Dukes In Disguise

by Grace Burrowes, Susanna Ives, Emily Greenwood

  The main thoroughfare was no more than a rambling medieval passage. On either side of the narrow lane, crumbling timbered buildings sloped against each other as if for mutual support. The muddy street was empty save for a washerwoman, who was tossing the contents of a chamber pot into the gutter, and an old man in a workman’s tunic, drinking from a flask while herding pigs. He tugged at his hat as he passed and muttered an unintelligible, but happy-sounding, greeting. He had one tooth.

  “And a fine morning to you, kind sir,” Lucere answered, tipping his hat in return. He then muttered to Harris, his manservant, “I should have been the one shot in the arse for getting entangled in this low scheme.”

  It was the meanest Mowne, Starlingham, and he had befallen, which, given the men’s propensity to locate and bask in trouble, was rather significant.

  “That would be most unfortunate,” observed Harris.

  Harris had been Lucere’s late father’s manservant and conduit for conversation between the warring father and son. He was a tall man, possessing the powerful build of a pugilist bruiser. Yet his visage was that of a noble Roman with a prominent nose, metallic silver hair that fringed his large head, and grave gray eyes, the type that poets might describe as calm oceans.

  Upon meeting Harris for the first hundred or so times, one would think he possessed a great talent for observing the obvious. However, Lucere knew a wise seer with supernatural powers lay beneath the man’s placid façade.

  For instance, when, after downing three bottles of fine Portuguese port with Mowne, Starlingham, and several lovely actresses, Starlingham had said, or more accurately, he had slurred, “Let’s ride to Scotland together. Unity in battle,” it had seemed like a completely rational plan given the inebriated circumstances. The words “jolly” and “congenial” had even been bandied about.

  When told of this proposed travel party, Harris had said, “It will be a most exciting adventure, I’m sure,” which, if translated onto a lay tongue, had meant, There is a strong possibility you or your friends may be arrested, injured, or shot dead.

  And Harris had been right, of course.

  Mowne’s brother had become embroiled in an unsavory duel before they’d even managed to cross the border. And poor Mowne had received a shot in the rump as a reward for trying to stop the unpleasant business.

  Now Lucere was worried, nervous, and furious.

  Worried that Mowne’s poor wound would fester—it would be a sad affair for a duke in the prime of his life to have his backside amputated.

  Nervous that Mowne’s Uncle Leo would receive word of the duel.

  And furious at Mowne’s brother, but mostly at himself.

  What am I doing here? Hadn’t he made a vow to be a better man?

  A year had passed since a footman had found Lucere playing deep in a London gaming hell, a cigar in his mouth, a brandy in one hand, an ace in the other, and a dainty ballerina decorating his knee, to inform him of his father’s imminent death. Lucere had dashed through the yellow fog-filled streets that evening. He hadn’t been to his father’s home since the old duke had told him to stay out of his sight for the remainder of his life.

  “So you’re going to be the duke,” his father had rasped when Lucere knelt beside his deathbed. The air reeked of mucus, urine, and medicine. His father sucked for breath and then released it with a gravelly, wet rush. “Well, you’re a disgrace to the ancient Primrose blood line. A stalwart English family that for hundreds of years upheld our motto of duty, honor, truth, sacrifice, and courage. You’re a libertine like The Despicable Uncle, except you can’t be shaken from the tree but remain to blight it. Oh, had your worthy brother lived. Had he ascended to the title. Woe, that he and I—admirable, honorable men—should die and you should be the duke.” He fell into violent coughs that sounded like rocks scraping together.

  The duke had been throwing these little knives of words for years at his surviving son. Lucere hadn’t experienced that acute, fresh sting at their utterance as he had in disreputable youth. What had brought the shine of tears to Lucere’s eyes that evening was to see his formidable father shriveled to yellow skin draped loosely over bones, everything in between eaten away. Even though his father would never have believed it, and would have scoffed at such weak sentimentality from a man, Lucere loved the duke. He wished he could have been a better son.

  “Take my hand,” his father growled.

  Lucere had never held his father’s hand in his life. It was hot and reduced to cords of tendons and hard knuckles.

