The Desperate Duke Read online

  “I’m not ‘rolled up,’ ” Theodore protested. “I’ve got plenty of money—or I will have, as soon as it comes into my possession.”

  “Is it that little ladybird you’ve ’ad in keeping?”

  “No—that is, not entirely, but—dash it, Ethan, she expected me to marry her! I may have been green, but I’m not such a flat as all that! And when she saw I couldn’t be persuaded, or seduced, or coerced into it—” He broke off, shuddering at the memory.

  “Didn’t take it well, did she?” Sir Ethan observed knowingly.

  Theodore gave him a rather sheepish grin. “Lord, you never saw such a shrew! It made me think that perhaps I’m well out of a bad business—Iversleigh may have her with my blessing! But I couldn’t let it get about that she’d ditched me, so I went to Rundell and Bridge and bought her the most expensive thing they had.”

  Sir Ethan, who had bestowed upon his wife more than one bauble from this establishment and thus had a very good idea of the prices to be found therein, gave a long, low whistle.

  “And then,” Theodore continued, “I went to White’s and—well, I just wanted to forget about it, just for a little while—not just Fanny, mind you, but all of it: the dukedom, and the steward and his blasted ‘improvements,’ and the House of Lords, where I’ll no doubt be expected to take my seat, and—oh, you don’t understand!”

  “Actually, I do,” said his brother with a faraway look in his eyes. “More than you think.”

  Theodore, intent on his own troubles, paid no heed to the interruption. “And I can’t let it get out that the Duke of Reddington don’t pay his debts, for we’ve had quite enough of that in the family already! But I don’t have to tell you that—God knows you shelled out enough blunt, towing Papa out of the River Tick.” At this recollection, a new possibility occurred to him. “I say, Ethan, I don’t suppose you would be willing to lend me the ready? Just until the will is probated, you know, and at any interest rate you care to name,” he added hastily, lest his brother-in-law balk at agreeing to this proposal.

  Sir Ethan gave him an appraising look, and asked, “ ’ow much do you need?”

  Theodore told him.

  “You’ve managed to run through that much in less than a fortnight?” demanded his brother-in-law, staring at him.

  “No!” Theodore said, bristling. “That is, I’ll admit I’ve spent more than I should, but old Crumpton says the will could take months! A fellow has to have something to live on in the meantime, you know.”

  “Never mind that! ’ow much will it take to settle your gaming debts and pay for the trinket you gave that game pullet?”

  This figure, while still much higher than it ought to have been, seemed quite reasonable compared to the sum Theodore had felt necessary to sustain him for the few months it might take for the will to go through probate.

  “All right, then,” pronounced Sir Ethan. “It’s yours.”

  Theodore was moved to seize his brother’s hand and wring it gratefully. “I say, Ethan, you’re a great gun! You’ll have every penny of it back, I promise—and, as I said, at any rate of interest you care to name.”

  Sir Ethan shook his head. “There’ll be no interest. As for paying me back, you don’t ’ave to do that—at least, not in pounds, shillings, and pence.”

  This assurance left Theodore more than a little puzzled. “What do you want, then? Does it have to do with your Parliamentary bid? I’ll be glad to use any influence I may have—”

  Sir Ethan had to smile at this sincere but misguided offer. “I’m not sure but what the influence of a Tory might do me more ’arm than good.”

  “I daresay it might,” Theodore acknowledged with a grin. “What, then—?”

  “You’ll pay me back by working it off.” In case further explanation was needed, he added, “In the mill.”

  Theodore’s grin faded, replaced by an expression that combined bewilderment with indignation. “Me? Work in a cotton mill? You can’t be serious!”

  “Perfectly serious,” Sir Ethan assured him, and although his tone was pleasant enough, there was something in his eyes that gave Theodore pause.

  “Dash it, Ethan, I won’t do it!”

  “I guess you’ll ’ave to wait until the will is probated, then,” Sir Ethan said sympathetically, and rose to take his leave.

