“I will marry your daughter, Lady Ward,” said the duke, effectively rendering Eleanor absolutely and completely speechless for the first time in her entire life. “It is, after all, the only right thing to do.”
Chapter Four
Lady Ward was crying.
Eleanor was shouting.
The hedgehog was chirping.
Ignoring all three of them, Derek went to the door and locked it, then angled a chair beneath the doorknob for good measure. No one was leaving the parlor until they had their bloody story straight. Desperately wishing he had a bottle of brandy at his disposal, he settled for draining the two flutes of champagne before he turned to face his reluctant (to put it mildly) fiancée and elated mother-in-law.
“Quiet.” He snapped the word out with the same sharp tone he used for his hounds, and it had a similar effect. At least on Lady Ward and the hedgehog. Eleanor was far more difficult to subdue. Not that he was surprised. ‘Willful nature’ indeed. The chit was what nightmares were born of. And he was going to marry her.
Here’s to you, Grandfather, he toasted silently as he tipped one of the empty flutes up towards the ceiling. Wherever you are, and we both know it isn’t heaven, I know you’re no doubt laughing your arse off, you old bastard.
After twenty-three years of constantly being told he wasn’t good enough, he wasn’t man enough, he wasn’t deserving enough to inherit a dukedom, Derek would be lying if he said he’d shed a tear over his grandfather’s coffin. His grandfather may have raised him – his own mother and father had perished in a boating accident when he was eleven years old – but there’d been no love lost between the two men. His grandmother, a sweet woman who had always snuck him hard candies, said it was because they were too much alike. Whatever the reason, Derek had been relieved when the tyrannical goat had finally met his maker. Until his grandfather’s solicitor had sat him down and explained the unusual terms of the late duke’s will.
It was really quite simple, which made it all the more infuriating. Derek would immediately inherit the title and all of the land and properties that went along with it. But he would only keep the title and the land and properties if he married before his twenty-ninth birthday and (here was the crux of the bloody matter) managed to avoid any major scandals.
The will was a way for his grandfather to control him even in death, and despite seeking the counsel of no less than two dozen different solicitors, he’d yet to discover a way to overturn the damned thing. Yes, it was unusual and even possibly illegal, all of the solicitors had told him. But in order to fight it he would have to go to the courts which were notoriously slow and cumbersome. It could take years before they ruled in his favor, and in the meantime everything – from his townhouse in London to Hawkridge Castle in Surrey – would be placed under the temporary care of the Crown.
Given that he had no intention of pandering to King George every time he wanted use of his own bloody money, Derek had grudgingly accepted the terms of the will. All things considered, it actually hadn’t been that bad. Mr. Evans, the solicitor in charge of making sure the terms of the will were met, was an annoying little fellow, but he’d stayed out of Derek’s way for the most part. He still had an entire year left to find a bride, and by some small miracle he’d even managed to keep his nose clean of any scandals – until a certain redhead with an affinity for odd pets asked him to help free her from underneath a table.
“I still don’t see why I have to marry him.” Hands on her narrow hips, Eleanor shot Derek a look of such utter revulsion that he blinked. “Who cares what other people say? I know the truth, which is that nothing happened!”
Her brown eyes shining, Lady Ward wrapped her arms around her daughter and squeezed her tight. “My darling,” she sniffled happily. “My sweet, darling girl. Do you know how proud of you I am?”
“For getting stuck under a table?” Eleanor said incredulously.
“Don’t be absurd,” Derek drawled. And because some perverse side of him liked it when her eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed with angry heat, he added, “Anyone can get stuck under a table. But it’s a rare lady who gets to marry a duke.”
There went her eyes and her cheeks, and he couldn’t help but grin at how easy she was to antagonize. He felt like a young lad again tugging on Mindy Caterwaul’s braids. Except that teasing had led to a kiss, whereas this was leading straight down the aisle.
“We’re not married yet,” Eleanor gritted out, glaring at him over her mother’s shoulder. “Nor will we ever be! I could never marry you.”
