The Duke I Tempted

by Scarlett Peckham

  He rifled through the papers on the table until he found Desmond Flannery’s frivolous gazette.

  A sketch of Constance under a cloud of blossoms dominated the page. the triumph of the house of westmead—London’s most mysterious family set the latest fashion in the country.

  Constance would be pleased. It was exactly what she’d hoped for. But hardly the stuff of scandal. He looked up at Gibbs, who was staring grimly at the page over his shoulder.

  “Further down, Your Grace.” He located a bolded square of text at the bottom of the page.

  scandal blooms?

  The sylvan scenes of the glittering ballroom were designed by Miss Poplar Cavendish, of Bantham Park, granddaughter to the sixth Viscount Mallardsly. Miss Cavendish’s brilliant blossoms are sure to be fashionable in the coming season. But whispers have it that it is the elegant figure of the Beau Monde Botanist herself that has caught the eye of the Duke of Westmead. The duke began the evening’s first dance with his garden nymph in arm, and, if roving eyes can be trusted, he may have ended the night with her as well. His Grace was spotted at first light in the company of fair Miss Cavendish, no chaperone in sight! Could it be the flower of love that blooms? Or is it the scent of a budding scandal?

  “Desmond fucking Flannery.”

  Gibbs nodded. “Indeed, Your Grace.”

  Archer took great pleasure in crumpling the paper in his fist. He took greater pleasure still in writing a note to his sister instructing that Flannery be ejected from his property immediately, or else line up a second in time for his imminent return. He rather hoped the man chose the latter. He would relish the opportunity to shoot him.

  But Christ. What was he going to do about Poppy?

  He’d tempted her to Westhaven with the promise that her nursery would flourish, and instead her prospects were as good as destroyed.

  To be a woman in business was difficult enough with a spotless reputation. She’d be ruined by this.

  Unless, of course, he married her.

  As soon as he thought of it, he realized it had been the answer all along.

  There was an elegant kind of logic to it. Who, better than Poppy, understood the nature of a transaction? Who, better than Poppy, would understand that there were aspects of his life that simply did not bear looking into?

  Was it not precisely the scenario he sought? A woman who needed his name? A woman who understood the advantages of a fair exchange and could be counted on to extract terms that suited her? A woman who would no doubt find far better uses for his fortune than amassing jewels and dresses? Who would contribute to his offspring’s intelligence and spirit, rather than a tendency toward indolence and gossip?

  He ignored the part of himself that objected that he felt many, many things about Miss Cavendish, and not a one was indifference. That the last thing she was to him was safe.

  Instead, he strode outside, ignoring the shouting crowd.

  “Throgmorton Street,” he told the waiting coachman.

  The proprietor of Webb’s brightened at the sight of Westmead on his doorstep, anticipation blooming in his eyes at that rare customer who bought generously and paid readily.

  “Your Grace.” He bowed. “What an unexpected surprise. I hope Lady Constance admired the parure. Such a fine set of emeralds—exceedingly pure in quality. What can I help you with today?”

  “I need a ring.”

  Webb’s eyes glinted with promise. “Of course, Your Grace. Something for a lady? I have recently acquired a cluster of diamonds in a brilliant setting, nine large stones in fine silver. Dazzling by candlelight. Lord Westing has had it in mind for his mistress, but given the weight on his line of credit, I could see that it be released to Your Grace instead.”

  Anything coveted by Westing’s mistress was sure to strike horror in the heart of his intended recipient. “What have you that’s … simple?” he asked, trying unsuccessfully to locate an appropriate word for Poppy’s humble, unaffected taste.

  Webb assembled several trays of baubles, each one gaudier than the next. These would do for Miss Bastian and his sister’s set, but not for Poppy.

  Sensing his client was on the verge of departing empty-handed, Webb rummaged in a drawer and produced a box.

  “I have a few older pieces, yet to be reset. Perhaps something like this?”

  He held out a ring of six teardrop pearls arranged like petals around a small yellow diamond. It looked like a plumeria blossom from Poppy’s greenhouse.

  “Quite elegant, if modest, Your Grace. But of course I can add more stones if you desire.”

  “No need. I’ll take it now.”

  With the ring carefully tucked in a leather box, and the box tucked away in his pocket, he returned to the carriage.

  “On to Mayfair, Your Grace?” the coachman asked.

  “Change of plans. Grove Vale. And please make haste.”

  Chapter 16

  Poppy leaned down to inspect the fragile pink petals of a bee orchid. The humble local flowers, which crowned Wiltshire’s chalky meadows in the summer like enormous, fuchsia-winged bumblebees, had been much admired at the ball. She had thought to grow them in large enough quantity that her fashionable new customers might order them for their gardens next summer, at a tidy profit to herself.

  Now she wondered if she would have any customers left at all.

  It had scarcely been a day since the dreadful story was printed in the Peculiar, and already her new relations, the Hathaways, had withdrawn their invitation for her to dine with them at Bantham Park. Sir Horace Melnick, dear friend to her late uncle, had written to cancel his autumn planting, just as Mrs. Elizabeth Ellis had sent word that she no longer required new hedgerows for the vicarage.

