Nothing Compares to the Duke

by Christy Carlyle

  All the warmth drained from Rhys’s expression. “This wasn’t merely a social call, Bella. It’s ten in the evening and I wasn’t invited to your party.”

  She’d been so overwhelmed by the sight of him that the oddness of him bursting into a house party unannounced hadn’t yet crossed her mind. Earlier she’d asked him why he’d returned to Essex, and he hadn’t even answered that question directly.

  “I need your help.”

  Her heartbeat had steadied the moment she’d forgiven him, but it thudded faster now.

  Her silence prompted him to step closer. “Is it selfish of me to come after all this time and ask that of you?”

  When she took a breath to answer emphatically yes, he lifted a finger and held it hovering over her lips.

  “Don’t answer that. I know it is, but there’s no one else I trust.”

  Every word he said was true. Bella could see it in his furrowed-brow expression, hear the earnestness in his voice. He wasn’t employing any of his usual charm. She sensed there wouldn’t be any jokes or clever quips to undercut his statement.

  “Surely there is someone else,” she said, and couldn’t help glancing down at where he still held his finger dangerously close to her lips, “for whatever reason you require assistance.”

  The man was a duke with servants at his beck and call, ladies prepared to swoon at his feet, and gentlemen eager to curry favor.

  “No one like you.” His voice had gone low, not much above a whisper. “You know who I am. My failings and flaws. Many of which are your strengths. Mathematics, for instance.”

  Bella frowned.

  “And London Seasons,” he added, then finally moved his hand away to begin ticking off items. “Ordering gowns, negotiating with haberdashers, hats, shoes, who knows what else. That is precisely the point. I have no notion of what Meg needs. You do.”

  Mention of his sister made Bella smile. In cutting off her friendship with Rhys, she’d missed any connection to his sister too.

  “I would be happy to meet with Lady Margaret. She could visit me at Hillcrest if she’s in residence at Edgecombe.”

  Now it was Rhys’s turn to frown. “But it’s more than Meg.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I need you. You know I can’t read or juggle numbers worth a damn and—”

  “That’s not true. You’re better than you think you are.” The instinct to reassure him came without thought or intention. An old habit, yet she still found the words to be utterly sincere. He’d never seen himself as she saw him, never understood the man he could be.

  “You still believe that after all this time?”

  “Unless you’ve changed significantly in the last five years, I probably do.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but I still need your aid. The ledgers at Edgecombe, Bella. They’re a nightmare. I can’t make heads or tails of them and I must. There’s been theft or perhaps simple mismanagement. I’m not certain. Nothing is certain.” After his rushed ramble, he shoved a hand through his golden waves. He looked as exhausted as she’d ever seen him. “If you’d just examine them and speak to Meg. I’ve nothing to offer in return. You’d have my gratitude, but you’ve had that since the day we met.”

  The desire to help him was almost as compelling as a need. But that was exactly why she couldn’t. A few minutes in his presence and tender, foolish feelings were already there, waiting to resurface and shatter all her resolve.

  Perhaps they would always be there.

  “What was it you wished to ask of me?” he said softly. “Name it, and I’ll agree.”

  No, she couldn’t continue this. It was too much like picking at a wound that had finally healed over.

  “Please tell Meg to call. Despite the house party, I would welcome her any day.” She took a deep breath before saying the rest. “Beyond advising her, I cannot help you.”

  He closed his eyes a moment, pursed his lips, and then began to nod. “I understand. You owe me nothing, but I’ve always been a selfish man, haven’t I?”

  “I never thought so.”

  That little smile came again, tip-tilted and charming. “You thought too highly of me.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not anymore?”

  “It’s not that.” What was the point of explaining feelings that no longer mattered? “I’m sorry, but I must return to our guests.”

  He nodded and worked his jaw, then it was as if a breeze swept the clouds aside on a sunny day. He smiled, but it was the false one. The beautiful beaming facade. “I’m a selfish bastard, and I’ve kept you too long.” He reached for her hand.

  Bella bit back a gasp at the contact. His hands were bare. Hers too. And his skin was warm.

