The Duke she Desires

by Violet Hamers

“And what of the Duke of Kingwood? You have not been to his house as of late,” Lavinia said.

  Officially, her father was the duke’s physician, though the duke rarely called upon Mr. Bell. He was a stubborn gentleman and hated medical attention, though Lavinia had heard through gossip from Margaret, whose sister worked in the duke’s household, that the duke had been seen by no less than ten physicians in the last month and a half.

  Lavinia couldn’t help feeling angry at the gentleman for calling on what sounded like charlatans and barbers masquerading as physicians, when her father was clearly the best man for the job. Her father had been the duke’s physician for the entirety of his professional life. Who was this duke to refuse her father’s skills?

  “He is still refusing to see me. If you recall, when I visited four weeks ago, the gunshot wound was recovering well, but I have heard since then that he cannot move either leg. I do not understand why the unaffected leg is immobile, but if the muscles are not exercised properly, they will atrophy, and then, of course, that is an altogether more serious medical matter,” her father said, looking down and brushing a bit of lint off his trousers.

  “I have heard that he has been seen by other physicians, none of whom have been able to properly diagnose the complaint. I should like to see him again and conduct a deeper investigation of the ailments, but he, like so many of his ilk, is stubborn. No doubt he is feeling sorry for himself, and does not realize he is doing himself more damage as a result.”

  Her father nodded his head as he finished speaking, a sign that he was finished with this discussion, and that now they should both begin preparing for the day’s work.

  But though Lavinia was much occupied for the rest of the afternoon—Linda Garcia was not consumptive, but rather she had pneumonia, and a frightening case of it too—she could not stop her mind from drifting back to the duke. Why was his other leg immobile if there was no wound? And why was he allowing these other physicians into his home, but not her father, who was clearly the best man for the job?

  Lavinia’s only conclusion, which she came to as she trudged home on horseback at ten o’clock that night, was that Τhe Duke of Kingwood was as obstinate and unintelligent as an ass.

  “Get out! Do not make me repeat myself!” Peter yelled at the maid who had entered his room.

  She had been sent up by Stevens with a tray of biscuits and tea. They were Peter’s favorite kind of biscuits—shortbread with a thumbprint of jam in the middle.

  Stevens had stopped trying to ply Peter with food over a week ago, and instead was resorted to sending the most innocent-looking, fresh-faced maids in the house to him, assuming, incorrectly, that Peter would not have the heart to send such women away.

  However, Stevens had underestimated him. After an afternoon with yet another of Magdalene’s physician, the one recommended by Hatty Featherington’s brother’s wife or some such nonsense, Peter was in the foulest of moods. Though it was yet another annoyingly sunny day outside—odd for autumn in England—in Peter’s head, the storm of a century was brewing, the clouds growing darker and more menacing with every passing minute.

  The physician in question, a small, white-haired man from Switzerland, had taken one look at Peter’s legs and declared his ailments to be entirely self-inflicted.

  “You are insecure in your relationship, I sink,” the man said, his Swiss-German accent extremely pronounced. “You hurt your leg up because you need love,” he said, pronouncing love with an f, rather than a v. Peter was tempted to respond to the man with the meanest of all the German curses his governess, a wicked woman from Vienna, had taught him, but he refrained, wanting to hear the rest of the man’s proclamations.

  He was not disappointed. Over the next twenty minutes, the physician spun a rather detailed story that involved Peter’s mother’s death, and the hole in his heart that resulted from it. Peter had proposed to Lady Magdalene to help fill this hole, but he was not satisfied with her love, and so when he went to war, he thought it the perfect opportunity to play on her sympathies.

  “You shoot yourself in ze calf muscle, und go home to your love, expecting her to dote on you. But even zis does not make you happy. You are unhappy at your core. Nothing any physician can do will cure you. I am afraid only you can do that for yourself,” he said, adding a reverent “Your Grace” when he looked up and noticed Peter’s glare.

  The man had retreated from the room not long after, having been prompted to exit by Peter’s shouting, which he littered with those German expletives he had been sitting on.

  The maid was sent in not long after, no doubt in an attempt to assuage his anger with sweets. Instead, the poor woman was a victim of his continued shouting, growing so scared she eventually dropped the tray and ran out of the room, sobbing.

  Peter had thought that yelling would make him feel better, would release some of the tension and anger that had been building inside him while the small physician had insulted his person, but it didn’t help. If anything, it made him feel worse.

  Not only am I lame, but I am a monster.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon staring at the wet spot on the carpet where the tea had spilled, wishing he could melt into liquid and settle himself between the fibers of the Persian rug. Maybe in liquid form, he wouldn’t be quite so miserable.

  Chapter Three

  “I have to go help Mrs. Kuan in Limehouse. The midwife is already there, but she sent word that the labor is a difficult one. They will need by assistance, possibly for the rest of the night,” Lavinia’s father told her as he packed his bag.

  It had been three weeks since the afternoon of animal poison quiz and the trip to Bethnal Green, and Lavinia had spent much of that time taking diligent notes on George Cheyne’s The English Malady. She still saw to her patients and assisted her father when necessary, but every spare moment was spent with Cheyne and his interesting theories on the prevalence of melancholy and low spirits in the upper classes.

