Sophia glanced at David and Alicia. “Lord Montrose, will you take me home please?”
“My Lady,” Wesley pleaded as she marched past them both. “Do not go, please.”
Half turning, Sophia stared at the Duchess. “I will not remain under the roof of this evil lady another moment. If I am not good enough to marry you, then I suppose you should begin looking for another bride.”
With all the dignity she could muster, Sophia strolled from the drawing room, David and Alicia behind her.
Her control over her emotions lasted until she arrived in her chambers. Sophia sank into an armchair, still wearing her heavy cloak and gloves. Her eyes burned, her throat closed down. A sob escaped her mouth, and within seconds she could no longer hold back the tide of her pain and grief.
Erin came to her, kneeling beside her chair, trying to speak to her. Sophia clutched her maid’s hand as though she were drowning, her salty tears bitter on her tongue. For over an hour she wept, purging her soul of some of the pain, but never all of it.
As her sobs gradually subsided, Erin asked, “What is wrong, m’lady?”
“Wesley cannot marry me,” Sophia choked out, her handkerchief pressed to her mouth. “Not unless he wants to lose half his estates.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yes. I cannot face my parents,” Sophia said, exhausted and drained. “I am ashamed. If I write them a note, will you take it to them?”
“Of course.”
At her writing desk, Sophia scribbled a quick note.
I apologize for not seeing you in person, but I’m too ashamed to see anyone. His Grace cannot marry me without losing half his estates, per his father’s will. The Dowager Duchess claims I will not pass the solicitor’s inspection of my reputation. I will not marry His Grace now, as I will not be the reason he loses so much. Please grant me time in my rooms to collect myself.
She folded the note and handed it to Erin. “Please take this to my father. And bring wine back with you.”
“Yes, m’lady.”
Feeling cold, her heart empty, Sophia rose from her chair to find a shawl to wrap around her shoulders, then sat back down to watch the fire. Though she did not feel hungry, she expected she would ask Erin to bring her meals to her.
I have no intention of leaving my rooms for a long while. I cannot face my family for the shame the Dowager Duchess brought me.
When the door to her chambers opened, Sophia expected only Erin, and thus did not look up until her mother spoke.
“This is shameful,” the Duchess snapped from behind her.
Standing up, Sophia wheeled. “Yes, I do feel ashamed, Mama. My reputation as a bluestocking is preventing me from marrying the gentleman I love.”
“I did not mean you should feel ashamed, Sophia,” her Mother went on, stepping closer.
Sophia did not think she had ever seen her mother so angry. Like her father, the Duchess kept her emotions under rigid control, and seldom expressed anger, fear, excess happiness, or excess sorrow. But there was no mistaking that her mother was now furious, and did not care she showed it clearly to her daughter.
“Mama?”
“The Dowager Duchess should be the one ashamed of her behavior, Sophia. Not you. You have done nothing wrong, and yet she dares to censure you while involved in vile and scandalous lies, writing letters with false information. Why, she makes me angry enough to censure her in front of the entire ton.”
“Please do not, Mama,” Sophia asked, her fingers entwined in front of her. “His Grace will get caught up in the scandal. His father declared my unfitness in his will.”
Her Mother stared hard at Sophia. “His father would surely have approved of your match to his son, of that I have little doubt. There is no stain connected to your name, and this will-waving as a reason to snub you and declare you unfit deserves a scathing response. Even your father is furious.”
Sophia stared at the floor. “There is little anyone can do now, Mama. If he marries me, he loses half his inheritance. I cannot be the cause of that.”
“Humph,” her Mother snorted. “As though some tawdry solicitor can judge my daughter as not being eligible to marry the Duke. Perhaps the crown courts should become involved in this affair.”
For a moment, hope rose within Sophia, then she said, “The courts can only side with the written will, Mama.”
“We shall see about that. Now, I will give you permission to feel sorry for yourself here in your rooms for a time, but I insist you eat. I see your lady’s maid brought your wine, and that will help you sleep. But you send her to the kitchen right now for a plate.”
“Yes, Mama.”
With another snort, she turned and stalked from Sophia’s rooms past Erin, who curtsied. Once her mother had gone, Sophia drew a deep breath. “You heard her, Erin. Please fetch me food from the kitchen.”
Wesley wanted to hit something. Or someone.
After Sophia left with a greatly embarrassed David and Alicia, Wesley glared at his mother. She gazed back at him with unruffled calm, and an air of triumph, before turning on her heel to walk from the drawing room and close the door behind her.
His heart in agony, Wesley paced the big room, unable to keep still. “That wretched will. How could Father have inserted that terrible clause?”
