How obstinate she was, and how wrong. “When you took a look at my books, I was certain you’d fuss, shake your head, and tell me the situation was too complicated to be set to rights.”
Eleanora smoothed her skirts. “I wanted to. Your ledgers were a mare’s nest of inaccuracies, schemes, and incompetence, but numbers can be made to come right. They behave in a predictable fashion.”
“So does polite society, Eleanora, and I am as competent at tallying those books as you are at auditing bank records. I know which hostesses to charm, which charities to support, which MPs to flatter. I know whose daughter to stand up with. I know whose son needs a good word put in with a Cabinet minister. I know exactly which people to invite to the theater or to a dinner party, and I know how to quell gossip with a raised eyebrow.”
She smoothed an index finger along that portion of his anatomy. “You sound so confident.”
Was that relenting he heard in her voice? Hope? “I am very confident. I was not brought up to manage a complicated financial institution, but I was trained to be a duke. Acceptance of our union will take time and there will be talk, but it will be quiet talk. You will dance with me at Almack’s, we will enlist the aid of Walden and his duchess, and they will recruit others to our cause. My entire family will rally to our side, and we will be so very publicly besotted that everybody will know we are a love match.”
He could see the arrows and connections flying across the pages of Debrett’s. The aunties knew everybody, including the dowagers and hostesses who held the real social power in London. Mama had already promised her support, and even allowed that a soupçon of notoriety enlivened all the best family histories.
“We will hint that your grandfather was duped by a scheming wastrel,” he went on, pausing to kiss Eleanora’s hand. “A subtle reference to the truth never hurt the course of true love.”
“And what of my mother?” Eleanora asked. “She is the widow of a felon, living in self-imposed exile.”
“While my very heir is a felon, and his excuse is what? An inability to survive without a mahogany walking stick? A pressing need for more gold sleeve buttons? Your mother has committed no crimes, while my cousins—note the plural—have, and yet you think she should be banished to France?”
“What I think doesn’t matter.”
“What you think is all that matters,” Rex retorted. “Dealing with polite society will be messy and tedious, Eleanora, just as putting my accounts in order was messy and tedious. We’ll think we’ve laid the gossip to rest only to hear another nasty rumor. We’ll see glances exchanged when we’re announced and know damned well we’re being slandered purely for spite until some other couple stumbles into society’s gunsights. I don’t care, as long as you’ll marry me and be the woman I cleave to for the rest of my earthly days.”
She was quiet for so long Rex nearly resorted to begging on bended knee.
“I have no abacus for this, this proposal you put before me,” she said slowly. “I don’t understand the columns and figures.”
Rex’s heart sank straight to his toes, and he resigned himself to a lengthy courtship in blasted France.
“But you know what you’re about,” Eleanora went on, “and you love me.”
“I most assuredly do and always will.”
She clasped his hand in both of hers. No ink stains on her hands today, maybe no ink stains ever again.
“I love you too, Wrexham, Duke of Elsmore, and if love demands anything from us, it’s courage. You trusted me with your wretched bookkeeping. If you say a marriage between us will work, I am insufficiently unselfish to argue with you.”
Insufficiently unselfish meant…yes. “You already talk like a duchess.”
“I will be your wife, and if that means I must also be a duchess, then I will rise to that challenge to the best of my ability. I do wish though…”
He kissed her. “What do you wish?”
“Why did you sell Walden your bank shares, Elsmore? Your bank is on solid footing, though in another two years who’s to say where it might have tottered.”
“Eddie was brokering usurious loans. James embezzled outright. My head clerk, Ballentyre, was literally asleep at his post, and nobody—not a teller, not a manager, not a well-meaning fellow at the clubs where I’ve been playing cards for the past ten years, not my own cousin Howell—said a word. I kept a significant interest in the institution, which I expect to prosper under Walden’s watchful eye, and I will hold a seat on the board, even if Walden chooses to combine the two banks.”
Eleanora climbed back into his lap. “A seat on the board of directors?”