  The Duke of Kingwood and his affliction had of course sparked her interest, spurring her to pick up Cheyne’s tome, which had been sitting on a shelf in the library she and her father shared for years.

  Though Lavinia did not agree entirely with Cheyne on his theory, there was something to the idea that the upper classes were more subject to nervous distempers because of their lifestyles. What she disagreed with was that gentlemen of the ton were more able to talk about these complaints, because masculine emotionality was acceptable. From what Lavinia knew of the ton, the exact opposite was true. It was easier to convince a duke to a twice-daily regiment of leeching then to get him to share his feelings on personal matters.

  However, Lavinia was certain that the latter was exactly what was needed for the Duke of Kingwood to heal from his wounds. For these wounds were largely emotional, not physical. As her father pointed out, the duke’s gunshot wound had healed well, and his other leg was unaffected by injury. That he was immobile was not result of his wounds, but rather a symptom of them. There was something in his mind that was keeping him from moving, from taking steps. And she was determined to find out exactly what that was.

  She had thus far kept her theories to herself, knowing better than to share them with her father until they were fully formed. Her father was not a man who appreciated conjecture. He appreciated facts and evidence, and therefore Lavinia would need to see the patient and talk to him before she could involve her father in the investigation and hopeful cure of the Duke of Kingwood.

  The opportunity to see the duke came rather a lot sooner than she was expecting, however, for as her father snapped his bag shut and buttoned his coat, he turned to her and said, “As I will be away for the evening, I need you to attend to the duke. His butler has just sent word that he is with fever. As you know, normally I would go to him myself, but out of the two of us, I am the more experienced at difficult births. I am better suited to attending to Mrs. Huan, and you to the duke. Make sure you take a look at his legs, if his thrashing is not too great,” her fath
er added as an aside, and with that, he quit the room.

  Lavinia packed her own bag quickly, and was on her foot, heading toward the duke’s residence, in a matter of minutes. He lived only a short walk down the street on the corner, but Lavinia braced herself for a difficult trip. Margaret had informed her at that the residence directly next to the duke’s, where a Lord Horatio Hodge lived, a ball was being held, and that the street would therefore be clogged with carriages, making travel of any sort, even on foot, difficult.

  When she rounded the corner onto Albemarle Street, she found that it was indeed packed full of carriages and curricles. She had to dodge around quite a few drivers leaning against their vehicles, smoking cheroots and staring at her with open interest.

  Lavinia knew she was strange looking with her brown hat pulled low over her eyes, large leather bag, and unfashionable dress. She was most certainly not the picture of a genteel lady, and hardly bore any resemblance to the well-dressed ladies alighting from carriages only feet away from her.

  Her frock was a grey cotton wool that did not easily absorb stains, which were, after all, a hazard of her trade. She was aware it was possibly the least-flattering garment that a woman of her complexion could wear, but flattery was not a major factor of importance in her line of work.

  Still, she knew that the gown made her look pale and sullen, dulling the vibrancy of her hair and eyes, but this was only to her benefit. It made it that much less likely that men on the street would get it in their minds to talk to her. Even in the very worst slums of East London, she was generally able to avoid the attentions of the men who staggered about the streets there, half-crazed with drink and even more potent forms of intoxication.

  This time was no different. Though the drivers and footmen gazed at her, they did not actually speak to her. No words, insulting or otherwise, prevented her from taking the path down the side of the Kingwood residence toward the servants’ entrance her father had told her was at the very back of the house.

  Though her father was well-known enough in the Cadden family to enter through the front of the house, he had always preferred the back entrance. This was for the simple reason that it allowed him to interact with the house staff, who often told a much more factual account of the duke’s ailment than the man himself.

  “Always ask the footmen and the younger maids for information. Footmen are notorious gossips, and young maids will be inexperienced and not yet schooled in keeping private information to themselves,” her father had told her years ago after a visit to the duke’s residence. Lavinia had filed the information away in her mind, knowing that some day it would be useful. Today was such a day, and so after being let in through the door, she immediately approached the maid who had opened it.

  She was a young girl, no older than fourteen, with pretty, wide blue eyes and hair the exact color of wheat. Lavinia found her extremely easy to extract information from.

  The girl told her that the duke had taken nothing more than bread and broth for weeks. He had shrunken greatly, no longer the broad, brawny, muscular gentleman he once was. The day before, he had spent the afternoon in the sun with his betrothed, something they did together frequently, but he had complained of a headache. An hour later, he was laid up in bed with chills, and during the ensuing hours, the chills had transformed into a fever that had him thrashing about in bed.

  “He’s shoutin’ as well,” the girl said in a strong East London accent. “Goin’ on about some battle. Called the butler Brock, he did, an’ asked the footmen to ‘and him a match for lightin’ a cannon. It’s like he’s escaped from Bedlam, miss.”

  “Well, I shall go and see what I can do for him. Thank you for your help,” Lavinia said, passing the girl a coin. The girl preened, and Lavinia knew that she had found the ally she needed in the household.

