The Duke I Tempted

by Scarlett Peckham

  Through it all, one thought filtered through the back of her mind.

  Perfidious and fully formed and as urgent and insistent as the beating of her filthy, faithless heart.

  She wanted him like that.

  Abject.

  Kneeling.

  Hers.

  “Go,” she begged the coachman.

  And as she watched the sight of him recede, it was as though she had two hearts, the way she had two legs, two hands, two feet.

  Two hearts, and one was shattered.

  One hated him for coming here, for betraying her, for baring to some other woman a truth that she, his wife, had begged him to reveal to her. A truth he had not trusted her with even on pain of losing her altogether.

  But the other …

  How it wanted.

  Chapter 30

  Archer sat alone in Poppy’s dressing room, where it smelled like her most strongly.

  He fingered the message she had left behind. Broken shards of glass and tea leaves, carefully wrapped in a silk scarf with a brief note in her hand: I never took this. Along with it, her wedding ring. The small, simple plumeria of pearls.

  He had not needed to find her ring to know that she would leave him. He’d seen it in her eyes as she had stared at him from the doorway at Elena’s. The expression she had worn, just before she’d run, was not disgust.

  It was far simpler: hurt.

  He had feared the wrong thing. It was not the substance of his secret that had driven her away. It was the betrayal he’d made by keeping it.

  It was a betrayal. He knew that now. He’d negotiated an agreement that allowed him to do what he’d been doing, yes. But had he not once explained to her that contracts based on fraud are null and void? And was he not, therefore, the guilty party—the one who’d misrepresented the terms on offer? For he had proposed a marriage of convenience when the fact was, even then, that he was hopelessly, irretrievably in love with her. Had been from the moment he saw her in a forest of her own devising wearing a crown of plumeria in her hair.

  He’d pressed her to be his wife when he’d known full well what marriage to him would cost her. He could easily have found another way to help her. One need not marry the proprietor of a business to make a success of it. He’d seized the opportunity of her misfortune because he wanted her. And instead of offering her his real self—the one that was, yes, twisted and prone to moments of unhingedness, but loved her—he had offered her the fictional Duke of Westmead, with all his terms and limitations disguising an empty bargain.

  He’d not just taken her independence. He’d duped her out of it.

  He traced his fingers over the racks of expensive garments she had left behind. The thrifty, sensible dresses she wore in daily life she’d taken with her. What remained were embroidered damask gowns, fur-lined cloaks, paper-thin silk chemises cut along the bias. A rack of padded hoops and a shelf of dainty underthings, still wrapped in gold paper, never worn. The trappings of the Duke of Westmead’s wife. A role that she had never asked for, and never wanted.

  Had she not proved as much—throwing herself into that burning building with the desperation of a woman who had nothing outside of it to live for? He knew that she found his lectures on business tiresome and condescending, but if she thought that all she amounted to was plants and plans and papers, he had not adequately instructed her on the nature of value. For there was nothing, nothing in this world more precious or irreplaceable than her.

  He closed the door on the abandoned, ghostly silks. Observing them would not change what he had done. If he was to fix it—and he was, by all that was holy, going to fix it—there was business to attend to.

  He climbed the stairs to the study, still littered with the mess he’d made. He gathered up her filthy papers, strewn about the floor. He salvaged what seeds and flowers he could. He spent three hours smoothing them, arranging them into order, and packing them into tidy parcels to be sent on to her at Hammersmith.

  When he had done his best to repair the damage to her things, he sat down at the desk and took a quill and drafted a note to his solicitor.

  Tynedale: I need to confer at your earliest convenience on the matter of obtaining a divorce.

  Chapter 31

  Hammersmith, London

  December 23, 1753

  Poppy stood on the frosty lawn and watched a team of burly men use ropes and scaffolding to raise the last pane of glass to the framework of her conservatory.

  “The tallest of her kind in England,” Mr. Partings said with a grin. “And what a sight she is.”

  The structure was indeed beautiful, rising from the newly planted rows of trees to twinkle like a confection of spun sugar in the dying winter light. Beyond it, the walled gardens were freshly raked for the winter planting, and the force houses clattered with hired gardeners building beds for plants due to arrive next month from Virginia.

  The scene was everything she’d ever dreamed of, and that it had been conjured in so short a time was nothing less than a miracle of modern industry and the powers of immoderate wealth. She should be weeping in joy and gratitude at the sight of it. Instead, she wanted only to weep.

  “Is something amiss, Your Grace?” Partings asked.

  “Not at all,” she said, forcing her mouth into a smile. “It’s only the chill in the air. Shall we have a cup of something hot by the fire to warm up?”

  She led Partings inside the villa, made cozy now with woven rugs and jars of holly berries and the maelstrom of books and sketches that had descended in the past three weeks since she’d moved in, no matter the diligence of her housemaids.

  “Ah, Alison,” she called, seeing a male figure bent over a tea tray through the half-open library door. “Please see that a pot of chocolate is brought to us by the fire. And perhaps a bottle of brandy. I believe we have well earned a bit of winter cheer, have we not, Mr. Partings?”