“I was hoping you’d attend the meetings with me.” He wrapped his arms around her and she sighed.
“We will cause talk, won’t we?”
“A love match usually does.” He kissed her again, and she kissed him back, and while they did cause talk—a lot of talk—it’s also true that the marriage of Eleanora and Elsmore resulted in the addition of one plus one totaling not two, but rather…seven, and every one of them was both ferociously good with numbers and ferociously charming.
Keep reading for a peek at Althea Wentworth’s story in
A DUKE BY ANY OTHER NAME
Coming in Spring 2020
Chapter One
“Lady Althea Wentworth is, without doubt, the most vexatious, bothersome, pestilential female I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.” Nathaniel Rothmere was prevented from pacing and shouting by the sow sniffing at his boots, but his store of pejoratives concerning Lady Althea was bottomless.
The sow was a mere four-hundred-pound sylph compared to the rest of the herd milling about Nathaniel’s orchard, though when she flopped to the grass, the ground shook.
“Have you?” Treegum asked with characteristic delicacy. “Encountered the lady, that is?”
“No.” Nor do I wish to.
Another swine, this one on the scale of a seventy-four gun ship of the line, settled in beside her sister and several others followed.
“They seem quite happy here,” Treegum observed. “Perhaps we ought to simply keep them.”
“Then her ladyship will have an excuse to come around again, banging on the door, cutting up my peace, and disturbing the tranquility of my estate.”
Two more pigs chose grassy napping places. Their march across the pastures had apparently tired them out, which was just too damned bad.
“Has the time come for a Stinging Rebuke, sir?” Treegum asked, as a particularly grand specimen rubbed up against him and nearly knocked the old fellow off his feet. Treegum was the butler-cum-house steward. Swineherding was not in his gift.
“I’ve already sent her ladyship two Stinging Rebukes. She probably has them displayed over her mantel like a privateer’s letters of marque and reprisal.” Nathaniel shoved at the hog milling before him, but he might as well have shoved at one of the boulders dotting his fields. “Her ladyship apparently longs to boast that she’s made the acquaintance of the master of Rothhaven Hall. I will gratify her wish, in the spirit of true gentlemanly consideration.”
“Mind you don’t give her a fright,” Treegum muttered, wading around swine to accompany Nathaniel to the gate. “We can’t have you responsible for any more swoons.”
“Yes, we can. If enough ladies swoon at the mere sight of me, then I will continue to enjoy the privacy due the neighborhood eccentric. I’m considering having Granny Dewar curse me on market day. I could gallop past the village just as some foul weather moves in, and she could consign me to the devil.”
Treegum opened the gate, setting off a squeak loud enough to rouse the napping hogs. “Granny will want a fair bit of coin for a public curse, sir.”
“She’s partial to my elderberry cordial.” Nathaniel vaulted the wall one-handed. “Maybe we should leave the gate open.” The entire herd had settled on the grass and damned if the largest of the lot—a vast expanse of pink pork—appeared to smile at him.
“They won’t find their w
ay home, sir. Pigs like to wander, and sows that size go where they please.”
Running pigs through an orchard was an old Yorkshire custom, one usually reserved for autumn rather than the brisk, sunny days of early spring. The hogs consumed the dropped fruit, fertilized the soil, and with their rooting, helped the ground absorb water for the next growing season.
“Perhaps I should saddle up that fine beast on the end,” Nathaniel said, considering a quarter ton of livestock where livestock ought not to be. “Give the village something truly worth gossiping about.”
Treegum closed and latched the gate. “Hard to steer though, sir, and you do so pride yourself on being an intimidating sort of eccentric rather than the other kind.”
“Apparently not intimidating enough. Don’t wait supper for me and be sure the hogs of hell have a good supply of water. They have to be thirsty after coming such a distance, and even the neighborhood recluse ought to offer some hospitality to ladies who’ve wandered so far from home.”
