Duke of Misfortune

by Blake, Whitney

  She did not dread the idea of going to bed with him, as she assumed she might have if her mother had gotten her choice of suitors for Teddie. Quite the opposite.

  There was Lord Macbeth, a widower. There were exactly thirty years between them. If he’d been in his prime, she was sure he would have been quite the prize. Too bad he had not taken care of his teeth. Nor did he seem terribly inclined to bathe. And he was quite flatulent.

  Still, he was not the worst.

  The worst had been Sir Alan, who smelled perpetually of cabbages and looked so lasciviously at Teddie that she was surprised Mother never remarked upon it. Teddie had feared that the man would treat her unkindly, even viciously, should they ever marry. He made her skin go clammy whenever he came near.

  Once Teddie had chased him away, Mother then spoke highly of Sir Jacob. At least he had age in his favor, being but thirty. He was handsome in an understated manner, with intelligent gray eyes and auburn hair.

  Teddie was far less physically repulsed by Sir Jacob than she was by Sir Alan.

  Sir Jacob was also more appealing than Lord Macbeth, whose main advantage was the fact that he resided very far from London—and, therefore, her mother. I certainly did like Lord Macbeth more than Sir Alan, but that is not a flattering comparison, she thought.

  An ash heap possesses more charm than Sir Alan.

  Overall, Sir Jacob seemed mildly promising.

  He was the first man Mother approved who’d passed Teddie’s own muster. Teddie felt that courtship might have been acceptable, until Emma, who was usually more aware of society gossip, discovered that he was rumored to be more interested in his own sex than the fairer. The logistics of a marriage to him would have been complicated, to say the least. While many women would have been disgusted, Teddie decided that she felt sad for him. If the scandalous chatter was true, neither church nor state would accept his predilection.

  She declined Sir Jacob’s offer of a call, much to her mother’s vocal dismay.

  It was one of Teddie’s few interactions with society men that did not end with the man being angry.

  Or baffled.

  Or both.

  Teddie scowled. This compulsion to be near Emilian was intense and foreign. It did not feel the same as settling for someone, which she’d thought she would have to do—and nothing about it was mild.

  He had her attention. No, things were beyond that. He had her actively fantasizing. And she did not think he would grow cruel or disinterested in her over time.

  What made her uneasy, she could not quite put her finger on.

  Part of it was that she did not really know the duke. He was thoroughly mysterious and quite guarded in his speech, even if what he did say was charming. That was not out of the ordinary, and she supposed she should count herself lucky that he’d divulged what he had to her. Many wives did not know the first thing about their husbands besides, perhaps, what they liked for breakfast. It was more unheard of for a woman to enter a marriage knowing anything about him.

  As for the rest of what troubled her, she did could not say.

  It wasn’t exactly the prospect of being a duchess. Her whole life, she’d secretly thought she’d be good at running something, if only she were put in charge of it. If God had made her so obvious looking, so brightly colored, then surely, He meant for her to command attention in a constructive manner.

  She hoped that Emilian would be amenable to her being active in official estate business, wherever that was possible. She was eager to learn.

  “You know, I would really like to find out more about the Welburn estate,” said Teddie. “What is it called? Do you know?”

  “Just wait until your husband can show you.”

  “No, I should think it would be impressive to know a little before we—”

  “You’re sure that you’re not just curious for your own ulterior interests?”

  “What possible interests can I have?” said Teddie. “I am the luckiest of women. Set to marry a man well above my own station.”

  “Indeed.” Emma’s low grumble told Teddie what she thought.

  Teddie said, “I’m being deadly serious. I do feel I’m lucky.”

  This was a difficult subject to broach with Emma. Although Teddie counted her sister as her closest friend, she did not want to discuss her present misgivings too much. She feared they might cause Emma to revisit the pain of losing her husband. They had been in love, almost unrealistically so, and though their means had been modest, he was devoted to her and the betterment of his own business in the silver trade.

  When he was felled by an aggressive disease of the lungs, it was an enormous blow to Emma, and Mother insisted that she return home to the household. There was not much money left for Emma to live off of and she had no desire to manage a trade, so she’d acquiesced.

  Teddie couldn’t blame her, for even though she dearly wanted to be in charge of something of her own, she also understood that such an undertaking took training and aptitude. To his credit, Matthew had taught Emma everything about balancing books and running aspects of the business, but she was not comfortable enough around the production of silver. She ceded everything to Matthew’s business partner and let him manage it.

  “You did say that you liked kissing him.”

  “I liked kissing Sir Thorn,” said Teddie.

  “They are one and the same, Sir Thorn and Lord Emilian Valencourt.”

  “Do you really think that I shouldn’t try to learn a little more about him?”

  Knowing that she was fighting a losing battle with her sister, Emma chewed at her lower lip. “I suppose the desire is natural.”

  “I am sure he knows a great deal more about me.”

  “I’m sure he does. You don’t read the gossip. He does, presumably. Or he speaks of it with his friends.”

  “Neither would you, if you were afraid of being part of so much of it.”

  “You have only yourself to blame for that,” Emma said, trying to keep a composed face and failing, letting a little imp of a grin slip through.

