White Regency 03 - White Knight

by Jaclyn Reding

  From that moment, Parrott had thought the marquess the most pleasant, most generous man he’d ever met, able to conquer any obstacle put in his path. A gentleman, a hero, a veritable god.

  It hadn’t taken long, however, after he’d been assigned the coachman’s position, spending part of most every day with Lord Knighton, for Parrott to discover that the marquess was really a man who wore two different, very contrary faces.

  To most, Christian, Lord Knighton was the handsome and courteous lord, wealthy and self-assured, a man who had the very world bowing at his feet. Most anything he desired was his for the taking. Even the clouds seemed incapable of lowering when the marquess was about.

  It was only when he was away from the scrutinizing eyes of society that Parrott came to know the other side of the marquess, the one most everyone else never saw— the one who seemed to bear the full weight of the world upon his shoulders.

  It was the face that Lord Knighton had begun to wear far more frequently of late.

  To the rest of the world, the marquess was the heir to the wealthiest man in the land, his grandfather, the great Duke of Westover. Wherever Lord Knighton went people knew it. You could see it in their eyes when they begged his acquaintance, or sought his opinion out of false flattery, or even pushed their unmarried daughters in his path—as often happened when the marquess was about. A room immediately hushed at his entrance. Traffic stopped at the sight of him. The pleasure of a solitary walk in the park was something denied him, for inevitably some romantic miss would devise a plan to gain his attention—the last one had even trained her lap dog to bring the marquess her shoe so that he’d be made to return it to her, just like Cinderella and her fateful glass slipper.

  In the past year or so the marriage-minded misses and their mamas had become doubly bold, as if they had somehow decided his lordship’s bachelorhood had gone on long enough. “He is approaching his thirtieth year,” Parrott had once heard one of them say, “long past the time when he should be presenting the old duke with an heir.”

  Lord Knighton was what most ladies would call “handsomely cut.” His features were strong; his dark hair cut short and worn naturally. He wore his face clean shaven and his suit of clothes seemingly without effort. Coupled with the vast fortune he was set to inherit, it was no wonder the man never had a moment’s peace.

  “Would you be wantin’ me to await you here in front with the coach then, my lord?” Parrott asked, bowing his head as the marquess rapped at the door.

  Christian nodded, adjusting the cuff of his coat. “I would expect this to prove a visit much like any other I have made to my grandfather’s house, Parrott. The sooner cut short the better.”

  “The sooner, the better. Indeed, my lord,” said Parrott, ambling away.

  Of the countless places Parrott had driven the marquess, Westover House here on Grosvenor Square was certainly the one at which he spent the least amount of time. It looked a fine enough establishment from the outside—weathered red brick and gleaming windows behind an iron fence topped by finials that shone golden even on an overcast day such as this. Parrot could only guess at the finery inside; he’d never once been admitted nor had he so much as glimpsed the stables in the mews at the rear, although he’d heard from some of his acquaintances that they were equally fine.

  The young marquess, however, seemed oblivious to it all. He came to this place only when summoned and emerged just as quickly as he could, always in a far worse humor than he’d been upon arriving. There was bad blood between the marquess and the duke, his grandfather—bad blood, indeed.

  “Pull the coach around the square and park it under that large oak on the corner, Parrott. I’ve a notion a visit to my club will be in order once I leave here.”

  “In order. Aye, milord.”

  Christian remained at the door as Parrott made off, watching as the coachman climbed onto his seat and clicked his tongue to the horses to urge them forward. He knew a sudden desire to walk back down the steps and disregard the summons that had brought him to this place even as he realized it would do him little good. Eventually he would find himself back at this same spot, waiting before this same door, for this same purpose. It was patently unavoidable.

  Christian turned when he heard the sound of the latch opening behind him. The door swung open and he nodded to the butler, Spears, a man who’d been at his station in the Westover household as long as Christian could remember.

  “Good day, Lord Knighton,” said Spears, bowing his head dutifully as he immediately secured Christian’s gloves, beaver hat, and many-caped carrick, brushing a hand over the fine wool to dislodge an offending bit of lint.

  Christian mumbled his response and headed directly for the study, the usual setting for these nonsensical meetings. What would it be today? A lecture on his responsibilities at the northern properties? A justification of the invoices for Eleanor’s new wardrobe? No doubt the old man had forgotten that his granddaughter, Christian’s sister, was to have her long-awaited coming-out. Or perhaps the duke sought to delay it another year and make Nell’s chances for a safe and happy future all the more difficult. If that were his aim, Christian was fully prepared for a confrontation.

  Instead he was brought up short by the butler’s call.

  “I beg your pardon, my lord. His grace is not in his study this morning. He wished me to inform you he awaits you in the garden instead.”

  The garden? Christian wondered that his grandfather even knew the house had such a thing, for he ate, slept, and even relieved himself within the paneled walnut walls of his ducal study, a place just as gloomy and severe as its most frequent occupant. As a child, Christian could recall sneaking into the place at night to see if the marble busts of the various historical personages that were set about the room actually did come to life as his father had once told him.

  “The garden?” Christian queried, unaware of his Parrott-like response.

