A Wicked Duke's Prize: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Henrietta Harding

  Owen could hardly look at him. He swallowed another gulp of wine and gave a stiff nod.

  “What is it, Owen? Where is your lovely fiancée? I imagined the two of you would already be off somewhere. Hidden from the rest of us. I saw the way you looked at her earlier. And –” Theo kissed two of his fingers and cast them off toward the sky. “Truly, if I didn’t have such eyes for Zelda, I would go after her. She’s a dream, Owen. I can’t believe you were just gifted her, out of thin air.”

  “You speak of her like she’s a trinket,” Owen replied.

  Theo chuckled. “Already you’ve taken such a fancy to her. And still you speak of ways to dig yourself out of it.”

  “I cannot allow my father to arrange my marriage. Suppose we’re unhappy in six months, a year? Suppose the banter doesn’t hold up? People grow bored of one another. And at that point, I will point the blame at my father and ultimately ruin our relationship. It’s really for the good of my father, for the good of our family, that I don’t marry this woman. I just cannot comprehend a way to get out of it. The worst of it, of course, is that Rebecca has told me she doesn’t think I can get out of it. It’s as though she’s watching me, keeping tabs on my every move.”

  “You’re a stubborn man, Owen Crauford,” Theo said, stuttering. He slung an arm over Owen’s shoulder. “She sounds like a pain in the backside, to be quite honest with you. And, to further this honesty, I must attest that you, yourself, are also quite a pain in the backside. Have you considered that the two of you might make a very good pair? Driving one another mad – and the rest of the world just as mad – together, for the rest of your lives?”

  Zelda appeared before them. Her words were sloppy and hardly understood. Theo released Owen and flung toward her, wrapping his arm around her lower waist and drawing her against him. He dotted a kiss on her forehead and said to Owen, “This isn’t the sort of creature you’d be able to handle well, Owen. You’re always hankering for someone who’s far too clever – even more clever than yourself. Perhaps you’ve found her?”

  The party seemed to take off after that. Even Augustus had a dance partner. Theo whipped Zelda about the garden as she eased her head back, her blonde curls seeming to float through the air. The music was overly loud, overly exuberant. Owen cut across the garden and stalked back toward the stables. He could no longer deduce a reason that he was still there.

  He prepared his own horse, as the stable boys seemed unwilling to drop from their overzealous conversation. Once atop the black beast, he shot out across the open roads, back toward his father’s estate. With every clop of the horse’s hooves, he reminded himself of his mission: to fight for his father’s fortune back. To clear their family name. He couldn’t allow himself to focus on anything else.

  Not even if that anything else was profoundly beautiful, whip-smart, even more clever than he – according to Theo.

  Of course, he knew in his bones that Theo was entirely correct.

  Chapter 15

  Tabitha helped Anthony to their bedroom, whilst Rebecca padded down the hall to the guest room. She lit a candle and found her face reflected back at her in the mirror, her cheeks glowing and her lips round and soft and her breasts bulging from the fabric of her gown. With this view, she struggled once more with the night’s horrific question. Why had Owen abandoned her outside the garden when they could have done so much more?

  Yet again, when faced with this question, Rebecca ached with puzzlement. After all, what did she care if Owen paid her any mind? She shot towards the bed and curled up upon it, her arms wrapped over her knees. She felt like a child in the midst of a tantrum. When Tabitha’s footsteps appeared in the hallway and then stopped at the doorway, Rebecca remained in her coiled-up position. Tabitha clicked her tongue.

  “My, my. What do I find here?”

  Rebecca chuckled, yet still didn’t move. “Did you manage to put your enormous child to bed?”

  Tabitha clicked the door closed behind her and shuffled to the bed, where she flung herself on top of Rebecca. The bed creaked beneath them and Rebecca burst into laughter, thrashing beneath. Tabitha rolled off, giving a crafty smile.

  “You’d better watch yourself,” she said.

  “I’m terribly sorry for calling your overly drunken, overly boring husband an enormous child,” Rebecca said.

  Tabitha swatted Rebecca’s stomach and rolled her eyes. “I know there’s very little chance in you seeing what I see in him. And sometimes, of course, I struggle seeing whatever that is. But just, please. Lighten your attack a little. Just a little.”

  Rebecca buzzed her lips. “All right.”

  Tabitha pushed herself up so that she lay on her side, her head on her hand. She batted her eyelashes excitedly and said, “Tell me more about tonight. What happened with Owen?”

  Rebecca matched her friend – on her side, head leaning on her palm. Her face couldn’t muster the excitement her friend echoed. “I can hardly believe I’m saying this. But I think you might have been correct about my feelings for him.”

  Tabitha gave a light squeal of excitement. “Of course!”