  Teddie smirked at Emma, then said to Bess, “Bess, could you find me some of the more recent papers? Perhaps some have been left in Father’s study.”

  She only wanted to understand with a little more clarity where and how the Duke of Welburn fit into the larger picture of the ton. She was at a disadvantage having been on the outside of it—maybe it was time to start paying attention to the tidbits of gossip that so appealed to most of London.

  A duchess couldn’t afford to be ignorant.

  *

  They ended up staying awake until it was far too late. Nothing enormously troubling had surfaced about Emilian. He did not seem to be a reprobate or a brute or a criminal, and because he was so new to being a duke, there was only one passing remark about him before the one about him and Teddie in the Strand.

  However, from what Teddie and Emma were able to piece together over the last several months, his brother, the late duke, was not well-regarded.

  He was not personable, he rarely ingratiated himself to anyone, he hadn’t married despite being a duke, and there were rumors that he liked the most risqué of the gambling halls. There was even one anonymous assertion that he was rather brutish in his carnal tastes, which was veiled in the most genteel of phrases. It wouldn’t have been published otherwise.

  No one could prove any of it.

  Or, thought Teddie, no one wants to admit how they know.

  He was something of a shadowy, vaguely frightening figure lingering at the edges of the ton. But because he was from an old line, it was accepted, if derided. The “Duke of Misfortune”, they sometimes called him.

  Though the late duke’s funeral had been barely a week prior, thought Teddie, Emilian was not exactly in mourning if he was conducting morning calls. That choice was not terribly rare for a man. In the end, even the most severe martinets only dictated about three months of mourning for a sibling, anyway. But Emilian’s actions did suggest that he and his brot
her had had a less than favorable relationship.

  “The Valencourts are an old family,” said Emma. “And Welburn an old estate. So perhaps his brother was just not very…”

  “Kind?”

  “You cannot know that. I was going to say gregarious,” said Emma. “It could be that he had his reasons for being so…” she cleared her throat.

  “Then why have they rechristened him so?”

  “What does any of this have to do with your fiancé?”

  “There are things he hasn’t told me,” said Teddie. “About his family. His life. I can tell. I think he’s hiding something.”

  Wildly, Teddie thought for a fleeting moment that Emilian might be a gambler, too, someone who chased after the quick rush of winning a bet or a game without a thought for anything else. Then she shook her head. While she did not know much about the world, he did not strike her as that type. Whatever that type was.

  No, she was worried he’d suffered at someone’s hands—obviously, he had suffered in war, but she was thinking more along the lines of family. The idea made her feel vaguely ill. If she was going to marry him, she wanted to know how deep the wounds went and whether there was a possibility that they might reopen and affect his behavior with her… or, as reluctant as she was to think it, his future children.

  There was little she could do if she discovered something she did not like, but she would rather be armed and ready than ignorant. The man that she had been so attracted to, physically and almost mystically, was an enigma. But he could not remain one.

  “Theodora, he’s entitled to his privacy,” said Emma, shrugging. “I think you need to be thankful that he proposed to save you the humiliation of being caught outside a theater on your own, and not just any theater—”

  “Stop talking about me as though I were some unfortunate urchin,” said Teddie, a little too crisply. She did not mean to, and she knew that Emma was ten years her senior, but it grated that she was being spoken to like a child who did not know any better. So what if she had made a mistake? What if the mistake turned out to be a blessing?

  “I’m sorry, Teddie,” said Emma. She looked at the little writing desk that they had strewn with the papers. “I just don’t know what you were expecting to find. There’s nothing objectionable about the duke here. Possibly some things about his brother, yes, but Lord Valencourt is his own man. We cannot be held responsible for our siblings’ choices, can we?”

  As Teddie listened to her sister, something fuzzy came into focus that she did not even realize she was thinking. She wasn’t, exactly, or hadn’t been.

  Gamblers were often known for going into debt. The possibility was there to make money, and some men did make handsome amounts that kept them wealthy for life. But still others found themselves at the mercy of debtors. It was a horrible thing to think, but she wondered if the late Duke of Welburn might have fallen into the latter category. It was not quite a suspicion, yet. But it was a thought that she wanted dispelled before it was too late.

  The only person who could dispel it was Emilian. Most men, much less dukes, wouldn’t have offered their hand in marriage to a woman they barely knew simply to preserve her good name.

  It was the one thing that did seem slightly too good, too kind, to be quite believable.

  She opened the shallow drawer of the desk and brought out Emilian’s, no, Lord Thomas Valencourt’s, card. She needed to remind herself of his address, which had been helpfully noted on the little, austere document.

  Happily, it was also not terribly far away.

  *

  It was a woeful fact that he could not sleep because of the wine he had drunk and the conversation he’d had. Lee laid in his bed, a bed that was slightly too narrow because he refused to move into Thomas’ room.

  Better to feel too big here than haunted there.

  A soft knock sounded on the other side of his door.

  “Your Grace?” Mason said.

  “Yes, man, what is it? Have we caught fire?”

  “No, Your Grace. Were you not expecting a visitor?”

  Because of the way Mason said visitor, Lee sat upright.

  “Open the door, Mason.”

