew that.”

  She smiled, but she didn’t smile directly at him, instead tracing the line of the brook on the map with her long, graceful index finger. “It’s easy to get caught up in your own interpretation of things. Your own convictions. I feel rather bad for them. They’ve probably never been out of this area in their whole lives. That must be limiting.”

  “Perceptive, Miss Masbeck.”

  Jeremy hesitated before going to close the door. She did look away from the map, then, her eyes following his actions with wary interest. He tried not to take it personally, especially in light of what Wenwood had divulged to him about her past.

  He had the unseemly and searing need to find Lord Rowling and rip him from limb to limb.

  “Lady Hareden asked your brother why you and I were in here with the door shut the day that he and I met,” she said mildly.

  “Lady Hareden was being willfully obtuse.”

  Her lush, pink lips twitched but she did not laugh. It was close enough for Jeremy, who took it as a good sign that she was willing to laugh at such a thing, even if she felt she should not. “I did get the feeling that she was rather like a cat with trapped mice.”

  “I must apologize for her behavior. All of it. All of it since you were first employed and even her behavior before then,” said Jeremy. “When I caught you, you were not even my employee, yet.”

  After she shut the book of maps, Miss Masbeck went quite still. The sunlight coming through the window framed her to perfection. “Her grace seems unhappy,” she said. Caution colored her words.

  “She is, but that is no excuse.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is she unhappy, you mean?”

  Miss Masbeck nodded. Jeremy went to her, taking care to move slowly so she had ample time to move if she wanted. She didn’t move, which encouraged him. “I don’t understand it,” she said.

  “Hearts are difficult to decipher. And I do not think I am in a position, even as her husband, to ask and receive an honest answer.” Jeremy himself still didn’t know, beyond the basic fact that Isabel had not wanted to marry him, why she was so displeased. It was possible that things were just that simple. He had been through much, yet he acknowledged that he would never know what it was like to be a woman with little say in her life.

  “They are,” she said, tilting her head. “I-I am still going to speak to that landlady about taking residence in Aldbury. I don’t think it’s advisable that I live here.”

  He found it curious that she would broach the subject then. Telling, even. “You must do what you feel is best,” he said, “but may I ask why? You are not at all obtrusive or burdensome.”

  “In his last letter, my father mentioned he’d heard that you and I, your grace, had begun a… liaison.” Miss Masbeck rested her hand on the shining, lacquered windowsill and avoided his eyes. She was, sensed Jeremy, lying outright. “He knew it was not true, but I do worry that others will not see the truth. That is, if such talk has spread or will spread. Perhap
s if I am not living in the manor, it will help things settle.”

  “We have done no such thing,” said Jeremy calmly. Standing this close to her, he could smell her perfume, something more reminiscent of citrus than many women’s often were. He loved it. It brought to mind sunny days and the sea, deeply buried memories of childhood visits to the ocean.

  She looked at him. “I have to say something, and I do not know what it will say about me.”

  Jeremy’s stomach lurched, for he suspected that he knew what she might say, or roughly what she might say. “Say it, anyway.”

  Miss Masbeck swallowed, glanced at her feet, then back up at him. “I would not mind if we did. No, more than that, I have been contemplating what it might be like.”

  “Have you?”

  She nodded. “I fear that if I do not remove myself from the manor, I may do something which feels good in the moment but is ultimately not to either of our advantages,” she said, then she nibbled at the skin of her own lower lip. “It may not seem like it, but I have made rash choices in the past. I fear doing so, again.”

  So elated was Jeremy that he could have punched the air if he were a more lively man, but he had been taught to be reserved in his expression of emotions. Instead of punching the air, he surged forward and kissed Miss Masbeck.

  On balance, it was a worse show of sentiment.

  Reminiscing as he sat in the very room where his first kiss for, well, years, had happened, he thought that as far as kisses went, it was the best one he’d ever given, received, or otherwise participated in.

  Warm, almost blisteringly so, but full of longing and something that might have been close to tenderness. Miss Masbeck had been surprised, but she did not deny him and was just as enthusiastic as he. The first instant in which they were kissing told Jeremy everything he needed to know about his romantic or sexual life thus far: he had never actually kissed someone he fully loved or was so attracted to.

  Everything else had been, at best, a pleasing diversion, or at worst—being married to Isabel, namely—undertaken out of his sense of what had to be right in the world. That blinding realization and searing kiss had occurred several weeks ago, now.

  Apart from making some theoretical advances within his own mind, he was materially no closer to securing a future with Miss Masbeck. All he could keep doing was thinking, plotting and running through the worst things that could happen. Even if he came to be in a position where he could remarry, he might very well be a social pariah by then. As much as a duke could be. She might not want him at all.

  But if the way she responded was an indication, she felt the same spark between them.

  True to form, though, she broke from him gently after minutes of what felt like a blissful eternity. With a rueful look, she said, rather cryptically, “Believe me, I would.”

  Nothing between them had changed, to an outsider. But Jeremy believed the spark had developed into a fire that needed to be tended.

  He would quite simply go mad if it was not.

  *

  London was beautiful in autumn. It gave Charlotte some pleasure to be back in the city at a time when she felt it looked its best. The parks were all host to different trees whose leaves were shifting, while the alternating rain and cool sunshine dappled stone, brick, roads, and vegetation. With Lord Hareden’s leave, rather than taking several shorter visits, she proposed that she be allowed a fortnight instead. The final week of September and the first week of October suited his schedule, and so, he waved her off with a smile that did not belie the fact that they had intimately embraced in his office.

