Someday My Duke Will Come

by Christina Britton

It was prettily said, with not a hint of censure in it. Yet the undercurrent of steel beneath the words, the emphasis on her status, did not go unnoticed by him. Or his mother, if the considering look she gave Clara was any indication.

  The duchess inclined her head in a regal tilt.

  And that was all. No apology, no remorse for the great slight to Clara. But Clara’s brief feather-light touch to his back had reminded him to rein in his raging temper. He perhaps should have been concerned by the strength of his reaction to a mere touch from her. In that moment, however, he could only be grateful. If there was anything he needed just then, it was to remain in tight control of his emotions. His mother had ever looked for weaknesses in others, and exploited them wherever she could.

  “Yargood,” Clara said into the silence, “if you would be so kind as to add two extra cups for Her Grace and her guest to the tray being prepared?”

  As the butler turned to go, Clara’s words brought Quincy’s notice to the slight woman half hidden behind the duchess. She was a colorless little thing, her blue eyes wide in her pale face. Her blond hair, so light as to be nearly white, was pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Even her gown was without color, the pale gray dress only enhancing the waxen look of her.

  A choked sound escaped her thin lips when his eyes fell on her. She dipped into a deep curtsy and held it so long, he nearly rushed forward to assist her back upright.

  The duchess considered him with sharp eyes as the girl straightened. “May I present Lady Mary Durant.”

  No other explanation as to who the girl was, or why she had accompanied the duchess to so private a meeting. No doubt, from the way his mother gazed at him like the proverbial cat that licked the cream, she wanted nothing more than to see him squirm in curiosity.

  But though the name Durant snagged at something just out of reach in his memories, he would not give his mother the pleasure. He schooled his features into his typical rakish devilry and dipped into a bow. “Lady Mary, how absolutely enchanting to make your acquaintance. May I present Lady Clara Ashford?”

  As Clara greeted her, deftly guiding the two women to a circle of comfortable seats, he cast a sideways glance at his mother. The smug smile had not left her face, instead only increasing into a kind of cold satisfaction.

  Trepidation wormed under his skin, a chill shiver that had his hair standing on end. What the devil was the woman up to?

  Though there were plenty of seats to choose from, he found himself gravitating toward Clara, sinking down beside her on the settee. His mother could be cruel and had already insulted Clara beyond bearing. He would protect her as well as he could.

  Yet he knew, deep down, it was Clara doing the saving. He needed her calming presence, as the effect of her touch on his back had proven. This meeting was unsettling him much more than he would ever admit.

  “Lady Mary,” Clara said with a small smile for the girl, “have you been in London long?”

  The sudden infusion of color to the girl’s cheeks did nothing to help her complexion, leaving mottled splotches across her face and down her neck. “I have arrived just this morning,” she choked out.

  “Goodness, how tired you must be! I hope you did not have a long journey.” When the girl only gave a jerky shake of her head, Clara continued. “And what brings you to the capital?”

  Lady Mary’s eyes swiveled to the duchess for a moment, wild with uncertainty, before skidding off in his general direction. The unease that had begun to creep up on him intensified.

  “To meet with His Grace,” she replied, her voice barely discernible for the trembling in it.

  “You have come to meet with the duke?” Clara looked to him, a question in her eyes, before turning back to Lady Mary with a kind smile that should have put the girl at ease.

  Yet her agitation seemed only to grow. With another choked sound, she looked in desperation to the duchess.

  That woman did not so much as acknowledge Lady Mary, instead keeping her focus on Quincy and Quincy alone. “Mayhap,” she said in silky tones, “Lady Clara might give us a moment to discuss family matters.”

  Over my dead body. If there was anyone sane in this scenario, it was Clara. He needed her there. A fact that he would not look too closely at until this infernal meeting was behind him.

  Clara inclined her head and made to rise. Of course she would, he thought in a panic. She was far too accommodating. Which was something he was apparently only too happy to exploit. Before he quite knew what he was doing his hand shot out, catching at Clara’s. She let out a soft gasp and tensed. In the next moment, however, her fingers curled around his, a bold attempt at comfort.