* * *
Althea Wentworth heard her guest before she saw him. Rothhaven’s arrival was presaged by a rapid beat of hooves pounding not up her drive, but rather, directly across the park that surrounded Lynley Vale manor.
A large horse created that kind of thunder, one disdaining the genteel canter for a hellbent gallop. She could see its approach from her parlor window, and her first thought was that only a terrified animal traveled at such a speed.
But no. Horse and rider cleared the wall beside the drive in perfect rhythm, swerved onto the verge, and continued right up—good God, they aimed straight for the fountain. Althea looked on in horror as the black horse drew closer and closer to unforgiving marble and splashing water.
“Mary Mother of God.”
Another smooth leap—the fountain was five feet if it was an inch—and a foot perfect landing, followed by an immediate check of the horse’s speed. The gelding came down to a frisking, capering trot, clearly proud of itself and ready for even greater challenges.
The rider stroked the horse’s neck, and the beast calmed and hung its head, sides heaving. A treat was offered and another pat, before one of Althea’s grooms bestirred himself to take the horse. Rothhaven—for that could only be the dread duke himself—paused on the front steps long enough to remove his spurs, whip off his hat, and run a black-gloved hand through hair as dark as hell’s tarpit.
“The rumors are true,” Althea murmured. Rothhaven was built on the proportions of the Vikings of old, but their fair coloring had been denied him. He glanced up, as if he knew Althea would be spying, and she drew back.
His gaze was colder than a Yorkshire night in January, which fit exactly with what Althea had heard of him.
She moved from the window and took the nearest wing chair, opening a book chosen for this singular occasion. She had dressed carefully—elegantly but without too much fuss—and styled her hair with similar consideration. Rothhaven gave very few people the chance to make even a first impression on him, a feat Althea admired.
Voices drifted up from the foyer, then the tread of boots sounded on the stair. Rothhaven moved lightly for such a grand specimen, and his voice rumbled like distant cannon. A soft tap on the door preceded Strensall announcing Nathaniel, His Grace of Rothhaven. The duke did not have to duck his head to come through the doorway, but it was a near thing.
Althea set aside her book, rose, and curtseyed to a precisely deferential depth and not one inch lower. “Welcome to Lynley Vale, Your Grace. A pleasure to meet you. Strensall, the tea, and don’t spare the trimmings.”
Strensall bolted for the door.
“I do not break bread with mine enemy.” Rothhaven stalked over to Althea and swept her with a glower. “No damned tea.”
His eyes were a startling green, set against swooping dark brows and features as angular as the crags and tors of Yorkshire’s moors. He brought with him the scents of heather and horse, a lovely combination. His cravat remained neatly pinned with a single bar of gleaming gold, despite his mad dash across the countryside.
He was precisely as his reputation had foretold, from the fierce dignity of his bearing, to the perfect details of his appearance, to a disregard for decorum that made him all the more imposing.
Althea could barely contain her glee, for he was all she’d hoped for and more. “I will attribute Your Grace’s lack of manners to the peckishness that can follow exertion. A tray, Strensall.”
The duke leaned nearer. “Shall I threaten to curse poor Strensall with nightmares, should he bring a tray?”
“That would be unsporting.” Althea sent her goggling butler a glance and he withdrew. “You are reputed to have a temper, but then, if folk claimed that my mere passing caused milk to curdle and babies to colic, I’d be a tad testy too. No one has ever accused you of dishonorable behavior.”
“Nor will they, while you, my lady, have stooped so low as to unleash the hogs of war upon my private property.” He backed away not one inch, and this close Althea caught a more subtle fragrance. Lily of the valley or jasmine. Very faint, elegant, and unexpected, like the moss green of his eyes.
“You cannot read, perhaps,” he went on, “else you’d grasp that ‘we will not be entertaining for the foreseeable future’ means neither you nor your livestock are welcome at Rothhaven.”
“A neighborly call is hardly entertaining,” Althea countered. “Shall we be seated?”