  The door opened, and the man stepped through, and her husband smiled at her.

  She had to clutch Mr. Partings’s arm to stay steady.

  “I’ve been known to do the work of the gardener and the coachman,” Archer said affably, “but I draw the line at butlering.”

  “Your Grace!” Partings said, folding himself into a low bow. “Have you come to see the conservatory? We’ve just installed the glass.”

  “Indeed, I saw it being raised as I drove up. A marvel. But then, when it comes to my duchess, I am never short of wonder.”

  Partings, bless him, went on chattering, neatly covering up the fact that her throat had seized and made it impossible for her to greet her husband.

  “Indeed, the design is ingenious,” the architect went on, unable to disguise his pride nor his excitement at this rare private audience with his employer. “The piping sits under the walls of the foundation, you see, such that the plants are not exposed to the furnace. Much better for regulating temperature. Perhaps you’d like a tour?”

  Archer cocked his head at him, as if what he offered was at once thrilling and yet somehow not quite the idea at which they were meant to arrive. It was a look she had once found as much maddening as it was charming. The intended effect, no doubt, for she saw how easily it was working on Partings, who was scrambling to deduce whatever it was Archer had in mind for him.

  “Your Grace, on second thought, I should depart,” he said, pleased with himself for thinking of it, and more pleased still when her husband’s smile confirmed he had achieved the correct answer. “I believe we are due for snow this evening, and it’s best that I get home, lest Mrs. Partings worry.”

  “Ah, a pity,” Archer said. “A spot of cheer another time, then. My duchess and I would love for you and Mrs. Partings to join us some evening for supper, to thank you for your work.”

  The absurdity of engaging in such a prosaic domestic scene with her husband, on whom she had not set eyes in nearly a month, helped restore Poppy’s wits.

  “I shall write to Mrs. Partings after the holidays with an invitation,” she s
aid.

  “How kind,” Partings enthused. “Good day, Your Graces. I shall see myself out.”

  She waited until he was gone to allow her gaze to fully fall upon her husband.

  He was gallingly immaculate. After so long an absence, his handsomeness blazed out at her as it had when they’d first met, pristine and undiminished by the passage of time. She caught a glimpse of herself in the looking glass over the credenza and saw her hair was windswept into knots and her cheeks were chafed with cold. The same old score—him, breathtaking; her, disheveled.

  “Cavendish,” he said, locking eyes with her.

  Her traitorous heart. It was pathetic in its simplicity, pounding away at the sound of his voice saying her abandoned girlhood name. It was a story so old and tired she wondered why anyone bothered to tell it: he had hurt her, and she had pined for him. Craved his presence these past weeks. Waited for him to come after her, to apologize, to explain himself, to let her rail at him until she could forgive him and set it all to rights. To assure her that she had not imagined they belonged together, however jaggedly they were cut.

  But he hadn’t.

  The only word she’d had from him was a neatly ordered box of her fire-singed possessions. Such an eloquent rebuke she doubted his distaste for her could have been signaled more poetically by Alexander Pope himself. And that—his cold indifference—was worse than whatever scene she’d interrupted in the darkened town house. For all his secrets, his most hurtful crime was the one he wasn’t guilty of.

  He simply didn’t love her.

  And yet, here he was.

  Today, of all the days he could have chosen. Which could mean only one thing: that ancient, doddering blackguard, Dr. Hinton, had betrayed her. Six hours was all it had taken for him to break his faith, despite his promise not to speak of her condition. She would have the old telltale’s liver. But first, she must muddle her way through the inevitable confrontation with her husband. Standing in the corridor wringing her hands would not help her any more than pining had.

  She turned on her heel and sailed past him to the library. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  He followed her into the library and removed an envelope from his pocket and held it out to her. The packet was thick and sealed with crimson wax stamped with his ducal crest. Official peerage business.

  “What’s this?”

  He cleared his throat. His voice came out low and nearly hoarse. “It’s what you are owed.”

  She used her erasing knife to slice open the seal and looked inside.

  Legal documents, just as she’d suspected.

  She smiled tightly. “I see. More contracts.”

  No doubt they contained some coda to their marriage agreement demanding custody of her child, or her banishment to some far-flung country house in Scotland upon the birth. She walked behind her desk and took a seat. It would be safer to have the distance of solid furniture between them when she read his documents, lest she be tempted to slit his throat with the erasing knife.

  “As you are aware,” he said, lowering his voice further, “contracts based on misrepresentation are invalid.”

  “As I thought I made clear, Your Grace, I didn’t take the pennyroyal. Surely you can’t doubt that under the current circumstances.”

  He blinked. “You misunderstand me. I do believe you. But it wouldn’t matter, legally speaking, if you had. I committed fraud and you, therefore, deserve to be released from our agreement.”

  She did not respond, because her mind was busy struggling with the words she was seeing on the page. She had thought many unhappy things about her husband in the weeks of their estrangement, but never had she considered that he might have gone insane.

  She brushed her fingers to the edge of the desk, hoping that they would land on air, a signal she was having an especially vivid nightmare. But her skin touched down on solid oak. And upon it, a petition to the House of Lords for an Act of Parliament granting the Duke of Westmead a divorce on grounds of adultery and criminal perversion.