  His father labored for words. “Promise me before the ghosts of the old Dukes of Lucere gathered in this room tonight, coming to bring me to their great fold, that you will be a better man. Worthy of your title.”

  Lucere wasn’t one to believe in ghosts, but that night the room felt alive with specters. His voice cracked when he said, “I promise upon the Primrose family name to be a better man.”

  “Tell me how you will improve yourself.”

  “Now?”

  “No, son, in a fortnight. Of course now. What other time is there?”

  “I-I suppose I’ll start attending the House of Lords and help bolster several bills I’ve been reading about.”

  “No!” his father hissed, which brought more coughs. When he spoke again, his voice was a mere thread. “You will stop keeping company with low women and take a gentle wife of proper breeding and manners. She will bear you a son as soon as may be possible, who, God willing, will inherit her good sense and restore dignity to the title of Duke of Lucere.” His father strained on. “Once the question of the heir is settled, what will you do?”

  Lucere began making brash promises to his father. He would improve the tenants’ homes, research farming techniques to increase yields, form charities for the orphans and widows, and so forth. Things the old duke hadn’t done, but it hadn’t been the time to further explore that subject. The duke nodded his head best as he could. Finally, in the very last hours of his father’s life, Lucere had managed to please him.

  The old duke released his last breath in the early morning. The new duke had walked to the empty nursery at the top of the house where Catherine, his favorite childhood nurse, and he had shared so many hours. He had squatted onto the cold, bare floor planks and imagined she was with him, embracing him and whispering that all would be well when he knew it wouldn’t be.

  Even as a grown man, Lucere desperately missed her abundant smiles and the way she embraced him without reserve—so different from his cold parents, or the grasping courtesans who would later decorate his adult nights. How readily Catherine praised his childish drawings and songs he made up—all created to worship her. No night of wild passion had ever surpassed the gentle, warm feeling of when she had tucked him into bed, singing a lovely song meant to lull him to sleep. He had heard enough false I love you’s dripping from ambitious women’s lips. But Catherine had truly meant it when she’d said, “I love my sweet, sweet boy.”

  Catherine was the only person who had ever truly cared for him.

  And he had killed her.

  After his father’s death, Lucere had tried in vain to find the proper wife in London Society to fulfill the vow he had made, but the Catherine problem had assailed him at every turn. He knew he would never find Catherine again, but that didn’t stop his heart from yearning for her. For years, she had sent him drifting restlessly from one beautiful courtesan’s arms to the next, finding no solace for very long. And now she was determined to prevent his marriage and transformation.

  Lucere was a mordant caterpillar stuck in a gloomy chrysalis. In the depths of his marital despair, he had received a fateful letter from Mowne’s interfering and matchmaking Uncle Leo. Leo wrote that a lovely German princess, who Leo and Lucere’s late father had agreed would make an excellent Duchess of Lucere, was attending a hunting party in Scotland. Leo provided a genealogy chart—Leo consulted genealogy charts like fortune-tellers conferred with astrological tables—showing her impeccable pedigree, as wel
l as German articles attesting to her gentle manners and acts of charity. Lucere decided to give up trying to talk sense into his adamant heart—Catherine was dead, he had killed her. Even if he found an incarnation of Catherine, he wouldn’t be worthy of her. He should just surrender to the ease of an arranged, loveless marriage. After all, his friends Mowne and Starlingham were already heading to Scotland, so the entire affair seemed rather destined—the sun, moon, and stars aligning in his favor.

  “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” Lucere now muttered, quoting Shakespeare as he gazed down the narrow lanes of Lesser Puddlebury, seeking an inn that might be devoid of fleas and thieves.

  “Harris, do you see that slowly collapsing building with the word ‘Arm’ scribbled upon the side? Do you think it houses people, such as The Royal Arms or Chauncy’s Arms might? Or is it a shop of arms, say, wooden arms? Or perhaps a physician whose specialty is the arm?”

  “It is a captivating mystery, Your Grace,” said Harris in his unperturbed tones. “However, might I suggest the Duke of Lucere’s Boarding House as your temporary home?”

