Duke Du Jour

by Petie McCarty

  “No! I won’t have it,” she wailed. “We are a perfect match, some of the best bloodlines in all England. Peers like us do not cry off. They marry and then learn to”—she flailed her hands—“get along.”

  “You mean lead separate lives and sleep with whomever we choose?”

  “Well, yes. I suppose.”

  “I want more.”

  “What do you want?” she sneered. “Love? Good luck with that. It doesn’t exist.”

  “No. I mean I need an heir.”

  She looked almost relieved. “So, that’s what this is all about? The magnificent Duke of Reston needs an heir to continue his illustrious line in this…this mausoleum?” She smiled slyly. “I am willing to try for an heir. You always had one exceptional thing the others lacked.”

  He arched one brow. “And what was that?”

  Her eyes slid to his groin. “It’s why I agreed to marry you at all.”

  “Then pray tell what was your attraction for me, I wonder,” he said sardonically.

  Another sly smile. “You know precisely why you pursued me. Those bloodlines you so desperately wanted, darling. I’m no fool. I know you don’t love me. You were marrying me for bloodlines that date back to Henry II, even to William the Conqueror if my grandfather is to be believed, and you couched your offer in smooth talk and promises of love.”

  Sadly enough, she had hit the veritable nail on the head. He had happily progressed to this point in his life, dating gorgeous supermodels and managing his investments with a certain genetic knack for increase. Until he had reached his thirtieth birthday and received that inauspicious visit from his mother. The duchess’s fated pronouncement—It is time you sought a suitable wife, my son. You owe our ancestral line a proper heir—had brought him to this juncture.

  A glare had replaced Edwina’s smile, and he realized she had continued talking. “—and I was getting a title and no imagination in bed, no creativity, and no desire.” She spat the last word. “You haven’t slept with me in almost four months.”

  “First, I had to locate you, and then it was difficult to squeeze through the revolving door.” Her sadomasochistic tendencies in bed were a whole other story.

  “Oh, you bastard!” She grabbed a vase from a settee table and winged it toward his head.

  “I am a lot of things,” he said, ducking first and then wincing at the sound of shattering porcelain, “but never that.”

  “We had an agreement!” she shrieked, finally losing her cool.

  “Had being the operative word.”

  “In our betrothal contract, there is an implied promise of marriage. Legally defensible. I checked.”

  His eyebrows went on point. He had clearly underestimated her. “Was that before or after you started cheating on me?”

  “Oh!” She winged another curio at his head. “I will be the Duchess of Reston, do you hear me? I am not giving up that celebrity renown. I like how everyone had to cater to my whims, and I refuse to sign your bloody papers!”

  “Even if the media gets wind of your indiscretions?”

  The media had had a field day with their engagement announcement, likening it to a royal wedding, with him the wealthiest peer in England and Edwina’s chromosomes from the lineage of kings. Paparazzi had hounded them both ever since, to his sincere regret.

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Oh, I certainly would. Did you expect me to spend the next fifty years letting you run around the countryside and cuckold me?”

  “Cuckold!” she shrieked. “Now there’s a word. No doubt you got that from those musty old journals.”

  “It suits you. Marriage to me however, does not.”

  “Oh, I hate you!” She reached for a porcelain vase.

  “Put that down. That vase is from the sixteenth century and—” He ducked as it flew past his head and crashed against the wall. “If you sign the papers today, I will double your financial settlement.”

  That caught her attention. “Double?”

  “That’s right.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You are trying to buy me off three months before our wedding? Well, it won’t work. I am holding you to our premarital contract.” Her eyes shot sparks, and her hand reached.

  “Throw one thing more, and my offer is rescinded. You will not get a single pound to spend on your friends.”

  Her fingers closed into a fist. “How much?”

  “Substantially more than you are accustomed to having access to, considering you come from a family of spendthrifts, and your ancient line of family earls has never bothered to refill or even maintain their forebears’ coffers.”

