The Desperate Duke Read online

  “ ’e’s not dead—leastways, not yet,” he assured her. “ ’e wants a word with you, Tisdale.”

  Running a finger beneath a cravat that suddenly felt too tight, the viscount entered his father’s room. The duke had been too hard a parent for his children to regard him with affection, but even in his weakened state, the simple statement “Your father wants a word with you” still had the power to make a knot form in the pit of Theodore’s stomach.

  “Yes, Papa?” he asked, tentatively approaching his father’s bedside. “Ethan said you had something to say to me. What is it?”

  “That idiot Grant says I’ll be cocking up my toes before I’m much older,” the duke said. "You’ll be stepping into my shoes soon.”

  “I’m in no hurry, Papa,” the young man assured him.

  His grace plucked convulsively at the bedsheets. “Ha! What makes you think you have a choice in the matter? You don’t, any more than I have. Any more than I did when I inherited the title from your grandfather. You never knew him—he died when you were still in leading strings—devil of a fellow, though.”

  “So I’ve always heard.”

  “You’re not much like him,” the duke said, his tone making it clear that this was no compliment. “I am. Your sister is, a little. Pity she wasn’t a boy, but there it is.”

  “I—I’ll do my best, sir,” said Theodore, feeling some response on his part was called for.

  “Daresay you won’t botch the thing too badly. Had your share of scrapes, but nothing nine out of ten young fools wouldn’t have got into.”

  Theodore was still trying to decide what response, if any, to make to this very tepid praise when his father continued, “You get into any trouble, you go to your brother, d’ye hear? The fellow’s as vulgar as be-damned, but he don’t want for sense.”

  “I daresay I shall contrive,” said Theodore, nettled by the suggestion that he, who had been reared from the cradle to assume his father’s position someday, should need any assistance, least of all from someone of his brother-in-law’s background.

  “I daresay you will, seeing as how you don’t have a choice,” the duke said pettishly. “Now, go away, all of you, and send my man to me. No doubt he and Grant between them will expect me to drink that swill Grant calls medicine, but I’m very tired, and I want to sleep.”

  “Yes, sir.” After a brief, awkward pause, he took his father’s withered hand and pressed it to his lips. “Goodnight, Papa.”

  They were the last words Theodore would ever speak to him. In the middle of the night, he was roused from sleep by his father’s valet, bearing the news that the old duke had passed away peacefully in his sleep, and that Theodore, Viscount Tisdale was now the Duke of Reddington.

  2

  ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

  JOHN FORD, title of a play

  FOR THEODORE, DUKE of Reddington, the days that followed seemed to pass in a blur. There were notices to be sent to the newspapers, of course, but before that, letters must be written and mailed to a host of friends and relations, lest they learn of the duke’s death by reading of it in the Times. Thankfully, his sister was willing to take on the burden of correspondence, as she and her husband would not return to Lancashire until after the funeral. This left Theodore free to devote his time to other tasks: a meeting with his father’s—no, his, he realized with some dismay—solicitor, who read the duke’s will; another with his banker, who brought him up to date on the state of his father’s finances; and, most daunting of all, a lengthy conversation with his steward.

  “Thank you for your time, my lord, er, your grace,” Alfred began when Theodore entered the study, clearly waiting for the new duke to take his seat behind the desk that had once been his father’s. As soon as Theodore had done so, Alfred spread a sheaf of papers across the desk. “I hope I may prevail upon you to undertake at least a few of the improvements I have long urged upon your father. The most ambitious of these is the draining of the south field, but as it would no doubt be unwise to begin such a project so late in the year, I daresay that had best wait until spring. In the meantime, I hope you will consider some of the smaller yet more urgent . . .”

  By the time Theodore emerged from the study two hours later, his head was spinning with such matters as bushels per acre, grazing rights, and mining claims.

  A few days after his father was laid to rest in the family vault, responses to his sister’s letters began to arrive, including four from old friends of the late duke who expressed their willingness to sponsor him if and when he chose to take up his seat in the House of Lords—a responsibility which his father had neglected for so long that Theodore had forgotten it would fall to him along with the rest of his inheritance, and one which would cost him (as his correspondents tactfully pointed out) a rather large sum of money to assume.

