She felt her lips purse in disapproval. Imogen could not stand by silently as he ruined the poor girl’s life. She knew all about young girls with their shimmering hopes who fell prey to silver-tongued devils. She knew too well.
Mercy Kittinger sidled close to Imogen’s side.
“Your duke is looking as dapper as ever this morning,” she murmured for her ears alone.
“He is not my duke. Or a duke, for that matter,” she corrected her friend while trying not to sound too gleeful.
Mercy stared at Mr. Butler in a considering fashion. “’Tis a shame to see though.”
“What’s that?”
“Young Annis staring after the duke calf-eyed. You must not approve.” Mercy looked at her knowingly. Her long-time friend was well versed in Imogen’s dislike of the former duke. She did not fully understand it, of course, but she knew of it. Imogen had never shared the particulars of that day in the conservatory. Some shames were best kept private.
“She’s young and impressionable.” Imogen shrugged. “Mr. Butler is handsome and still possesses an air of consequence. It will take time for others to see that he is no longer eligible.” Papa chortled at something Mrs. Blankenship said. It reassured Imogen to see him happily occupied. “Will you be attending the Blankenships’ upcoming ball?” she asked her friend.
Mercy sighed. “I suppose I must. Grace will not forgive me if I keep her from it. She says I keep her isolated enough at the farm.” Mercy’s anxious gaze tracked to her sister, where she stood laughing with a gaggle of other young girls.
The Kittinger farm was sprawling and took up a considerable amount of land to the east of Shropshire. The Kittinger house itself was almost an hour’s ride by carriage. They did not often make trips to the village. Sunday was usually the only day Imogen could visit with her friend, unless she made a special trip to call on her, and lately she preferred to stay close to home in case Papa had need of her.
Imogen turned her attention back to Mr. Butler as he bestowed a brilliant smile on the baroness and her daughter. “I am certain that wretched man will be in attendance, wooing all the unattached young ladies who have two ha’pennies to rub together.”
“I think he’s looking for a bit more than two ha’pennies,” Mercy offered. “He’s searching for an heiress, and Shropshire does boast a few of those.”
Imogen made a sound of disgust. “Can you imagine it?” Now he would join their ranks. Now those heiresses were good enough for him. She sighed. “Dukes are the worst.”
“Except he is no longer a duke . . . as you are fond of reminding.”
“Indeed. Indeed, he is not.” She nodded once in accord.
Mrs. Blankenship’s twin daughters edged away from Papa’s and their mother’s side to stop before Imogen and Mercy.
“Good day, Miss Bates, Miss Kittinger,” they greeted in near unison. Turning then, they tracked Mr. Butler through the crowd. The girls sighed dramatically. “Penning is so handsome, is he not?”
“And no longer Penning,” Imogen offered with false cheer, but they did not seem to hear her.
“He has accepted Mama’s invitation to our ball,” Emily, the more effusive of the Blankenship sisters, trilled, very nearly dancing in place. “It is so thrilling.”
Imogen canted her head. “Is it?”
Emily continued as though Imogen had not spoken. “He’s never attended any of our fetes before, although we have been invited on occasion up to Penning Hall.”
“There has been nothing held at the hall following the late Duke of Penning’s passing. Not so much as a tea since then,” Imogen reminded, unwilling to let the point slide. She wished everyone would recall how little Mr. Butler had to do with anything or anyone in Shropshire. Unlike his father, he cared not one whit for their community. His present interest was only spawned by his need.
Emily fluttered her hand in dismissal, still staring dreamily after Mr. Butler.
It really was too much. What would it take for others to realize he was no grand catch anymore?
“And there is his other . . . affliction,” Imogen heard herself declaring.
Emily glanced at Imogen sharply, proving she was not completely oblivious of her remarks. “What affliction?”
“Yes, what affliction?” Mercy seconded, her expression rightly wary. She knew me only too well.