  “I assure you,” he drawled, “Lady Clara is more family to me than my own ever was. Whatever you have to say to me can be said in her presence.”

  Clara sank once again beside him, her fingers tightening about his own. He ignored the warmth that spread in his chest at the show of solidarity, needing his wits about him. “And besides,” he continued, “I hardly think it can be at all sensitive, if Lady Mary’s presence is any indication. No offense to you, my lady,” he said to the girl. She was an innocent in this, after all.

  The duchess’s soft laugh turned his blood to ice. “I was certain, Reigate, that you would understand Lady Mary’s presence here and what it meant. You have been quite busy, from what I hear, poring over the documents from our solicitor. Surely you’ve come across Lady Mary’s name in one or two of those papers.”

  Her taunting words finally jarred loose the elusive bit of information. Of course, Lady Mary Durant. Orphaned daughter of the Marquess of Eccleston, heiress to a vast dowry, including a lucrative property next to the Reigate country home in Lancashire.

  And briefly engaged to his brother Sylvester before his untimely—and idiotic—passing.

  He looked at the girl with new eyes. Sylvester had been dead a mere six months. His mother’s stark black wardrobe reflected that. Lady Mary wore the gray of half-mourning. Had she loved Sylvester?

  He inclined his head. “Of course. Forgive me, my lady. My condolences on your loss.”

  “Yours as well, Your Grace,” she stammered, her cheeks mottling once again with bright color.

  He nodded, uncomfortable, as yet unused to accepting condolences over a brother he had hardly known. It was a situation he had found himself in during his interviews with the solicitors and men of business associated with the Reigate title over the past days. Each mention of his loss was a new cut to him, a reminder that he had not known Sylvester as he ought to have. The sting of it was made worse by the realization that he never would know him now, or any of his brothers.

  Even as he struggled with this, however, his question regarding the girl’s presence during such a volatile meeting remained unanswered. Surely his mother didn’t care for Lady Mary. The duchess had never been one for softer emotions, after all. Yet the passing of so many years and the loss of so many children might change a person. Perhaps she loved this girl who would have married her son and taken her place.

  The idea of viewing his mother in such a pitying light was as foreign to him as breathing underwater. He shifted in his seat, looking to her, trying to attach this new, more tender idea of a mothering person to the duchess. Her hard eyes and stiff posture, however, made that a near impossibility.

  “You must see what has to be done then,” she said, her sharp voice obliterating the remnants of his generous attempts to dust. “It will be the mere matter of editing the contract, supplanting one name for another.”

  Clara made a small sound in her throat at that. When he glanced over, her eyes were wide on his face, her fingers, still tucked in his, tightening. He frowned and turned back to his mother. “I don’t understand.”

  The duchess rolled her eyes, making no effort to hide her disgust. “You always were slow. Surely you must see, after viewing the evidence of your brothers’ wastefulness, what has to be done. Sylvester’s marriage to Lady Mary was an important lifeline for our f
amily’s solvency. That has not changed. And Lady Mary is eager to take her place as Duchess of Reigate, something that she has been groomed for since infancy.”

  He shook his head, his eyes flying to Lady Mary and back to his mother. Surely she could not be saying what he believed her to be saying.

  That pitiful hope was dashed in a moment.

  “You shall wed Lady Mary.”

  “No.”

  There was no hesitation in the word. It broke through his lips, all the revulsion of the idea present in it. On the ride from the solicitor’s he’d prayed as he hadn’t before, begging for a solution to save the dukedom. But not this. Not marriage to a stranger, who looked as if she might faint if he breathed wrong.

  “No?” His mother’s sharp voice pierced the haze of shock that enveloped him.

  He turned to Lady Mary. “I am so very sorry. I mean no disrespect. But I cannot marry you.”

  The girl’s eyes were huge in her face, though what emotions filled them he could not guess. She inclined her head in a jerking sort of nod, looking down to her lap.