  “No, but—but dash it, Ethan!” Theodore expostulated. “You can’t—you really can’t expect me to work in a cotton mill!”

  “Why not? Men do it every day,” pointed out Sir Ethan.

  “But—but I’m the Duke of Reddington! How would it look for me to—to—?”

  “No one need know ’oo you are unless you choose to tell ’em,” his brother assured him. “I can promise you that I won’t. In any case, it won’t be for long—only until probate is granted.”

  “But old Crumpton says that could take months!”

  “Most of the mill workers will work their entire lives and never see such a sum,” said Sir Ethan, hardening his heart.

  “I’ll tell my sister about this!” Theodore cried hotly. “Nell won’t stand for it!”

  “When I left ’elen,” Sir Ethan recalled blandly, “she ’ad the fixed intention of introducing you to one or two females—not schoolroom misses, mind you, but sensible females ’oo might inspire you to settle down.”

  “Oh, God!” groaned Theodore, clutching his golden locks in dismay.

  “Come, Theodore, what ’ave you got to lose? It’s not as if there are that many entertainments to be found in Town this time of year, anyway. Besides, I thought you young bucks were up to any kind of lark. I’ll wager it would be something none of your cronies have done.”

  “No, but everyone will think I’ve slunk back to Devon to nurse a broken heart for La Fantasia.”

  “Not if you put it about that you’ve been obliged to leave Town and look into your estate. Your papa left several, and you need not say which one it is that demands your attention.”

  “And what if something really does demand my attention?”

  “You can give instructions that any letters are to be forwarded to me. No one will wonder at it, since I’m the executor of your father’s will, and I’ll know where to find you.”

  Theodore gave a short laugh that was utterly devoid of humor. “You seem to have it all worked out, never mind the fact that I’ll stand out like a mustard pot in a coal scuttle.”

  “Aye, you will if you dress like that,” Sir Ethan agreed, casting a critical eye over his young relation’s fashionable tailcoat of Bath superfine, buckskin breeches, and gleaming Hessian boots. “You’ll want some more suitable clothes.”

  “I suppose I’ll just order them from Weston,” retorted Theodore.

  “You might. Or you could ’ave your man buy you some things from the secondhand shops in Petticoat Lane.”

  “And how, pray, am I to explain my sudden taste for castoff clothing?”

  Sir Ethan gave Theodore the same sweet, disarming smile that had—eventually—won his sister’s fickle heart. “Can you wonder at it? Just tell ’im you lost a wager.”

  “Touché,” Theodore acknowledged with a grin. “Now that you mention it, that would serve as an excuse for anyone who might wonder why I’m working at the mill, yet putting up at its owner’s house.”

  Sir Ethan shook his head. “I’m sorry, Theodore, but I’m afraid that won’t do. No one at the mill is to know ’oo you are, for I won’t ’ave them giving you special treatment.”

  “I suppose they would be bound to do so, if they knew I was a duke,” Theodore conceded generously.

  “They would be bound to do so if they knew you were a relation of mine,” Sir Ethan corrected him gently. “But there’s a boarding’ouse not far from the mill, kept by a gentlewoman ’oo’s fallen on ’ard times. Not only would it give you a roof over your ’ead, but you’d ’ave someone to cook your dinner and do your washing. You’d also be doing a kindness for an unfortunate lady and ’er daughter.”

  Theodore,
listening to these plans for his future with a sense of fatal resignation, made no reply. At the moment, he could imagine no one more unfortunate than himself.

  5

  A simple maiden in her flower

  Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, Lady Clara Vere de Vere

  DAPHNE DRINKARD EMERGED from the back of the house with an armful of freshly laundered sheets destined for the second-best bedroom. This chamber, which had once been her own, was usually vacant these days, kept in readiness for anyone willing to pay half a crown per night for its use, while Daphne occupied a much smaller room at the opposite end of the hall. Not, she reminded herself, that she resented this; in fact, she much preferred it to her mama’s protestations that mother and daughter should share the bedroom which had once belonged to the late Mr. Drinkard. But Daphne, who had already lost so much in the three years since that gentleman’s death, had been determined not to add her privacy to that constantly growing list. Suppressing a sigh at the memory of the cheerful room with its flowered chintz curtains and thick Axminster carpet, she went in search of her mother to inform her that the laundry maid (who, along with the cook, represented all that remained of what had once been a sizeable staff) had said they were almost out of fuller’s earth.

