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

by Henrietta Harding

  Rebecca felt strangely outside of herself, listening to the words her friends had spoken about her. Suddenly, she dropped Augustus’s hands and stepped towards the garden gate, feeling as though she marched through the fog of a dream. She lifted her hand to the iron and dropped her chin to her chest and said, “Augustus, you’ve given me a great deal to consider.”

  She could feel him behind her. The intensity of his gaze seemed to burn through her back, but she resisted turning around.

  “I’ve been through a great deal of hardship over the past few weeks,” Rebecca continued. “I can hardly wrap my mind around each detail, nor comprehend what exactly I feel about it all. Your marriage proposal is incredibly kind. Even beautiful, when looked at from all angles – and analysed for the density of time we’ve spent together.”

  Augustus tore through the garden, grabbed Rebecca’s shoulder and whirled her around. She blinked up at him tearfully, conscious, suddenly, that if Owen had performed a similar action, she would have fallen into his arms and kissed him with her eyes closed, her heart on her sleeve. Augustus simply didn’t craft those sorts of responses within her. She felt dull and weepy and sad, a much older woman who’d already seen too much of her own life pass by.

  “You don’t have to give me a response now, Rebecca,” Augustus murmured. He drew his hand across her cheek and flicked away a tear, a tender motion that made her heart lurch.

  “Thank you. I feel myself rung out with sadness, unable to articulate my true feelings.” She paused for a moment, exhaling gruffly. “Augustus, you’re really such a dear friend. It would do me so well to love you. It would give such meaning to my life.”

  “Yes. This is what I wanted to translate to you…” Augustus said, his voice growing stronger, brighter. “Perhaps already you understand it. Perhaps you can see it how I do. Our gorgeous life, flung out before us, as enchanting as any night sky.”

  “Oh, but Augustus…” Rebecca stuttered. As he spoke, her heart dipped lower in her chest and beat dully. With every description, every tug towards this other direction, she felt drawn back to Owen, to the man she truly loved.

  She fell against Augustus, wild with panic and sadness. Tears flowed freely, and her body shook. Augustus’s massive hands drew across her back and he cradled her, whispered in her ear that all would be all right. He was there for her, as he always had been and as he always would be. But the words sounded sour to Rebecca.

  She inhaled sharply, forcing her tears to falter, and then leaned back. Augustus’s eyes twinkled as he moved towards her, his lips hunting for hers. In the panic of the moment, she flung herself back once more, her hand over her lips. Augustus’s hands smashed to his sides as he cried out.

  “What on earth!”

  “Please, Augustus. Please. Understand. If I kiss you now, I will destroy every single piece of myself that I’ve ever liked. I will become a shadow of a human – nothing you could ever truly love.”

  Augustus’s cheeks grew blotchy, red. The weight of this embarrassment curled his lips downward. Rebecca felt the rage boiling in his belly, in his skull, and she took another step towards the gate, prepared to run.

  She’d never seen him like this.

  “Augustus, you know that I love you a great deal. And I know that you would make me very happy,” she said, attempting to backtrack. “But Augustus, I know in my heart that I could never love you the way I love him. It would never be a true kind of love. If – if I married you, I would be with you for your stability and your acceptance and really nothing more. And what kind of marriage is that? I perceive it to be of little value. The two of us would make one another quite miserable. I would pick fights with you about the smallest of things, and you would take to drinking or gambling and history would repeat itself, through the lens of a different family.”

  Augustus snarled at her. “You’re making up fantasies, Rebecca. Listen to yourself. You sound like a blubbering fool.”

  “Augustus, please. Calm down.”

  “How can I possibly? You’ve just suggested that I could never give you what you need. That I’m a lesser man than Owen Crauford. I’ve been quite patient until now, but I cannot resist to unveil the truth. Rebecca, Owen is a wretched man. He ran about with Theo for years and years, making a mockery of the women they courted and never once considering the concept of marriage to them. And didn’t Owen come into this false engagement with the mindset that he never wanted to marry you anyway? Couldn’t you perceive this to be entirely your fault? You allowed him to woo you, and then you allowed him to throw you away. I had eternal respect for you, prior to this moment, and now? Now, I believe myself to be one of the only men in the world who would still have you.”

  “You cannot return from such a statement,” Rebecca hissed, scarcely able to believe he’d dipped so low.

  “Consider Owen’s father’s lifestyle. He’s lost everything, Rebecca. I heard that his entire mansion is empty – just a big, beautiful house with nothing in it! Don’t you think that Owen might fall to the same sad end?” Augustus continued, seething.