“I should not speak of it . . .” Imogen hedged, her mind working feverishly, wondering if she dared say what was even teasing at her mind.
Now both the Blankenship sisters were looking at her expectantly, waiting.
Imogen cleared her throat and glanced around as though to make certain there were no eavesdroppers . . . although she knew once she uttered the words, they would be the tattle of Shropshire. The girls, like their mother and brother, could not keep a secret, but that would be the point of what she was about to do.
“Well . . . the man is stark bald. He wears a wig,” she rushed to whisper. “It’s quite unfortunate. Oh, they’ve done their best to conceal it with a very realistic-looking wig. The best money can buy, but he’s been bald ever since he was a lad.”
The girls gasped, swinging their gazes to rest on the former duke. “No! His hair seems so very real.”
“Doesn’t it?” Mercy murmured. Imogen shot her a quelling look.
“Indeed. It is very convincing.” Imogen nodded with feigned grimness. “However, if you were to give it a hearty tug it would pop clean off his head.” She made a popping sound with her tongue against her cheek and the girls’ eyes widened even further.
The sisters exchanged looks and with a quick farewell, they beat a hasty line for their mother, doubtlessly to fill her ears.
“What have you done?” Mercy asked with a chuckle and rueful shake of her head.
“I’m simply protecting the unsuspecting females of Shropshire from a grasping and disingenuous man.”
“By starting a rumor? And when this reaches his ears, which you know it will, and he finds out you are the source . . . what then?” Mercy arched an eyebrow.
Imogen felt a flicker of misgiving . . . until she once again caught sight of the man in question, escorting the baroness and her daughter to their waiting carriage.
Young sweet Annis had settled her hand on his arm and blinked up at him worshipfully. Imogen blinked, suddenly seeing herself as she had once been, so much like Annis, young and hungry for the love and attention of a handsome young man. Susceptible.
No. It would not be. The girl must be saved.
No fabrication was too wild—or wrong—if it saved a vulnerable girl from making a mistake she would regret all her life.
“I’ve done no harm, and I’m not afraid of him.” Imogen crossed her arms. “Mr. Butler has no power over me.”
Mercy made a skeptical noise in her throat. “I hope you’re right.”
Chapter Three
The day following Perry’s uncharacteristic attendance at church, he was hiding in the wine cellar, three sheets to the wind, when Thurman found him.
“Your Grace,” Thurman intoned with all the disappointment only an ancient butler could wield. “Dinner is served.”
Perry understood his disappointment. He was disappointed, too. His booted foot slid out in front of him. He kicked at nothing in particular.
He lifted the paper his mother had given him earlier in the day and waved it wildly in the air. “It’s official, Thurman. The banns are posted. Lady Circe is betrothed to that sod, the Earl of Westborough. Can you believe it? She will marry that oaf? When we were at Eton he liked to jump off the roof of the conservatory and see if he could land in the rhododendron hedges. More oft than not he missed, and landed on his head. He’s a stellar grade arsehole.”
Just another disappointment. Another one of the many things he had thought to have for himself but did not. Propped against the wall between racks of wine, Perry turned an eye to the myriad bottles, contemplating which vintage to crack into next. If ever there was a time to get foxed, this was it.
>
“Forgive me, but it must be said. Do you really think it advisable to wed someone named after the goddess Circe? She was a necromancer known to seduce men and change them into swine.”
Perry peered up at the steely-eyed retainer from where he sat on the ground. The man had served his parents faithfully since his predecessor had retired in Perry’s infancy. He stuck by them, moving into the dower house with Perry’s mother rather than remain at Penning Hall to await the new duke. Loyalty like that could not be bought.
“She was beautiful and could carry an intelligent conversation,” Perry countered.
Thurman’s lips twisted as though he tasted something tart. “And also vain and short-tempered. Word has it she treats her staff abominably.”
Perry sent Thurman a sharp look. “You never mentioned that before.”
