A Duke in Need of a Wife

by Annie Burrows

  Sofia’s eyes filled with tears. He thought she was going to say something pertinent to Livvy’s feelings or the treatment to which he had exposed her. Instead, she stunned him by saying, ‘You must have been terrified.’

  He shrugged one shoulder, as though it didn’t matter. ‘It was a long time ago. I could not have been more than three years old. But,’ he continued, loathe though he was to remember that time, let alone speak of it, ‘the very morning after my mother died, I was banished from Theakstone Court. I grew up believing my father had...had killed her, that night, in a fit of rage.’

  ‘Oh, no! How awful.’ She reached out one hand, then withdrew it, as though she could see how reluctant he was to receive any form of pity.

  ‘Worse was the fact that he never paid for the crime. No charges were ever brought against him, probably because he was too powerful. And by the time I was old enough to do anything it was too late. You cannot imagine the difficulties inherent in attempting to investigate a crime that took place over twenty years previously. Besides...’ He jerked his head in the direction of her bed, reminding her and himself that there was a more important issue at stake now.

  ‘I was not precisely safe myself. You see...’ he shifted on the stool, wishing he’d taken her hand, for then he could be pulling her on to his lap ‘...my father did not summon me home until some ten years later, by which time my half-brother had grown to an age where he was unlikely to succumb to any childhood ailment. And, tellingly, my father had given him the courtesy title of Marquess of Devizes, a title which is normally given to the heir to the Dukedom.’

  ‘But...you were the heir.’

  ‘Yes. But he did not believe it. He thought my mother had played him false and that I was no son of his. He did have what he believed was evidence. For one thing, my father had blue eyes. And my mother had blue eyes. But I have brown eyes. And, according to what investigations I could carry out, witnesses said that she discouraged him from visiting the nursery when I was awake. I don’t know what her reasons were any more than I can guess what Ruby’s motives may have been for concealing Livvy from me.’ She couldn’t have thought he would harm his own child, could she? The fear she might have was one of the things that had him pacing the schoolroom at nights. Had she seen something in him that was essentially the same as what resided in the depths of his own father’s nature? Something dark and cruel?

  ‘You know,’ Sofia said, hesitantly, ‘not many men are all that interested in visiting the nursery except when their offspring are washed and bathed and quiet. Perhaps you were a fractious baby. Or...’

  ‘We will never know. The only thing of which I can be sure is that the sight of my brown eyes, when I started crawling and pulling myself up at his knee, came as a horrible shock to him.’

  ‘I’m surprised she didn’t do it the other way round, then.’

  ‘Other way round? How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, babies all have blue eyes when they are born, you know. So she could have shown you to him with complete confidence that he would not suspect a thing. It was later she should have hidden you away, when your eyes darkened, if she was guilty of...of anything.’

  ‘She was guilty of nothing,’ he growled, setting down the water glass and getting to his feet. The next part was going to be even harder to relate than anything that had gone before. He’d never told another living soul what he was about to tell Sofia and Livvy. But Livvy had to know why he could sympathise with any child who went in fear of their own father. That he wouldn’t hold it against her.

  ‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean to imply...’

  ‘I need to tell you about the manner of my homecoming,’ he said, making an impatient gesture with his hand to cut her off. He had to get the telling over with before his nerve failed him.

  ‘One day, my foster father told me that the third Duke of Theakstone thought it was about time I learned to shoot a gun. And that he wanted to be the one to teach me. So, it was goodbye. He looked sad as he was packing me into the coach. Since I’d grown rather cynical by then, I assumed it was because he was going to miss the money he’d been paid for having me live with him. It was only later...’

  Sofia clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘You think...you thought...you said you weren’t safe...’

  ‘It is probably irrelevant now.’ And probably best to gloss over it anyway, with Livvy’s little ears no doubt straining to hear every word. ‘The point is, the moment he clapped eyes on me his jaw dropped. He dragged me straight up to the gallery and stood me next to the portrait of my Aunt Mary, his sister.’