  “Are you attempting a joke? Because I don’t feel in the mood to laugh, but would rather kick something very hard, namely myself.”

  “No, Your Grace. If you will kindly position your sights farther down the lane, you will see a sign advertising the Duke of Lucere’s Boarding House.”

  Lucere turned, located said sign, and studied it with his head tilted, a brow cocked. The wood—embellished with vines and primroses, no doubt after his family name Primrose—did, indeed, read “Duke of Lucere’s Boarding House.” Below that, a line further expounded, “Apartments for Elegant Persons of Gentle Breeding.”

  What?

  Intrigued by this mystery, Lucere strolled down the uneven pavement until it ended in a dirt path. Set slightly apart from the town was a crumbling manor house. It was a dreary gray stone edifice from Jacobean times. The left side of the building was higher than the right, and ugly cracks ran in slants from the roof to the foundation. The grounds, which twenty years before might have been a pleasing, manicured garden, appeared to run feral.

  “Well, that’s convenient,” Lucere said, at length. “Exceedingly odd and rather puzzling, but terribly convenient. Ah, Harris, but do we possess the required gentle breeding demanded by this exacting Duke of Lucere? Starlingham said something about being in disguise—or did he say be disguised?”

  “I do believe he was suggesting assuming false identities, not being inebriated for the duration of our time in Lesser Puddlebury.”

  “I could be both, for good measure. For I can hardly stomach this place sober. Very well, who is genteel and poor? We haven’t regimentals or clergyman’s clothes. Good God, no one would believe I was a man of the cloth for a moment—an aura of sin surrounds me.”

  “Perhaps we could be tutors in want of employment.”

  “You shock me with your fast, devious mind, Harris. Tutors we are. I shall resurrect dead and tedious languages, and no doubt, you shall want to teach philosophy, given your great esteem for Kant.”

  “If it pleases Your Grace.”

  “No, it does not please,” Lucere said, gazing at the dilapidated lodging house. The dying domicile with his name on its sign seemed like a sad metaphor for his life. As if to further illustrate the point, a slate slid from the roof and thudded on the ground. “Nothing pleases, and that is entirely the problem. Since my father’s death and that bloody vow, my life has become gray. London is gray, this village is gray, and everything I touch, hear, or see is as dull, relentless, and despondently gray as this sad home. And I can’t chase away this feeling, no matter how much I try. I feel so doomed and trapped by life.”

  Harris studied his master, his heavy brows raised in alarm. Lucere felt embarrassed by his outburst.

  “Damn it,” Lucere muttered, feeling foolish and exposed in Harris’s penetrating gaze. “Forget I spoke. I’m just frustrated that I agreed to this sad folly.” He slid his identifying signet ring into his bag, which also carried Leo’s letters and charts as well as a diamond ring and necklace Lucere would give his princess should he decide to ask for her hand in marriage. “I hope this Lucere cove has chambers for us. I hear tell he is a blackhearted rogue who would be well served with a good shot in the arse.”

  “You may find, Your Grace, that good things are often born of unfortunate circumstances.”

  “I assure you the only good thing that will come of this unfortunate circumstance will be that for the rest of my life, no matter what evil befalls me, I can always say, ‘At least, I’m not in Lesser Puddlepiss.’”

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  Estella pondered why, at least in her case, bad news never meted itself, for example, dropping a tidbit of badness on a Monday and a little more on a Thursday. But alas, vile tidings must all fall at once. For the past few days, she had prayed for a positive reply from the Duke of Lucere before she met next with the despised banker. Out of financial desperation, she had recently tried to strike up a correspondence with the great duke, or to be more accurate, with the great duke’s secretary, Mr. Fellows. Naturally, a cold letter from Mr. Fellows, denying her requests for help, and a call from the banker, Mr. Todd, occurred within the same hour.

  Now the franked letter lay folded before her on the parlor table beside twenty pounds and three shillings in stacked coins—all the money she possessed. She sat on a chair, her hands clutched in her lap, her eyes focused on the stained and snagged carpet as she struggled to remain civil.

