“Have I you to thank for the money that does exist?”
“I wouldn’t presume to take all of the credit,” said Clyde.
With new respect for Clyde’s acumen, Lee said, “You’re a sly fox, Clyde.” How clever he had been to subtly do what he could to spare Whitwell from being whittled away to its last penny.
Clyde went from serenely pleased to quietly smug. “Thank you, Your Grace. My loyalty is to you, but before that, it was to the people who had only an… errant… duke to look after them.”
By implication, he was also saving his own skin as an employee of that same errant duke, but Lee believed that Clyde had largely been defending those who depended on Welburn. “That is a very kind way of referring to I hope you do not judge me for preferring London.”
“Not at all. I do not believe you will neglect your tenants. There is a difference between preferring a place, and letting your demons get the better of you. Lord Thomas, God rest him, let them win. It was not his desire to be here that caused the largest trouble.”
It was impossible not to mourn what could have been—largely, thought Lee, if Father had been kinder. Then, perhaps, Thomas would have made better choices. It was folly to say with any certainty. No one would ever know. All Lee knew was that he still felt lingering compassion for his brother and sharp indignation at the memory of his father.
“Still, I regret that we are in this predicament at all.”
“It is not hopeless, Your Grace,” said Clyde. He gestured to some papers, all bearing his orderly, bold handwriting, on the desk between them. “I have summarized everything here.”
Lee looked at the stack with trepidation. He could memorize lines more quickly than almost any other actor he knew, but he was not confident in his abilities to synthesize this kind of information. Clyde seemed to sense his nervousness, for he said, “Perhaps we may meet after you have read it? I would be happy to go over anything that may be unclear to you.”
“Thank you,” said Lee, meaning the words to their fullest extent.
After the most recent appointment with Clyde, he felt reasonably assured that they should select a new broker to aid them in trade at the Exchange. The ways of Capel Court, as well as the Bank—or any banks—were largely foreign to him. He had never had enough money to make it worthwhile to learn. But he supposed that with guidance and mentorship, he could make money to replenish what Thomas had lost. Then, ideally, he could surpass that. Never being given time and space to become a true heir or envision himself as a possible duke, this was all very new to him.
He should have started this way weeks and weeks ago. It would have saved him a world of hurt. No longer would he act on impulsivity, which itself wasn’t bad, but could be more reckless than constructive in certain circumstances.
For the moment, Thomas’ creditors were satisfied with what they had been given or legally seized, but Lee was thinking ahead to a time when he wouldn’t have to consider them at all.
As his fears calmed, his propensity for dreaming returned. Perhaps he could become a patron of one of the theaters or a company, so long as he did not meet with them.
But that wouldn’t do—they’d expect it, and he would miss the experience. The bonhomie.
He knew for certain that he wanted to rehire all the servants and employees that Thomas had dismissed. That seemed like a more achievable goal than helping support a theater, production, or company, right now.
Maybe the Duchess of Welburn could become a patron of the arts, instead, he thought. Teddie certainly had the energy and intelligence. A vacant smile came to his lips. There hadn’t been a duchess in years, not since his mother. He hadn’t wondered if Mother could see him since he was a boy. Older now, her absence hurt him less, but he still wanted to know what she might think of him.
Was he a good man? Or was she shaking her head in shame?
And now that he was verging on being in love, he revisited the thought that his father could have been in love with his mother. It really might explain the icy callousness he’d exhibited toward particularly his younger son. If Lee were to have children—hopefully, he would—he prayed he would be kinder to them, no matter what happened.
It wasn’t as though he’d actively killed the woman who gave him life, yet looking at his father’s behavior with eyes that had more experience with the world, it seemed like the duke had blamed him.
How much did that destroy your approach to women?
He’d never thought it before, but suddenly suspected that it was a large part of his newly unearthed reticence to pursue a woman he very much wanted to pursue. If such a relationship, a partnership, had never been modeled for him, what was he to think about the possibility of one?
His father had shown him nothing but hard discipline, belittling his passion and all that he held dear, or he had ignored him entirely. Well, Lee had been ignored entirely until his passions found him and he dared to act on them, anyway. As a rambunctious and hurt young man, he didn’t think anything he did made a difference to Father. He’d clearly been wrong.
Mason was brushing off his coat.
Lee turned to him and said, “Will you tell Clements he doesn’t need to have the carriage readied? I think I shall walk today. It would be a shame not to.” He was given to believe that dukes were generally conveyed everywhere due to their supposed importance, but he missed his days of striding to and fro. He missed the days he’d had to do it in the rain far less. But on days like this one, he would take advantage. Who knew. Perhaps one day, he’d be branded as the duke with the charming, quaint habit of walking places and not just walking to socialize, or see and be seen. He could set a new trend.
“Gladly, Your Grace.”
As he stood dutifully and allowed Mason to finish dressing him, he sorely regretted his behavior—or lack of it—toward Teddie. He didn’t have a name for what had come over him, but he knew the feeling and had come to know it well since his return to London.
A low hum of nerves, a sensation like he was teetering dangerously close to doing something someone would take offense to. It was really very strange to someone like him. He’d spent the first part of his life being quite sensitive to rejection, but he’d always had the jubilance to make up for it.