  It also became apparent that the parish church in one of his father’s holdings—no, his holdings—was at present without a vicar, for various bishops, rectors, and other churchmen had written to recommend their subordinates for the position.

  The post also included several letters from tradesmen whom the old duke owed money, and one or two excruciatingly solicitous communications from gentlemen who began with fond recollections of certain gaming ventures they had enjoyed with his father in happier days when that gentleman still lived, and concluded with expressions of certainty that the young duke would not want to be behindhand in honoring the debts of honor incurred by his never-to-be-sufficiently-mourned sire.

  Theodore was so overwhelmed by it all that as soon as the last of the out-of-town relatives had departed, he lost no time in throwing his leg over his horse and riding off hell-for-leather to London, stopping in his bachelor lodgings only long enough to dump his bags before setting out for a discreet house in Half Moon Street, where he lost no time in throwing his leg over the voluptuous form of La Fantasia. Alas, even this pleasant exercise did not provide the escape he sought.

  “Mmm, this has been a new experience for me,” purred the lady, stretching sinuously and pushing tousled ebony locks from her eyes. “I’ve never shared a bed with a duke before.”

  “Not you too, Fanny!” Theodore exclaimed in dismay, sitting bolt upright in the bed.

  “Poor darling,” she cooed, sitting up behind him so that she might massage his shoulders. “Is it all too much? Shall we go to Paris and get away from it all? Or Rome, perhaps?”

  “I’m in mourning,” he reminded her. “How would it look for me to go junketing about on the Continent before Papa is cold in his grave? Besides,” he added, seeing she was unconvinced by this argument, “I haven’t the funds for it in any case.”

  “But your inheritance—”

  He shook his head. “Can’t be touched, not until the will is probated.”

  “But—but how long will that take?” she demanded, not at all pleased with this revelation.

  “Lord, how should I know? Old Crumpton—Papa’s solicitor, you know—says it might take several months.”

  “Months?” La Fantasia shrieked, before remembering to modify her voice to a seductive purr. “Months? Whatever shall we find to do in the meantime?”

  The look she cast him from under her lashes left Theodore in no doubt as to her meaning, but he stood up and reached for his breeches. “I’m sorry, Fanny, but I’ve a hundred things to do. Truth to tell, it’s all a bit much.” Seeing her pout, he stroked her rouged cheek with the back of one finger. “Thank you, Fanny. For helping me forget about it, at least for a little while.”

  La Fantasia, not much mollified by this speech, arranged herself more attractively amidst the rumpled bedclothes, and smiled coyly at him. “Best not take too long, darling. The Earl of Iversleigh has been most assiduous in his attentions, you know.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I’m well aware that I’m the most envied man in London.”

  She preened a little at the compliment. “Still, you’d best have a care. I won’t wait forever, you know.” She peeped up at him from u
nder her lashes. “Of course, there are ways to be sure of me.”

  “Anything,” Theodore declared ardently, catching up her hand and pressing passionate kisses into her palm. “You have only to name it, Fanny. You know I adore you! What is it you want? Diamonds? Emeralds? Rubies? Only say the word, and they’re yours.”

  “And how, pray, are you to buy them on the pittance that serves as your allowance?”

  “It’s only for a little while, and it may not take that long, after all. In the meantime, I’m sure my credit is good.”

  She gave a disdainful sniff. “I thought I might go for a drive in St. James’s this afternoon. I wonder if I might see Lord Iversleigh there?”

  “Don’t toy with me, Fanny! Tell me what it is that you want.”

  She rose slowly from the bed, and the sheets fell away to reveal the full glory of her figure. “Every duke needs a duchess, you know,” she said huskily.

  “M-Marriage?” Theodore stammered, his ardor considerably cooled. “You want—you expect me to offer you marriage?”

  “You said I might have anything I wanted,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, but—but—dash it, Fanny, I’m not ready to marry anyone just yet!”

  “I shan’t object to a long engagement,” she said reassuringly. “Let us say, just as long as it takes for the will to be probated.”