  The only positive word Poppy had received was from her loyal correspondent Mr. Carpenter in Virginia. For the first time, she was grateful for the slow and irregular interchange of information between England and the colonies. Rumors of young ladies’ ruined reputations were unlikely to penetrate the wilds of Virginia for some time.

  Her friend began his letter, as always, lamenting the difficulty of obtaining suitable European cuttings for his nursery and requesting any help she could provide.

  Perhaps all was not lost. Plants could still be her salvation.

  She sorted her disorderly boxes of letters into tidy piles in her makeshift workshop, drawing up a list of her contacts at nurseries from Carolina to the Continent. She had well-placed friends in the world of botany and eight hundred pounds of ready money. It was enough to purchase a few acres of land closer to London, where she might establish a larger nursery near the river, with access to the ports. Her reputation would not matter so much if she controlled the prevailing means of horticultural exchange across the Atlantic.

  But. There was always a but.

  The trouble would be in arranging adequate funds to pay for transport and entice other nurseries to participate in the scheme. She would need to loan out a great deal of her capital, and take on a great deal of credit, in order to engage partners abroad. But to secure a loan without a male sponsor, she would need, at minimum, her good name.

  Which was a difficult thing when one was utterly ruined.

  She pushed her papers to the side. It was a trap, this business of being a woman. The simple truth of it was that after all her efforts to secure her independence, she was still stuck. To accomplish what she ought, she need not have bothered with years of being single-minded and industrious. She needed only to have been born a man.

  She knelt on the floor to sort through a stack of crates that had yet to be unpacked. At least now she would have ample time to cultivate her neglected cuttings. A lifetime, the way this week was unfolding.

  She was in the midst of unwrapping a parcel of bulbs when a tapping sounded at the window.

  She looked up, expecting the bustling intrusion of some prying village busybody.

  It was Westmead.

  He’d come back.

  He entered the room tentatively, a
s if unsure of his welcome. Fair be that, for in truth, there was no sense to the relief she felt in looking at him. If they were seen together, it would only add to the rumors. She needed him to leave immediately if she wasn’t to be ruined twice. Which was unfortunate, as she had a sudden pressing desire to launch herself into his arms and spend the next quarter hour recounting her misfortunes into the comfort of his chest.

  “Your Grace,” she said instead.

  “Archer,” he corrected her.

  “Archer,” she echoed.

  It was a mistake to use his Christian name. It brought back the unsteady feeling she had felt at their last parting, like her limbs were made of churning water.

  “I thought you had returned to London.”

  “I had. I turned back as soon as I saw the Peculiar. It seemed I was needed here. To murder Desmond Flannery.”

  She allowed him a rueful smile. “Slowly and without mercy, I hope.”

  “May I help you with these?” He crouched down to join her on the floor amidst her muddle of crates and trunks.

  She allowed herself a moment to look at him in wonder. For all that her relations with the Duke of Westmead had invited the occasion of her downfall, she could not help but like the fact that he was the type of man who wore his title in such a way that kneeling on a countrywoman’s humble workshop floor came to him as naturally as breathing.

  “No. It’s growing late. And given the rapid desertion of my clients, I shall scarcely need such an immoderate number of seeds.”

  He frowned. She instantly wished she hadn’t said that. There was nothing to be gained by making him feel guilty for the position she was in. She had, after all, left his house in the middle of the night all of her own volition. He hadn’t compromised her reputation. She had managed that on her own.

  “If only there was something that could remedy that.”

  He reached inside his coat pocket and removed a small, round leather jewel case. Meeting her eye, he slid it across the floor.

  Oh no. The churning drained from her limbs as though someone had let out a stopper at her feet.

  “Open it?”

  Squinting with dread at what she would find inside the box, she opened the lid. Inside, a ring shivered in the fading light.

  It was small and shaped like a flower. A plumeria. It would have been the perfect ring, just right, had they been lovers. The sweetness of it made her falter. She looked up at him, trying to find the words to say that the gesture he felt honor-bound to make was neither required nor welcome. But before she could get them out, he took her hand. Only in looking down at it, clutched in his own, did she become aware that she was trembling.

  She shook her head, wanting him not to say whatever it was he meant by giving her this ring. “Archer, please, there is no need—”

  He cleared his throat. “When I saw that headline yesterday, I was instantly filled with regret—”

  “Stop there. You are not responsible. I did not intend to imply—”

  His face lost its tentative expression and fell into a grim-set line. “Cavendish, let me finish. I don’t mean I regretted that I would be forced to offer for you. I regretted I hadn’t got it through my skull to think of it before I left. You see, I think we can be useful to each other.”

  “Being useful to each other is how we arrived at the current predicament, if I recall,” she said, careful to offer him a rueful little smile to show she meant no ill will. “Truly, you are kind to offer, but you need not.”

  He looked at her unhappily, as though deciding whether to pursue this further. “Cavendish,” he drew out. “No one wins at business by rejecting a proposal before she’s heard it.”

  She didn’t need to hear it. He could contend what he liked about his reasons for returning, but she knew why he was really here and she couldn’t stand to be the recipient of charity. She hated to be beholden. To be beholden to a man like him would be a special kind of torture.