  “That’s entirely unfair. Neil Crauford’s sins have nothing to do with Owen Crauford…”

  “And yet, the apple never really falls far from the tree, does it?” Augustus said. He leered at her, picking and prodding at her until she fell to the ground, weeping. “You might have been his idiot wife, losing your beautiful looks with each passing day as he spent away your father’s money at the gambling table. Imagine it. You, at home, in a big, empty house, with a weeping baby at your breast.”

  “Augustus!” Rebecca cried. “Stop! You’re insane. You’re…”

  He smashed his finger against his chest and cried, “I offer you stability. I offer you endless love. I offer you everything you need. Consider that, Rebecca. Consider that you could be walking away from the last shred of happiness you might ever find.”

  Augustus stormed out through the iron gate, letting it smash closed behind him. Rebecca blinked after him, statue-like in the garden, the sunlight still smearing across her face. Augustus’s words rang through her skull, menacing and violent and seemingly true. Was it possible that if she didn’t agree to marry Augustus, she would become a tired, raggedy old maid? Certainly, what felt like her current, eternal youth would one day be no more.

  Further, Augustus’s words might haunt her forever, craft themselves into a story of heartache and rejection and terror. Perhaps she would wake in the middle of the night, entirely sure she was a young and bright twenty-year-old woman – with her entire existence before her – only to light a candle and see an old woman peering back in the mirror. Augustus could very well have the last laugh.

  And she could very well be left alone for good.

  Chapter 25

  Rebecca took the news to Tabitha’s the following morning. She found her friend stretched out on the floor of the parlour, some needlework across her stomach and her eyelashes fluttered closed over her cheeks. She looked like a porcelain doll, altogether perfect, her hair curled out around her head. The butler shrugged and said, “She’s been out for a few minutes. Exhausted from the morning sickness.”

  Although Rebecca’s body had taken no toll, her mind had left her similarly fatigued. She dropped to the ground and matched her friend in style, her curls around her head, and stared at the ceiling. Beside her, Tabitha’s breath was soft and lulling, in and out, oddly re-assuring, even as Rebecca’s mind stirred with apprehension. All evening and into the night, she’d tossed around the events of her fight with Augustus. She knew that if she came to Augustus, told him that she’d thought it through in a better light and did, in fact, wish to marry him, he would agree.

  But did she truly wish to do something like that? To completely abandon her own heart.

  Tabitha suddenly came-to, coughed, and flashed her head to the side to find Rebecca beside her. Her lips formed a round ‘O’.

  “Am I dreaming?” she asked.

  “Perhaps,” Rebecca said. “How could you know?”
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  “I don’t know. You’re continually in my dreams, regardless. Perhaps we’re about to go on a great adventure.” Tabitha stretched her hands into the air and blinked at them. “Although I don’t think you can ever do this in your dreams, can you? Look at your hands, I mean. But the baby has given me such strange, realistic visions. I can hardly understand the difference between them. Awake, asleep – it’s all the same to me.”

  Rebecca grabbed one of Tabitha’s hands and brought it back to the rug between them. “I wish this was a dream,” she murmured, her tone shifting.

  “What’s happened? Something else with Owen?” Tabitha asked.

  Rebecca shook her head. “Oh, goodness, I wish. I’ve prayed for him to return to my life. Have willed it with every part of me. But instead, I find Augustus in my back garden. Augustus, poised to make a sort of… proposal.”

  “Oh dear,” Tabitha murmured. She squeezed Rebecca’s hand harder. “I sensed he was on some sort of mission when he came to find me several days ago. He asked seemingly countless questions about you and Owen – how it ended, what you thought of it all. I tried to be as evasive as I could. I told him only that you were sad, that you needed time. It seems he didn’t listen to the last bit.”

  “We’ve been friends for years. I thought I knew him, knew what he was capable of. But he said such dastardly things. Things you’d never say to a stranger or a close friend – certainly things I couldn’t forgive him for, should I… marry him.”

  “You’re actually considering it?” Tabitha asked.

  “Some of the things he said stuck with me,” Rebecca murmured. “Perhaps he’s my last…”

  “Don’t assume anything,” Tabitha replied.

  “But your life. Your baby. Your time here with Anthony,” Rebecca said, scarcely able to believe her own words. “You’ve found unique happiness with all of that, haven’t you? Perhaps I’ve had too narrow a view of what life could be.”

  “What you’re saying doesn’t sound like anything my best friend Rebecca Frampton could ever say,” Tabitha said softly.

  A pit grew in Rebecca’s stomach. She sensed the truth in Tabitha’s words and heaved a sigh.

  “What on earth has got into the two of you?” Anthony’s voice rang out from the foyer.

  Rebecca and Tabitha turned their faces to the left to see him, the pink-cheeked, boisterously happy soon-to-be father. He beamed at them, then brought his hand down to assist both women back up. Although ordinarily, Anthony’s presence annoyed Rebecca, she was surprised to find him a welcome distraction.