  Mason’s single candle illuminated the room enough for the two to see each other. If Mason was taken aback that Lee was in the same clothes he’d come home in, he hid it perfectly.

  “Your Grace.”

  “Why are you saying visitor like that?”

  Mason huffed and gave up tact. “Your fiancée is here.”

  “It’s almost midnight, is it not?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “You’re certain it is Miss Driffield?”

  “She says so. I have no reason to doubt her. I have never seen the woman before, but if your descriptions are correct…”

  Lee rubbed his eyes. Why would she have come here, now? Had he given the woman a taste of sneaking around, and now she liked it?

  Once his mind started working a little more quickly, he went ashen in fear. She couldn’t see the state of this house.

  “Mason, where have you told her to wait?”

  “The front parlor. The less… sparse parlor,” said Mason. Although their acquaintance had not been long, Lee was growing to value Mason’s shrewdness. He was a man of few words, but of much thought and perfectly timed actions. “Clements and I supposed that you would prefer it that way.”

  Nodding, Lee said, “Thank you.” He wanted to make some excuse for himself, especially because he suspected that Clements, Mason, and even Clyde all knew what he was about.

  But then he recalled that dukes did not make excuses for themselves. He swung his legs out from under the covers and put on his slippers. Mason set the candlestick down on the bureau and helped him ruffle out his clothing.

  Teddie was sitting primly in the front parlor as Mason said she would be. Lee smiled to himself when he saw how she was dressed—as a maid, but the most put-together maid he’d ever seen. He did not know if the disguise was strictly necessary. Moreover, it was an obvious costume. Now that he saw she was unharmed, he began to fret about why she was here.

  “How in God’s name did you get here?”

  “A carriage, the same as any other person would.”

  “Your own?”

  Teddie shook her head. “No, a hired one.”

  “Why?” Lee came around to the chair where she was and took the one next to it. “Is something the matter?”

  “I wanted to speak to you about something.”

  Gently, Lee asked, “Could it not have waited until morning?”

  “It might have,” she admitted. She took his right hand in hers. “I sometimes have problems controlling my impulses. You may as well know that now.” He stroked the back of her hand. “But Emma, my sister, and I, were looking at the papers this evening, and…”

  Lee felt himself tense as she was speaking and endeavored not to let it become too obvious. Paul, as well as Mason, had assured him that there was nothing untoward about him at all. No suspicious speculations. He tried to tell himself that he had nothing to fear.

  “Yes?”

  “Why have you proposed marriage so quickly?”

  “If I hadn’t, you would be—”

  “Maligned. Ruined. I know.” Teddie gazed around the parlor. “This is a lovely house, though it is somewhat less ornate than others I have seen.” If Lee wasn’t mistaken, she was watching for the tenor of his response. He bristled. “Though I don’t suppose I can fault anyone for living more simply than their peers.”

  He felt like the ceiling was drawing lower, drawing in to crush him.

  “I have not had the chance to refurnish since my brother died, and he was a man of more direct tastes than me.”

  “What sort of man are you?” she asked.

  He didn’t know if he knew, any more. “If you are accusing me of something, I would like to hear it directly.”

  “I didn’t really suspect until I saw your home. And it is beautiful, but it’s seen be
tter times, hasn’t it? When I read—kept reading—that your brother was a patron of the tables, I idly wondered how far that went. You seem very eager to marry me.”

  “It can hardly be considered idle if you came to me in the middle of the night,” said Lee. He had not taken his hand back from her, but his entire body was engulfed by anger and shame. “And who wouldn’t be eager to marry you?”

  She was blushing now. It was obvious even in the candlelight.

  “Exactly. What with the resources I command—who wouldn’t?”

  She’d misinterpreted what he meant.

  “No,” he said, brow furrowing in frustration. “Because of you. You as a person. I’m an immeasurably lucky man.”

  Christ, he sounded like he was praising a new race horse.

  All because he was so nervous he’d be caught out, reprimanded, that the truth would come to the attention of all of London if she so wished to tell it.

  Well, he was being caught out, to a certain extent.

  “I’m sure the money isn’t a factor, too,” she said, refusing to meet his eyes. “I saw the foyer and the corridor, Your Grace, and I know it is the middle of the night, but I’m not a gullible child. You cannot fool me into believing this is all the result of a deliberately austere lifestyle.”

  She was clever. It did her a disservice to assume that she would be unable to put the truth together if faced with the clues. He did not want her to think that he took her for both a fool and an easy ticket to solvency.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Who are you, Emilian?” she asked, squeezing his hand. His apology had made her look up, again. It was heartening, if not a promise that things would be fully mended. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “Yes,” he said, heart all but stuttering at the sound of his name on her tongue. “Of course I was.”

  “When? I mean to ask, when would you have told me all of it?”

  He wanted to parry it with a reply that had to do with how few ladies knew their husbands’ pasts in full.

  But he neither believed it should be that way, nor wanted another blow to the face.

  “Whenever I felt like I could.”

  That, sadly, was also a wrong thing to say. Her face fell. “But not before we married,” she said. There was such a wistfulness to her voice that he wanted to take it back. But he refused to take back the truth.