  “You may call it what you like, Your Grace, but I have no desire to marry. And while we’re giving lessons, need I repeat mine on rescuing women who do not desire it?”

  Again, he rearranged his face. She could see whatever response he had been expecting, this was not one he had imagined.

  “If you would give me a fair hearing,” he said drolly, “you would see that I don’t intend to rescue you. I merely perceive a way to use the circumstances to our mutual advantage.”

  His tone had no chivalry to it. It held the brisk tone of calculation she had become accustomed to hearing whenever the topic of conversation found its way to his dearest subject: commerce. This meant he was honest in his protestation that he was not here strictly out of misplaced honor. It also meant he simply did not understand the stakes of what he asked. And why would he?

  “I’m sorry, but it would not be to my advantage to marry.”

  “Forgive me for being blunt, Cavendish, but I fail to see a single advantage for you in remaining unwed.”

  “Well, of course you wouldn’t see.”

  “I am not entirely stupid. Perhaps you might explain.”

  She rubbed her temple. How to explain to a duke that marriage made women vulnerable? That she had arranged her affairs to protect herself from such a fate? That she wanted to be her own protector, her own provider? That it kept a person safe?

  She looked at the contents of the room around them. The pots and bulbs, the rows of orchids, the mud-stained ledger. They would not look like much to him. But to her, they were not merely objects. They were tokens of something incalculably precious.

  “If I were to wed, my nursery—everything I’ve worked for—would be surrendered to my husband. I would lose the right to conduct business in my name. I would lose my independence. My ability to decide for myself …” She trailed off, unable to express the magnitude of the loss, the inherent vulnerability of wives. “I suspect you will tell me that it amounts to little in pounds sterling. But to give it up would be to lose my finest self.”

  She waited for him to dismiss her as hysterical.

  Instead he tapped his knee and mulled her words.

  “I suppose,” he said after a long pause, “that were our roles reversed, I might share your hesitation.”

  “Oh, good,” she said with relief. She spared a moment’s appreciation for the way he understood her. “Nevertheless, thank you for your offer. I’ll see you out.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not done negotiating, Cavendish. For while I might share your instinct, following it would be a mistake. Forgive me, but surely you must realize you are in a dreadful situation. You have your independence, that is true, but you lack certain critical resources for maintaining it.”

  Her gratitude was replaced with the urge to hit him over the head with a trowel.

  “Yes, thank you for articulating the nature of my plight so succinctly, Your Grace. I can see you’ve missed my point completely.”

  “Insult me if you wish, but a clever businesswoman might ask herself not what she stood to lose by marrying me, but what she stood to gain.”

  “A husband. That very thing I have spent my entire life trying not to acquire.”

  “A partner. I can’t in good faith deny that as my wife you would lose the right to enter contracts in your name. But what if I offered you the power to enter them in mine? My lands, my capital, my credit, my ships—whatever you need—all at your disposal. You could build the finest nursery in all of England.”

  If there was one lesson she had learned in the last fortnight, it was that when things sounded too good to be true, they were.

  “What generous terms. And just what precious thing is it you are after in return?”

  He locked eyes with her, and the smile left his lips. “An heir.”

  Oh.

  Their conversation no longer seemed like a puzzle she must solve before she could dismiss him and retire to her bed. It was as grave as life itself.

  “A child,” she said, more softly than she ought to. “You want another ch
ild.”

  “No,” he said crisply, his manner growing icier by the second. “Not want, precisely. I have a responsibility to produce an heir. And given the status of the succession, I need one quickly. A man with a history of brutality has recently become next in line to my title. I have a duty to protect these lands and the people who depend on them. What I want has nothing to do with it.”

  She felt her face grow rosy with offense. “Ah. You need a broodmare. And I am the most desperate candidate.”

  He stared at her unhappily. “It really isn’t quite so crass as that, Poppy. I do require a woman who is able and willing to bear a child. But more specifically, I desire a wife with whom I can be honest about the fact that I have limitations. I lack capacity for the attachments and expectations that inevitably arise from marriage. I intend for my private life to remain private and free from obligation, and I want a wife who desires that same freedom and will respect my need for it. The fact that you don’t wish to marry me is what makes you a desirable candidate. That, and the fact that I think highly of you and can offer you something of value in return. It would be,” he concluded, “a cordial business arrangement affording independence to us both.”

  A cordial business arrangement. She regarded this chilly figure, finding it strange that the more he spoke of matters of grave importance—marriage, life, death—the more remote and formal he became.

  “And what of the matter of conception?”

  He shrugged. “We would go about it in the usual way. I should hope, given our history, it would not be so unpleasant. And I should not ask for your favors once conception is assured, nor object should you grant them elsewhere.”

  He said this all so bloodlessly she wondered if there was something truly wrong with him. Had she not seen the depth of feeling he was capable of in the woods, she would have believed he felt so blithely of such matters. But she didn’t. Not at all.

  She would leave him to his fiction. She did not feel blithely.

  “No,” she said.

  “No?” he asked, visibly thrown by her refusal. “Is it the terms that bother you? Or perhaps you don’t desire children?”