Duke of Disgrace (Dukes of Destiny Book 3)

by Whitney Blake

  “I know.” His expressive eyes, eyes she could happily drown in, searched hers. “Would you wait for me?”

  Her logic wanted to say “no”, but as it had already, her heart won before reason could.

  “Yes.” She closed her eyes, letting them flutter shut. “But don’t propose marriage yet. It would not be right.”

  And what if it all comes to naught? It was better to try, she concluded. If her heart was to be broken, she wanted it smashed to pieces and not simply bruised from speculation alone.

  “No, it wouldn’t, and that is not how I’d want to start things.” She heard the smile in his tone. “Will you call me ‘Jeremy’, now?”

  “Only if we’re not going to be overheard,” she said with reluctance.

  “Paul will have kept everyone downstairs for the moment.”

  She opened her eyes. “Because he knew you and I were going to talk about this?”

  “Gracious, no, even he’s not so intuitive as to be a mind reader. Because he knows it’s easier to keep people going about their duties than it is to let them scatter willy-nilly.” There was a fire in his expression that she had never seen. Hope, she realized. It was just so foreign on his chiseled features. “Miss Masbeck, will you please address me as I’ve asked you to?”

  “When I feel like I can,” she said.

  “That is enough for me.”

  “You may call me ‘Lottie’, if you’d like,” she said, as a heady mixture of joy and nerves wracked through her, “though I’d appreciate it if you did not within the hearing of anyone else.”

  “Since you’re going to remain working for me, I shall adhere to the strictest bounds of propriety.” The duke—Jeremy—crossed his heart solemnly, as though they were children making a vow, as his blue eyes twinkled.

  “Lord, am I?” she asked. “You won’t dismiss me?”

  His face fell. “Are you?”

  She thought on it, talking as she did. “I fear there will be gossip either way.” Jeremy held his tongue as she came to sit on the foot of the bed well out of the way of his ankles and feet. The primary question was whether she could bear being in such close proximity to him as she knew he was undertaking measures to leave his lady wife. She would also possibly have to see him ridiculed or maligned in the process. Would it be better for her to be at his side? Yes. She could not be parted from him. “But I would like to remain as your secretary. If you do your best not to let me know what, exactly, is happening as it happens.” She did not have to specify what she meant, because Jeremy nodded at once. “I don’t want to know until it is done.”

  Newspapers would ruin that illusion for her, but at least she wouldn’t be hearing it from him, which seemed like it could be more excruciating.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  She studied his face, hardly letting herself think or hope that one day this man could be hers. It was such a new proposition that it would take some time to feel like reality. How quickly the images came, though, images of herself with children, learning to manage an estate—then more salacious ones of what man and wife did together.

  Oh, bugger, she thought, borrowing one of Ethan’s favorite curse words. Man and wife. She was going to have to tell Jeremy about Tom. Well, Lord Rowling. Much to her embarrassment, she wondered if Jeremy knew Lord Rowling. Paul might, as well. But a fiancé would expect to know such a thing and for his future wife to be unsullied.

  There was nothing for it but to risk cooling his passion for her. Even if she didn’t say anything at the outset, it would probably become clear at some point that she was no innocent. If they got what they wanted, that is. If they didn’t, then she could still face a few minutes of mortification for honesty’s sake. He’d had so little transparency in his life that she felt she owed it to him.

  “There’s something I need to confess.”

  “Confess? That sounds incredibly serious. Have you murdered someone?” He said it in a low, playful tone, leaning against his pillows and headboard.

  “Well, you may judge me more for what I have done, actually.”

  “I told you once that I would not mind being a confidante to you. That is how I still feel. I can’t imagine anything you’ve done that would make me judge you.”

  He had said he’d be her confidante. She’d revisited the moment many times in her memories. “Then you should know, especially if you are planning to put so much at stake, that I was once engaged to be married. It did not go as I planned.” Charlotte clasped her hands in her lap, worried that they might betray her and reach for whatever part of him she could reach, simply for the human contact and comfort. It would be better to get to the point, so she did. “He and I were intimate before the engagement was broken, however.”

  Jeremy’s eyes were on her; she felt the intensity of his full attention. Still, she looked at her hands. Continuing so that he would catch her point if he had not already, she said, “And not just in a manner that is public and proper. He did not just hold my hand or buy me flowers. We did much more than that.”

  She loathed that she had to bear this shamefully when Jeremy had most likely not been a virgin before his own wedding night. There was apparently nothing wrong with that, according to society, as long as he wasn’t flamboyant about it. In fact, she thought, she’d never heard of any man being referred to as a virgin, only girls and women. Naturally, it wasn’t something that would be discussed in front of her anyway.

  She willed these thoughts to come to a full stop. They weren’t really of any use.

  “You might be surprised how many engaged couples aren’t proper in their intimacies,” said Jeremy. He was not being unkind.

  “Pardon?”

  “If you loved this man and he said he loved you, I don’t believe you did anything beyond the pale or even out of the ordinary. We all have pasts, especially once we reach adulthood,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “That isn’t much of a thing to confess in my book, so if you were looking for my disapproval, you needn’t fear it.”