  Mr. Todd tossed back his head in belly-shaking laughter, then lowered it again and studied her. The side of his thin lips rose in a boyish smile. A twinkle warmed his gray eyes that were mantled by heavy lids. She did not know whether to describe him as stout or powerfully built. He was a man of dualities. At this moment, he resembled a lovable, chubby puppy. This puppy side was the one most people saw.

  But Estella wasn’t fooled.

  She had witnessed his visage harden to frightening menace in a flash.

  “You are a lovely little darling.” He leaned down until they were at eye level. “But let me help you perform a little mathematics problem.” He spoke slowly, as if to a child. “You owe 3,120 pounds at four percent. Do you know what that equals per month including last month’s missed payment?”

  “I only owe you 3,112 pounds,” she said. “Here is the correct amount for two monthly installments. I keep careful ledgers.”

  “Of course you do.” He leaned in closer, his eyes mere inches from hers. “But, my dearest, you owed the butcher, the coal deliverer, and the apothecary for your mother’s medicine. You can’t leave your house without incurring more debt, can you, my silly darling?” He laughed again. “What would happen if you weren’t so beautiful? If I weren’t so willing to help you? My dear, you live entirely on my graces.” He placed his large, hot hand on her cheek. “Now I would appreciate a little gratitude.”

  “You did not ask my permission to pay those creditors.” She gently removed his fingers. She knew better than to anger him. “You are intentionally making me further obliged to you.”

  “Obliged?!” he cried. “Y-you’re like a bird with a broken wing trying to fly. It’s pathetic to watch you.” He stepped back and swung his arm, gesturing to the room. “You can’t run this house. It’s falling down around you. You have no sense of economy. You’re not intelligent enough to take care of yourself, let alone your sisters and a sick mother. Only I have the patience to put up with you—no one else—and yet, you give me no consequence. No respect.”

  Estella tried to keep his ugly words from sinking into her heart and further weakening her. That was his intention. Every week, he called to try to break her down.

  “I’m the only man standing up for your honor,” he continued when he didn’t garner a reaction. He brushed his chin with his hand; it made a rasping sound. “What do you think the villagers think when they see a young woman running a lodging house? Th
at you’re entertaining the royal princesses? You, my dear, have made yourself the object of lurid gossip. Decency forbids me to say how the gentlemen in this town regard you.”

  What an insidious man! He was guilty of spreading the very rumors about her that he claimed to dispel. She wouldn’t put him above suspicion in the mysterious events surrounding her chicken coop being left open overnight and all the chickens eaten by dogs, or the sudden, fatal illness of their milch cow.

  Estella glanced at the letter. “I will write the Duke of Lucere again. I will scratch up the extra monies.” She would beg the duke. She would sign her name in blood.

  He slammed his palm hard on the table, rattling the coins and the tin candlestick holder. “Enough with this inane Duke of Lucere foolishness! Enough, I tell you, woman! You could drive a tolerant man to madness.”

  She came to her feet. “We are Primroses!” She kept her bearing high. “The duke is my cousin through my grandfather, Lord Maxim.”

  He cocked his head and raked his gaze over her body, stopping at her breasts. She gathered her arms about her bosom, trying to conceal herself from his eyes.

  “Would you care to know who my cousin is?” he asked, and didn’t wait for her answer. “Lord Nelson. That’s right.” He slowly approached her. She backed up until she hit the bureau desk, shaking the glass cabinets. Still he came even closer to her. He kept his legs spread, his face so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. “My mother claims he’s a fourth cousin. I’ve never met him. Therefore, I don’t call my bank Lord Nelson’s Bank, because I don’t shamelessly live off the name of another. I rise and fall by my own merit.”

  She didn’t mention that the lodging house had been her mother’s idea before she’d had the heart spasm. Her mother had taken out the mortgage and named the business after the great duke. Now Estella shielded her mother and twin sisters from Mr. Todd and the desperation of their situation. Around her family, she upheld the pretense that their world was running merrily along. But inside, Estella was breaking under the weight of Mr. Todd’s bombardment of her character and her business.