  She found Mrs. Drinkard in the front hall, deep in conversation with a man Daphne had never seen before. That the conversation was causing her mother considerable perturbation of spirits was quite clear, for her mother’s lace-mittened hands gestured in agitation.

  “But here is my daughter now! Daphne, my love, come and make your curtsy to Sir Valerian Wadsworth.”

  Thus adjured, Daphne dipped a curtsy, clutching the bedsheets against her chest lest they tip over and tumble onto the floor, undoing the laundry maid’s work as well as her own, since it was she to whom fell the task of folding.

  “How do you do, sir?” she responded politely.

  “The better for having made your acquaintance, Miss Drinkard, I’m sure,” he said, his smile exposing a mouthful of impossibly white teeth.

  “Will you be staying with us, then?” She made a quick appraisal of his fashionable attire and stylishly disheveled chestnut locks, and determined that here was one who could well afford the second-best bedroom. Color rose to her face at the thought of this gentleman sleeping in the bed that had once been hers.

  “Dear me, no,” her mother put in hastily. “Sir Valerian is putting up at one of the fashionable hotels in Manchester.”

  “As I was telling your mother, I wish to hold a series of meetings—for the mill workers, you understand—and wondered if she might have a public room I could hire for the purpose.”

  “Sir Valerian is standing for Parliament,” put in Mrs. Drinkard by way of explanation. “Only fancy! I told him he might use the dining room, once dinner has been served and the dishes cleared away.”

  Daphne had to admire her mother’s adroitness in leaving the impression, without going so far as to lie about it, that these menial tasks would fall to persons other than themselves. Sir Valerian said all that was proper and took his leave, promising to see them again on the following night, when he would hold the first of his meetings.

  The door had no sooner closed behind him than her mother fell into raptures. “Oh, my dear! A baronet! Perhaps even a Member of Parliament! If only he should take a fancy to you, we could all be comfortable again! It would be just the sort of match you might have made if your dear papa had not died! You would be Lady Wadsworth, you know, and have a grand house in London where you should live during the Season, and whenever Parliament was in session—”

  “Mama, pray hold your transports!” Daphne protested, laughing. “The man has only just laid eyes on me—never mind the fact that he has not yet secured his seat in the Commons.”

  “I’m sure he could not fail to do so—such an air! Such address! Yes, I know you think I am very silly,” she chided her irreverent daughter, “but you cannot know how I have feared for your future, my dearest girl.”

  In fact, Daphne had a very good idea, for she often experienced those same fears herself. Three years ago, she had been seventeen years old, and preparing to go to London for her first Season, where she had every expectation of making a good match. Her birth, though not aristocratic, was certainly genteel, and her dowry was respectable. As for her physical attributes, she was much admired in Lancashire, and it was unlikely that gentlemen in London would be less appreciative of glossy brown curls, speaking brown eyes, and a trim figure than were their Lancastrian counterparts. She was intelligent, without being a bluestocking; in fact, she was a poetess of some note, having even known the satisfaction of seeing several of these pieces published in various journals, from which she had even received a modest payment. Alas, now that she and her mother could have used the extra money, this source of income was closed to her: the poetry in which she had once taken such pleasure had taken a dark turn of late, usually addressing such subjects as the cruelty of fate and the blighting of youthful hopes. Unlike their sunnier predecessors, these had never seen print; in fact, they were no sooner penned than they were consigned to the fire. Quite aside from the fact that no publisher would release upon an unsuspecting public such works as must cast their readers into a fit of the dismals, Daphne had no desire for them to bring pain to her mother.

