The Duke (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 6)

by Mary Kingswood

“Why ever not?” she said, puzzled. “Why can you not marry the woman you love?”

  He winced at her plain speaking. “Because her father is determined that she marry a man of high rank, and a younger son, even the younger son of a duke, is not good enough.”

  “But to break off an engagement so close to the wedding,” she said. “Even in my far less exalted world, that is a very bad thing to do. Only two weeks away, Ran! Her father cannot prevent it, not if she is set upon it.”

  “No, for we are both of age, and the announcement has been made publicly, so in any normal situation there would be nothing to prevent it. But this is not a normal situation. Our betrothal was based on the mistaken idea that I was the duke, which I am not.”

  “But you are the same man!” she cried. “What difference does it make?”

  He gave a wry smile. “All the difference in the world. Amongst the nobility, marriage is a business arrangement. Both sides lay out their assets. For the man, an estate, an income of so much per year, his position in society, which becomes hers upon marriage. For the woman, her dowry, her beauty and temperament, her ability to manage his house, raise his children, bring credit upon him socially. Her position in society matters, too, for the connections it brings, but less than his. As a duke, with vast holdings and an income of thirty thousand pounds a year, I was very eligible. As a younger son, with a small estate, two houses without land and an allowance from my brother, I have less than one thousand pounds a year. It is not enough! Even if by some miracle Ruth were to hold to the betrothal, her father will not settle so much as a farthing on her, and I cannot afford to.”

  “People marry without settlements all the time,” she said gently. “If she loves you—”

  “But she does not, and even if she did, I cannot ask the daughter of a duke to bind herself to me for a thousand a year and no protection at all if I should die. It is useless to think of it. Forgive me, but I must go and dance attendance on our unwelcome guests.”

  17: Games Of Cards

  The evening was got through somehow. They sat down eleven to dinner, and Ran thanked providence for the presence of Captain Edgerton, who flirted gently with the ladies, told slightly warm stories to the gentlemen and was agreeable to all. Michael Chandry had been intercepted on arrival and dispatched to bear his sister company, by which means the company was relieved of the name of Chandry altogether. That did not stop Uncle Arthur plaintively enquiring after him, and protesting that the chaplain was not an adequate substitute at the whist table.

  Ran could see that Ger was not in spirits. He put a brave face on it, but his conversation was languid and he seemed relieved whenever something occurred to distract attention from him. When the gentlemen were alone, he became altogether silent.

  “Are you minded for cards?” Ran whispered to him as they made their way to join the ladies. Ger shook his head, and immediately went to sit by Ruth, who was at the instrument. She was playing a charming, lilting piece, perhaps Irish, and when she looked up at Ger and he smiled, she smiled back. Even though the sight was like a knife twisted in his stomach, Ran could see the value in keeping the two of them apart from the company, engrossed in their music.

  Since Lady Anne was already asleep, and he wanted to make up two card tables, he was obliged to join one of them himself, although he was an indifferent player at best, and tonight he was certainly not at his best. Even Elizabeth, the most relaxed of his sisters, berated him soundly.

  “Really, Ran, what are you about to be throwing away a trump like that? Where have your wits gone a-begging?”

  “I beg your pardon,” he said for the twentieth time.

  Eventually, his group of card players yawned, stretched and declared themselves tired of the game. Ran had lost eighty pounds, and cared not one whit. Even the chaplain had taken money off him, for once. On the other table, the brandy was flowing freely and Uncle Arthur, the duke, Captain Edgerton and Max were settling in for the night.

  Ruth was sitting on her own, absorbed in her stitchery. It was an opportunity he could not resist. He no longer wished to have any private talk with her, for what was the point, now? Still, her serenity drew him and perhaps her gentle company would soothe his jangled nerves, so he crossed the room and sat down beside her. They had exchanged not two sentences, and rather innocuous ones, when the duchess materialised and sat down beside her daughter.

  “I declare, travelling is the most tiring thing in the world, is it not, Lord Randolph?”

  “Indeed it is, Duchess,” he said politely.