  “Shush.” Rebecca scrubbed one of her cheeks with her free hand, irritation throttling through her. “I’m just not quite sure what to do about it, Tabitha. You were there when it happened. When I told him he couldn’t possibly find a way out of our engagement. My goodness, I can’t go back on that! Yet tonight, when we saw one another, we admitted that we were both so different than we’d envisioned.”

  “How romantic,” Tabitha murmured, her eyes catching the candlelight.

  “In a sense, yes. Entirely romantic,” Rebecca said. “Yet of course, the moment he touches me –”

  “He touched you!”

  “Yes. The moment it happened, it was as though he recognised that we were altogether too close, and he backed away, practically ran back to Theo and left me, embarrassed and entirely unsure, behind some bush. Now I feel like his plaything. He’s heard all the rumours about me. He knows I don’t normally play along when it comes to an engagement. Thusly, he probably wishes to trap me in my own feelings for him and then surprise me with a horrendously embarrassing end to the engagement.”

  “Not if he’s falling for you as well,” Tabitha said.

  “But I think he’s the sort of man who doesn’t care about that,” Rebecca said. “I really believe that he thinks his word is above everything else. He’ll never be forced into a marriage, because it makes him appear weak-minded and…”

  “This is precisely what you normally say about arranged marriage,” Tabitha said, her smile widening.

  “I just know if I tell him how I feel, I will be creating a trap for myself,” Rebecca said. “And I simply refuse.”

  “You’re entirely too stubborn. You’re never going to be happy if you allow your stubbornness to win. You must know this,” Tabitha said. She dropped back, so that her hair spilled out on the second pillow.

  Rebecca followed her lead. They both stared up at the ceiling, hazy and shadowed. The candlelight danced across it, flickering with a light draft.

  “I think you should tell him. Take a chance on yourself. A chance on your own happiness,” Tabitha said, in barely a whisper.

  “I wish you were still out here with me,” Rebecca murmured.

  “Out where?”

  “Courting. Life as a single woman. We might have had many more years of silliness, before we both fell into marriage, children…”

  Tabitha pondered this for a moment. Yet again, Rebecca felt she’d pressed the issue too far. She yearned to force her mind elsewhere, to learn how not to take such pleasure in her endless wordy destruction of Anthony.

  “Oh, but darling, I really can’t imagine my life without Anthony,” Tabitha finally uttered.

  In Rebecca’s mind, she felt Tabitha had only said this because it was the only thing she could possibly say without going wild with panic and anxiety, trapped in a cage she’d built herself.

  “On that note, I suppose I
’d better join him. He really does snore so dreadfully when he’s drunk,” Tabitha continued.

  “Why not sleep here?” Rebecca said. “Like when we were girls. We can fall asleep telling one another our deepest, darkest secrets.”

  “And yet, I feel as though I’ve already learned all of yours,” Tabitha said.

  She drew herself toward the back end of the bed and then hobbled off, standing straight and peering down at Rebecca. She wore a silly smirk.

  “You’re no fun these days, are you?” Rebecca said, her voice light and playful. Although perhaps, in some sense, she meant it – meant that she wasn’t entirely the same child-like wonder she’d been years before – she knew she would never fall out of love for her Tabitha.

  “You know that I was never any fun at the start,” Tabitha said. She reached up and squeezed Rebecca’s foot, right beneath the toes, and then departed swiftly, tracing out the doorway and then shutting the door closed softly.

  Rebecca groaned and shrugged herself up. She was still stitched tight in her corset, her gown, and her makeup felt strange and thick across her cheeks. She shuffled back to the mirror, the water basin, and flung droplets across her face. Within minutes, she’d stripped herself down and flung herself back beneath the covers, shuddering slightly at the weight of the day.

  When Rebecca approached the breakfast table the following day, she found a miserable Anthony stationed in his familiar chair. He turned his eyes to her only briefly before scooping them back to his sausages, which dripped with grease.

  Tabitha was nowhere yet to be found. Rebecca swept into the chair between Anthony’s and Tabitha’s and folded her hands over her lap. Anthony cleared his throat and said, “I must apologise to you, Rebecca.”

  Rebecca, incredulous, parted her lips to speak. “No, of course not. You have nothing to…”

  “I was quite drunk, Rebecca. Really quite. It’s one of the reasons I felt too embarrassed to come to the other garden parties. Once I imbibe too much, I become someone I don’t recognise. I…”

  “Don’t be silly,” Rebecca said. She cut her teeth over her lower lip and prayed she wouldn’t roll out with venomous laughter. “Everyone was quite drunk. I hardly remember what it was you did or said.”

  But of course, Rebecca couldn’t shake the shame from Anthony. Tabitha appeared in the doorway, then, her cheeks pink and her eyes fresh, clear. She dotted a kiss on her husband’s forehead, then perched across from him.

  “Good morning, Tabitha,” Rebecca said, sensing something amiss between the married couple. “Where have you been?”

  “Just for a walk through the garden,” Tabitha said. She drew her fists upon the tablecloth and clenched them tighter.