  Spears nodded once, offering no further explanation. Christian simply took a turn and headed off for the rear of the house.

  As he made his way through the lower chambers, past furnishings and ornaments that were meant to impress more than to enhance, Christian tried to shake away the foreboding that had greeted him with his morning coffee. No matter how he tried, he could not shake the sense that something was terribly wrong. He’d felt it in his gut the moment he’d found his grandfather’s summons sitting atop his newspaper on the breakfast tray, instructing him to make this urgent and unscheduled appearance. While this wasn’t the first, second, or even twentieth time his grandfather had sent such a request, somehow this time just seemed out of the ordinary.

  Whatever it was that had brought the old man to calling for him, Christian knew it could not be for any good. Through most of his nine-and-twenty years, it never had been. The duke seemed to spend his waking hours devising new and inventive ways to plague his unfortunate heir, as if he felt it his sole duty to assume the tradition of enmity that had previously existed between the king and his heir, the then Regent, before the old king had died earlier that same year. It shouldn’t have come as any surprise. After all, the duke had certainly modeled his life after old George in more ways than one, periodic insanity seeming sometimes among them.

  But the nearer Christian drew to the garden, the more that feeling in his gut began to burn. He hated the fact that he should feel this way at all, that his grandfather should be allowed to have this effect over him. By the time he reached the double doors leading outside, Christian had convinced himself that the reason for the summons had to be Eleanor’s coming-out. The duke was going to refuse it again.

  He found the duke sitting in a cane-backed chair beneath the feathery boughs of a large willow tree. The drooping branches nearly shrouded him from view. His pale hair was undressed, falling about his shoulders in thinning strands, and he wore a brocade dressing robe over his shirt and breeches, slippers of red morocco on his feet.

  He had not yet noticed his grandson’s arrival. Ch
ristian delayed a moment in the doorway. He hadn’t been to these gardens since he’d been a boy, since shortly before his father had died, taking him immediately from the innocence and freedom he had known in childhood to the penitentiary role he now held as ducal heir. From then on, Christian’s imaginative games of pirate and adventurer, even his interest in the wars taking place overseas, were forbidden, for these were pursuits deemed unnecessary for a future duke. After all, as heir to the Westover fortune, he would never be granted the officer’s position he had so often dreamed of as a boy. His grandfather had made certain of it, filling Christian’s: days instead with studies of Latin and philosophy.

  Stepping further into the garden, Christian noticed a glass of lemonade and a book—a novel?— sitting on the table beside his grandfather. It appeared that the duke’s attention was wholly taken up with watching a bird picking at the ground a space away. Christian wondered if his eyes were deceiving him. A novel? Bird watching?! His grandfather, the distinguished Duke of Westover? The burning feeling in his stomach began to curdle. There was no longer any doubt about it; something was definitely wrong.

  Christian came to a halt several feet away from the duke’s chair, stood tall and straight, and bowed his head respectfully as he’d been taught as a boy.

  “Good day, Your Grace.”

  Elias Wycliffe, the fourth Duke of Westover, turned in his chair to regard his grandson and only living heir.

  “Christian,” he said in his usual dispassionate tone. When Christian made no attempt to converse further, he added, “You received my message, I see.”

  Again Christian remained silent, which prompted the duke to say after an awkward moment, “Thank you for taking the time to come.”

  Christian abandoned his stance for another, one slightly more defensive. “Haven’t I always come when you’ve summoned me, sir? I wasn’t aware I had any choice in the matter.”

  Christian watched his grandfather’s expression darken as it always did whenever they were together, and he wondered how they had come to be such adversaries. It had been this way so long now, he no longer could recall it being any differently between them.

  “I will make this brief and come straight to the point. Christian, I have summoned you here to tell you that it is time for you to fulfill your part in our agreement— the first part of it, that is. I have made the necessary arrangements for you to marry.”

  It was a statement Christian had always known he’d one day hear from the duke, still he couldn’t quite temper the breath-stealing impact that came immediately after the words had been spoken. For nineteen years he had known this day would come. At twenty, even at twenty-five, he had anticipated it. But as time had passed on without mention of it, Christian had begun to think that perhaps the old man had forgotten the bargain he’d made with his grandson so long ago. He should have known better; the duke had simply been biding his time, waiting until he knew Christian would be occupied with the arrangements for Eleanor’s coming-out before delivering the blow he had been waiting so long to give.

  Christian didn’t move for several moments as he stood waiting for the feelings of anger and impotence that he so often felt before this man to subside. He would not allow his grandfather to detect even the slightest hint of emotion in him. He couldn’t allow him the satisfaction.

  “Indeed? A marriage?” Christian finally said, managing to hide his response behind a mask of nonchalance. It was a method he had come to master well during the past twenty years.

  “Yes. She is of fine stock, a nobleman’s daughter, good character, unsullied. I would allow no less for you.”

  Christian’s jaw tightened at the duke’s cutting comment, one that implied he should be grateful. The notion of Christian choosing his own wife had never once been a consideration. From birth he had known this, a fact that had become all the more apparent since his father’s death. While he could do nothing to change this part of his life, this role he’d been born to, Christian would at least make certain the duke met his obligation in their agreement.