“A vain and short-tempered noblewoman bears mentioning?”
“She was not any noblewoman. I was considering marrying her,” he reminded reproachfully. He was damned close to asking for her hand when the bottom had fallen out from his world.
“It was not my place to interfere.”
“But now you don’t mind telling me of my near miss?” He snorted.
“I thought you might be glad of it now. Count yourself fortunate.”
Fortunate? He supposed he was. He could not imagine being married to Lady Circe now that he had fallen so low. What if they had wed before the truth of his illegitimacy came to light? She would despise him. At least he did not have to endure that, waking beside a woman who loathed him for the circumstances of his birth. At least now whomever he married would know what she was getting—a bastard born son of a duke without a penny to his name.
Perhaps he should set aside the entire notion of marriage, pack a bag and leave. Head for some distant land where he might start anew and make his fortune. Men and women were doing it every day. Sailing across the pond. Canada. New Zealand. South America.
With a muttered curse, Perry lifted the bottle of wine he had been nursing and took a deep swig. A final swig, it would seem. He gave it a small shake, and looked through the mouth to eye the hollow interior. With a regretful sigh, he tossed the empty vessel to the ground at his feet. “A fine year. Pity ’tis gone.”
“Your mother awaits, Your Grace,” Thurman reminded.
Perry spread his arms wide. “As you can see, I’m not fit to sit at my mother’s table.” He then wagged a finger at the stern-faced butler. “And Thurman, you know better. I’m not ‘Your Grace’ anymore.”
“Old habits are not so easy to alter.”
They certainly were not. He was still learning that himself. It was difficult to break the customs of a lifetime.
“Call me Perry.”
His mother’s butler shuddered. “I would never demean myself to call you that revolting moniker.”
Perry chuckled. “Very well. You may call me by my truly revolting name then.”
Peregrine.
It was the type of ostentatious name that belonged to a duke. Not a bastard like him—the bastard he’d turned out to be. But he would let Thurman have his way.
Thurman waved toward the door. “Your mother . . .”
Perry looked down at himself. His clothes were hopelessly wrinkled, and wine stained his cravat. “In my present state, she would not wish me at her table.” His mother was fastidious and exacting in nature. A duchess through and through. She would not approve.
“Perhaps.” Thurman sniffed and started to leave, but then he stopped. “If I might be so bold as to inquire, how was your time in Shropshire yesterday?”
“You mean did I manage to corner the baroness and her daughter in the churchyard?”
Thurman inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment. There was not a fraction of shame in the motion. The old gentleman had taken Perry’s descent hard, perhaps only second to the unhappiness Perry’s mother suffered, and he wholeheartedly supported Perry finding an heiress.
In fact, Thurman and Mama had spent a great deal of time strategizing over that very matter, insisting that Perry attend church and all local happenings where the few heiresses of Shropshire congregated.
“Fret not. I did engage with the baroness and her daughter after church. Well, mostly the baroness. The girl hardly speaks.” Truth be told, her widow mother was more intriguing than the callow daughter. “I escorted them to their carriage.”
“They were amenable?”
“As always,” he said, feeling wearier than he should.
He had begun courting with the intent to wed well over a year ago when he was still the duke. Naturally he had not courted anyone in Shropshire then. He’d thrown himself into the season and the London marriage mart like a good nobleman. The time had come and he had resigned himself to taking that next step toward the proper state of matrimony. Now, however, the act of courting felt so very desperate and soul-crushing.
“Very good. The baroness’s daughter is by far the most eligible female Shropshire can boast.”
It did not bear mentioning that while she might be the most eligible female in the shire, Perry would never have bestowed any amount of attention on her before. Harsh perhaps. And yet true. It was simply the way things had been in the before times.
The before times. When he was a duke and life had been decidedly uncomplicated. When he had everything he ever wanted. Before a pair of dour-faced gentlemen, agents of the crown, had arrived in his drawing room alongside the morose-faced Penning family solicitor. It had been the most lowering moment in his life.
