Dukes By the Dozen

by Alyssa Alexander

  Ten years away and he had become a hardened man—two minutes back in her presence and he was already as surly and uncomfortable in his own skin as the adolescent boy he had been when he left. More so.

  The ache where his left arm used to be wasn’t helping his mood.

  Marcus took a deep breath and resolved to be himself. “Well, Mama, I reckon what prompted you to send for me was that Caius has died.”

  “Don’t say died.” The teacup in her hand trembled ever so slightly. “I prefer passed away.”

  “I prefer no double speak.” His decade of service had given him a taste for simplicity and the character for honesty. “When did Caius die, and how?”

  “Months ago. It’s taken you forever to get here.” The dowager duchess frowned into her teacup, as if she were put out at him for not being more conveniently located than the coast of Brazil. “You’re so awfully out of fashion with that ill-kempt beard and antiquated clubbed hair.”

  No mention of what else about him that was more permanently altered.

  Marcus worked to keep the slow match of his temper dampened. “Fashion doesn’t matter at sea, Mama.”

  “Well, now that you’re finally here, you can see to such things. Martins is secretary.” She waved her wrist in the vague direction of the library, where this secretary was presumably to be found. “He can sort you out and do…anything you might need done for you.”

  As if his missing arm made him incapable of doing anything for himself. “I can still write a bank draft, if that’s your worry.”

  Her teacup shook enough to splash hot pekoe into the saucer. “We’ll have to make an effort right away,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard him, “if we’re to have any luck a’tall before the Season is in full swing.”

  “Any luck at what?” His mind was already busy toting up a long list of questions for this as-yet-unseen secretary—Caius had never been an attentive, dutiful sort of fellow to begin with, but if the estates had been left to their own devices for months, there was doubtless much work to be done. “Are you done in? Did Caius bankrupt the estate before going toes up?”

  “Marcus!” His mother’s tone was affronted, but she finally turned to face him, and meet his eyes. “Any luck at doing what I failed to do for your dear brother—finding you a respectable wife.”

  Chapter 2

  Marcus sensibly abandoned London, making all sail directly for Warwickshire, settling quietly into the ducal seat of Warwick Court, and setting his mind to learning his newfound ducal duties. But not even his removal to the country could stop Society’s mamas, who waged a battle as direct and brutal as Admiral Nelson ever had—the invitations for country card parties, musical evenings, and balls immediately arrived with the relentless regularity of mortar rounds from a shore bombardment.

  As little as he liked it, Marcus was a man too used to duty to shirk from responsibility, even in such aggrieved circumstances. He silently cursed his fate and chose a winter ball at nearby Oakley Hall as the lesser of all the evils on offer, on the presumption that he could not be required to dance.

  Yet after only a few minutes of standing awkwardly by the side of the dance floor, he regretted his decision. He’d be damned if he would spend another strangled breath—the spacious ballroom was somehow as sweltering as the horse latitudes even in February—making idle conversation. And by conversation, he meant gossip. He did not care to hear who was sleeping with whom—especially as he was bloody well not sleeping with anyone at the moment.

  But people—and by people, he meant the wide-eyed, stammering young things the local mamas kept foisting upon him—could not seem to speak of anything more substantive. That was if they could bring themselves to speak at all. Most of them just stood there, quivering in their virginal white muslin as if they feared his empty sleeve might jump out and grab them.

  Marcus had had enough of being stared at from behind fans—nothing made his missing arm ache like feeling useless. But just because he was a fish well out of seawater didn’t mean he had to flop ignominiously about the deck. He was now the bloody Duke of Warwick—he could do as he damn well pleased. And what he pleased was to find a snug harbor to moor up in and have—as his naval steward used to say say—a bit of a wet.

  He found the quiet library with a mercifully full decanter of brandy and poured himself a heavy measure before cracking the window to let in some fresh air. He settled comfortably into a wing-backed armchair by the hearth and was contemplating which of his sins had got him condemned to such a purgatory, when the sound of the library door latching shut made him sit up and take notice.