  His own.

  The pages fluttered in her hands. “Are you mad?” she whispered.

  This would expose him. See him cast in the image of his father and made a public object of mockery.

  He put his steady hand above her shaking one. “Please. Don’t worry. I promise you. I’m only here to make it right.”

  He shuffled the papers and pointed to a clause on the second page.

  “Here. Under the terms, you will be entitled to the dower settled on you at the time of our marriage. Your nursery, several properties, and the full equity in my investment holdings. Everything I have that’s not entailed.”

  She gaped at him. Divorce was rare, and made women half creatures under law, dependent on their former spouses for every farthing. The settlement he suggested was unorthodox. It had no precedence in law or custom.

  He cleared his throat. “You will worry for your reputation, I know. See page nine. It’s an affidavit making clear that you knew nothing of my proclivities and were appalled to learn of them. That I betrayed your faith and my vows. Given my family’s history, no one will blame you. There will still be a scandal, of course—that can’t be avoided. But I’ll do what I can to see you’re spared the worst of it. I regret you must be implicated at all.”

  He stepped back. “I won’t insist on this—the choice is yours. But if you would like your freedom, I want you to have whatever I can restore of it. And I’m sorry for taking it away under false pretenses.”

  He looked sincere. Repentant. Solemn.

  He made not a bit of sense.

  “You keep saying you have acted in bad faith. What is it that you mean?”

  He moved around the desk and knelt beside her, meeting her gaze with a look so raw it was as though he had dropped his fine clothing to the floor.

  “I asked you to give up your name and property in order to secure my own. I said that in return I would make no demands on your heart or independence. And I lied. I was in love with you. So I am in breach.”

  She felt dizzy.

  Suddenly she understood.

  These documents were not a rejection.

  They were a testament of feeling.

  Trust him to say it with a careful stack of papers.

  He was saying he understood what she had given up by marrying him. Which meant he must also understand why she had done it anyway.

  That whenever he was near her, her heart went to her throat. When he touched her, the boundaries of the world narrowed and reduced to only him and her and wanting. Because before him, she had never dared imagine there could be on earth a person so exactly tailored to suit the making of her character. Because long before she’d married him, she’d felt, somehow, he was her person, however unlikely and inconceivable that was. Her Archer. Her insufferable, impossible, unbearably lovely Duke of Westmead.

  She worried the pages in her hands, too overcome to speak.

  “What of your heir?” she asked, gathering time to come to a decision. “Lord Wetherby?”

  “I signed over twenty thousand pounds to a trust preserving the welfare of the tenants of Westhaven. It will protect them long after the duchy leaves my hands. Even if Wetherby succeeds me.”

  “Ah.” If her voice was faraway, it was only because she knew now what she was going to say, and she was searching for the words. But he looked up guiltily, like she had caught him in a lie.

  “I know. I should have thought to do so before I met you. I should not have pressed you for your hand. But I can’t say I regret it, Poppy. I can’t say I regret a minute of my time with you.”

  Sorrow flashed through his eyes.

  She found the words.

  “I hate—” she began, but her voice faltered.

  She could see him cringing, bearing himself up to withstand whatever dreadful thing he thought she was about to say to him.

  She picked up the first page of the divorce petition and let her hands do what her voice could not. She ripp
ed it. The torn pages falling to the floor shored her up.

  “I hate that I have to destroy these,” she said, shredding another fistful.

  A tentative look crossed his face.

  “I shall cherish them, Archer. Just as soon as I have destroyed them. They are the most romantic thing anyone has ever given me.”

  He winced. “If that is true, it is because I am an idiot, Cavendish. If I had done it properly, this would be the most romantic thing anyone had ever given you.”

  He took her wedding ring out of his pocket and slid it across the desk.

  “I wish I had given it to you properly. I wish I had been honest.”

  She smiled, perhaps her first genuine smile in three weeks. “And what would you have said?”

  “That I was looking to marry a fortune hunter and instead I met a woman who could make forests grow indoors.”

  “She sounds like a witch.”

  He smiled. “It’s possible. It would explain why I stopped breathing every time she walked into a room and lost whole nights of sleep imagining her hair.”

  He looked so pained she reached out and took his hand.

  “It was obvious she had no interest in marrying me. It was obvious I was unfit to be her husband. It was obvious that the things I wanted when I looked at her were the very ones I had promised myself I would never, ever want again. But I ignored all that because I was—I am—in love with her.”

  He picked up her hand and placed it on his shoulder, above his scars.

  “Poppy, I was too afraid to admit that I love you. Even to myself. But I do. So much. Never mind that I’m a coward.”

  He was making an unseemly production of himself. He had not intended to deliver a soliloquy.

  Poppy’s fingers closed around his shoulder. He glanced up into her eyes, unsure what she would think of him, falling to pieces on his knees like this. In the dim light, the cool green of her irises had gone as soft and gray as the mist that rolled off the downs on Wiltshire mornings. He wanted to bury himself in what he saw in them.