The paintings on the walls gave him no answer. Nor did the rugs he trod under his feet. The brandy he drank in great gulps remained silent on the subject. “If Father were here now, I know damn well he’d approve of Sophia in an instant. So what if she reads books,” he scoffed to himself, “that is what drew me to her, made me fall in love with her. Father would never have considered that aspect of her as a reason to not marry her.”
Thinking of the will made him think of that wretched solicitor, Mr. Tennant, who could break Wesley’s soul with a single word. Then he remembered Berkeley had intended to look into the matter of his father’s will.
Abruptly leaving the drawing room, his brandy still in his hand, he found Phillip at the door. The hound wagged his tail happily, and rolled onto his back over for a belly scratch. “Good lad,” Wesley told him, obliging Phillip with a hefty rub to his belly. “We will go for a walk once I speak to Berkeley. Come along, then.”
With the dog trotting at his side, Wesley crossed the house to Berkeley’s office. He swung open the door, already talking.
“Berkeley, where are—?”
The office was empty of Berkeley’s presence. Wesley gazed around the extremely tidy room with every ledger, every piece of paper neatly stacked, Berkeley’s quills in a precise row, the inkwell in the corner. Every book on the shelf had been perfectly categorized, and Wesley took a moment to wonder at the mind that required such neatness.
“Where the devil could he be?”
Leaving the office and closing the door behind him, Wesley found the butler admonishing a pair of footmen. All three bowed as he approached, and then the butler dismissed the servants with a wave of his hand.
“How may I be of service, Your Grace?” he asked.
“Do you know where Patrick Berkeley is?”
“Why no, I believed him to be in his office. I did not see him leave the house, Your Grace.”
“Ah, well,” Wesley stammered, nonplussed. “Uh, carry on.”
The butler bowed again as Wesley left him, then suddenly turned back. “Oh, will you fetch me my overcoat? Thank you.”
Thus warmly dressed, Wesley wandered the townhouse grounds as Phillip bounded ahead of him, his gloved hands in his coat pockets. He remembered Sophia’s stricken face as she left, but then grinned as he recalled her words to his mother.
“My Sophia has a backbone, indeed,” he muttered with a chuckle. “A worthy Duchess for me.”
Roaming the grounds, able to see his breath from his lips, Wesley pondered the ways around that despicable will. “Perhaps I should bring it before the Prince Regent, or the Lord Chancellor. The courts could deem it as unenforceable, and have it stricken. Under the laws of primogenit
ure, I, as the eldest son, inherit everything.”
He wondered what role, if any, his mother had to play in that clause’s creation. “But she does not directly benefit from it. So instructing my father to write it brings her nothing, no advantage.”
Finally, he grew cold enough to need to return to the warmth of the townhouse, and whistled for Phillip. The hound trotted at his side as he returned inside through the side door near the kitchen. Dinner was being prepared as he walked in, but the delicious odors emanating from it failed to stir his appetite.
Still, he admitted to himself, he had to eat.
“I will not dine with my mother this evening,” he told the staff. “Bring my dinner to me in my private quarters.”
Crossing the house toward the stairs, Wesley took off his coat and gloves, handing them to the butler. “When Berkeley returns, have him see me immediately.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
However, Berkeley failed to return that night.
Chapter 30
Berkeley did not return until nearly noon the following day.
Growing more worried by the minute, Wesley alternated between asking the staff if he had returned, and pacing the house like a caged beast. He had not joined his mother in the dining room for meals, and what she might have thought about her own son snubbing her, Wesley cared not one jot.
Wesley had made a strong attempt to calm down and actually sit in the library to read when Berkeley entered, and bowed low.
Wesley snapped to his feet, gaping. “Where the devil have you been? And why are you dressed like that?”
Had he not recognized Berkeley’s face, and his nervous twitch, Wesley would have thought him a vagabond from the street that had somehow entered the townhouse. He had dirt smudged on his face, his hair was bedraggled, his spectacles gone. Berkeley wore filthy rags for clothing, and even with the distance between them, he stank of something nasty.
“Forgive my improper attire, Your Grace,” Berkeley told him. “But my news was far too urgent to share with you that I did not dare take the time to properly bathe and change.”
His terrible odor notwithstanding, Wesley urged him to a chair. “Did you find something?”
After a glance around to make certain they were alone, Berkeley grinned, and it was not a friendly one. In fact, it appeared decidedly feral. “I have, Your Grace. I hope you will not hold a bit of burglary I committed on your behalf against me.”
Wesley leaned forward intently. “Were you seen?”
Berkeley tried to wither him with a glower. “Do not insult me, Your Grace.”
“Then I know nothing of any burglary. I expect it was at the offices of a certain solicitor?”
“You have guessed rightly.” Berkeley reached into his ragged coat, and pulled out two scrolls, both tied closed with a red ribbon. Yet, Berkeley held his hand over both, gazing at Wesley in the eye. He had no nervous twitch or tic that Wesley saw.