  She glared, and he felt a minuscule stab of guilt at his slight. “I intend to leave you considerably wealthier than when I engaged you.”

  Now her blue eyes sparked. “How…much?”

  “Two million and we release a statement to the media that we have amicably ended our relationship and parted the best of friends to pursue other interests. You may have to limit your number of lovers, unless you can locate another wealthy gull to marry.”

  He could not resist that last jab. She had cuckolded him in a manner of speaking.

  She ignored the slight in favor of clarification. “I want the deed to Cravenwood, too. You have a dozen estates and houses about England, and I have always loved that one.”

  He stared unblinking—foregoing the urge to remind her they had only been engaged for eleven interminable months. Though he had never cared for Cravenwood, he knew she would sell the property the minute she had the deed in her hands, and he refused to let go of even one ducal estate. His forebears had spent their lives building up and maintaining the ducal inheritance for subsequent generations, and he would do no less.

  “Absolutely not!” he exclaimed with enough vehemence she abandoned her pursuit.

  She let out a disgusted sigh. “I will think about signing.”

  “I suggest you do that quickly. My generous offer to double the settlement ends today. The alternatives will not be pleasant.”

  “I don’t think you will do it—put our dirty laundry about.”

  He narrowed his gaze. “Count on it.”

  Giving him a glare for the road, she snatched up her purse and stalked out the door.

  He sighed. “Well, that is that.”

  Edwina would sign the papers. She was far too greedy not to and too fearful of damaging her family’s reputation with newsbreaks of scurrilous affairs, while engaged to one of the highest-ranked peers in all of England and current media darling, to say nothing of the damage to her chances of landing another wealthy fiancé. He would make good on his threat, for the thought of remaining engaged to Edwina made his head ache.

  He had become accustomed to the idea of her infidelity, but that did not mean he liked it any better. Thank the good Lord he had had the presence of mind to be suspicious of her gadding about the continent and had hired the private investigator, Wells. What if he had gone along blindly and married Eddy? He heaved another disgusted sigh.

  And they call men bounders.

  He left the library to seek out the portrait gallery of his ancestors, feeling his misery would love their company. The long hall in the west wing had been one of his favorite places in all Haverly as a child. He had skateboarded the length of the gallery when the weather was inclement and his parents were traveling—which was always. The gallery was long with glass windows along the outside wall for viewing the formal courtyard gardens. Canvases lined the opposing wall of polished oak, each with the face of a past Reston duke glumly staring back.

  Jared thought of his parents’ own loveless marriage and his childhood spent with one parent or the other, but never both, as the two had never resided under the same roof for longer than a week or two. Fun became his family since he had none with his parents always gone. Truth be admitted, the two had stepped out of his life almost from the first, leaving Jared to grow up with servants who catered to his every whim but never really cared about him.

/>   Even now, his mother lived in Switzerland, and his father had spent the last decade of his life at his hunting lodge in Scotland. Neither had ever wanted to visit Haverly Manor and treated the place as though it was haunted. Had all the previous dukes been as unhappy at Haverly?

  He remembered his mother once saying, “This horrible old house could ruin the best of marriages.”

  So maybe this was all his fault. He had doomed his own chance at marriage, by forcing Eddy to come here so often with him when they first began seeing each other, and later when she refused to come with him, he had let her go off on her own.

  “I see where that got me,” he muttered to himself.

  He progressed slowly down the gallery, stopping to peer at the bleak expression on each of his Reston ancestors. Had any of them ever smiled?

  “None of you fellows look happy,” he muttered to the various and sundry ducal portraits. “I know that feeling now. I have read some of your journals, and we all seem to have a penchant for making poor spousal choices.”

  Strangely, he had wanted to retrace more of his roots in the weeks after finding that box in the Haverly attic holding the journals of dukes one through six. He had almost quit his research after reading about the wastrel and rogue known as Six. Jared hated the thought of his genealogy being partially anchored by that sod. Even Six’s portrait scowled, the look in his eyes somehow accusatory.