It was impossible to explain what he feared so much, because he didn’t know if it actually had a form or name to explain. He did know the effect it had on his life, though. It had ripped possibilities from him and ideally, it had only delayed the happiness he sought with Teddie.
Who must be cursing his name, these days. He wanted so dearly to make things right between them.
*
“And that is what I think of sheep whose ancestral stock is older than our native specimens,” said Sir Gregory sagely.
If she were not mishearing things, Teddie thought Emma had fallen asleep with her eyes open and was almost snoring through her mouth. A stealthy glance to her left did not confirm the suspicion, but she wouldn’t openly draw attention to her sister. Anyone would be susceptible to falling asleep, even mid-conversation, with a man whose most concerted and enthusiastic interest was… sheep.
Given the volume of things he knew and the opinions he had on the animals, Teddie was surprised he had not brought them up while partnering with her to dance. Some dances allowed for partners to talk and, in the future, she would be sure to avoid the topic and those dances if Sir Gregory was anywhere near writing his name on her card.
She had quite forgotten that he’d rather adamantly arranged a visit for today. She imagined that he thought things were becoming rather serious, and by the ton’s standard, they were.
But if it had not already been before her conversation with Lord Paul, her heart was now firmly in the hand of another.
Lord Valencourt had merely to decide whether he would return it to her burnished with love—or crushed. Whatever he did, she did not think it would be quick. She was willing to playact the part of an interested and available heiress simply to keep her mother quiet. M
aybe, if enough news of her behavior and habits and who was calling at her home made the papers, it might smoke the duke out of his silence.
She knew it could also get out of hand and come back to haunt her, like almost everything else she did, but she could not resist trying. Only today, she had seen something about “Miss D was seen speaking openly with Lord H, brother of our poor ‘Duke of Disgrace’”—she had scoffed into her morning tea.
It was amazing and telling what the quick presses seized upon.
Well, he did warn you, did he not? she thought.
The only other person who noticed was, of course, Mother, who remarked that she’d heard tell of “that charming Hareden rapscallion”, and so long as Sir Gregory did not disapprove of the conversation, Teddie would be fine. Though she had once been a firm supporter, the firmest, of marrying Lord Valencourt, that notion seemed to have faded in her mind.
It was as though the man had never existed and she’d turned all of her efforts upon his successor. She did not besmirch the duke, though. Teddie felt that her father must have had something to do with that blessing.
But Mother also never made any reference to him, even in passing.
“Do French sheep have accents, do you think?” asked Teddie, mostly to see if he would see the humor.
He did not.
“Sheep,” he said with an incredulous expression, “do not have accents.”
“Oh, but they must,” she said. “For they can make an awful lot of noise.”
“Are you feeling quite the thing, Miss Driffield?”
“I am only musing, and I assure you that I feel quite well,” she said, dimpling in her effort to bite back laughter. He was almost offended at her suggestion. If not offended, then quite dismissive of such a fanciful notion. “Perhaps we might take a turn in the garden? I find this weather most invigorating.”
She also needed to find a distraction that would keep her from falling asleep.
It was at this that Emma blinked heavily and said, “Yes, I do believe that is a wonderful suggestion.”
Sir Gregory did not give the impression that he was a very athletic person, or that he moved much at all. He was not at all large, but he seemed very… soft, thought Teddie, eyeing his form and conjecturing what was under his attire. He was also quite pale, as though he’d spent very little time outdoors.
However, he said, “Indeed, I do agree.”
There was an eagerness in those pale green eyes that Teddie had not seen before. It immediately made her wary.
Emma smiled and said, “Good, then let us—”
Sir Gregory cut across her in a way that might have been rather rude if he had any charisma at all. But it just came across as rather desperate because he did not possess an ant’s weight of magnetism.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Crowley, but I do wonder whether Miss Driffield and I might venture out alone.”
Emma’s eyes widened and she looked at Teddie mutely.
Teddie, who knew exactly what was going to happen and did not want it to, was suddenly stuck in place as though she’d been encased in ice. It was frightfully naive of her to assume that in playing a part, she wouldn’t quickly produce the unwanted results. Poor Sir Gregory was only operating with the responses he had been given.
“I don’t know if that is appropriate,” said Emma, cautiously. She was the only other person besides Lord Paul who knew that Teddie was, largely, stalling for time with an apparently very reluctant and sensitive duke.
That entire strategy was unravelling before Teddie’s eyes, for now she could clearly see her errors. No one could divine her true desires unless she spoke about them. If Sir Gregory is about to propose, then surely Lee, if he has seen anything of me in the papers, might assume he has no chance. That I have given up on him.
It was, quite abruptly and to her acute embarrassment, all too much.
She started to cry in the parlor with too many decorations and patterns that did not quite match.
Softly and quietly, at first, then with more unreserved gusto as the tears came and would not stop. It was hard to say why, exactly, she was crying. Emma, she was certain, thought she was feigning for a moment. Her sister stopped looking at Sir Gregory and glanced at Teddie a little distrustfully.