  For with the death of Mr. Drinkard, a tragedy of another sort (albeit not unrelated to the first) had come upon the household. No sooner had he been laid to rest than it was brought home to mother and daughter that their situation was dire indeed. The sweet-tempered and somewhat bookish gentleman they had known as husband and father had proven to be nothing more than a façade behind which had hidden a very different man, one whose frequent trips on unnamed “estate business” had, in fact, been sojourns to Newmarket, Royal Ascot, and several lesser temples to horseracing, as well as shorter jaunts to numerous cockpits and prizefights. Mr. Drinkard was, in short, a hardened gambler. This might have been forgiven had he been even moderately successful at this dubious pastime, but he was not. He was an indifferent judge of horseflesh and a worse one of men, staking his ever-shrinking capital on the favorites of his younger days in blithe disregard for the fact that these former pets of the Fancy were now past their prime. Daphne’s dowry was long gone, and most of the assets that had remained to the widow and child of the deceased had been sold to pay his debts. Only the house remained, its conversion to a boarding house (demeaning though it was) being the only thing that had kept it, too, from the auction block.

  As for Daphne’s approaching Season, it had never been spoken of again. It would have been impossible to have gone to London in any case, as she and her mother were now in mourning, and by the time they had put off their blacks, it had been made abundantly plain to that young lady, by now eighteen, that there was no money for such an endeavor, and it was unlikely that there ever would be. Orders for ball gowns, riding habits, and opera cloaks had been abruptly canceled, and most of the dresses that had already been delivered from the modiste had been stripped of their ribbons and lace, and the denuded garments dyed black. Only a few had escaped the vat: the two day dresses which she alternated wearing on weekdays (now three years old and beginning to show wear at seams and elbows); one walking dress which she wore to church on Sundays; a simple dinner gown which, according to Mrs. Drinkard, gave the boarding house an air of gentility when Daphne wore it downstairs for the evening meal; and a pink satin ball gown, never worn, still wrapped in its original tissue and tucked away in the attic where—unbeknownst to her mother—Daphne slipped away to visit it occasionally, furtively fanning the tiny ember of hope that, in the teeth of all evidence, refused to be utterly extinguished.

  Yes, Daphne had every reason to fear for her future, which seemed to promise nothing but a life of spinsterhood and near-poverty. The husband she was to have found in London was destined to remain undiscovered (and might well have married another by this time, in any case), and her Lancashi
re beaux had all melted away as soon as her changed circumstances had become public knowledge.

  Her mother’s thoughts must have been running along very similar lines, for Mrs. Drinkard said, in a voice half doubt and half hope, “I don’t suppose you might wear the pink satin tomorrow night?”

  “A ball gown? Mama, you must know better! I might as well throw myself at the poor man’s head!”

  “I only thought he might notice you,” Daphne’s parent said defensively.

  “He would certainly do that, for he would think me the most shockingly vulgar creature imaginable!”

  Mrs. Drinkard heaved a sigh of regret. “I suppose you’re right. Tell me, do you think we should set out a bottle of your poor papa’s brandy? I suppose not—we wouldn’t want to waste it on the mill workers. Why does he want to meet with them, do you suppose?”

  Daphne offered no opinion, for at that moment the door opened and a new arrival stood on the threshold, the autumn sun striking his bare head and turning his fair hair to gold. He was quite tall, and although he was clad in the rough clothing of the common laborer, he wore them with an air that even so exalted a personage as Sir Valerian might have envied. He carried a bulging valise, which indicated that he intended to stay. Daphne was not quite sure whether this was a good thing, or a bad one.

  “I, er, I beg your pardon,” he said, his green-eyed gaze shifting from Daphne to her mother and back again. “Have I come to the right place? I was told I might hire a room here.”

  “Yes, of course,” Daphne said quickly, suddenly aware that she was staring. “We have several rooms vacant at the moment. How long do you plan to stay with us?”