  “I find myself quite exhausted, and you are looking a little tired, daughter, too. You are suffering from too much jolting in the carriage and not enough rest, I daresay. Junketing about all over the garden in the afternoon sun is never a good idea, and quite alone, too, with no one to advise you not to overexert yourself. You must not do so again.”

  “No, Mama,” she said colourlessly.

  “We shall go to bed now.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Ruth tucked her needlework away into a work bag.

  “Allow me to escort you to your rooms,” Ran said, as they all rose.

  “I would not for the world take you from your guests,” the duchess said coldly. “We can find our way very easily.”

  “Then I shall bid you both a good night, and may you enjoy your repose.”

  As Ruth followed her mother from the room, she half turned and mouthed, “Thank you,” to Ran, although for what, he could not say.

  Apart from the avid card players, the rest of the company drifted away too. Elizabeth departed for her little lodge and Ponsonby for his rooms near the chapel. Aunt Anne and Ger had disappeared long since. Ran felt it safe to leave, too. He was tired and unhappy, and a whole evening of pretending otherwise had taxed his resources to the utmost. He would have a brandy before bed, and then, he supposed, lie awake wondering what torments the next day would bring.

  Giggs was waiting for him in his room.

  “Help me out of my coat, will you, and then you may go. I shall not need you again tonight. Off you go, then.”

  “Very good, milord. I shall hold myself in readiness in case your lordship should require anything further.”

  “No need for that. I can pull a nightshirt over my head unaided, you know. I am not entirely helpless.”

  “And yet I fancy you were very glad to see me in Exeter, milord.”

  Ran smiled at him. “So I was, Giggs. You are a very good fellow, but I shall do well enough now. Go to bed.”

  When the valet had gone, Ran went through to the sitting room, to find it lit as bright as day. Ger and Chandry were huddled over the card table, with three candelabra beside them. In a corner, Ginny and Molly were stitching with the aid of working candles.

  “Ran!” Ger cried, with a pleased smile. “Have they all gone to bed? Are you cross with me for abandoning you?”

  “No and no,” Ran said. “Chandry, why are you letting him fleece you? Oh — buttons! Well, at least you have the good sense not to play for money.”

  “Lord, no, I’m not such a fool,” Chandry said. “I know he’s going to beat me into a cocked hat, but that’s how you learn, by playing against the best.”

  “And what does he get out of it?”

  “Buttons!” Chandry said, pointing to the great mound of them in front of Ger. “And the delights of my charming company.”

  Ger smiled. “He cheers me up, Ran, so please do not be cross with me. I know I should not have left you but—”

  “I have already said that I am not cross. You lasted as long as supper and no one noticed you leave so I am not minded to censure you, even if it were my place to do so. Have you drunk all the brandy?”

  “We’re not drinking,” Chandry said. “Have to keep a clear head for this.”

  Ran poured his brandy and went to sit with the women. “How are you, Molly? Have you been well looked after below stairs?”

  “Now, isn’t that just like you to ask so kindly after me, but then everyone here
is so pleasant and friendly. I’m very well, milord, and most comfortably situated in an attic room just at the top of the servants’ stairs. Lovely room, and spacious and done up so pretty, for all there’s no flying babies on the ceiling.”

  “Only the State Apartments have… erm, flying babies on the ceiling,” Ran said solemnly. “Should you like some? I can arrange it.”

  “Dear me, no! Faces looking down at me as I lie in my bed, or…” She went slightly pink. “…when I’m dressing and what not? No, no! I couldn’t.”

  “I have not seen you since we arrived. Have you been avoiding me?” Ran said lightly.

  Molly pursed her lips primly, but Ger laughed. “It is not you whom Molly has been avoiding, Ran. She disapproves mightily of me.”

  “Well, I do, and I make no bones about it,” the nurse answered. “Thought he was such a gentleman, I did, when he first arrived at Pendower, and so quiet and well behaved and all the time he was talking sweet to Miss Ginny and making her forget the respectable way she was brought up. It’s wicked, it is.”