  ‘Who has the eyebrows.’

  ‘And, apparently, the brown eyes beneath them. He went white as paper. I thought he was going to cast up his accounts. Instead, he sent for the housekeeper to have a room prepared for me.’ Their eyes met at this significant point. And he could see she understood, because she was shaking her head, in horror rather than denial.

  ‘That same day he banished my poor stepmother and her brood from the house.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  He shook his head. ‘Who knew what possessed him to do anything? He was, not to put too fine a point on it, a touch unhinged. He would dote upon me one day, then fly into a rage with me the next. He was the same with his second family, from what I can gather. He cosseted and indulged my half-brother to a high degree and then, after he brought me back, not only banished him but hardly acknowledged him ever again. It created a rift that I have never been able to heal. Whatever I try to do for them, they believe I am doing it out of malice.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Not if they had no idea you existed until you showed up. Which must have been the case if your half-brother was brought up expecting to become the next Duke. He sounds like a perfect beast.’

  ‘He was. I went in fear of my life every moment my father lived, lest he take it into his head to undo the decision he’d made to acknowledge me as his legitimate first born. Fortunately, I’d already learned how to keep my true feelings hidden. My foster family taught me that much,’ he said, a wave of bitterness surging to the fore. ‘I learned that there was no point in crying, for it only earned me a beating. No point in complaining, or asking for anything. By the time I returned here, I was like a little automaton. Not trusting anyone. Never confiding in anyone. When my father began to try to teach me that women in particular were not to be trusted, that I should never give rein to my emotions, he thought he found me an able pupil.’

  Until Ruby. For a while, at least, she’d called to something in him that he’d thought life had extinguished. Every so often he’d even shared...

  Which perhaps explained why she’d hidden Livvy from him. Perhaps she’d been afraid he might turn out like his own father. Especially since he’d told her he’d never wanted to father a child out of wedlock. Knowing what bastards went through, he’d never wanted to be responsible for making another innocent child feel the same. But had she mistaken his motives for urging her to make sure she didn’t quicken with child?

  Well, whatever her reasons for acting as she had, Livvy was here now and he needed to concentrate on coaxing her out from under the bed.

  ‘My father encouraged me to behave with coldness, to weigh up everything everyone said to me. Always to question what a person’s motive might be for approaching me, or attempting to befriend me.’

  ‘You must have been so lonely,’ Sofia said, reaching out a hand to touch his arm. This time, her gesture of sympathy seared into his soul like a brand. He wasn’t sure if it was pain he felt, or something more beneficent. His instinct was to recoil from it.

  And yet, another part of him, the part he’d been deliberately suppressing ever since his mother’s death, put out its arms in the hope she would enfold him. Smother him with compassion.

  ‘The point is,’ he said stiffly, while the two parts of himself were still wrestling for supremacy, ‘I know what it feels like t
o lose my mother, to be sent to live with strangers and to be despised by those who had the task of raising me.’

  He was past saving. But there was still time to prevent Livvy’s soul from being stunted and warped, and crippled.

  ‘When I first met Livvy, it all came rushing back. I knew just what she must have felt like when she saw me. I could see it on her face. My first instinct was to try to shield her from all that I’d suffered. Above all, I would not place her in the hands of people who would raise her only for financial gain. What would they care if she was ill? And if she wanted a puppy, or a pony, would they refuse, grudging the expense? And yet, it appears, that I have failed her. Somebody in my household is making her feel as though she is to blame for the circumstances surrounding her birth. And worse, she appears to be as afraid of me as I was of my own father.’

  ‘Well, you know,’ Sofia said, apologetically, ‘you...you are a bit...stern in your manner.’

  ‘I know it. And it tears at me, seeing how unhappy and withdrawn Livvy remains. Which is why I finally decided I needed to marry and provide her with a mother. Someone who could give her the...the...emotional care that I am incapable of giving her.’