“I must remind you that what I am about to show you is not just untoward, but criminal, Your Grace. I politely and respectfully urge you to think before you act once I display these.”
His mouth dry, Wesley dipped his chin once in a nod. “I promise I will not act with undue haste.”
Berkeley unrolled the scroll on his right. After a quick glance at it, he held it out to Wesley. “Is this the will that was read to you?”
Wesley read it over. “Indeed it is.”
With reverence, Berkeley untied and unrolled the second scroll. “This, Your Grace, is your father’s last will and testament.”
Stunned, Wesley read it as quickly as he could, then gazed at Berkeley in shock. “This—this has no added clause.”
“Your Grace, in whose hand was this written?”
“My father’s.”
“And whose hand was this second will written in?”
Studying it closely, Wesley rubbed his chin. “This looks like my mother’s handwriting.”
As the realization of what had happened dawned on him, Wesley knew why Berkeley demanded that he think before he acted. “She forged his will,” Wesley said slowly, shocked and appalled by what Berkeley uncovered. “My mother forged his will. That is a criminal act.”
“With the solicitor’s help and assistance, Your Grace.”
Berkeley rolled out both wills on the table, and held the rolled ends down with books. The wills lay side by side. “Please look at the seals closely.”
Forcing his mind from his mother’s unconscionable act, Wesley bent to study the seals. Comparing the two, from his father’s original will to the forgery, Wesley suddenly frowned.
“They are not exact.”
Berkeley gazed at him with sorrow. “What is the penalty for forging the King’s seal?”
Leaping up from the chair, Wesley paced the library, cursing softly. “Death,” he muttered.
“Yes, Your Grace. Now you see what I meant by taking the time to think, to not act without being rational. Should this become public, your mother will hang.”
Sweating from something other than the heat, Wesley paced. “What do I do?”
“First, we pay a call on the solicitor,” Berkeley advised. “We find out why he would risk his life to forge a Duke’s will. We go from there.”
Wesley nodded. “Go wash and change. I’ll have the carriage brought around.”
Berkeley bowed and left, leaving Wesley to roll the wills back into their scrolls and retie them. Placing them in an inner pocket of his coat, he then went downstairs to order his coach readied. He was glad his mother did not appear, for he did not trust himself. He had no idea what he would do with her.
He and Berkeley discussed various situations on how to handle his mother as the coachman took them to Mr. Tennant’s offices. Alighting from the carriage, Wesley and Berkeley entered the townhouse where Mr. Tennant conducted his business.
Without knocking, Wesley stormed into the solicitor’s private office, startling both him and his client.
“Excuse me,” the solicitor stated. “I am with a client. You cannot just barge in here.”
“I am the Duke of Bersard,” Wesley said coldly. “I will do as I please.” He glared at the client. “Get out.”
The man hastily bowed, and scrambled from the room. Berkeley closed it behind him, then leaned against it. Wesley stared at the solicitor, who now trembled in terror.
“You know why I am here,” Wesley said, stalking the man behind his desk. “You, with my mother, forged my father’s will.”
“No! Of course not, I could never—that would be illegal.”
Pulling the two wills from his coat, Wesley waved them under his nose. “I have both wills, Mr. Tennant. The original, written in my father’s hand and sealed with the King’s seal. I also have here a second will, written in my mother’s hand, and the seal not the King’s. Close, but is not, indeed, the real one.”
Mr. Tennant appeared as though he were about to faint. He perspired heavily, pulling his collar from his throat.
“What is the penalty for forging a will?” Wesley asked him.
“L-life in gaol.”
“And what is the penalty for forging His Majesty’s seal?”
“D-death.”
Wesley leaned toward him, menacingly, his eyes flat. “Now you and my mother have committed serious crimes. You will tell me why.”
Mr. Tennant, near tears, explained, his words spilling from his lips in a flood. “I am in love with your mother, Your Grace. I would do anything for her. We have been lovers for years, loved each other when your father stopped loving her. She wanted the will rewritten with the clause—”
Wesley slapped his palm on the desk, furious, sickened by what he had just heard. “My mother an unfaithful whore? Why? She gains nothing from this forgery.”
“That is not true, Your Grace,” Mr. Tennant insisted, his tears and sweat mingling on his cheeks. “Her friend, the Countess of Swinton, demanded years ago that you marry her daughter. She threatened to reveal your mother’s infi
delity, and yet also promised your mother ten thousand pounds a year if you married the Countess’s daughter.”
“Blackmail and bribery?” Wesley stared at the man. “With that, and what I was to give her, she would be well off indeed.”
Addicted to a Rascal Duke: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 26