  Across the room, a tiny, dark-haired young woman in claret-colored velvet was attempting to shove a large chest of drawers across the door.

  He had to ask, even though he could plainly see the answer. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The young lady in question let out an oath so old, so Anglo-Saxon and so familiar that Marcus feared he must have misheard her, for he had never heard it uttered anywhere but between the decks of a ship.

  Fuck him indeed.

  But then she said, “Oh, good Lord. Beech? Is that you behind that beard?”

  Everything within him eased. “It is.” Only one female of his acquaintance had ever called him Beech—Miss Penelope Pease, daughter of his host for the evening, Sir Harold Pease. And Marcus, in his oh-so-tedious and unimaginative youth, had called her, “Pease Porridge?”

  “Dear Beech!” She came forward with her hand extended, all astonished happiness. “What an unexpected pleasure! If you aren’t a welcome sight for sore eyes.”

  And here he had been thinking that he was a sore sight for her welcome blue eyes. Devil take him, but she had grown into a beautiful young woman, whose hand he gladly took. She was the first real human contact he’d had since he'd returned—he felt the warmth of her grasp all the way from his fingertips to places better left unmentioned. “Why Pease Porridge Hot—how is it possible you are no longer ten and three years old?”

  Her smile lit up her heart-shaped face, all mischievous, laughing angel. “More like Pease Porridge Cold these days, my friend. And you are no longer the gangly lad of our gloriously mis-spent youth, either. Gracious, but you’re a long drink of water.”

  Marcus was pleasantly surprised to find his mouth curving into his first real smile in days. “Well, the passing decade has clearly not dimmed your hoydenish tendencies one bit.”

  “It’s not as if I haven’t tried, but—” Behind her, the door latch rattled, and she sprang back to action, lowering her voice to an urgent whisper. “Help me!” She motioned for him to join her as she laid a determined shoulder to the chest of drawers.

  “I don’t think I should.” Even he knew barricading them in alone was definitely not the done thing.

  “I’ll explain if you’ll only help,” she promised. “You’re supposed to be a bloody hero, Beech. Come act like one.”

  He was drawn in by her wayward charm. “My dear Pease Porridge, whatever have you been doing with yourself these many years?” His question went unanswered while he snugged in beside her to lay his good shoulder into the chest of drawers—careful so as not to spill his drink—and shove the heavy piece of furniture the necessary remaining inches to bar the door.

  “Thank you.” She blew out a gusty breath before she smiled up at him and patted his lapel in an absent gesture of casual intimacy that nearly rocked him back on his heels. “Good Lord, Beech, you smell divine. What are you drinking?” She swiped the snifter of brandy from his hand and took a hearty sip. “Mmm. Thanks.” She kept possession of the glass as she all but flung herself into the other armchair opposite the hearth. “I’m meant to be good and stay well clear of trouble, but to do so I’m in need of some fortification. You?”

  “As you see.” Marcus decided he rather liked the offhand, ordinary way she treated him, much like his brother officers had—as if there were nothing wrong with him.

  He fetched himself another drink. “Well clear of
trouble? But wasn’t there some stupid talk of you marrying my late, unlamented brother?”

  She nearly choked on the brandy, but when she recovered her aplomb, she shot him what he could only describe as a sharp, cutty-eyed glance. “Dear Beech, you have been away.”

  “Aye.” He distinctly remembered his mother had written about an engagement between Pease Porridge and his older brother Caius, if only because the news had given him such an awful, riveting pang that had stayed with him, lodged deep in his chest like a broken rib.

  “There was talk, but it was quickly dismissed.”

  And just like that, the pain was healed, and he could breathe again. “Glad to hear it.”

  “Ha!” she scoffed. “You’d be the first of your family to feel so.”

  Something in her tone told Marcus he was clearly not in possession of all the facts. “Enlighten me, Pease Porridge.”

