Duke of Disgrace (Dukes of Destiny Book 3)

by Whitney Blake

  “Remarkably clever for his age. Frighteningly adept at wrapping his governess around his very little finger. Serious. And healthy, most thankfully of all.”

  “Has he met Miss Masbeck?”

  “Why would he meet my secretary—which, thank you, by the way.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Wenwood affably. “She’s very good with children, and I imagine he toddles about sometimes?” When Jeremy shrugged his shoulders a little, Wenwood still carried on. “She did well with Mary, even though we did not take Miss Masbeck on for that purpose. The twins adore her. Keep asking if she’ll come back.”

  “May I ask… why did you take her on?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Precisely what I say. Did you see her in action? Did her father ask you to employ her?”

  Playing with his elegantly tied, white cravat, Wenwood began to look guilty. “Well… has she not… said?”

  “I don’t know why she would. I am not paying her to talk to me.”

  “You cannot tell a soul.”

  Fearing the worst—has he slept with her? Surely not—Jeremy shook his head. “You’ve my word.”

  “Have you heard of Lord Thomas Rowling? I don’t want to be rude, but I know that your brother does tend to muck around with…”

  “Vaguely.” The name sounded familiar and he could not place why, but perhaps he could just ask Paul when he returned home.

  “He has a troubling habit of seducing young ladies. I had it out of him.”

  “Ladies of the ton?”

  “No, he’s not so shortsighted. Not that Rowling said any of this to me. But as far as I can surmise… he likes to go after commoners so he can move on without anyone ever being the wiser or stopping him. He likes toying with them. What recourse would they have against one of us in a situation like that? Especially a woman.” Wenwood said it with disgust. “Regardless…” He toyed with his cravat a little more, evidently thinking about what he was going to voice next.

  Jeremy, able to be patient under normal circumstances, fidgeted in his chair. Part of his fidgeting had to do with, he expected, the interval of time he’d allowed himself to go without laudanum. The other part, of course, was the subject. He could look past many behaviors, but brutality or carelessness toward a woman was not one of them. Thinking Wenwood was too polite to say anything and that there was no one else in the room, he gingerly took the incriminating bottle from his pocket. There was a tepid cup of tea on the table before him between Wenwood and himself, and he poured just a little of the solution from the bottle into the cup. Why not. It would make him look like more of an addict if he just tilted his head back and dropped it in like he normally did.

  Barely anything, he believed. Wenwood’s eyebrow’s rose. “Hareden…”

  “It’s nothing,” said Jeremy. He waved his right arm a little. “Sometimes it pains me, you know, when it rains like this and the weather has shifted so much.”

  “If you say so,” said Wenwood. He glanced rather disapprovingly at the small bottle, which Jeremy pocketed once more. “Well, back to Miss Masbeck.” Wenwood sighed. “I have no other way to say this. But as it happens, Miss Masbeck is one of the young ladies whom Rowling has compromised.”

  Jeremy sipped some of his tea to avoid having to react much to the words. His first response was a wave of hot anger that curdled his stomach, and that level of ire would hardly be appropriate from a duke over an untitled, unmarried young lady. “Was it… did she consent?” He thought, however, that he knew the answer.

  “Her father says she did not.”

  It made Jeremy angry, certainly, but it also wrenched at his heart. That does, though, explain much about Miss Masbeck’s jumpier moments.

  “You’ve spoken about this?”

  “He came to me.”

  “That’s irregular. Why?”

  “One day shortly before your mother came around for the twins’ birthday, she was at the house helping him. I was expecting Lord Rowling and several others to discuss a possible amendment to a statute, and… from what her father said, as they were on their way out, she spied Rowling on his way in and nearly fainted.”

  Fainted? thought Jeremy. He abhorred the thought of her being driven to it by some cad. “But why did that prompt her father to speak to you about it?”