  He suggested tea in the garden, and the girls agreed, linking their arms together and parading out into the sunlight. Rebecca found the strength to ask the two of them questions regarding their plans for the future, Tabitha’s strange newfound tastes for various foods she’d never liked before (like liver), and the various names Tabitha refused to name the child, like Genevieve.

  “Of course, he’ll be Anthony if he’s a boy,” Anthony said, a comment that caused Tabitha to snort her tea.

  “Excuse me?” she cried. “We haven’t yet discussed that.”

  “Darling, you know that my father’s name is Anthony,” he said. “A third is only proper.”

  “When does the madness end? Will our line be birthing Anthonys into the 1900s?” Tabitha asked, clattering her tea cup atop its saucer.

  “I suppose we can only hope,” Anthony said.

  “Then I suppose I can only pray for all girls,” Tabitha said, her eyes glittering with humour.

  “Who says you can’t name a girl Anthony?” Rebecca asked.

  “Ah! What a remarkable point,” Anthony said. “Thank you, Rebecca.”

  “Rebecca! It’s not as though I assumed you’d help me, but you’re making this much worse,” Tabitha said, smacking Rebecca lightly on the knee.

  Although Rebecca’s mind felt eternally chaotic, she sensed that all things had been patched between herself, Anthony and Tabitha. For this she was grateful. Regardless of who she married – who she strapped herself to forever – she would always have Tabitha and, therefore, Anthony. The portrait of their lives together had shifted, and she’d gradually learned to become agreeable with it – even, at some points, like this glossy one beneath the summer sun, glad for it.

  ***

  Tabitha followed Rebecca to her carriage at the end of the sleepy afternoon, half-declaring she should stay for dinner, although her eyes hardly remained open throughout. Rebecca hugged her friend close and said, “No. I have to return home. And you seem to want to leap into bed.”

  Tabitha’s shoulders sagged. “I cannot stay awake for longer than a few hours. I’ve become a caricature of a pregnant woman.”

  “Only the most beautiful pregnant woman I’ve ever seen,” Rebecca returned.

  “I haven’t yet started to show. The moment I do, I’m apt to swell up. You won’t want to look at me too hard after that.”

  “Don’t be foolish. I could look at you all day long,” Rebecca said.

  Tabitha squeezed her hand and gave her a worried look. “Are you going to speak with Augustus again?”

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca said, stuttering. “I feel I live in such a haze. On the one hand, I could have a fine life with Augustus. We would laugh and be kind to one another. I would birth beautiful children. My sisters, my father, everyone would be entirely pleased. ‘Finally, Rebecca Frampton grew up!’ they’d say. But I know that some part of me would always know there was something bigger, something greater. Something that I’d lost. Perhaps I’ll always live with this.”

  Back in the carriage, Rebecca instructed the driver to take her the long way, past Owen’s estate. It was a bit of an impulse, perhaps an attempt to toy with her own emotions. When the mansion bucked up over the horizon, she felt a punch in her gut. She pressed her nose to the window of the carriage, her eyes hungry for any sign of him. It had been far too long since she’d seen him. Could she still fully recall the darkness of his eyes, the curl of his smile? Those images would surely bleed together after this, become something else entirely. When she thought she had visions of him, they wouldn’t be precise whatsoever. Already, he had slipped through her fingers.

  Of course, there wasn’t a sign of him. The estate looked barren, forlorn. They hadn’t had time to keep up with the gardening, it seemed, and the shrubs and hedges burst towards the blue sky, tossed around in the wind.

  When she returned home, Rebecca entered the house through the back door and slipped into the kitchen, hot with steam that billowed out from the fireplace. Molly was poised over it, swatting at the fire and stirring a vat of potatoes. When she turned to find Rebecca, seated at the kitchen table, she nearly leapt from her skin.

  “Goodness! Rebecca, you gave me a fright.”

  Rebecca gave Molly a sad smile. “I’m terribly sorry. I only wished to say hello.”

  Molly tapped her finger atop Rebecca’s nose and beamed. “You know my kitchen is always open to you, darling girl. But of course, you must know that your sister and the boys are here. They asked about you. Of course, your father hadn’t a clue where you’d gone. Seems the two of you haven’t had much to say to one another in quite some time.”

  Rebecca pressed hard against the side of her cheek with her tongue. Hesitation folded over her. Had she strength to sit with her sister, with the boys, with her father, after so much had collapsed?

  “They’re in the dining room, awaiting the first course,” Molly said, coaxingly. “Why don’t you go in? I know Peter and Oliver are always so pleased to see their young and beautiful auntie.”

  “You always know what’s best for me, don’t you, Molly?”

  Rebecca heard the chaos of little boys at a dinner table, their mother in the midst of attempting to calm them.