The Way to a Duke's Heart: The Truth About the Duke

by Caroline Linden

  “My dear!” Eugenie’s voice went up a register in excitement. “My dear, he is coming!”

  So much the better, thought Tessa, since no one would serve them until he came through; but she obligingly stepped forward to see what sort of man could upend the entire York Hotel.

  Mr. Lucas, the hotel proprietor, ushered the earl to the door himself. Lord Gresham was moderately tall and wore clothing of unmistakable elegance and quality. He turned on the doorstep to speak to someone still outside, and she studied his profile. A high forehead, square jaw, perfect nose. His dark hair curled against his collar, just a bit longer than fashionable. From the tips of his polished boots to the crown of his fashionable beaver hat, he exuded wealth and privilege.

  “Such a handsome gentleman!” breathed Eugenie beside her, clinging to Tessa’s arm as if she would faint. “I’ve never seen the like!”

  “I would like him a great deal better if he hadn’t been responsible for everyone deserting us to carry up his luggage,” she replied.

  “And his carriage is so elegant! Everything a gentleman’s should be, I’m sure,” went on Eugenie, either ignoring or not hearing Tessa’s comment. “How fortunate we should be in Bath at the same time, at the very same hotel! I do believe Lady Woodall mentioned his name recently—oh, she shall be in transports that we have seen him! What was it she was saying about him?” Her brow knitted anxiously. “I’m sure it was some bon mot that would amuse you, my dear . . .”

  Tessa suppressed a sigh. She didn’t listen to Louise’s gossip, and Eugenie didn’t remember it. What a pair they made. She shifted her weight; her shoes were beginning to pinch her feet.

  Lord Gresham smiled, then laughed at whatever was said outside the hotel, and finally walked through the door. He moved like a man who knew others would pause to make room for him to walk by. It was the bold, unhurried stride of someone with the world in his pocket, with a whiff of predatory grace, as if he knew just how arresting his appearance was and meant to use it to his best advantage. Because Eugenie was right: he was a blindingly attractive man.

  Tessa had learned the hard way to be wary of attractive men. They often thought it counted for too much, and in her experience, a handsome man was not a man to be trusted. And this man, who not only had the face of a minor deity but an earldom and, from the looks of his clothing, a substantial income, was nearly everything she had come to mistrust and dislike. That was all without considering how he had inconvenienced her, however unknowingly. Together, it pushed her strained temper to the breaking point. She arched her brows critically and murmured to Eugenie, “He looks indolent to me.”

  Here the earl committed his second grievous offense. He was several feet away from her, with Mr. Lucas hovering beside him and a servant—probably his valet—trailing close behind, and yet when she spoke the peevish words in a hushed whisper, Lord Gresham paused. His head came up and he turned to look directly at her with startling dark eyes, and she knew, with a wincing certainty, that he had heard her.

  Eugenie sucked in her breath on a long, whistling wheeze. She sank into a deep curtsy, dragging Tessa down with her. Chagrined at being so careless, Tessa ducked her head and obediently curtsied. She fervently wished she had arrived half an hour earlier, so she and Eugenie could have been comfortably ensconced in their rooms before he arrived, or even half an hour later. Now she would have to be very certain she never ran into the earl again; if he remembered her face, or heaven forbid, learned her name and connected her to Louise, her sister would quite possibly murder her.

  For a moment the earl just looked at her, his gaze somehow piercing even though she still thought he looked like a languid, lazy sort. Then, incredibly, one corner of his mouth twitched, and slowly a sinful smile spread over his face. As if he knew every disdainful thought she’d had about him, and was amused—or even challenged—by them. Tessa could hear Eugenie gasping for air beside her, and she could feel the heat of the blood rushing to her cheeks, but she couldn’t look away. Still smiling in that enigmatic, wicked way, Lord Gresham bowed his head to her, and then finally—finally—walked away.