  “Mr. Masbeck has been my steward for ten years. A little longer. I trust him. He trusts me. He was worried I was friends with Rowling, and declared in a short, very well-reasoned but passionate speech that he might commit some act of violence against Rowling if he were to see him again. I’d never heard the man string together more than a few sentences! But once he calmed down enough to explain fully, I decided I did not want such a character under my roof for any reason. Not around my staff or servants, and not near my wife or daughter. It is so rare that we get to close ranks against somebody like Rowling.”

  That fit with Wenwood’s character. He could also afford to alienate just about anybody both in terms of his financial safety and his level of prestige. If Jeremy remembered properly, Rowling’s father was an obscure earl who had very little sway and had done nothing of note. Rowling himself, or the one in question, was merely a baron.

  Wenwood continued, “I also did a little research of my own and discovered that Miss Masbeck’s situation is not an anomaly. It was a difficult line to trace, but I heard enough to say with conviction that there is no possible way for Rowling to be interpreted as a decent sort.”

  “I can see why she would not tell me any of this,” said Jeremy after a few moments. He sipped his cold tea, which had gone bitter with the taste of the laudanum. He really should have just swigged some of it down, directly. “If it were known, she would be…”

  “Quite ruined, yes. To Miss Masbeck and her mother and father, Rowling was simply Mr. Tom Rankin.”

  “He took an alias with her?”

  “Oh, indeed. Mr. Masbeck told me that Rowling and Miss Masbeck had been engaged. Well. Verbally. She broke it off, obviously. The awful man knew all three of them.”

  “It does sound as though Rowling enjoys the hunt,” said Jeremy. He had to work hard to keep the distaste from his voice. “He probably just melted away into nothing—she might not have had anyone with whom to break.”

  “Hareden, are you quite all right?”

  Jeremy surmised that he’d kept the loathing from his tone, but he must have had a fearsome expression on his face. He was also clutching his teacup so tightly that his knuckles were white. “Fine, yes.”

  “You seem… look, I know that men like Rowling are completely reprehensible.”

  Hopefully, very soon, the opiate would take its effect and he would be feeling all of this less acutely. He hated it. Feeling so vividly, so luridly. Why was it that everyone seemed to be able to cope with life better than him? They took a stand or articulated what they felt, whichever needed to happen. He couldn’t.

  “And all too common,” said Jeremy.

  Although it was not part of how his small circle seemed to conduct themselves, ton gossip was rife with knowledge of men who preyed on those less fortunate than themselves. Or simply the less privileged. In the best cases, there were the brothels where one might pay a woman to playact a scene. No one was irrevocably damaged in any way.

  But men like Rowling did exist. Jeremy hoped his father had not been one.

  He took a small amount of comfort in the thought that his mother would have most likely told him if that had been the truth. Now that Father was dead and had been for years, she seemed to have little incentive to preserve his image in any upstanding way for either Paul or Jeremy. He did not think his father had been like Rowling.

  “Sometimes. As I said, it did feel good to freeze him out. He doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, anyway. I invited him along most of all as a courtesy,” said Wenwood. He gauged Jeremy’s face and apparently did not trust what he saw. “Are you sure you are well?”

  Jeremy changed tack. “What was it like,
Wenwood, to wed below yourself?”

  “Far less frightening than if I had been a woman, I imagine. Not that it would even be possible, exactly, if I were,” he said, taken aback. “There was little call for me to be nervous, and I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but it didn’t really occur to me to feel anything differently than I did.”

  “You did not feel that you were forsaking duty, or…”

  “No, but I was an only child. An only son. I had the surety of knowing that everything had passed to me—my father died when I was very young, and when I reached my majority, my uncle did not hesitate to do right by me.”

  Brittlely, Jeremy smiled. Wenwood was such a decent man that here he sat in the middle of one of the oldest and most prestigious clubs on St. James’s Street, deflecting from honors that were rightfully his by explaining how they’d come to him simply because of good fortune. Very few would do that, reasoned Jeremy. “And when you met Lady Wenwood, how did you know she was the one you wished to marry?”