Lynley Vale had come into her possession when the Wentworth family had acquired a ducal title several years past. Althea’s brother Quinn, the present duke, had entrusted an estate to each of his three siblings, and Althea had done her best to kit out Lynley Vale as befit a ducal residence. When Quinn visited, he and his duchess seemed comfortable enough amid the portraits, frescoed ceilings, and gilt-framed pier glasses.
Rothhaven was a different sort of duke, one whose presence made pastel carpets and flocked wallpaper appear fussy and overdone. Althea had been so curious about Rothhaven Hall she’d nearly peered through the windows, but His Grace had threatened even children with charges of trespassing. A grown woman would get no quarter from a duke who cursed and issued threats on first acquaintance.
“I will not be seated,” he retorted. “Retrieve your damned pigs from my orchard, madam, or I will send them all to slaughter before the week is out.”
“Is that where my naughty ladies got off to?” Althea took her wing chair. “They haven’t been on an outing in ages. I suppose the spring air provoked them to seeing the sights. Last autumn they took a notion to inspect the market. In spring they decided to attend Sunday services. Most of my neighbors find my herd’s social inclinations amusing.”
“I might be amused, were your herd not at the moment rooting through my orchard uninvited. To allow stock of those dimensions to wander is irresponsible, and why a duke’s sister is raising hogs entirely defeats my powers of imagination.”
Because he had never been destitute and never would be. “Do have a seat. I’m told only the ill-mannered pace the parlor like a house tabby who needs to visit the garden.”
He turned his back to Althea—very rude of him—though he appeared to require a moment to marshal his composure. She counted that a small victory, for she had needed many such moments since acquiring a title, and her composure yet remained as unruly as her sows on a pretty spring day.
Though truth be told, the ladies had had some encouragement regarding the direction of their latest outing.
Rothhaven turned to face her, the fire in his gaze banked to burning disdain. “Will you or will you not retrieve your wayward pigs from my land?”
“I refuse to discuss this with a man who cannot observe the simplest conversational courtesy.” She waved a hand at the opposite wing chair, and when that provoked a drawing up of the magnificent ducal height, she feared he’d stalk from the room.
Instead he took the chair, whipping out the tails of his riding jacket like Lucifer arranging his coronation robes.
“Thank you,”
Althea said. “When you march about like that you give a lady a crick in her neck. Your orchard is at least a mile from my home farm.”
“And downwind, more’s the pity. Do you raise pigs to perfume the neighborhood with their scent?”
“No more than you keep horses, sheep, or cows for the same purpose, Your Grace. Or maybe your livestock covers up the pervasive odor of brimstone hanging about Rothhaven Hall?”
A muscle twitched in His Grace’s jaw.
Althea had been raised by a man who regarded displays of violence to be all in a day’s parenting. Her instinct for survival had been honed early and well, and had she found Rothhaven frightening, she would not have been alone with him.
She was considered a spinster, while he was a confirmed eccentric. He was intimidating—impressively so—but she had bet her future on his basic decency. He patted his horse, he fed the beast treats, he took off his spurs before calling on a lady, and his retainers were all so venerable they could nearly recall when York was a Viking capital.
A truly dishonorable peer would discard elderly servants, abuse his cattle, and ignore basic manners, wouldn’t he?
The tea tray arrived before Althea could doubt herself further, and in keeping with standing instructions, the kitchen had exerted itself to the utmost. Strensall placed an enormous silver tray before Althea—the good silver, not the fancy silver—bowed, and withdrew.
“How do you take your tea, Your Grace?”
“Plain, except I won’t be staying for tea. Assure me that you’ll send your swineherd over to collect your sows in the next twenty-four hours and I will take my leave of you.”
Not so fast. Having coaxed Rothhaven into making a call, Althea wasn’t about to let him win free that easily.
“I cannot give you those assurances, much as I’d like to. I’m very fond of those ladies, and they are quite valuable. They are also particular.”
Forever and a Duke Page 26