“Why not?” he asked, genuinely curious to hear her reasoning. Knowing he was the most eligible bachelor in all of England wasn’t arrogance; it was simple fact. For years debutantes and their overbearing mothers had been trying to catch him, as if he were a prized trout to be hauled out of the water and displayed on their mantle. He’d managed to keep up the pretense of looking for a wife while simultaneously avoiding all of their advances. No small task, given the doggedness with which he’d been pursued. The Bow Street Runners were known far and wide as the best thief takers in all of London, but they were nothing compared to a desperate debutante.
Once he’d come home to find a young woman hiding behind one of his potted ferns. A potted fern, for the love of Christ! Thankfully his butler, a man accustomed to dealing with hysterical females, had managed to subdue the girl and send her on her way. Then there was the time he’d been accosted at the theatre. All he’d wanted to do was watch a bloody play in peace and quiet, but as soon as word got out that he was in one of the box seats absolute bedlam had ensued. He still had a mark on his arm where one lady’s nails had dug a little too deep in her frantic attempt to cling to him as he’d made his exit.
Dangerous creatures, debutantes. Yet here was one – although to be fair, she was several years past her debut – that had managed, with the help of a runaway hedgehog and a sharp nail, to finally do what no other woman could: catch the Duke of Hawkridge. She should have been crying tears of joy along with her mother. Instead he was fairly certain that if she’d been in possession of a dagger she would have already tried to stab him with it.
Repeatedly.
“Why not?” Managing to slip free of her mother’s embrace, Eleanor regarded him with wide eyes, her pink lips slightly parted and a faint wrinkle in the middle of her nose, as if she’d smelled something particularly distasteful. “For one thing, you’re a pompous, self-entitled rake who has no regard for a woman’s intelligence or her self-worth. You’ve spent your entire life being handed whatever you want, and it’s turned you into a conceited, bullying–”
“All right,” Derek growled, holding up his hand. “I get the bloody point. You don’t want to marry me.” Now it was his eyes that flashed. “Unfortunately, you don’t have a choice in the matter.”
“Of course I have a choice!” She lifted her chin defiantly. “And I choose not to marry you.”
“Is that so?” he said in a very quiet, very gentle voice. Those who knew him understood that when he used such a tone it would be in their best interests to immediately flee in the opposite direction. Eleanor stepped closer.
“Yes,” she said, meeting his hard gaze without flinching. “It is.”
“In that case, I suppose you don’t mind that if word of this gets out your reputation will be completely ruined and no man will ever have you?”
“First, word of this is never going to get out. Second–”
Derek harsh laugh cut her off. “Word always finds a way to get out, my lady. Even now I’ve no doubt there are busy bodies standing outside this room with their ears pressed to the door. Make no mistake, people have noted our absence. And it will not take very long for them to draw whatever dark conclusion they wish.”
“Let them think what they want. Henny and I know the truth, and it doesn’t matter a whit to me if my reputation is ruined.”
“And your parents?” he challenged softly. “What of their reputation? For you can rest assured that they wil
l be given the same cut direct as you. Your mother strikes me as a lovely, sociable woman. What a pity it will be when she’s no longer received by any of her friends.”
For the first time, Eleanor’s courage faltered. “I…Mama?” she said uncertainly, looking back at Lady Ward. “That’s not true, is it?”
“A scandal of this magnitude would indeed affect the entire family,” Lady Ward said gravely. Then her expression softened. “But if you truly do not wish to marry His Grace, your father and I will not force you.”
Eleanor’s face was so easy to read Derek could decipher every emotion that flitted across her freckled countenance, from doubt to anger to disbelief, and finally, at long last, grim acceptance.
“Fine,” she said shortly. “I’ll marry you. But I’m not going to like it.”
Derek smiled humorlessly. “That’s fine, Red. Neither am I.”
Chapter Five
Hawkridge Castle
(Almost) One Year Later
Eleanor Ward had been married to the Duke of Hawkridge for eleven months, three days, and nine hours. In all that time, they had spoken exactly four sentences to one another.