  “Hareden…”

  “I’m in earnest, and this is not the laudanum talking.”

  “I suppose I just… she understood me. There was an intuitive… fire. I don’t know, man. That would be like asking me to explain the mechanics of the stars. I’ve no idea how to begin telling anybody.”

  “But the difference in statuses, that didn’t impact things? Your understanding of each other?”

  Frowning as he seemingly thought back to a time years and years ago, Wenwood said slowly, “It did not, at least not negatively. There was a candid note in most of our interactions that I did not ever experience with society women. But, to be honest with you, I think I would have loved her no matter the circumstances of our meeting or our births or anything else. What is this about, Hareden?”

  His thoughts were absolutely beyond the pale. Jeremy leveled the rest of his old tea down his throat and put the cup down on the table. He could not have fallen in love with Miss Masbeck within such a short amount of time. Months. Could he?

  It had to have been the state of his marriage tripping him up. That was it. Anything or indeed anyone seemed more appealing than Isabel. More appealing than going to bed alone night after night. Grappling with the fact that every second of his life, he had to think about appearances.

  Miss Masbeck was simply in the right place at the right time.

  No, he thought, almost immediately rebuffing himself. You know it is not that. You’re not that sort of person. He took a deep breath and looked at Wenwood with doleful eyes.

  “I think I’m in trouble, Wenwood.”

  *

  “What do you mean, you know who she is?”

  Paul only gave her a halfhearted smile. “Playing silly does not suit you, Miss Masbeck. Come, let us walk about the garden for a spell.”

  “In the rain?”

  “It’s stopped.”

  “For now!”

  “And if it starts again, we shall retreat indoors.” He came closer to her and took her arm firmly but without hurting her. In a low voice near her ear, he said, “I do trust the majority of the servants, but I’ve learned to be careful in my time philandering.”

  Charlotte scoffed, but went along with him toward the solar and a set of doors leading to the garden. “Oh, as though no one will talk about what this looks like?”

  “Trust me, everyone around here knows what that looks like and this is not it.”

  The air outside smelled intoxicatingly of damp leaves and wet earth. Charlotte had to admit that it was all rather lovely. Birds had started to sing in the lull between adamant squalls. Once she and Paul came close enough to the flowerbeds, the roses in particular gave off a luscious perfume that mingled with the scent of damp greenery. It was once again difficult to believe they were so close to London with its masses of people and peals of smoke and fog.

  “How do you know my, er, correspondent?” She turned to Paul and watched him closely.

  “I’m the one that put her up to it.”

  “You what?”

  “Not specifically your letter. And I didn’t say my sister-in-law should take a nom de guerre, but I also said that if she didn’t want to get caught, she could not always be Lady Isabel Hareden whenever she was on the prowl for a new lover.” Paul sighed and watched a small yellow bird land in the overflowing birdbath. She followed his eyes. “I feel as though I must, then, take some responsibility for there being an Emily.”

  Lost, Charlotte said, “I had not thought… I thought that women might be more restrained than men.” She knew she made no sense. But internally, her mind was spinning and she was thinking, A primer in adultery isn’t exactly something we get handed at birth. Unlike men, who somehow seem to know how to get away with everything. “How did you even get on the subject?”

  “We did not. Exactly. She had had quite a lot of wine one evening and she, ah, approached me for my favor. In this very garden, in fact. Her nerve is astounding, I will give her that.” He wrinkled his perfect nose which, unlike his brother’s, did not look as though it had been broken. That was surprising. She would have assumed that someone, at some time, had broken Paul’s nose. “Her own husband’s brother.”

  “I think she has rather too much nerve. And in general, I do value courage, but she really goes too far.”

  “Quite.”

  Getting back to the matter at hand, she said, “And when… or how… did you discover Mrs. Rattray?”