Sir Gregory, conversely, appeared entirely terrified at the sight of her tears. It only made her cry more. She couldn’t marry someone who was terrified of emotions, even unpleasant ones. And more to the point, she knew who she wanted to spend her life with. This was not him.
When Teddie did not stop crying, Emma came forward and offered her a handkerchief. “Teddie, Teddie, whatever is the matter?”
She spoke not with concern for appearances, but concern for her sister.
To his credit, Sir Gregory managed a weak and hushed, “I am sorry to have caused offense, if I did.”
Teddie choked out, trying to gain a foothold, “You did not, not at all.”
Only prone to interrupting the most charged of moments between the sisters, apparently, Roderick came to the doorway and said, “The Duke of Welburn—”
“Has he left another card?” Teddie demanded, sniffling.
“No, Miss.”
Emma, Teddie, and Sir Gregory all looked at the footman.
With a clutch at true dignity under three pairs of eyes, one of which was very red-rimmed and leaking, Roderick said, “His Grace is here.”
Perfect. Of course the man is here.
*
Lee had no special expectations of how this visit would go. He meant to communicate his feelings fully and articulately. He had minor misgivings that he would not be allowed into the house if Mrs. Driffield had her say, but all he wanted to do was declare, openly, to Teddie what he felt and how he had been feeling. It was not her responsibility to absolve him and he wasn’t seeking absolution. He was hoping that honesty would save the day.
So, when he was met with a tableau that looked like anything out of one of the popular melodramas, he was taken aback.
Young Roderick had greeted him, then relayed that he was present to the house’s occupants, then come back to guide him indoors.
The footman did not have time to announce him formally before slight pandemonium broke out. Lee was too eager.
Teddie took one glance at him and her crying redoubled. The woman he believed to be her sister because of their general family resemblance—Lee had not yet met her properly, of course, but Teddie had mentioned her—patted her shoulder.
Meanwhile, the man he had seen once before at the house seemed so bewildered that he might start to cry himself.
Roderick said to Teddie’s sister, “Mrs. Crowley, should I—”
“Hang it, Roderick,” she said, breaking from Teddie to stride up to Lee, who had never been admonished by a woman in full mourning garb before. “Your Grace, this is all down to you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Mrs. Crowley glared at him. “I have never seen my sister so beset. Not ever.”
“So, it was not anything I said?” asked the unknown man, which prompted Mrs. Crowley to chuckle. In disdain or sympathy, Lee could not tell.
Disdain, most likely.
“Sir Gregory,” she said to him, “I apologize for all of this, but if you could please—”
Lee staid her by holding up his hand for silence. “Sir Gregory, is it? If you would be so kind as to wait in the foyer for me, if you are on your way out—I should like a word.”
“Lord Valencourt, I do not know if that is strictly advisory,” said Mrs. Crowley, looking as though she might bite off his fingers if he didn’t lower his palm.
Lee lowered his hand.
Apparently, Teddie’s temper was more of a shared trait than hers alone.
“Your Grace, I should be honored,” said Sir Gregory, faintly, disregarding what Mrs. Crowley had said. Lee got the impression that Sir Gregory would be so impacted by any one of his social betters. He did not take credit for the acquiescence.
Anyway, he ha
d nothing to say to the man other than he wanted to make his intentions with Miss Driffield clear. He did, though, try to look less menacing than he had when they’d passed each other outside the last time they had both been on the Driffields’ property.
As though he wanted nothing more than to leave that parlor, Sir Gregory stole a glance at Teddie, who was goggling at Lee, then gave an awkward bow and passed both Mrs. Crowley and Lee to get through the doorway. Roderick, probably at a loss as to how to manage this, went after Sir Gregory.
This left just Lee and two of the Driffield women. He said, sheepishly, “Are… is Mrs. Driffield present?”
“She is not,” said Mrs. Crowley. “But they are due back soon.”
Lee, thinking this could be a genteel prod at him to speed things up, looked at Teddie for confirmation.
She nodded and said, voice calm but thick with unshed tears, “They are, Your Grace.”
Nodding, then, Lee said, “May I presume to ask you something?”
“You may.”
“Don’t sneak out the servants’ entrance to avoid me. I shall come right back to this parlor. Please?”
Watchful, Mrs. Crowley studied Teddie’s face, then Lee’s. “What do you mean to do, Lord Valencourt?” she asked him.
He should have looked at her, but he could not stop gazing at Teddie. She was a vision, a sunset made into a woman. Rather later than he would have wanted, for he lost himself in a good, long, besotted stare, he said, “I need to tell him of my plans.”
With that, he offered a tentative smile to Teddie, who returned it fleetingly, and followed the path set by Sir Gregory and Roderick. As he said he would, Sir Gregory lingered in the foyer. It was an affront to most households’ codes of politeness but became quite a different matter when one was told to do it by a duke.
The man was possibly in his early forties, and as these things went, he was not a horrible specimen. Teddie could have done far worse, so he could see why she might have chosen to let people believe this fellow was her fiancé. When he’d first started to hear about Miss Driffield’s possible husband and the amazing feat she’d accomplished by being known as such a brazen thing yet still securing a serious suitor, he’d seen red.
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