Wait, she thought, a tiny line appearing between her winged eyebrows as she reconsidered. Was it four or was it five?
Five, she decided, if she counted the day of their wedding when he had looked into her eyes and said – albeit with great reluctance – “I do”. Although did two words really count as an entire sentence?
Debatable.
"What do you think, Mr. Pumpernickel?" Coaxing the white Persian up into her lap with a tiny sliver of anchovy, she scratched carefully under his chin, knowing the cat could go from purring to hissing in less time than it took to pour a cup of tea.
Not unlike her husband.
"Yes, you and the duke have quite a lot of traits in common, don't you? For one thing, you are both arrogant, not to mention quite unapproachable." Leaning back in her chair, she stared thoughtfully at the fireplace and the flames that hissed and crackled within. It may have been the first week of April, but Eleanor would hardly describe the weather as spring like.
The pond still had a thin crust of ice around the edges and the lawn was covered in a silvery blanket of frost. It was so cold the farmers had yet to plant their crops for the upcoming season, and whenever she went outside she was forced to bundle up as though it were the middle of January.
"You also come from impeccable bloodlines," she continued matter-of-factly. "Although you really have nothing to do with that. It wasn't as if you chose who you parents were going to be. How could you? You're a cat."
Mr. Pumpernickel’s ears flattened.
"A brilliant cat," Eleanor assured him quickly. "Just brilliant."
Mr. Pumpernickel’s tail swished.
"Oh, for heaven's sake. You're a genius. Second only to Socrates. There." She stroked a hand down his back. "Do you feel better?"
The Persian glared up at her from one slitted blue eye – he’d lost the other in a fight when he was only a kitten – before he jumped off her lap and trotted out of the parlor without so much as a backwards glance.
"Go on," she muttered under her breath. "I didn't want to speak to you anyways."
"Talking to yourself again?" Lady Georgiana glided into the room as if she were walking on a cloud. Sweeping her skirts to the side with an elegant flick of her wrist, she sat across from Eleanor and helped herself to one of the scones sitting on the glass table between them. "I thought we discussed that, darling," she said between nibbles.
"I wasn't talking to myself," Eleanor said defensively. "I was talking to Mr. Pumpernickel."
Georgiana lifted a sleek ebony brow. Like her brother, she had hair as dark as midnight and hazel eyes that stood out in startling contrast against her ivory countenance. Similar to the outside of a pearl, her skin had its own luminescent shine, something which Eleanor, with her scattering of freckles across sun kissed cheeks, was noticeably lacking.
"I do not think having a conversation with a cat is considered an improvement,” she said haughtily. “We converse with people, Nora. Not empty rooms or persnickety felines."
"Mr. Pumpernickel is not persnickety. A touch arrogant, perhaps, but-"
"I did not come here to discuss the personality traits of your cat."
Eleanor's mouth set in a mulish frown. "Then why are you here?"
Try as she might - and she had tried - she'd yet to warm up to her husband’s sister. It wasn't that Georgiana was mean, per say. It was just that they had absolutely nothing in common. Georgiana was fashionable and graceful and ladylike, while Eleanor was...well, none of those things. Put side by side, the two women couldn’t have looked – or acted – more differently.
Georgiana, with her flawless style and stunning good looks, made Eleanor look like a country bumpkin with her disheveled hair and frumpy dresses that were more often than not smeared with dirt and grass stains after an afternoon spent frolicking outside with her animals. Neither one of them understood the other, and that misunderstanding had caused more than a few tensions since Georgiana’s husband unexpectedly passed and she came to spend her mourning period at Hawkridge Castle.
Nestled amidst fifty thousand acres of rolling fields to the east and thick, unharvested forest to the west, one would think Hawkridge Castle and its surrounding grounds would be large enough for two women to cohabitate in relative peace and harmony.
One would be wrong.
Constructed by her husband’s great-great-great grandfather when Britain was still under the reign of the Tudors, the castle was massively sized…but apparently it wasn’t quite big enough for Georgiana to mind her own business.