  She laughed, but by the time she answered, the twinkling warmth in her eyes had hardened into studied nonchalance. “Did no one write to tell you all the gory details? That I made the unforgivable mistake of daring to decline the engagement that was so thoughtfully and hastily arranged for the Duke of Warwick and me? That I refused to marry your brother, and was that instant and forevermore declared entirely unsuitable?”

  The flush of satisfaction—she had refused Caius!—quickly burned itself out. Such childish triumph was beneath him with his brother cold in his grave.

  Still. “Unsuitable for being smart enough to say no to my blaggard of a brother?” Such a choice only raised her up in his estimation. “Hardly.”

  “Kind Beech. You have been away a very long time, haven’t you?” Penelope Pease took another deep drink, before she met his eye. “It’s like this, Beech. I’m ruined, you see. Utterly and completely ruined.”

  Chapter 3

  “The devil you say!”

  Penelope could tell by the scowl on Marcus Beecham’s delightfully scruffy face that he did not believe her.

  “Come now,” Beech continued in his lovely low baritone. “Don’t distress me with such nonsense.”

  It was kind of him, if naive. She wouldn’t have expected that of a naval man—especially one so obviously aware of how unfair, unkind and harsh life could be. “I wish I were, Beech. I wish—” So many things. Things she couldn’t say to dear Beech, who seemed to have come back to her from the dead—certainly his family had made no mention of him for years. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here, and that’s what matters.”

  “Pease Porridge.” His tone brooked no change of conversation. “What don’t I know?”

  How strange—or refreshing, she was not sure which—that he didn’t know the whole of her very short, but ultimately sordid, affair with his now-deceased brother.

  Lord, but they grew them fine, these Beecham boys. They were so alike physically—tall and strong-boned with piercing grey-green eyes—she might be forgiven for her imprudent infatuation. Beech was all tanned, naval robustness, even with that empty sleeve, where Caius had been a paler, more citified version of handsome.

  But even a blind woman could tell that Marcus Beecham had become everything his devilishly good-looking older brother had not been—upstanding, honest and forthright. Too good for the likes of her. “All you need to know is that I am ruined, and you are meant to stay well clear of me.”

  “Devil take me if I will.” His tanned face was marred only by that ferociously lovely scowl—and that interesting little scar on his forehead. “You’re the first friendly face I’ve seen since I put a foot on land, and I’ll not abandon a friend to the foul winds of rumor.”

  “Kind Beech.” He would be such a man.

  If only she had had been patient. If only she had been prudent. If only.

  But there was no way to put spilt milk back into the pail. “Sorry, Beech, but I’m afraid I’ll soon be abandoning you. I’m being sent to the hinterlands—banished to some Backwater-By-Nowhere as companion to a maiden aunty in punishment for my sins—whilst my parents try to launch my younger sister, Susanne, off.”

  “Like a ship of war, ready to go into battle?” he chuckled.

  “Indeed.” Penelope found her own smile to mirror his. “In light of my scandal, they feel they must wage a campaign to find sweet Susanne a husband. And until they depart for London, I am meant to be as quiet and invisible as a mouse, which is why I made for my lonely bolt hole here this evening.”

  “Lonely?”

  “I beg your pardon, Beech. I meant to be alone, but that does not mean that I am not delighted to have the unexpected pleasure of your company. Lord, but it has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  “A lifetime—Caius’s lifetime, at the very least.” Beech knocked back another drink of brandy. “Which is damned ironic, considering I was meant to be the expendable one.”

  Such a thought was not to be borne. “Not expendable, Beech. Never that. Out of sight, perhaps, but never out of mind, surely.”

  “Out of mind until they had use of me,” he scoffed. “My mother, and the lawyers and secretaries she has set nipping at my heels like a pack of rat terriers.”

  “Poor Beech, to discover yourself a duke,” she teased.

  “Aye, well…” One side of Beech’s lovely mouth curved up in a rueful smile. “I know there are a thousand men—nay, a hundred thousand—who should love to be standing in my well-polished boots, but…” He let the thought trail away as he absently touched the empty sleeve of his coat where it was sewn under his lapel. “I daresay I’ll be happier once I settle into my duties and escape society’s demands. At least in the country I can get a fresh breath of winter air. I was like to suffocate in that ballroom.”