  ‘Oliver,’ said Sofia, shaking her head. ‘You have so much more to give her than you think. My own father...he made a lot of mistakes. But I never doubted he loved me. And you do love Livvy, don’t you? Everything you have told me, all your struggles, all you have tried to do for her, it all proves it.’

  There was the sound of a stifled sob from beneath the bed. Snowball whined and wriggled free of Sofia’s arms, returning to the edge of the bed and sticking her head beneath it.

  ‘You know,’ Sofia said, ‘you could simply hug her, once in a while. If you ever found her upset, or hurt...’

  ‘Would she want me to hug her?’

  ‘I am fairly sure she would. It sounds as if her mama was very affectionate and demonstrative. Livvy talks of all the hugs and kisses she misses...’

  ‘But it is the hugs of her mother she misses. I am a stranger to her...’

  ‘Hugs are hugs,’ said Sofia simply. ‘All little girls need them. And I’ll tell you how I know it. The day I reached Nettleton Manor, dirty and dishevelled and defiant because I was so sure that these people, too, were going to let me down, I stood there glaring at my aunt and uncle. Because I was blowed if I was going to let them see how scared I was. If only my aunt had broken through all that bravado, and her own disgust at the verminous state of my clothing, to hug me, even though I’m pretty sure I would have stood stiff and suspicious in her arms, at least I would have known that she cared; that she wasn’t just taking me in on sufferance, because it was the right thing to do. Everything would have been so different,’ she went on, a little teary-eyed. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have been so terrified of being sent away if I stepped out of line that I turned myself into a...total bore.’

  She dashed a tear from her cheek in an angry gesture that made him want to take her in his arms and comfort her. But she shook her head.

  ‘And you are not going to send Livvy away if she is sometimes naughty,’ she continued, ‘are you? You don’t even want to punish her for what she’s done today, do you? For running away and hiding, and worrying you?’

  ‘No. I would just be glad to know that she was safe. Though I would want to know what made her hide in the first place, so that I could see what I could do to make her want to stay here. And be happy here.’

  ‘Perhaps it might help if you were to discipline her governess. It sounds as though she is at the root of Livvy’s misery.’

  ‘I think losing her mother is at the root of her misery. But that woman certainly has not done anything to alleviate it.’

  Suddenly he knew what he had to do next. And it started with him going to the bell pull. Then, since Sofia’s rooms were not in the best part of the house and servants were unlikely to come in answer to a summons very quickly, he strode to the main door to her suite and bellowed for a footman.

  A young one appeared remarkably swiftly.

  ‘Send for Mrs Stuyvesant,’ he said to the puzzled-looking young man. ‘Quickly!’

  ‘Sir...er... Your Grace,’ he said, his eyes sliding past Oliver, to where Sofia was standing, in the doorway to her bedroom. ‘You want me to fetch her here?’

  ‘Here,’ he confirmed, before shutting the door in his face.

  When he returned to Sofia’s room, it was to see her on her hands and knees, next to her dog, her head under the bed, holding a frantic, whispered conversation with his daughter. And the most ignoble part of him couldn’t help noticing that she had a very shapely bottom.

  But now was not the time to be distracted by her physical charms. He had a small, frightened child to coax out of hiding.

  ‘She won’t come out,’ said Sofia, turning to look at him over her shoulder. ‘When she heard you send for Mrs Starchy...that is to say, Mrs Stuyvesant, she got it into her head that you did mean to punish her, in spite of what you said before.’ And then she mouthed, please don’t be angry.

  ‘I am not really surprised she does not trust me,’ he said. ‘After all, she is my daughter. And she has clearly inherited a suspicious nature from me. She needs proof that I mean what I say. And it will take time for her to learn that I never say anything I don’t mean. I will be patient with her. I will give her the time she needs to learn that I am a man of my word.’