  What could you possibly know about me, you rakehell? That is what they called you back then, was it not?

  Six tupped every skirt within six feet of him and every maid in the manor house, willing or no. Jared shuddered. What he would not give to go back and shake some sense into his ancestor and those that came after. Maybe those later Reston dukes explained Jared’s own penchant for fun and making money, which according to his father and grandfather were all the later Reston dukes ever did.

  To add insult to injury, the last six dukes had also suffered the now-famous Reston curse—one heir, no spare. One child per duke. Thank God, each had been a male. And all had married women with huge dowries and no extended family—no siblings for uncles, aunts, or cousins. Was Duke Six responsible for that curse? He did happen to be the first single-heir Reston.

  Jared scrutinized the ducal line and recognized pieces and parts of his own visage amongst the portraits forming the lineage of Reston—height well over six feet, broad shoulders, thankfully narrow hips, and no sign of paunch. Add strong facial lines with an aquiline nose and the dark auburn hair, an odd color not often seen. Women loved the color—enough of his former girlfriends had informed him so. He halted at the center of the gallery and let his gaze shift from side to side over his genealogical foundation.

  “Only one in the lot of you with the hint of a smile.” He sighed deeply and muttered, “Is this to be my lot then? All because I desire to be a good and faithful duke?”

  As though in answer, the portraits all stared glumly back. All except for his namesake—Jared Langley, seventh Duke of Reston—who stared back from the oils with a mischievous smile. Almost watching him. Jared stared back, incredulous. He had never before noticed how much he resembled the seventh duke. Why the two of them could be twins except for the two hundred years separating their existence. How had he missed this? How had anyone missed this? Had anyone even cared?

  Jared addressed the smiling portrait. “You were from the Regency era, as I recall. Prince George’s world of wine, women, and whatever trouble you could find. Mostly women, from what I gather. Small wonder you’re smirking, given those depraved times. Lord knows what you were up to back then. Yours is one of the missing journals.”

  Jared narrowed his gaze on this wild ancestor. “Your father Duke Six mentions only that you existed. From the few Dolan historical records I could locate, I gather you traipsed off to Waterloo with a purchased commission and a last-minute show of patriotism. Then nothing. I have not located Eight’s journal or the journals of those that came after, if they even exist.”

  He glanced over at Eight’s portrait, painted later in life and recreated with a miserable glower.

  He leaned back for a closer look at Seven. “If you died at Waterloo, who was Eight’s father? Eight is a Langley, but was he yours or a distant cousin? Our records on the two of you seem to have vanished, if they ever existed.”

  As he stared, the portrait smirked at him! He sucked in a breath and stepped back. His gaze held, however—mesmerized by the smirking duke. Questions formed. A noticeable gap existed in the chronological journals. Jared had always assumed Seven spent so much time partying he had little time to write about the family, tenants, or things that normally mattered to Reston dukes, like producing heirs. When there was no mention of him after Waterloo, Jared wondered if he had been killed in the battle.

  He shook himself free of his weird musings—and worse yet, mutterings at a portrait—and strode from the gallery, suddenly in need of a breath of fresh air. Jared still had to face the challenge of securing an heir. What to do about that, now that Eddy had been set aside? His head pounded with the question as he stalked through the old ballroom and out the terrace doors. The garden had a special spot where he went as a boy, when he had a problem and he needed to think. The spot—a wrought-iron bench under an ancient poplar tree—had always served him well in his youth, and he hoped today would be no different.

  Down the long gravel path lined with boxwood hedgerows, he trudged and then ducked under an arbor. He smiled, remembering he had never had to duck as a boy. The gardeners had obviously avoided this back portion of the garden. Shrubs sported leggy branches in desperate need of pruning, and vines had crawled up to smother trees and shrubs alike. The grass reached almost knee high. Annoyed, Jared made a mental note to rectify this jungle immediately. The gardeners would all get a personal earful from him. One more responsibility to add to his growing list, as if he did not have enough to do already.