  “I bid you good evening, Miss Prescott.”

  “Good-bye, Your Grace.”

  He let her go and moved past her toward the door. Bella didn’t turn, didn’t breathe, as she waited for him to depart. Then his footsteps stopped.

  “What was the favor?” he called from behind her.

  Bella turned to face him. “It was nothing. Nonsense.”

  In a flash of rebelliousness, she’d thought to invite him to the dance and dinner her parents had planned for tomorrow night. Her birthday fete. But the impulse had been pure mischief. For a moment, she’d wondered if a single waltz with the infamous Duke of Claremont might convince the men her mother had invited to abandon their pursuit.

  “I’d be more than happy to exchange favors, Bella.” His smile was wicked, unlike any he’d ever offered her before. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  Chapter Five

  Rhys stifled a yawn, planted his boot a step higher on the rolling ladder, and stretched to tug at the books on the top bookcase shelf. Every muscle ached and he deserved it for getting the only hours of sleep he’d achieved while draped across an overstuffed settee in the corner of his father’s study.

  After meeting with Bella, there’d been no possibility of returning to his chamber and falling into anything like restful slumber. Guilt and regret still chased him, hours after their encounter.

  He could no longer pinpoint what had possessed him to go to Hillcrest and ask for her help.

  What didn’t surprise him at all was her refusal. Of course she’d refused. Bella owed him nothing and he had nothing to give her in return even if she’d agreed to assist him. It wasn’t hard to see the irony. He’d gone seeking to make his responsibilities feel like less of a burden and yet facing Bella made him more determined than ever to embrace duty and be a better duke.

  He’d decided to search his father’s study for any clue to why the Claremont finances had taken such a downturn in the previous year. He dreamed of finding a journal the old man left behind, preferably one explaining that the steward was a thief or that he’d been cheated in some investment by a scoundrel.

  But instead of answers, he’d only discovered that his father liked subterfuge. He’d squirreled away documents in the oddest of places. Random drawers, hidden compartments in his desk, and tucked behind the rows of books on the tall shelves that lined one wall of the study.

  Rhys gripped the edge of one finely tooled leather-bound copy of Herodotus with his fingertips and pulled. The volume came easily but he nearly dropped it when a feminine voice called up from below.

  “Shall I bring your morning repast here, Your Grace?” Edgecombe’s ruthlessly efficient housekeeper, Mrs. Chalmers, had taken to delivering his breakfast personally each morning. He suspected it had something to do with how foul tempered he’d been since arriving in Essex and her desire to spare the younger staff from his churlishness.

  She also had a unique talent for overruling his directives. Though she showed him all the necessary deference when other staff were about, she fussed over him like he was still the boy she’d once known when no one was about as a witness.

  “Strong coffee is all I require, Chalmers.”

  “Excellent. We’ve just pulled out fresh crumpets and there’s a bit of ham fr
om last evening’s meal.”

  Rhys shot her a raised-brow look which didn’t seem to intimidate her in the least.

  “Will you be working from the study now, Your Grace? Shall we move all of your writing implements from the conservatory?” Chalmers had always had a way of phrasing her suggestions as questions. She was grayer now and the sharp angles of her face had softened with age, but she still knew how to spark his guilty conscience just as she had when he was a child.

  “I already have.” Rhys descended two steps on the rolling ladder attached to the wall of bookcases and was rather proud to point to the ink pot, pen, and various crumpled pages littering his father’s desk. He’d managed a short note to his bank directing the transfer of additional funds and inquiring about a clerk to be sent out to Edgecombe to review the estate’s accounts. “I still need to retrieve the ledgers.”

  “I’ll have one of the footmen see to it. Have you been able to review the invoices, Your Grace?” She gestured to the corner of the desk.

  Rhys hadn’t even noticed the neat little pile of documents there.

  “They’ve been waiting for some time.” He understood the older woman’s impatience. She’d probably accomplished more in the few hours since daylight than he would all day. Though he’d been up early, the search of his father’s study had proven futile.