  Sofia got up, dusted down her skirts and came up to him. ‘You are not angry with her for not trusting you?’

  ‘Trust has to be earned,’ he said.

  She frowned, then nodded. ‘I see. And, having witnessed the behaviour of the other women you have brought here, to see if they could be good mothers to Livvy, I can understand why you needed to...test us all. You have been used to people betraying you, from as far back as you can remember.’ She laid one hand on his cheek.

  Finally, he yielded to temptation. He turned his face into her palm and kissed it.

  ‘I admit I wanted to test you, to see if you were what Livvy needed. I needed to make sure that I was right about you. That you could be a mother to Livvy, that is true. And that I wanted to ignore the...other things I felt whenever I saw you. But...’ Hang it, this wasn’t the time to be making a declaration. He groaned. ‘This is the trouble with you. I always try to behave like a rational, sensible man, but around you I have never been able to manage it. From the first moment I saw you, you...’

  ‘Yes?’ She was looking up at him with what looked like hope in her eyes. And she’d inched nearer. She was definitely standing closer to him than she’d been a minute ago.

  ‘You...you got under my skin,’ he admitted.

  ‘Like nettle rash?’

  ‘As welcome as that affliction,’ he agreed. ‘I try to keep reminding myself that it is for Livvy’s sake that I am searching for a bride, and for someone who can become the fourth Duchess of Theakstone. But... I want you so much, for myself,’ he grated. ‘Thank God Livvy likes you as well, because even if she didn’t, I...’

  She moved her hand to stop his mouth and shook her head fiercely.

  And that, right there, was why he...he loved her. She had a good heart. A kind, caring nature. Even when he was trying to tell her that she was more important to him than his own child, she would not allow him to say so. Not when that child might be able to hear it.

  She was a woman in a million.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When Mrs Stuyvesant arrived, the Duke urged Sofia to sit on the chaise longue by the window, while he took up a stance in her bedroom doorway. Snowball, as though sensing trouble brewing, shot under the bed to hide alongside Livvy.

  Oliver was setting the scene, Sofia perceived. If his own memories of being a child, cowering under his bed while his father attacked him with a poker, had stayed with him all his life, then his daughter’s would stay with her, too. And in year
s to come, she would wager that Livvy’s abiding memory of this scene would be of watching the woman who’d been so unkind to her being given a rare trimming before being dismissed by her father—through the framework of his sturdy legs.

  After today, Livvy would never regard her father as a man she needed to fear, but as a strong and protective figure, instead. Because he would continue, staunch and true. Because that was the kind of man he was.

  The moment the governess had stalked out of the room, unrepentant in spite of being soundly denounced for her cruelty, Livvy and Snowball came out from their hiding place.

  For a few moments father and daughter stood there, looking at each other warily.

  ‘Livvy,’ said Sofia, ‘would you not like your father to hug you?’

  Livvy thought about it. She raised her chin. ‘Not if he don’t want to. I’m not a baby.’

  ‘No, you are a very brave and resourceful young lady,’ said Oliver.

  ‘You ain’t cross with me? Truly?’

  ‘No. I am angry with myself.’

  ‘With yourself?’

  ‘Yes. For not seeing through that vile woman sooner. For believing her word over yours. For not being a better father.’

  Livvy took a step closer. ‘You’ll get better at it. You just need practice.’

  ‘I...’ His voice choked up.

  ‘Oliver,’ Sofia said gently, ‘I can see that today has been very hard for you. Would it help if Livvy gave you a hug?’

  ‘Only if she wishes to,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, come here, the pair of you,’ she said, taking Oliver by one hand, and Livvy with the other and then, when they were close enough, putting one arm round each of them. Livvy leaned into her, though she kept her eyes upon her father, who put his arms round the pair of them.

  ‘We need you, Sofia,’ he said. ‘You are going to marry me and make us a family, aren’t you?’

  ‘Please, Miss Sofia. I don’t want none of those others to be my mama.’