  That response was not what she had been expecting. Her head swiveled up and she looked at him.

  “I asked him to stop,” she said, very quickly, like the words were a sloppy stitch being ripped from a cheap dress.

  It was the second part of what Jeremy needed to understand. In time, she knew she would be amenable, far more than amenable, to bedsport he initiated. But the fact remained that he would be only the second person she had gone to bed with. The first had been a brute. She didn’t know what effect that might have had upon her, but if being so easy to startle was any indication, something within her had been changed by the despicable behavior.

  She’d never seen the duke’s eyes become so steely. They did not shift in hue, but something about them went impenetrable and furious. He brought to mind a deadly, exotic cat, every inch of him taut and ready to pounce.

  “Did he?”

  “No.” Charlotte had already cried oceans over this. While she told Jeremy she found it incredibly easy not to shed more tears, and hoped this would not come off as disingenuous. “He did not. I did not ask a second time because I simply couldn’t.”

  That she would not describe, and even if she and Jeremy did end up married, it might take years for her to be enticed to do so.

  “Who was this man?” The question was deadly and soft. She had little doubt that if Jeremy were ever to encounter him, there would be a question as to whether or not “this man” would survive the encounter. It didn’t displease her. She liked hearing such protectiveness in his voice.

  Here was the third and final part of what Jeremy had to know. “I feel as though I have to specify that he did not tell me who he really was. He introduced himself as a commoner. He even met my mother and father. But as it turned out, he was of the ton.”

  “Lottie, tell me, please.”

  She sighed and did not explain any more deeply than she felt she needed to. “Lord Wenwood knew who he was. He’s apparently a man called Lord Thomas Rowling. But I a
ssure you, he fully disappeared from my life that night. I tried to contact him and had no way of doing so.”

  Until I saw him outside Lord and Lady Wenwood’s townhouse, that is.

  “Thank you.”

  Charlotte lifted her eyebrows in disbelief. “Thank you?” she repeated.

  “I was wondering when you’d tell me, yourself.”

  She slumped. He’d known?

  “How… and who? Who told you?”

  But she intuited who as soon as she asked. It had to be Lord Wenwood. There’d been no real flicker of recognition in Jeremy’s expression when she said the name Lord Thomas Rowling, but she’d wager her eyeteeth that if he already knew what had happened to her, it had been Lord Wenwood who supplied that knowledge.

  “Wenwood.”

  “Of course,” said Charlotte. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I didn’t take him for a gossip.”

  “Oh, he’s not. Not at all.” Carefully, Jeremy took his empty glass and filled it with water from the silver pitcher. She watched as he maneuvered things with his one hand and didn’t spill a drop. He smiled, perhaps sensing what, exactly, she was watching. “I was left-handed as a child. Missing my right was odd to cope with, at first. But I thanked my lucky stars that I’d been blessed with the propensity for using the devil’s hand in the first place.”

  To her surprise, he did not bring the glass to his own lips, but instead leaned toward her, offering it.

  She accepted it, and for the first time, she allowed herself to savor the frisson of heat that flowed through her when their fingers touched. “Thank you.”

  There was something sweetly intimate about sharing his glass.

  “My pleasure.” His eyes held hers and she felt her cheeks flame.

  There was a wealth of intentions in the two words.

  *

  Jeremy waited to speak to Isabel. He wanted neither to speak to her while he was feeling under the weather, nor while he was waiting for his body to reacclimatize to a lack of laudanum. The latter had instigated the prior, although it was bearable and felt like a head cold once the initial cravings had passed.

  In the third week since he’d woken up in his own bedroom faced with his brother and Charlotte, he decided that his headache was not so awful that he couldn’t send Martha to Lady Hareden with wishes that she join him in the library.

  Paul, who had been true to his word and stayed in the manor, tilted his head when Martha shuffled out of sight. “You’re sure you want to do this, now?”

  “Should I wait?”

  “Not because I think you’re doing something rash. For what it’s worth, I support you in everything.”

  More touched than he wanted to let on, Jeremy said, “Then why are you questioning it? Who knows where my wife will be this afternoon, much less tomorrow.”

  “Are you feeling better?”

  Nothing serious had befallen him aside from the splitting, ever-present headache and dehydration. Both were fatiguing and saw him retiring very early to bed, but he tried each day to confront what duties he could. Charlotte took over all the professional correspondence he had, including letters with the Duke of Lancaster and Lancaster’s steward. His mother had been correct and Lancaster did not require anything nefarious: after they’d organized some of his business ventures, the duke needed him to look after his will.

  It certainly took good strategizing due to the size and power of his estate, but it was not unmanageable. It’s probably good practice for the future.

  “Yes, for the most part.”

  He’d spoken to Paul about what he intended, though Paul did not seem taken too far aback. Jeremy didn’t know if it was because Charlotte had confided in him, or if his brother had worked out what was going on without any help. If so, Jeremy was less inscrutable than he intended. Perhaps that was a good thing. He was sick of hiding his true motivations and intentions.