  He gave a shaky little laugh, but he had the lowering conviction that she was not joking. “You—you don’t understand—”

  “Oh, I understand very well!” she cried, her exquisite body flushing a mottled red hue.

  “I meant no offense, Fan,” he said hastily. “It’s just that, well, my position, you know—I have a responsibility —”

  “In other words, I’m good enough for a tumble ’twixt the sheets, but your duchess must be a virgin!”

  “Not necessarily,” Theodore protested. “I might not object to a young widow.”

  Having clarified this point, he picked up his shirt and pulled it over his head, and thus failed to observe the warning signs of the approaching storm. His head emerged from the neck of his shirt just in time to see his inamorata snatch a china shepherdess from over the mantel.

  “Get out!” she screeched in accents more suited to a Billingsgate fishwife than an aspiring duchess, and hurled the ornament at his head.

  He ducked only just in time, and the shepherdess shattered against the wall behind him. “Here now, Fan, there’s no cause for—”

  “Get—out!” she shrieked again, and a porcelain vase followed the shepherdess, glancing off Theodore’s shoulder as she berated him with a vocabulary he had not known she had possessed, including a few words that were unfamiliar to him in spite of a fairly comprehensive education on the subject at first Eton and then Oxford.

  “Fanny, I meant no—I’m sorry—ow!—Dash it, Fan, be reasonable—”

  But La Fantasia, that most courted of all London courtesans, was in no mood for reason. When a crystal candy dish was hurled in his direction, followed in rapid succession by two brass candlesticks and a small ormolu clock, Theodore decided discretion was indeed the better part of valor. He snatched up the rest of his clothes and beat a hasty retreat, sped on his way by what trinkets La Fantasia could lay her hands on as she chased after him down the stairs and out of the house.

  Thus his grace the Duke of Reddington, taking leave of his mistress while hopping on one foot in an attempt to tug on his boot—his collar open, his cravat hanging loosely about his neck, his coat and waistcoat caught up over his arm, and his other boot clutched in one hand, held out before him as if it might offer some protection from the hellish fury of a woman scorned.

  At last the door slammed shut behind him, and Theodore, judging it safe, stopped on the pavement long enough to put on his other boot and shrug his arms into his coat and waistcoat. He glanced up and down the street, but took little comfort in the fact that there were no carriages visible in what was primarily a quiet residential street. Word of the fracas would certainly get out; these things always did, conveyed from the servants of one house to the servants of another and thence from servants to masters, until everyone from the lowliest scullery maid to the Marquess of Cutliffe himself, who occupied a house on the other end of the street when he was in Town, would have got wind of it. From there, of course, word would spread to other houses in other streets via the gentlemen’s clubs and the ladies’ tea parties, until all of London would know of it.

  In truth, though, Theodore’s sense of humiliation sprang from other causes than his being the target of La Fantasia’s rage. He had known, of course, that she had accepted him as her protector solely on his expectations; why else would she have chosen a green fellow almost a decade her junior over the more mature and, yes, more sophisticated charms of men like Iversleigh? He had known exactly where his attraction lay, and it had troubled him not at all; in fact, he had considered it one of the advantages of being the heir to a dukedom. But to think that she had taken him on in the belief that he was gullible enough to be cozened into marriage? The insult was more than flesh and blood could bear. The dull ache in his shoulder where one of her missiles had found its mark was nothing to the blow to his self-esteem.

  Still, he had not been on the Town this long without learning to a nicety how the game should be played. When a man broke off with his mistress (and one might certainly argue that it had certainly been he who had broken off with her, by refusing to acquiesce to her last and most outrageous request), he gave the woman her congé in the form of an expensive farewell gift. Well, La Fantasia would soon discover that her erstwhile protector was no less a knowing one than any gentleman many years his senior. He stopped by his flat only long enough to put on fresh clothing (including a black band on the sleeve of his coat to indicate his bereaved state), then set out for Rundell and Bridge, jewelers to the king for longer than Theodore had been alive.

  He had not exaggerated when he’d told La Fantasia that his credit was good. Mssrs. Philip Rundell and John Bridge had not attained their present position without keeping au courant with the doings of the aristocracy, and they were quick to offer their condolences to the young man who entered their establishment with his jaw set, yet something of vulnerability in his green eyes.