  “And Eleanor’s coming-out?”

  “What of it?” “If you think to refuse—”

  “It will be taken care of just as we agreed this season. Your sister will be given every opportunity to wed a man of her choosing under the protection of the Westover name—without any fear of the truth coming out.” He added, “Of course, that is if you are agreeable to the match I have made for you.”

  Bastard, Christian thought, hating the duke for speaking as if he actually had a choice, as if he might actually refuse. Perhaps he would, had Christian not decided long ago to sacrifice his own future for that of his sister’s f happiness. In order to protect Eleanor, Christian would have made a deal with the devil himself if he’d had to; indeed he already had.

  Christian pulled in a steadying breath. As he stared [ at the pendulous blooms of the snowdrops blowing in the morning breeze at his feet, he remembered Eleanor as a child—how she would bring him flowers, how she had followed him wherever he went. For you, Eleanor. I do this for you, even though you can never know of it. His feelings of anger began to subside as they always did when he thought of his sister. Only then did he return his attention to the duke.

  “I assume some sort of public announcement is forthcoming.”

  “No! There will not be an announcement made until after you are already wed. I want no possibility of any trouble.”

  The duke’s expression had grown agitated, causing Christian to wonder if some sort of threat had perhaps already been made. Dear God, Eleanor…

  The duke went on. “I have made arrangements for a special license and have already settled the terms of the marriage with your intended bride’s family. You have only to sign the contracts before you are to wed on the twenty-ninth.”

  April the twenty-ninth. Less than a fortnight away, Christian thought, and on so significant a day. The very anniversary of his father’s death. How his grandfather must have planned this—every detail seen to, every precaution taken. No doubt even Christian’s suit of clothes had been chosen for him. The duke had spent the past twenty years waiting for this day, for the glory of his final domination over his grandson’s life, so embittered had he been since the death of his only son, Christian’s father. Even now, Christian could hear the duke’s words that fateful morning so long ago.

  Now your life is mine.

  Christian stood, ready to leave before he revealed to the old man just how very right he’d been in that prophecy.

  “I assume you will send some sort of missive to me instructing the pertinent time and place.”

  The duke nodded.

  “Then I shall take my leave, sir. Have one of your footmen bring the necessary paperwork to Knighton House and I will see to the signatures. I bid you good day.”

  Christian didn’t wait for an acknowledgment as he started for the door. Truth be told, if he didn’t leave at that moment, he might possibly end up slamming his fist through a pane of one of the French doors.

  “Christian.”

  He halted at the threshold, lingering a moment before he turned to face his grandfather’s profile. The duke stared outward at the garden, neglecting to look at him as he spoke.

  “Do you not even wish to know her name, this woman who is to be your wife?”

  Christian hesitated but a moment in his response. “What does it matter, sir, when you have spent nearly my entire life assuring me that one wife is as good as any other?”

  And with that, Christian departed, his mood definitely blacker for the visit.

  Chapter Three

  “Westover.”

  Grace felt her legs immediately go soft beneath her, her consciousness blurring as if she might actually faint. She quickly grabbed onto the back of the chair she stood behind. It was the only thing she could think of to keep herself from falling to the floor.

  Dear God, no, she thought as she struggled to gather her wits, of all the names her uncle could have given, why, oh why had he
spoken that one?

  Simply the memory of that man sitting in this same room, in this very chair, questioning her about the authenticity of her anatomy, made her shudder. It had taken all her will to make it through that day without getting physically ill. And now Uncle Tedric was telling her she was to be the man’s wife? To live under the same roof? Share his home? Even—she closed her eyes against the thought—his bed?

  Grace shook her head in denial, knowing that no matter the consequences, she could never, ever agree to it, and she said as much to Uncle Tedric a moment later, her voice oddly lucid for thoughts so much in chaos.

  “I won’t wed him, Uncle.”

  Tedric’s face went rigid over the cheek-high points of his collar, the fingers he’d been drumming on the rosewood tabletop going suddenly still. “I beg your pardon, my dear Grace? I fail to recall having asked for your consent in this.”

  Grace frowned, standing her ground, thankful for the chair in front of her lest her uncle notice the trembling of her legs. “No, Uncle, you did not ask me, but I repeat: I won’t wed that man. He is old enough to be my grandfather. I don’t care what he has offered you. I won’t do it. Threaten all you like. Forbid me from leaving the house. Take away all my things, if you must. But if you think to force me to wed him, I promise you now I shall refuse to speak the vows. I will scream hysterically even as you have to carry me bodily down the aisle to him. I would rather live in the streets of … of …”

  “Westminster,” Tedric said, knowing perfectly well Grace knew about as little of London as would a foreigner landing on her streets for the first time.

  “Westminster! I would live in the streets of Westminster before I will ever become wife to that disgusting man.”

  “Consider that the streets there are named such things as Cut Throat Lane, Rogue’s Acres, and Pickpocket Alley. Believe me, Grace, marriage to Westover is far preferable.”

  Grace wasn’t to be deterred. “I don’t care if he is the wealthiest man in England—or the entire world, for that matter. I will not marry him!”