  “You have forgotten the less-than-respectable example Papa set,” Ginny said, laughing.

  “I don’t forget, but he kept himself to married women, as a rule, unless a maid threw herself at his head. Which they did, sometimes. Powerful attractive to the women, your pa was, and he has some of that, too,” she added, nodding at Michael Chandry. “Although to be fair, he’s not as free with himself as his pa was. But him!” Her eye fell on Ger. “A real gentleman with such pretty manners and so polite, he shouldn’t be taking respectable maids, not without marrying them.”

  “She will not have me,” Ger said, with a little laugh. “Not for all my grand titles and great estates will she be my wife.”

  “It is because of the titles and estates that I can never marry you,” Ginny said, laying down her sewing. “I cannot possibly marry the Duke of Falconbury.”

  Ger gazed at her, bemused. “Would you have married Jonathan Ellsworthy?”

  “Yes.”

  He cried out in anguish, his cards tossed aside. “Yet you never said… I had no idea…”

  “Of course not. Didn’t you realise? I thought you might have worked it out by now. I knew almost from the start that you were not a humble clerk, that you were the duke who was supposed to be drowned, but you said nothing. You were content to be Jonathan Ellsworthy, clerk. You told me once that life weighed hard on you, but what you meant was that being the duke weighed hard. And then one day you woke up and found that you were not that person any more. You had escaped, and could live a different life. But I was never sure whether you would be content to stay free for ever or whether there would come a time when you would want to go back to your life of wealth and power and be a nobleman instead of a clerk. So… I decided to test you. I came to your bed and seduced you, and for all Molly’s tutting, it was I who did the seducing, not you. If you were ready to spend the rest of your life as Jonathan Ellsworthy, I knew you would ask me to marry you, but if you were not… Well, I had my answer, and I am content. We are together, whether I have a wedding ring or not, and that is all that matters to me. I have never cared much about the conventional proprieties, no matter how much the parson preaches. My father’s blood, I’m afraid.”

  Ger was too distressed to speak, but Ran said, “I do not see why you cannot marry Ger even now, even knowing him to be the duke. He can marry where he chooses, you know. There is no bar.”

  “No, no, no!” she cried. “He must marry his own kind! Ran, do you remember when you were at the Pendower inn with all those great men? Lord This and Sir Something, every last one of them. You all treated me with so much courtesy, just as if I were a real lady, but I am not and never will be. Gervase moves in a different world from the likes of me, and even though you have convinced me that nobles are not all entirely useless, still I can’t ever be one. It is impossible.”

  “You did well with the relatives that first night,” Ran said. “No society lady could have done better.”

  “Oh, I have been in society a little. I know the essentials. But when I saw Lady Ruth… she is so far above me in every way! I am like a donkey to her thoroughbred mare. She has been trained from birth to marry a man of high rank, and I have not been trained for anything. I have always known that Gervase would marry someone like that, someone who was his equal. I am only fit to be his mistress.”

  Ger made an inarticulate sound of distress.

  “No, it is true, love. I shall live in the Old Manor and keep out of the way and be there whenever you need me, and you will marry someone who will support you in your public life. I am resolved on this, and nothing you say will change my mind, so finish your game, my love, for it is growing late, and tomorrow you must decide your future course.”

  “Do you think I should marry Ruth?” Ger said.

  Ginny threw a quick look at Ran, then said carefully, “If that is the best answer for everyone.”

  Molly sniffed. “He should marry you, Miss Ginny, and that’s the truth. What’s to become of you without a husband?”

  “Gervase will look after me.”

  After a while the women left but Ran sat on in the corner, watching the card players. Both played quickly and decisively, with no dithering. Chandry maintained a steady patter of inconsequential nonsense, perhaps to distract his opponent. Ger said nothing not pertaining to the game. He looked calm, but there was an excitement in his eyes as he made his plays. In the Grand Saloon or at dinner, he had looked uneasy and uncomfortably out of place, but here he was in his element. He was alive, his fears submerged, in a way he was not when he was required to be formal, and be the duke. His music was another means for him to lose himself. Ran and Ginny would have to find a way to protect him from too many public duties. Ran had been taking that rôle for some years now, and it would not hurt to continue.