  “And what may we show you today, your grace?” Mr. Rundell asked at the conclusion of these expressions of sympathy. “Dare we hope there is soon to be a new Duchess of Reddington? It has been a long time, I believe, since that title was graced by your late mother. I had the honor of designing her wedding ring.”

  Theodore, ignoring these hints, came straight to the point. “Show me the most expensive thing you’ve got.”

  This, when it was brought out from the back room and the safe in which it usually resided, proved to be an ornate necklace so laden with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires that it might have served any knight of old as a breastplate. In truth, Theodore found it more than a little vulgar. In spite of his bleak mood, a smile tugged at his lips at the thought of his brother-in-law presenting so gaudy a piece to his sister—as he might well have done in the early days of their marriage, before she had taken on the task of informing her husband’s tastes. But its vulgarity, Theodore decided, was perfectly in keeping with the woman upon whom he intended to bestow it, the same woman from whose presence he had been driven only a few hours earlier.

  “I’ll take it,” he pronounced.

  His resolution suffered a slight check when he was informed of the price of this token, but the ache in his shoulder served to strengthen his resolve. He would send the piece to La Fantasia, and be vindicated when the ton whispered behind its hands that Tisdale—no, Reddington!—had behaved just as he ought. As for the gift’s recipient, let her own actions bear witness to her unsuitability for the position she coveted; his own conduct would be above reproach.

  “Excellent, excellent!” exclaimed Mr. Rundell, who had secretly feared that the showy piece of his partner’s design was a bit much, and that they would eventua
lly be obliged to remove the gemstones and melt down the gold in order to fashion less ambitious, yet more marketable, examples of the jeweler’s art.

  “Er, I haven’t the funds to pay for it today,” Theodore began, only to be cut short.

  “No need to trouble yourself, my lord—er, your grace,” Mr. Rundell assured him hastily. “I’m sure we can repose every confidence in you to settle your account after your affairs have been set in order. Now, shall you present it to the lady yourself, or would you prefer to have it delivered?”

  Theodore considered with some satisfaction the vision of himself bestowing the necklace upon La Fantasia in person, nobly forgiving her for her ill treatment of him even as he gently but firmly rebuffed her tearful pleas for him to take her back. Gratifying as this vision was, he was practical enough to acknowledge that she was more likely to throw something at his head than to beg for a reconciliation; La Fantasia, he knew from experience, was not the begging kind.

  “Deliver it to Half Moon Street,” he said decisively. “Number nineteen.” He requested paper and pen with which he might compose a note, and upon this being brought, he scrawled, Let this token serve to express my best wishes for your future happiness. It has been a most educational experience. La Fantasia, he felt sure, would recognize the double meaning. Out of long habit, he signed himself simply T for Tisdale, then, after a moment’s consideration, added several letters and a few words, so that it read Theodore, Duke of Reddington.

  3

  How well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly

  in debt . . . how jolly and easy they are in their minds.

  WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Vanity Fair

  HAVING DISPATCHED LA Fantasia to, presumably, the eager arms of Lord Iversleigh, Theodore found himself sadly at loose ends. London was extremely thin of company in autumn, and would very likely remain so until Parliament reconvened in November. And even if the ton had been in residence and the Season in full spate, the fact that he was in mourning would have precluded his participation in most of its diversions. The thought of spending the night alone in his bachelor flat was intolerable: Besides dwelling on his quarrel with La Fantasia and how he might have handled the matter differently, he was all too aware that he must give up the flat soon and take up residence in the town house that had been his father’s and his father’s before him. Having nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, he eventually ended up at White’s, where the Dukes of Reddington had been members since its earliest days as a chocolate house more than a century ago. His father, he recalled, had put him up for membership upon his leaving Oxford, and his unanimous acceptance into the exclusive club was one of the few occasions on which he’d had the satisfaction of knowing he had made the duke proud. Granted, the play in its card rooms tended to run a bit deep, and his pockets were to let, at least until the will was probated. Still, as he had told Fanny, his credit was good. Besides, he thought in a burst of optimism, he might even win.