  “You will marry her,” his mother bit out, forcing his attention back to her. “I demand it.”

  Beside her, Lady Mary made a strangled noise deep in her throat. Pity joined the horror swirling in him.

  “Mother, stop it,” he rasped. “Can’t you see you’re upsetting the girl?”

  “I am upsetting her?” The duchess’s eyes snapped furious fire at him. “You refuse the girl and I am upsetting her?”

  “Enough. Let us continue this another time.”

  His words fell on deaf ears. “I have already begun the process of having the documents redrawn. They will be ready for your signature by this evening.”

  “Mr. Richmond agreed to such a scheme?” Surely not. The man would have said something.

  “Richmond? Of course not; the man was always loyal to your father, even after his death. Do you take me for a fool?”

  Relief filled him, and with it a bit of the devil as well. “Do you really wish me to answer that, Mother?”

  She glared at him but for once didn’t rise to the bait. “You will sign those papers, and you will wed Lady Mary. The future of our family depends on it. Would you refuse to offer the girl a place in our family? Would you refuse to save the dukedom?”

  “The dukedom will be fine.”

  “With what, the pittance you brought back from America?”

  “It is not a pittance, madam,” he gritted.

  “It may regrow our coffers, but Lady Mary brings the promise of property, and the status to bring us back to the glory we once were. You would not be so selfish as to refuse such a thing.”

  Dear God, she talked of the girl as if she were cattle. As she spoke, Lady Mary only seemed to shrink more into herself.

  He saw it then, the power his mother had over the girl. And what she hoped to gain from this union. Here was a young woman, alone in the world, owner of a vast fortune. The duchess had coerced her way into the girl’s life, seeing the weaknesses in her and exploiting them. She had managed to connect her to Sylvester before he went and fell off a cliff. Now she hoped to wed her to Quincy, no matter her dislike of him, so that she might continue that control over the dukedom. She would stop at nothing to force him into marriage with this girl.

  A ringing started up in his ears. As he struggled to come up with a reason, any reason, to lay waste to this mad scheme of his mother’s, Clara’s fingers squeezed his.

  He had forgotten for a moment she was there. He looked to her, hoping to glean some of the calm and wisdom she exuded. Her dark blue eyes peered back into his, myriad emotions crowding their depths. And then her expression changed, a grim determination settling over her features.

  Before he quite knew what was happening, she pulled his hand—until then hidden by the soft folds of her gown—into her lap and clasped it tight. In full view of the duchess and Lady Mary.

  As his mother looked down in outrage at their clasped fingers, Clara spoke, her voice trembling but strong in the thick silence of the room.

  “Your son cannot wed Lady Mary. He is engaged to me.”

  Chapter 6

  Oh, dear God. What have I done?

  If the ground had opened up to swallow Clara whole, she would have gladly dove in headfirst. Engaged to Quincy? What madness had prompted her to say such a thing? Yes, she had been stunned by what the duchess would do to that poor girl and to her own son, but Quincy was a man grown. Surely he could extricate himself from such a fate. Just as she had determined to leave the room and let Quincy handle things without an audience, however, he’d turned and looked at her with such desperation, as if he were pleading with her. She had acted on instinct.

  But what instinct had her falsely claiming engagement to a man? Most especially one with whom, had she been able, she would have gladly considered marriage in truth.

  That devastating thought was still reverberating in her mind when the maid entered, deposited the heavily laden tea tray on the low table, then hurried out. Not a person acknowledged it. The duchess gaped at her, her face held slack in an expression Clara would have bet had never crossed it before. Lady Mary, too, was staring at her in shock, her pale eyebrows high up her wide forehead.

  But it was Quincy’s reaction that her whole being was focused on. His fingers had gone slack in hers, his body jolting as if struck by a bolt of lightning. Any second now he would declare her mad. She held her breath, waiting for the inevitable axe to fall.

  “Is this true?” the duchess breathed, the shock in her eyes turning to outrage as they shifted to Quincy. “Are you engaged to be married to this person?”