  “I have not personally. A friend of a friend has, and I believe he turned her down when he realized who she was.”

  Good Lord, where did Lady Hareden generally go when she chose to be the Merry Widow Rattray? London? And did she go to Aldbury because it was so close, or because she had not made herself known there as Lady Hareden?

  “And this friend…”

  “Told me his friend’s suspicions. Off of his description of her, I was able to surmise it was Lady Hareden.” Paul smiled ruefully. “He gave me the name, too. I only knew for sure when you received that note and looked as though you’d seen a ghost. Why would she write to you?”

  “Oh, I came across her and one of her paramours in Aldbury.”

  “Is that why you were gone for so long?”

  “More or less.”

  “He was worried.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Charlotte sighed and shook her head. “As I said, I came across them and we had a most disconcerting conversation.”

  Paul turned his face to the sky and surveyed the mulish, silver clouds. Then he looked back at her. “What about?”

  “Nothing sensible, really.” She blushed. “She asked me if I’d enjoyed sleeping with her husband.”

  For all this back-and-forth, Charlotte was beginning to wish that at least she had done so.

  “Jeremy would rather lob off his other hand than commit adultery. She knows it.”

  Wincing, Charlotte glanced at her shoes. She did not want to admit that she was perilously close to deciding her morals meant little. It was not easy to cling to them when they seemed so quaint, she thought. There couldn’t be any harm in shelving some of them.

  “Even if his wife has made rather a career of it?”

  With no small amount of pity—she supposed for her—Paul smiled. “He does not want to become our father.” Off her questioning look, he said, “Who was not a violent man. He did have a wandering eye, though.” Almost under his breath, he added, “And wandering hands.”

  Well, that certainly squared with Charlotte’s own experience of an aristocratic man.

  “I cannot imagine anyone stepping out on Lady Hareden. That is to say, your lady mother… the dowager duchess,” said Charlotte, musing. “Why would the duke’s wife send me such a letter?”

  “At a guess, she’s bored. Maybe a little jealous. It must sting for there to be someone around Jeremy who is just as pretty as she is. Finally.”

  Charlotte sidestepped his compliment. “How on earth can she be bored?” Imagine havin
g the whole of society at one’s disposal and being bored. What a waste that seemed to Charlotte.

  “Honestly, that’s probably not it, but who knows.”

  Her mind, fed by novels and more recently, those blasted gossip columns through which she had learned more about the Hareden family’s situation, ran with the possibility that Walter could be scheming to steal from the duke. Or perhaps they want to kill him? No, no. That’s far too lurid. Don’t be ridiculous. There’d be so little point to something so ghastly. In all, Lady Hareden did not strike her as a murderess—too self-interested, and murderesses were likely to be caught and imprisoned or hanged—and she would defer to Paul’s more thorough knowledge of the woman.

  It was just as likely that Lady Hareden could bide her time forever, doing what she was doing, and live out her days in security and comfort. Suddenly, a sharp and irrational disdain for the duke ripped through Charlotte.

  She said, “I still cannot see how his grace allows this to just continue ad infinitum. What does he expect will happen? That it will just get better?”

  “What options does he have?” Paul sat down carefully on the least damp of the marble benches nearest them. “Good manners dictate that I ask if you would like to sit.”

  “No… I shall remain as I am, thank you. And I don’t know why you’re asking me what options he has.”

  More importantly, in this present moment, she knew none of those options would lead to her.

  “I was being serious. I often wonder, myself. He could possibly garner enough support to…” Paul cleared his throat. “Get things to the stage of a criminal conversation.”

  “Everyone knows what she’s up to, I’d wager,” said Charlotte. “But doesn’t there have to be, ah, definitive proof?” But allegations of adultery would effectively ruin Lady Hareden whether or not she was found guilty, never mind all the later proceedings to be granted a true divorce that allowed for remarriage. Charlotte didn’t quite think she could support it with a clear conscience.