No matter which wing of the castle Eleanor tried to hide in (and there were plenty to choose from), her sister-in-law always managed to find her. She liked to pretend it was by accident. “Oh, dear me!” she would laugh, fluttering a hand over her chest. “I didn’t know you were in here.” But Eleanor had long ago begun to suspect she sought her out on purpose, like a dog hunting down a bone. And like a dog with a bone, she would use Eleanor to entertain herself for a time before reburying her and flitting away to do…well, whatever it was well bred, well behaved women did.
“I have some very exciting news to share.” Draping her arm across the back of the chaise longue, Georgiana leaned back and delivered a smile that could only be described as glib. “Would you care to guess it?”
“No.” Eleanor shook her head. “I really don’t want to–”
“Oh, come on,” Georgiana coaxed. “Don’t be an old stick in the mud. I’ll give you three guesses.”
“I’m not being a stick in the mud, I just–”
“Nora.” Beneath the sugary sweetness, her sister-in-law’s voice was unmistakably sharp. “Be a dear and guess.”
Since it would be easier – and quicker – to play along than to argue, Eleanor gritted her teeth and said, “You’ve decided to return to London.”
Please, please, please let that be it.
“Return to town when I am still in mourning and the Season is nearly finished? Honestly, Nora, the way your mind works is quite amusing. Guess again!”
“You’ve bought a new hat?” she ventured.
“No.” Georgiana’s nose wrinkled. “It’s as if you’re not even trying.”
“Fine. I give up.” Grabbing a scone off the plate – her third of the morning – Eleanor stuffed the entire thing in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to play Georgiana’s ridiculous game to its conclusion.
“Oh Nora, you’re so amusing,” Georgiana said with an airy laugh. “And I must confess, I am so jealous of the way you can eat and eat and never gain a single stone. More than one of those scones and I need to let out my stays. They’re just riddled with sugar and butter, you know.”
They could have been filled with lard for all Eleanor cared. Scones were delicious, and she’d be damned if she stopped eating them for something as frivolous as the size of her waistline. Although to be fair, her we
ight was never something she’d had to worry about. Not with all the energy she exerted caring for her menagerie of rescued animals.
While Georgiana spent her afternoons reading a book or working on her sewing, Eleanor was outside chasing after all manner of creatures, from the three goslings she’d found abandoned by their mother when she first arrived at Hawkridge to the litter of pygmy shrews she’d saved from the gardener’s shovel.
After Mrs. Gibbons, the no nonsense housekeeper with a stern brow and even sterner tongue, made it clear that ‘wild beasts’ were not welcome inside, Eleanor had managed to coax the groundskeeper into allowing her use of the empty carriage barn. With the help of some footmen, she’d constructed half a dozen pens for her larger pets and four wooden box enclosures for those who still needed to be confined to a nest. For the most part the animals behaved themselves, but the goslings – now tripled in both size and temperament – had been proving particularly difficult as of late.
As soon as the ice was completely melted off the pond she was going to release them, but until then it was going to be a struggle to keep the young geese contained. The silly things insisted on following her wherever she went, and four days ago they’d nearly ended up on the dinner menu when they’d wandered into the kitchens and caused such a ruckus that Mrs. Gibbons had gone after them with a carving knife.
Poor Ronald had barely managed to escape with all of his feathers intact, and Donald had been one step away from being thrown straight into a pot of strew when Eleanor plucked him up and dashed outside. Mrs. Gibbons had been so furious that her entire face had turned a rather alarming shade of purple, and she still wasn’t speaking to her. Eleanor may have been the duchess, but the housekeeper had made no attempts to disguise where her loyalties lay. She treasured Hawkridge Castle first and foremost, the duke second, Georgiana third, and Eleanor came in at a (very) distant fourth.
She didn’t mind. She may have been married to the duke, but Georgiana was more of a duchess than she’d ever be. All of the servants deferred to her. When there was a decision to be made relating to the running of the household Georgiana made it, and Eleanor was only too happy to let her. It kept things at an even keel, and allowed her to do what she really wanted which was to care for her animals.
A Duchess for all Seasons: The Collection Page 13