  “Oh, my,” moaned Eugenie. Her fingers still dug into Tessa’s arm, and it took some effort to pry her off and lead her to a chair in the corner. “Oh, my . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tessa, abashed. “I never dreamed he would overhear, but I was wrong to say it out loud. But Eugenie, he won’t remember. Or if he does, it will be some amusing story he tells his friends about the shrewish lady at the York Hotel.”

  “What if we see him again?” whispered Eugenie in anguish. “He might remember, Tessa, he might! And your sister, so hopeful about her new life in London! He’s quite an established member of the haut ton; he could ruin her!”

  “I will hide my face if he approaches,” she promised. “You know I would never deliberately upset Louise—and you shouldn’t either. Telling her about this will only send her into a spell and cause her to worry needlessly.” It would also unleash a flurry of letters to Tessa, full of despair and blame. She prayed Eugenie wouldn’t set her sister off. “And really, I am very, very sorry. It was badly done of me, and I won’t make the same mistake again.” She did so hate it when her temper got away from her, and this time it could leave Eugenie on the verge of a fainting fit for the duration of their stay in Bath. Seen in that light, the coming week seemed endless, and she applied herself to reassuring her companion.

  Once the earl’s retinue had proceeded up the stairs, someone finally remembered them and came to conduct them to their rooms. Tessa helped Eugenie up the stairs, still patting her hand as the porter led them to a lovely suite and carried in their luggage. When she finally coaxed Eugenie to lie down with a cool cloth on her forehead, her first instinct was to leave. She could slip out of the room and soothe her cross mood with a short walk before dinner. If she happened across a new novel or delicious confection in Milsom Street, so much the better. Eugenie would be immensely cheered by a small gift, and a novel would keep her occupied for several days. Tessa hadn’t wanted anyone other than Mary, her maid, to come with her, and already she was chafing at Eugenie’s presence.

  She pulled the door of the bedroom gently closed and quietly crossed the sitting room. “I’m going out for a walk,” she told Mary softly, throwing her shawl around her shoulders and picking up her reticule. “See to Mrs. Bates; she’ll likely have a headache.” Eugenie was very prone to having headaches when Tessa had done something she disapproved of. Mary might as well be forewarned to have her favored remedy, a good bottle of sherry, at hand.

  Some instinct made her pause at the door. Instead of just leaving, she opened the door a few inches and took a quick look out. The first person she saw was Mr. Lucas, the hotelier. The second person was the Earl of Gresham. He had shed his long greatcoat and hat by now, displaying a figure that didn’t look the slightest bit soft or lazy. His dark hair fell in thick waves to his collar, and somehow up close he didn’t look like a languid fop at all. Tessa froze, hoping to remain invisible by virtue of holding very, very still. Mindful of her recent promise to Eugenie, she all but held her breath as the men came nearer, just a few feet away from her door. Her prayers seemed to be answered as they passed without looking her way, but only for a moment. When she cautiously inched the door open a bit more and peered around it to see that they were gone, she beheld a door only a few feet down the corridor—almost opposite her own—standing open, with Mr. Lucas ushering the odiously keen-eared earl through it.

  Tessa closed the door without a sound. Well. This was a dilemma. How could she leave her rooms if he might be passing in the corridor at any moment? She could ask for a new suite, perhaps, in another part of the hotel, but that would be a terrible bother. On the other hand, having to sneak in and out of her own hotel room was the height of inconvenience. What was she to do now?

  She shook her head at her own dithering. “Mary, did you pack a veil?” she asked her maid, who w
as bustling about the room unpacking the valises.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mary produced the veil, draping it over her bonnet, and Tessa picked up her parasol as well. She would not be held prisoner in her own room, but neither did she want to break her promise to Eugenie. Not that he was bound to recognize her, even if he did see her. Eugenie was worried over nothing. She was well beneath the notice of any earl, particularly a vain, arrogant, indolent one. On her guard this time, she let herself out of the room, and safely escaped the hotel.

  Charlie was having a hard time ridding himself of Mr. Lucas, the smooth and somewhat oily hotel proprietor. He had no objection to being personally greeted, nor to being shown to his rooms, and then to a larger, better suite when the first was unacceptable. But then he wanted the man to leave, and instead Mr. Lucas stayed, blathering on about his hotel’s service. Mostly Charlie was tired and longed to prop up his stiff leg, nearly healed by now though still ungainly, but Mr. Lucas was undeniably annoying as well.