  To Penelope, leaving society was exile, not escape. This winter, and every one thereafter, would be spent as a companion to a relative she had never met, in some frozen corner of the countryside where she would doubtless spend the coming years being made to stop up drafts.

  Such a bleak prospect was enough to prompt sarcasm. “I should recommend getting yourself ruined if you want to escape society entirely, Beech. Though I daresay a fellow as handsome as you got himself good and ruined a long time ago.”

  “I beg your pardon?” His tone was incredulous enough to remind Penelope that Beech had done nothing to earn her spleen.

  Yet some still-wounded piece of her tattered pride prompted her on. “But, of course, chaps aren’t accounted ruined whenever they indulge in…shall we call it ungentlemanly behavior, are they? Because my unladylike behavior—being caught alone with your brother, to be specific—is how I was ruined.”

  He looked slightly stunned. “You went apart with Caius? Willingly?”

  “I have to admit so, yes. Very willingly. Enthusiastically, even.” She gave Beech that much of the truth. She had been a fool for a handsome face so very much like Beech’s, and the late Duke of Warwick had been irresistible to her—all brooding, dark delight that she had learned nearly too late was the sort of self-loathing that poisons everything and everyone it touches.

  She had only just missed it touching her.

  Still, she had been poisoned, and everything that had made her life comfortable, everything she had recklessly taken for granted—her good name and her family’s regard and protection—was gone in an evening.

  “He fooled you, then.” Beech’s scowl loomed across his brow like a thundercloud. “He always did like having his way, and he never did care who he hurt while he got it.”

  Dear, clever Beech, to see so clearly, and yet, still not see all.

  “Alas, Beech, I was the one who kissed him,” she admitted.

  Penelope could not tell if the look in his eyes was pity or disappointment. Either way, it was more than she could stomach. “What about you? Have you never kissed anyone, Beech?”

  Her question took him aback for only the briefest moment. “Indeed, I have,” he confirmed without a trace of rancor. “And enjoyed it. Immensely. Great stuff kissing, when properly done—amicably and with the right person
.”

  Something within her—something ridiculously, miserably hopeful—sparked to life. Properly done, indeed.

  She attempted to douse the ember by taking another drink. But the brandy only seemed to loosen her tongue. “Be glad you are not a woman, Beech, else you’d be ruined for such enthusiasm.” Lord, but it felt good to say what she’d been thinking, to let the words loose upon the world. She propped her feet upon the fireplace bumper. “Utterly ruined—your very existence treated as an affront to all well-bred behavior.”

  Gracious but she was airing out all sorts of her dirty linen this evening—even she could hear the bitterness in her tone. But Beech had been a loyal friend in their long-ago youth—before he had gone away to the Navy and she had been fool enough to turn her reckless fancy to kissing handsome men—and he deserved the truth. The whole truth, and not what she had been admitting out of some idiotic mixture of resentment and pride.

  “So here you are, an affront, barricaded behind a chest of drawers,” Beech concluded in that steady, smooth baritone as deep and rich as the liquor. “Might I venture if that precaution is to keep you from being imposed upon by idiot chaps eager to keep you ruined?”

  “Why, Beech.” Penelope felt the brandy’s warmth spread all the way to her toes. “How extraordinarily perceptive you are.”

  He deflected her praise. “Human nature is the same on a ship as it is in a ballroom.”

  “Is it? That brings to mind all sorts of interesting questions I should love to ask. But the problem is that it is February, and the St. Valentine’s poems have begun. I can normally endure them—the poems as well as the idiot chaps who send them—but my present circumstance seems to have brought out the absolute worst in the county’s bachelors.”

  The horrible doggerel was nearly enough to make her eager for the escape of exile. Nearly—she supposed the post could still reach her in Backwater-By-Nowhere.

  “St. Valentine’s Day poems?” Beech’s dark scowl scoured his forehead. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”