Initially, given their expressions, he had thought they were before him to deliver the news of a death . . . and he supposed, in effect, that was precisely what they were about on that ill-fated day. Only the loss they were there to proclaim was his own.
He’d sat stunned, hands limp at his sides, speechless as a slab of marble as they’d imparted the news of his illegitimacy. It was all a blur. He vaguely recalled the pop and crackle of the fire in the great hearth. The scent of leather from the armchair he sat ensconced within filling his nose.
As dark and somber as crows, the gentlemen had circled him within the shrinking space of his drawing room, citing their proof. They presented him with several signed documents and witness statements.
Perry remembered looking at those papers, trying to process the words, the parchment brittle in his shaking hands. He’d felt like a lad in school again, attempting to decipher a particularly difficult Latin text. Latin had not been his best subject.
In the rubble of his shock, he recalled feeling a sense of gnawing guilt. Perhaps that was because of the grim lines of the faces watching him, the tight set of their mouths. Judgment was writ all over their expressions. Condemnation. As though he were somehow culpable. As though he had set out to defraud the true Penning duke of his rightful life.
It had not been his doing. None of it. He had led a life of blissful ignorance, unaware of the truth waiting to materialize.
Truth always had a way of doing that, of revealing itself and illuminating the darkest, hidden corners. It could not stay buried forever.
The wrongdoing had belonged to his parents alone, but his father was dead now and unable to answer for his deception. That left only his mother.
When all had come to light, she had behaved as though she were the victim of a hoax. A cruel hoax perpetrated against her.
“It was your father’s idea,” she had wept when Perry demanded an explanation from her.
Fortunately she’d been in Town for the season and Perry had not needed to travel far to arrive at her house in Mayfair to confront her. She was just rousing herself at noon and taking her breakfast in her private rooms, comfortably attired in her dressing robe with her hair hidden inside a turban—as she had done ever since he could remember. As children, he and his sister knew not to bother his mother until late in the afternoon.
“He said the title belonged to his son, no matter if you were born before we were wed. He was off on the Continent when I lear
ned I was increasing.” She sniffed and dabbed at her nose with a lacy handkerchief. “He wanted a grand tour before he settled down.”
“What for?” Perry had snorted, pacing a hard line in her chamber. “It seems he was having quite a bit of fun sowing his oats right here in England. Why did he need to go abroad for his diversions?”
“Peregrine.” His mother lifted her tear-stained face from her handkerchief to glare at him reproachfully. “Don’t you dare cast judgment on me. It’s not as though you have led a saintly existence. Have you?”
His mother was the daughter of a marquis. She came from an old and venerable family. She had always known she would marry the Duke of Penning and one day become the Duchess of Penning. That had been taught to her alongside her letters and embroidery. He supposed this certainty might have accounted for her willingness to prematurely consummate her union. She must have felt her future was assured.
Perry did not know what his mother or father could have been thinking. Clearly they weren’t using good judgment. He could only guess that they had been afflicted with youthful short-sightedness and functioning from the waist down . . . but he would rather not contemplate his mother and late father together in so intimate a fashion. It was all too much. He was already battling nausea over finding himself in this grim situation.
“I never lied to the world,” he had told his mother in the face of her censure and accusation. “I never stole a life that wasn’t mine.”
I just lived that stolen life.
The color had burned hot in her cheeks. “Once I sent word to your father, he returned as soon as he could . . . as soon as he was located.” A grimace crossed her face. “It just took some time for word to reach him.” She paused and tilted her head. “I believe he was found in the Netherlands.” She shrugged as though that were of no account now. “Alas he did not get here in time. You were born as he was en route home.”
“A great inconvenience, that,” Perry said with all the bitterness one might feel in such circumstances. Not that he imagined many people ever found themselves so similarly devastated. His situation was wholly unique.
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