  “Yes, that will be all,” he said at last, resorting to a lofty, bored voice. “Thank you, Mr. Lucas.” He motioned to Barnes, his valet, who obediently whisked the obsequious hotelier out the door.

  “Fetch something to eat, Barnes.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” Without being asked, Barnes offered the cane he had just removed from the trunk. With a grimace, Charlie took it, inhaling deeply as he shifted his weight off the injured limb. He was trying to wean himself off the cane, but by evening it was still welcome, much to his disgust. What a bloody nuisance a broken leg was. He’d fallen down the stairs after too much brandy almost two months ago and broken it in two places. It no longer throbbed as though a red-hot poker had been rammed into it, but after a long day in the carriage, it was stiff and sore. He hobbled across the room and settled himself in the chair by the window overlooking George Street.

  “Shall I procure some laudanum?” Barnes murmured when he had arranged a tray with dinner and a bottle of claret at Charlie’s elbow.

  He scowled and eased his aching foot onto a stool, surreptitiously placed by Barnes. He still wore his boots, and it would hurt like the devil to take them off. Of course, he probably deserved the pain. It was a good substitute for the sorrow he ought to feel at his father’s death. “No.”

  He dismissed his valet and picked up the glass of wine. It was still incredible to him that the duke was dead. Durham had been eighty, but remained vigorous and vital in his memory; Charlie had been sure, when he got Edward’s first letter detailing their father’s failing health, that the duke would survive on force of will alone. Edward had written a dozen more letters, first hinting and then outright asking him to return home, but Charlie hadn’t gone. Partly because of his broken leg—the doctor had strictly warned him to stay in bed or be crippled for life—but partly because he just couldn’t. In the eleven years since he left home, he’d had a letter from his father every few months, letting him know how splendid things were without him at Lastings: how brilliant and capable Edward was at business, how clever and heroic Gerard was in the army. Those letters never intimated the slightest hint of reconciliation, and now it was too late.

  For a few maudlin moments he tried to remember what life had been like, years ago, when his mother still lived and made his father smile. The memories were dusty and dim, and mostly of just his mother, as if he had deliberately cut the duke out of them. He remembered the way the joy went out of his father after her death, like a candle snuffed out. But he couldn’t remember a moment since then when he and Durham had gotten along.

  And Charlie couldn’t see how that would have changed had he obeyed his father’s dying wish and returned home in time to hear Durham’s confession. His father, that unforgiving paragon of ruthlessness and keen judgment, had had a scandalous past. No, not simply scandalous; Charlie knew scandal, and what his father had done was something much worse. As a young man, Durham had entered into a secret marriage with an inappropriate young woman—an actress!—and then simply parted ways from her when they ceased to get along. There was no divorce, and until the day of his death, Durham had no idea if she still lived or had died years ago.

  Quite aside from the element of hypocrisy, it was nearly the worst sort of thing he could have done, in every respect. The vast majority of the Durham holdings were entailed on the next duke; most of the money was also tied to the estate, although Charlie’s mother’s dowry funds had been held separately and become a handsome sum under first Durham’s and then Edward’s management. As long as Charlie became the next duke, all three brothers had a secure future. If he didn’t inherit, though, because he was an illegitimate son of a bigamous marriage, he and his brothers would each only be left with his share of their mother’s dowry and a single property his father had won in a bet.

  As if all that weren’t bad enough, someone had discovered this clandestine marriage and begun sending Durham blackmail letters a year before his death. For that year, the duke had known his past was a boil about to burst, and instead of confessing it then, he’d hidden it. He had betrayed his sons in the worst way, not only with an illicit marriage but with his utter inability to humble himself and admit fault.