  “Another partie?” Chandry said optimistically, pushing buttons across the table as Ger scooped up the cards.

  Ger shook his head. “It is late, and Ginny is right, as usual — tomorrow I must decide what to do. What do you think, Michael? Should I marry Ruth?”

  Chandry looked at him thoughtfully. “Ginny’s right about most things, but she doesn’t know your world, and nor do I. Ask your brother.”

  “He only asks me what I want to do.”

  “Well then, do that. You’re a duke, you can do whatever you want, so marry or not, as you please. No one can tell you what to do, except the King or the Prince of Wales, I suppose, but myself, I’d hesitate to keep two women under the same roof. Asking for trouble, that is.”

  “Ginny will be living at the Old Manor,” Ger said.

  “Which is what, a quarter of a mile away? Rather you than me! Thank you for taking all my buttons. Good night to you both.”

  After he had gone, Ger sat unmoving for some time, his hands restlessly shuffling the cards, passing them back and forth from one hand to the other.

  “Brandy?” Ran said eventually.

  “Ah! Good idea.” Then, hesitantly, he went on, “I wish you would tell me what to do, Ran. I want to do the right thing for everyone, but I have not the least notion what that may be.”

  Ran handed him a glass, and then took Chandry’s seat opposite him. “Ger, when I want to decide whether to do something to do with the estate — take an interest in a mine, for instance, or sell a piece of land — I try to work out what the benefit will be, but also the risks, so let us try that here. If you marry Ruth, the benefit is that you obtain a perfect wife who will do everything expected of a duchess. She will always behave impeccably, no matter the occasion, and she will raise your heirs in the traditional manner. Society will approve your choice. She will not be disturbed by the fact that you have a mistress, so long as you keep the two apart, and even if they meet occasionally, they are both sensible.”

  “You do not agree with Michael’s qualms, then?”

  “No. So long as you do nothing outrageous, such as expecting them to dine together, there will b
e no trouble. It is only when you house Ginny within Valmont itself, and talk about society respecting her that I take issue with you. Your wife will be respected by the beau monde, your mistress never will be. I do not foresee difficulties if you marry Ruth, so long as you conform somewhat to society’s strictures. If you do not marry Ruth, however—”

  He stopped, aware that each breath was harder to take now. How difficult to talk calmly about such matters! To play the disinterested adviser when he was anything but disinterested. But it had to be done. He would support his brother in all things, and that meant giving him the very best, the most objective advice within his power.

  “If you do not marry Ruth, her father might well consider that you have broken faith with him. He could, if he were to be vindictive, abuse your good name all over town, and you may be sure that Ginny’s name would be mentioned, too. And Ruth would be left unwed and unpromised at the age of one and twenty. She chose to wait for you, Ger, even though she had several very eligible offers, to my certain knowledge. If you reject her now, she will be obliged to look elsewhere for a husband.”

  “But not far, surely? You are very willing to have her.”

  “More than willing, but it is impossible. Even if she would have me, I cannot afford to take her.”

  “Not even if Orrisdale could be persuaded to pay up the full thirty thousand?” Ger said.

  Ran shook his head. “He is all to pieces, Ger. He can only manage ten thousand. I was obliged to put in twenty thousand myself, which I no longer have.”

  “He promised me thirty,” Ger said, eyes narrowing. “He is calling on me to honour a bargain which he himself repudiates. Am I constrained in honour to this, brother, or do I have a free choice?”

  “No one is constrained in honour except for myself,” Ran said wryly. “I am still betrothed to Ruth, since neither she nor her father has told me otherwise. Orrisdale has talked to you, but has said not a word on the subject to me.”

  “That is unpardonably rude, to be trying to arrange a new betrothal when the original is still in existence,” Ger said, indignantly. “Shall I tell him I want no part of it? That would give him back his own! And if he can spread tales all over town, so can I. It would be amusing, would it not?”