  Very little had changed between them since then, she thought. It was driving her to overthink what, exactly, that kiss had meant. So it was with some confusion that her mother and father found her rather less lively than usual, especially during her favorite season of the year.

  She was not sad, exactly, but she was incredibly contemplative. She just didn’t know how to explain that to them. One slightly foggy morning, she sat across from her father after a fully sleepless night, sluggishly adding sugar to her tea and wondering if using more of it would wake her. Sugar took Aunt Edith that way—made her rather prone to bouts of activity.

  Charlotte had, of course, been thinking of Lord Hareden. It was blasted hard not to, now that she knew what his lips felt like. Plush, for a man’s, but just the slightest bit roughened. She’d also done rather more than think, but luckily, her bedroom was not near her parents’ chamber.

  What had he been thinking when he kissed her? To have months of tangible attraction between them, then to go so suddenly to kissing the duke because he’d initiated it was quite a change. A shock to the system.

  It was breathtaking nonetheless. She had not kissed many people overall, but knew with certainty that she never wanted to kiss anyone else.

  That could, and would probably, turn out to be tragic for her.

  She knew he was a decent man. He could not possibly want to kiss her just to spite Lady Hareden. If he wanted to kiss out of spite, he could have done so long before now, and Paul had all but made it clear that Lord Hareden was not pursuing other women. Or maybe he had kissed her out of spite. Spite and pique. She didn’t know. In general, she trusted him, but she was unsure how deeply that trust was merited. Her heart could have been lying to her. It had done that, before.

  Irritated, she stirred her tea.

  But think of it rationally, she thought. What do you think he’s going to do?

  He did have a tendency to cope through what she felt was passivity.

  She could hope and dream, but until he actually did something—and she was not sure what she expected, because legally separating from Lady Hareden could only be described as complex, and that was a mild word to use—her fantasies would remain exactly that. He also would not go through such a thing just to marry her. Would he?

  The aristocracy hardly did that under the best of circumstances, for each other, much less for commoners. They just ran off with someone instead.

  Ah, there are Lord and Lady Wenwood. But neither of them had undergone a hellish ordeal before marrying. Lord Wenwood caused tongues to wag by marrying under his station, yet he had still been free to do so. Lord Hareden already bore a burden of gossip, now, because of his flagrantly adulterous wife. He would only create more talk by going through all the procedures to divorce her. Unless… was it what Lady Hareden wanted? In some roundabout, misguided way?

  Charlotte sipped her tea and dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it entered her head. That seemed patently absurd. She could imagine many circumstances in which women might want a divorce. Cruelty, abuse. Yet that did not mean that they could get them. Lady Hareden was not suffering that kind of thing and so Charlotte could not see why she would want to go through all the turmoil. Even though, ironically, her husband was one of the select class of men who could afford it.

  Charlotte wished he had not kissed her. But she’d stood there and accepted it. Participated in it. Wholeheartedly. Oh, she’d wanted that kiss and it was as good as she’d hoped. Honeyed, and passionate, and—

  “Darling, you’re rather quiet this morning,” said Father. “Are you feeling quite the thing?”

  “I’m sorry, Father. I’m just a little lost in thought, it seems.”

  He studied her with some concern in his eyes. “Are they at least good thoughts?”

  “Some are and some aren’t,” she said. “Do you remember anything in the papers about the Wenwoods’ marriage?”

  If he was surprised by the question, he hid it well. “Your mother might. She’s always liked the society-related columns more than me, I must confess. If there was anything, I would have missed it. I do know that, on occasion, someone will try to be snide about Lady Wenwood’s origins and Lord Wenwood simply won’t stand for it.” He took a bite of his egg, then said when he was finished swallowing, “Why do you ask?”

  “I just wonder if… I only wonder… whether the mood toward Lady Wenwood has shifted.” She
knew that it had not, exactly.

  Father was too astute to be fooled by her false nonchalance. He set down his teacup. “Has something happened?”

  “A great many things, I’d wager,” said Charlotte, smiling. “You must be more specific.” If her mother was present, her light teasing would have received a huff of annoyance. Happily, Mother was visiting with a friend.

  “Has anything happened between you and Lord Hareden?”

  Well, Father had never been one to prevaricate. Charlotte knew that he trusted her even after the debacle with Lord Rowling, so he was not asking with any disappointment. If anything, he was a little astounded.

  “Nothing protracted.”

  “Lottie…”

  “We kissed. Near the end of the summer. Nothing else has happened, and it’s been weeks.” Charlotte hastened to reassure him. “I don’t—well, it’s not that I don’t want anything else to happen. But nothing more will happen.” Beseeching, she leaned toward her father. “It was not without its motivations, but I do not think either of us was expecting it.”

  Father mulled that over. “But you…”

  “I was willing.”

  “Yet he is…”

  “Married. Yes.” Charlotte tried not to sound despondent.

  “Even I have heard of his wife, dear heart. Does he… seek out women… often?”

  “I don’t think he does.”

  Father was about to ask another question; she could guess by the way his eyebrows were raising and his mouth opened slightly. But it was at that moment that Annette, the maid employed by the Masbecks to help Mrs. Masbeck mind the house, entered the parlor and said, “Mr. Masbeck, there is a Lord Hareden here to see—”