  Rebecca felt her heart leap into her throat. Apprehension flavoured the air. Anthony hung his head once more, his hands across his cheeks. He looked like a child, in the midst of his punishment. Rebecca sliced a fork into a spare sausage in the centre of the table and drew it onto the glowing porcelain plate. Now, Anthony dragged his head back up to peer across the table at Tabitha, who wore a strange smile across her lips.

  “Rebecca, I hoped you would sleep over last night, if only because I have some news for you,” Tabitha said. Her fingers cranked over the table, one after another. She seemed more in charge of the situation before them than Rebecca had ever seen her.

  “Is that so?” Rebecca said finally.

  Again, Anthony hung his head. Rebecca hadn’t a single clue of what would happen next.

  Finally, Tabitha uttered, “I told you that this might be some of the last days of my freedom. Told you that I wished for you to attend Zelda’s garden party because I thought surely I would have children by next year. Do you remember?”

  “Of course,” Rebecca said. Her voice was low.

  “It’s happened. We only just learned yesterday,” Tabitha said. Her voice seemed oddly articulate, sure – an enormous contrast to how it had been only weeks ago, when Anthony had spent the majority of the breakfast hour spouting whatever news he deemed appropriate. Now, it seemed, Tabitha had the reins. She was the power, the body, the blood. She held the baby.

  Poor Anthony didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.

  But Rebecca, despite some of her arrogance, her short-comings, was, at her core, a wonderful friend. She shot up from the breakfast table, causing the chair to spit out behind her, and she hugged her friend tightly, her arms around her shoulders and tears already coating the fabric of her dress. When she drew back, she found Tabitha similarly soaking. Rebecca’s smile widened, and she turned toward Anthony, perplexed yet oddly endeared to him.

  “Anthony! No wonder you were so drunk!”

  She then shot around the dining room and gave him a similar hug. He shook a bit as she did it, like a frightened animal. Tabitha laughed, an ironic laugh, one mixed with sadness and fatigue and endless excitement. When Rebecca perched back down between them, she yanked her head back toward Tabitha and said, “You should have told me last night!”

  Tabitha sighed. “I knew you’d be unhappy.”

  “It’s not that I’m unhappy. I just told you I wanted to stay up with you. To swap stories and…”

  “I could hardly keep my eyes open! And my husband, I thought he was about to lose his mind.”

  “It’s been both a blessing and a terrifying truth,” Anthony agreed. “I don’t know that I’m entirely ready to be a father. One moment, you’re twenty-two, in the prime of your life, and the next, you’re twenty-five, operating an entire home with your young wife – and she’s suddenly pregnant with your child.” He leaned towards Rebecca, his eyes flashing. “I drank myself silly because of the panic of it all, Rebecca. And the glory of it. Tabitha – my Tabby – you’ll be a remarkable mother. Won’t she be, Rebecca? Gosh, won’t she be.”

  Rebecca agreed, over and over again. She wept, then forgot she wept and wept all over again, having to dot herself silly with her handkerchief to keep herself dry. They could hardly eat, due to excitement, and the three of them stepped into the parlour, where Anthony played the accordion and the two girls sang and danced.

  When Tabitha danced a bit too roughly, wishing to jump, to romp, both Rebecca and Anthony insisted she sit, she calm herself. After all, there was a baby in there, didn’t she remember? This, in turn, brought Anthony and Rebecca together in a manner she couldn’t have anticipated. She hugged Anthony at the end of the long morning, admitting that she had to return to her father.

  “But a better morning I can’t remember having in a long time,” she said, dotting a final kiss on Tabitha’s cheek.

  “You’ll be the godmother, you know,” Tabitha said. She squeezed Rebecca’s hand a final time.

  “If you hadn’t made me the godmother, our friendship would be over anyway,” Rebecca said, her smile widening.

  Back on horseback, Rebecca faced the wind, her hands holding the reins at the base of the horse’s neck. As she rode, the hooves clopping about beneath her, she imagined this strange future. Tabitha, a mother, and Anthony, her baby’s father. How would they navigate that world together? It seemed bizarre that Tabitha would embark on this familial existence without her best friend.

  In a sense, Rebecca would be there, would hold the baby, would ensure Tabitha could rest and collect herself. But Rebecca would only be a small fraction of Tabitha’s life, now. Tabitha’s universe would be her home, her baby, her Anthony. And it didn’t matter that sometimes Anthony was irritating. It didn’t matter how much Rebecca ached to be girls together once more. The only thing that mattered was the future. Rebecca had to accept it. Somehow.

  Chapter 16

  Tabitha’s morning sickness began mere days after her small announcement to Rebecca at the breakfast table. She and Anthony had decided they wouldn’t yet declare their pregnancy to the world, but it was already clear that Rebecca would be required to go through the social duties of the summer largely without her best friend. This, she’d never done before.