  The change in Quincy was immediate. He moved a fraction closer to Clara, his fingers tightening on hers as he dragged her hand into his own lap and covered it with his free one. “I am,” he said, his voice firm and strong.

  Clara just stopped herself from gaping at that blatant lie. Calling on her years of practice, she schooled her features into tranquility and met the duchess’s furious gaze head-on, though in reality her mind was whirling with the implications of what she’d done. Had she only made things worse? Had she merely trapped him in another type of cage?

  But she would not think on that now. It was done, and there was nothing she could do to change it; she would get through this disaster and deal with the ramifications when she had the time and privacy to do so properly.

  “How is this possible?” the duchess demanded, her eyes narrowing as suspicion took hold. “You have only been in the country for four days. There is no possibility you could have formed an alliance with the Duke of Dane’s cousin in that time.”

  “On the contrary,” Quincy said with an ease that impressed even Clara, “I met Lady Clara on the Isle of Synne a year ago, and we struck up a friendship. Over the past months of communicating through letters, that friendship transformed into something more.” He looked to Clara with warmth, a small smile lifting his deliciously full lips. “She has only just accepted my hand, and I could not be happier.”

  Goodness. Clara swallowed hard, doing her damnedest to retain control over mind, body, and heart even as she felt herself sinking into the liquid depths of his eyes. It’s all an act, she told herself sternly. Even so, the response in her was immediate and complete. And utterly devastating.

  But she would maintain the façade she had begun. Especially as it meant freeing Quincy from the sly machinations of his mother, who had already proven herself to be the devil incarnate in the short time Clara had known her. No matter the danger to her emotions.

  She smiled as if there was no greater joy on earth. Doing her best to pretend it wasn’t true.

  “This is an outrage,” the duchess sputtered.

  Quincy looked to his mother, finally releasing Clara from the spell of his gaze. For a moment she felt adrift, as if she had lost something precious. It took incredible effort to keep the smile plastered to her face.

  “Won’t you wish me joy?” Quincy drawled wit
h a cheerfulness that did nothing to hide the steel beneath. “Not only is Lady Clara the daughter of a duke—a connection even you cannot balk at—but we also care for each other. Surely my happiness is important to you, Mother.”

  The woman’s face suffused with color, her hands clenching into fists in the black silk of her gown. For one horrifying moment Clara was certain she would reach across the space between them and strike Quincy.

  Suddenly her demeanor changed. Her gaze, which had been welded to Quincy in a furious fire, cooled and shifted to Clara. Clara shivered. Beside her, she felt Quincy lean toward her, as if he, too, sensed danger.

  The duchess lifted a perfectly manicured brow. “How old are you, my dear?” she asked in a silky smooth tone that did not fool Clara one bit.

  A low growl issued from Quincy. “I hardly think that signifies—”

  “It’s all right, Quincy,” Clara said, desperate to deescalate the storm brewing between the two, wanting nothing more than to end this debacle. Lifting her head high, she met the duchess’s cold gaze with her own, making sure not a hint of fear or uncertainty showed. “I am nearly one and thirty, Your Grace.”

  “Older than Reigate, then. Hmm. And unwed?”

  “She’s spent her time caring for her ill father,” Quincy said, his voice tight. “He passed just last year.”

  “I don’t think the late duke was ill these fourteen years,” the duchess replied, her tone thoughtful as she considered Clara with narrowed eyes. “Rather, I recall it being a fairly recent illness, some two years or so before his death at the most.” She paused, letting the silence punctuate her suspicions, before a chilling smile slipped across her face. “One wonders why Lady Clara did not marry before his illness, that’s all. When one’s only remaining son is about to be wed, one must look out for his best interest.”

  Clara felt the blood leave her face. The duchess’s implication was clear.

  The woman could not know just how right she was.

  “You have never looked out for my best interest,” Quincy bit out.

  The duchess’s cool control transformed to hot fury in an instant. “Oh, haven’t I?” she snapped.