  With help from one of the footmen, who sadly had no other information to share, Lavinia was led to the duke’s chambers. Outside was the man she assumed was the butler. He was older than all the footmen she had seen and his uniform was of finer quality; he also had the natural look of a leader of men, someone capable of haranguing youthful servants into order when the need arose.

  He looked up when Lavinia approached, his shoulders immediately straightening, his hands coming to clasp together behind his back.

  “Dr. Bell, I presume?” he asked, and Lavinia was taken aback for a moment. No one had ever referred to her as a physician before. She was simply “miss” to her patients.

  “Yes,” she stammered, her voice coming out in an unusually high pitch that she hastened to lower. “I am Lavinia Bell. My father, Dr. Robert Bell, sent me in his stead, as he is currently held up in East London attending to a difficult birth.”

  He acknowledged this information with a nod of his head. “Very good. Shall I lead you inside? I should warn you, his lordship is rather—”

  The butler was interrupted at that moment by a shout, which, if Lavinia’s ears did not betray her, sounded very much like, “Get it out! Get it out, please! It burns!”

  “Distressed,” the butler finished, wincing as the shouts continued.

  “I see. Well, then I best get inside and do what I can to help him,” Lavinia said.

  The door was opened for her, and she walked into what appeared near-total darkness.

  Her eyes adjusted quickly, however, and she could soon see the figure of the duke tossing and turning in his bed, which occupied the central space in the large room.

  The curtains were all drawn, and a fire was lit in the hearth, though it was mostly embers and was burning so low it offered little light by which to see.

  “Open these curtains at once,” Lavinia ordered the butler. She pointed to the windows, and the butler was halfway to them when she held up a finger and cried, “Stop!”

  The man turned around, a confused, harried look on his face. “I do not know your name. Since I expect we will be speaking and interacting with each other with some frequency for the foreseeable future, I think it good if I know how to address you. You may call me Lavinia, for expediency. And you are…”

  She waited for him to fill in the silence, which he did. “Stevens. Head butler, miss. I mean, Lavinia.”

  “Very good. You may continue with the windows,” she said, and then walked toward the bed.

  The smell of sickness, of sweat from fever and that other hint of sweetness that always seemed to cling to the infirm, assaulted her senses.

  “Your Grace?” she said, leaning toward the duke and trying to examine his face. She could hardly see it in the darkness, but she heard the movement of his legs under the covers, bending and straightening like he was trying to run from something. Looking down, she could also make out his hands, which were opening and closing rapidly, as though trying and failing to grasp something.

  “Magdalene? Is that you?” he asked.

  Stevens threw open the curtain nearest his bed, sending the duke’s face into stark relief.

  She was immediately taken aback by the sight of him, sunlight slanting through the windows and falling onto his body, which was curled up against the pillows at his back.

  He was emaciated, that was for certain. His cheekbones and what was visible of his unshaven jaw were sharp, jutting out when normally she guessed they would have been softened, still noticeable, but blending better into the rest of his face, which even now was still attractive.

  Still, it was a face that looked like it could have been carved from marble by a great sculptor. Each line looked perfectly crafted, as though every single part of his person had been carefully considered by its maker in order to ensure that the finished piece was sheer perfection.

  Like the lines of his face, the duke’s skin had been affected by his sickness. There was a sallow, yellow tinge to the normally golden tones she could see hinted at under his pallor. Lavinia knew that the ton generally detested darker shades of skin, for such hues told of manual labor outdoors, something generally reserved for the lower classes. She knew without a
doubt, however, that no one would object to The Duke of Kingwood’s skin, not when it was so perfectly matched by his hair and eyes.

  His coif, if she could call the greasy mess of waves tangled all over his head such a thing, was the exact color of freshly polished gold, which made his eyes, a curious shade of teal blue, even more noticeable. The eyes were staring at her with expectation, clearly waiting for her response. But Lavinia was far too deep into her admiration to notice such a thing.

  She was far too busy drinking in the realization that she was currently standing in front of the most attractive gentleman she had ever seen. Despite his condition, she knew that if the duke were to be transported to a ballroom at that exact moment, he would be the talk of every meddling mama in the room. Every lady would want to be his wife, every mother his mother-in-law.

  Of course, this would no doubt be due partly to his fortune and societal standing, but Lavinia reckoned that even if he were poor as a pauper with the lowly title of viscount or baron, he would still be sought after. He was that beautiful, that desirable.

  Not that his beauty matters.

  Indeed, the appearance of her patients only mattered insofar as it told her something about their condition. As a physician, or a facsimile of the position, Lavinia made it a habit not to look at her patients too closely. It made it that much harder to share bad news with them, or to convince them of a painful treatment that would aid in their convalescence. The more she could distance herself, the better for everyone involved.

  But she knew immediately that distancing herself from the duke would be a hard task, indeed. She’d only been in the room with him for a few minutes and already she was lost in those eyes.

  This lasted only briefly, however, for a moment later, the duke was closing his eyes in pain and flailing around with such vigor that one of his hands nearly hit her in the face.

  Thankfully, years of attending to similar conditions had taught Lavinia the importance of quick actions. She deftly avoided the slap.