  The ache in his head pounded like a hammer against the inside of his skull, and he massaged his right temple. He had never had a migraine before, but after the confrontation he had suffered with Edwina, maybe this would be his first.

  He snatched aside branches growing across the footpath. Where the devil was the old poplar tree and his favorite spot? And blast those gardeners for not taking better care of his gardens! He stopped and glanced all around. Even overgrown as the landscaping was, the area should look familiar, and yet it did not.

  He pressed forward and spotted another arbor. This one he did not recognize. A new one perhaps? Couldn’t be. The rickety gate in the arbor looked neglected, like all the landscaping in this back section of his once-beautiful gardens. He unlatched the gate, which swung precariously by its top hinge—the bottom hinge having parted company with the support post.

  Stepping through, he entered a small fenced area with knee- to waist-high weeds of every species and size. In the center, an alabaster statue of an angel rose above the vegetation. Surging through the landscaping on no discernible path, he aimed straight for the smiling cherub. Ten cumbersome strides and he broke free of the weeds and entered a clearing with a dilapidated fountain at its center. The smiling alabaster angel he had spotted from afar perched on a central pedestal in the fountain, and four more smiling, though smaller, cherubs circled the angel from the perimeter wall, each pouring water from a small urn back into the fountain.

  Jared’s head ached so badly now he had to squint his eyes against the bright afternoon sun, and when he did, all five cherubs seemed to smile directly at him. Almost laughing. He stepped several paces to the right and then back left. Five sets of angel eyes moved with him.

  Impossible. Must be my headache.

  Feeling light-headed, he sat down on the short wall forming the fountain base. His head had never pounded like this before. Could he be having a stroke? Edwina would win everything then. The thought brought an involuntary bark of laughter that shot a bolt of pain through the back of his skull.

  He cupped his hands in the water and dumped the icy
liquid over the back of his neck and then his face. The brief chill did little to combat the hammering in his skull. Something was definitely wrong, and he doubted he could make it back to the manor house.

  Maybe this was all a bad dream. He could not remember there ever being a fountain in the back garden during his youth. Indeed, there had not been any fountain in the back garden since the sixth duke of Reston. He tried hard to picture the particular fountain described in Six’s fastidious journal, yet no image came to mind. Only a wave of dizziness so strong Jared keeled over backward into the fountain.

  Chapter Two

  Jared’s lungs seized up, and he coughed hard to get some air.

  “Back are ye? Ye should have tol’ someone, Yer Grace,” a feminine voice squealed.

  He stared up at the oddly dressed stranger addressing him. “You know me?”

  “Know ye? I’ve knowed ye so long, I walked ye on leading strings a time or two when Nurse got too deep in her cups.”

  Oh, good Lord. That couldn’t possibly be true.

  “Of course, you are Miss—”

  “Miss?” She cackled. “Ye always were a charmer. Look at ye now, calling old Cook a miss!”

  The woman’s clothes appeared worn—a long flowered skirt with a white blouse and a bodice of sorts and a white mobcap on her head. She looked a couple hundred years out of place. He grinned sheepishly and shifted to glance around. He still sat on the low fountain wall in the secluded back garden, but he must have blacked out from the headache. Only—

  He frowned. Everything in the little garden looked immaculate—no weeds—and tiny hedgerows separated groups of delicate plants.

  “Are ye feelin’ all right, Master Jared? And what be ye doin’ back here in me herb garden and wif yer head all wet? Did ye dunk yer head in the fountain?”

  Herb garden? He smoothed damp hair back from his face for a better look. His hair was indeed soaked, as were his clothes. What the hell had happened to him? And who was this person called Cook? Had Everston hired someone without telling him? That would be the last time his estate manager did so.