  The chessboard was between them and he was, as to be expected, losing. That wouldn’t improve even if he was in the pink of health. A fire crackled merrily in the grate. If he kept delaying any kind of serious face-to-face with Isabel, he worried that his nerve would fade. Sometimes he felt it surge dangerously as he tried to sleep or just when he awoke in the morning.

  He had seen her once or twice. She had been in residence, so far as he knew, this entire time. Mother had retreated to the house in Bath. Paul said he’d convinced her to go, for which Jeremy was infinitely grateful. He was already feeling guilty about how his own actions might impact her. He had never done anything he wasn’t supposed to.

  There was some comfort in the thought that her own marriage settlement meant she was entirely provided for, but that could not necessarily help her retain any friends or acquaintances who decided to turn on her for being the mother of the “Duke of Disgrace”.

  When he’d confessed his fears to Paul, Paul dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “You can’t always worry about all of us rather than yourself, Brother,” he’d said.

  Jeremy attempted to remind himself of that while he waited for Martha to relay his wishes to the duchess.

  *

  She sensed something was afoot the moment Paul addressed the servants immediately after he’d seen Jeremy. Paul’s return had been highly irregular and what was more, he’d brought Miss Masbeck with him.

  All Isabel could glean was that Jeremy had been found in the library unconscious. The cause was not known, so the physician from Aldbury was sent for. Her husband was largely in his prime and had no ailments to speak of, but he was not unfamiliar with overindulging in wine and had a history of leaning a little too much on laudanum.

  She was positive that she should have been more concerned, but it seemed to her that he’d most likely been drunk and it was all too much fuss.

  Besides, if he was ill, there was a chance that he could die. She did not ever actively wish death upon him, but were it to happen, a number of her problems would be solved just as much as others would arise. Still, as the widow of a duke, she could be with Walter unimpeded. In theory, they could even marry. She’d given it thought while Jeremy was abroad and faced the risk of being killed in battle.

  When Martha came to the parlor and said that his grace wished to see her if she was available, Isabel had been half-expecting some kind of summons. Only the uncertainty of what, exactly, was happening had her rather nervous.

  She wouldn’t show it, though.

  Jeremy was alone in the library, but she knew from the chessboard that the brothers had been playing a game before she arrived.

  “Have you ever beaten him, Husband?” she asked. She surprised herself by sounding nearly friendly. Her eyes swept over him. He’d stood as she entered the room, and she saw that he was dressed in some of his best attire. Red coat, a red so deep it was almost the color of claret, over white.

  “Not to date, I’m afraid. Please, do sit.” He gestured toward the settee and she acquiesced.

  If only she were a man, Isabel thought. None of the intricate, heavy mantle of this life would be hers. If she could have her pick of being anybody in the world, she would choose to be Paul, actually, because it seemed so tantalizingly uncomplicated to be a monied, youngest son of an old, respected family.

  Jeremy seemed disquieted. That was new. So often, he was infuriatingly unmovable. Because she did not know what he wanted to say and she had no particular wish to goad him, she remained quiet. She was so tired of all of these games.

  “I believe that I have matters of great importance to discuss with you, madam. I have had much time to myself, these days, and I have thought through many things.”

  She arched what she knew was a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “How great?”

  “Monumental,” said Jeremy. He sat down, facing her with his back to the fire.

  She crossed her arms and allowed an amused smirk to rise on her face. “If you are going to tell me that you have bedded your secretary, I neither care nor mind. I must say that it took you long enough to sate yourself.”
<
br />   She’d sometimes given idle thought to that—had he resorted to onanism? He was a man and she supposed he had needs, so to abstain from bedding anybody seemed ill-advised to her.

  “Oh, no,” said Jeremy. “Though, in a very roundabout way, I suppose that what we must discuss does owe itself to, ah, wishing to sate myself.”

  “Get to the point, Jeremy,” she said, “obtuseness doesn’t suit a man so clever as you.”

  “Very well.” He paused.

  She tolerated his reticence, but only just. Waiting, she studied his person. He was an undeniably handsome man, trim but strong, and quite tall. His countenance was perhaps a bit too stoic and dignified for some, but he had strong features and arresting blue eyes that were enhanced by his dark hair.

  Yet to Isabel, the attraction she felt to her husband was like one she might feel toward a masterful painting or breathtaking statue. It had never moved her in the way Walter had, and it never drove her to longing or hysterics.

  “Very well?” she prompted.

  “I propose that we seek a separation, then a divorce.”

  It took her at least half a minute to understand that he’d actually said it and she was not just daydreaming.

  “Good God, you’re actually serious.”

  Jeremy was, in general, always serious, but she sensed a different kind of seriousness in his manner. One that was far more determined and steely.

  “As the grave.”

  She would not show her hand, yet.

  “May I ask how this proposition has come about?”

  She had some idea, but wanted to see if he might explain himself. Many people, she was sure, assumed she was vapid. That was not true, but it was a front she did like to cultivate because it made a good many things easier for her. She knew as well as Jeremy did that such a process would not be instantaneous, and it would leave both of them with questionable reputations.

  Especially her, despite having been a duchess. That was the woman’s lot. As she peered at Jeremy, she conjectured that although the courts and Parliament would not be kind, exactly, he would probably find that his family name and fortune protected him well enough from destruction.