  Whatever bitter irony Charlie might have appreciated about the situation—at least the old devil had known what he was talking about when he railed about unwise attachments to inappropriate females—was lost in the enraging realization that this could ruin all three of them, and the deep alarm that they wouldn’t be able to stop it. Hell, they couldn’t even agree on a plan to solve the problem. Edward favored a legal battle, and Gerard announced his intention to find and shoot the blackmailer. Charlie, to his private horror, had no ideas at all, which made him almost resent his brothers for being so certain they did. It seemed the best thing he could do was stay out of the way of their plans, to avoid mucking things up.

  Not that either of them had been proved right. Edward, against advice, told his fiancée of the trouble, and she faithlessly sold the story to a scandal sheet and then jilted him. If things had been grim before, they became positively beastly after that, when all London began scrutinizing their every move and whispering about the Durham Dilemma, as the gossip rags had dubbed the disaster. Charlie endured it with his usual front of careless disregard for anything unpleasant, but inside he seethed. He still thought Edward’s plan to mount a bold, swift legal action was eminently reasonable and the most likely to succeed, but the gossip complicated things. The courts moved slowly. And when he called on Edward after a few weeks to see how they were progressing, his brother not only said it wasn’t over but sent him a dispatch case filled with all the documents and told him he must fight for Durham himself. For the first time Charlie could ever recall, Edward was leaving a task unfinished and turning it to him. That was shocking enough, to say nothing of alarming. It got even worse when Edward threw all his usual caution and reserve to the wind to marry an outspoken widow who had bewitched him—there was no other explanation for such shockingly unusual behavior on his brother’s part.

  And now it appeared Gerard’s plan to bring the blackmailer to a swift and brutal end had also run off track. After disappearing for weeks, the first word they had from their youngest brother was a desperate letter for help. Edward actually refused to go, which thoroughly quashed all Charlie’s amusement at his head-over-heels tumble into love. Edward handed the letter to him and wished him luck, then retired to make love to his new wife in shameful, callous, blatant disregard of his duty to family. Or so Charlie imagined, as he told Barnes to pack his things.

  So now he was in Bath. Tomorrow he would call on Gerard, discover what sort of trouble his brother was in, and then . . . He had no idea. Chase down the blackmailer, he supposed, since that should provide a link to the truth. Either the villain had proof of his charges and meant to demand something for it, or he didn’t, in which case his actions would all come to nothing when Charlie was declared the rightful duke. Charlie couldn’t decide which seemed
more unlikely. Hopefully Gerard had learned something useful, but he had also somehow acquired a wife, according to his letter, and Charlie had seen how marriage changed Edward. It still amazed him that ruthlessly logical and practical Edward had thrown over his family for a woman; Gerard, always more prone to emotion and impulse, was likely to do even worse, if he’d also fallen in love with his bride. And that would leave only Charlie to find the blackmailer, discover the truth about Durham’s long-lost first wife, prove his claim to the dukedom, and save them all from disgrace.

  He caught sight of the leather satchel on the writing desk across the room. In it were all the documents and correspondence from the investigators and the solicitors relating to that damned Durham Dilemma, as well as his father’s confessional letter. He turned his head away, not wanting to look at it. He’d forced himself to bring it all to Bath, but just thinking about it left him angry at his father, irked at his brothers, and deeply, privately, alarmed that his entire life now hung by a thread. If rumors in London—and Edward’s expensive solicitor—could be believed, Durham’s distant cousin Augustus was about to file a competing claim to the dukedom, alleging that Charlie could not prove he was the sole legitimate heir. If the House of Lords upheld that claim, the title and all its trappings would be lost—at best, held in abeyance until proof was found, or at worst, irrevocably awarded to Augustus. Either outcome would effectively ruin him.

  Charlie hoped to high heaven the answer to all their troubles could be found in Bath. And even more, he hoped he was capable of finding it before the House of Lords heard his petition.

  He let his head drop back against the chair and closed his eyes. How ironic that the first time anyone expected great things of him, the stakes were so high. Right now he didn’t want to think of anything beyond his dinner and the glass of wine in his hand. If the lady from downstairs could see him now, she would surely think him the most indolent, useless fellow on earth.