  After replacing Herodotus, he descended the ladder attached to the bookcase, jumped off the last step, and reached his hands over his head to stretch the muscles of his back. Aside from his hours in the Duke’s Den, he hadn’t spent so much time sitting on his arse in years. He longed for movement. Activity. Anything that didn’t involve perusing documents and deciphering tightly scribbled handwriting.

  Rhys stared down at the mess of a letter he’d been working on for the better part of an hour. A few words to his banker had been easy enough, but the note he’d begun to the Duchess of Tremayne had proved a challenge. He planned to ask her to shepherd Meg through her first Season, but he’d crossed out and rewritten so many lines the letter was no longer worthy of anything but the rubbish pile.

  Reaching out to crumple the latest attempt, his hand stilled as he looked at the doodle he’d sketched at the edge. Bella’s profile. Her round chin, elegant nose, and waves of auburn hair. He hadn’t sketched her in color, but he would always see her that way.

  He balled up the unfinished letter, aimed for the bin near the door behind Chalmers, and tossed the crumpled paper in a perfect arc that landed with a soft thud on top of the others he’d already tossed there.

  She made a little harrumphing sound of chastisement but said nothing.

  “Tell me about the invoices.”

  “They are nothing more than routine monthly expenses, Your Grace, but Lady Margaret has asked the staff to prepare a special luncheon for three of her lady friends next week, and we should see to the deliveries soon.” Rather than wait for him to retrieve the documents, she lifted the pile and held them out.

  He couldn’t take the time to decipher every word, but he skimmed a few and decided they all related to food or supplies for the ducal larder.

  “You see to some of the estate’s invoices, and I take it Mr. Brooks sees to the others?” Between Chalmers and Edgecombe’s long-serving butler, Rhys couldn’t imagine that any of the estate’s financial woes could be ascribed to their mismanagement. But if co-ownership of Lyon’s had taught him one thing, it was that people will always surprise you.

  “Quite so.” Mrs. Chalmers’s face puckered in a frown. She was a clever woman. Rhys suspected she could see through his ham-fisted interrogation and sensed there was something more afoot. “Mr. Brooks and I were allowed to purchase as we saw fit.”

  “What was left to Radley?” Rhys was due to meet with the estate’s steward in the afternoon and longed to know if his previous impressions of the man were shared by others.

  “Only when an expense was out of the ordinary would we consult Mr. Radley, and he spoke to His Grace on our behalf when necessary.” Her dark eyes narrowed behind her spectacles. “Is anything amiss?”

  Rhys liked her suspicious mind. It made him certain the staff were not aware of whatever shenanigans had gone on with the dukedom’s finances.

  “Mr. Radley is relatively new to the role of steward, is he not?”

  “Your father hired him nearly two years ago.”

  Two years during which Rhys hadn’t spoken to his father and exchanged only a handful of letters with his sister. If the dukedom was struggling, he’d never been informed.

  He scooped up the paperweights off the edge of his father’s desk. Polished rounds of jade he suspected his father liked more for their beauty than their usefulness. He began juggling the three disks. Concentrating on the task allowed him to focus his thoughts.

  “Do you like him, Chalmers?”

  “Not for me to say, Your Grace.”

  “I command you to say.”

  Her graying brows winged up high and she pressed her lips together.

  More gently, he tried, “You’re a discerning woman.” She was so clever, he had half a mind to ask her to have a look at the estate ledgers herself. But he didn’t want the staff alarmed if it was something as simple as an accounting error. “I trust your judgment, so may I have it?”

  “He’s a bit odd. Went away rather a lot. Disappeared for weeks at a time.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Can’t rightly say. We all wondered why he was allotted so many holidays or whether he was off on business for your father. I do recall mention of property the duke thought to purchase. There was talk of who among the staff might go to the new house.”

  “New house?” Rhys gestured around the spacious study. “Edgecombe has twenty-three bedrooms, three drawing rooms, and the largest ballroom in the county. Why would my father need another house?”

  “The seaside. There were whispers that he wished to buy a house for holidays. Mr. Radley did make several trips to the seaside and spoke of the temperate weather.”

  “Do you trust him?” He expected her to hedge about answering again, to demure and say it wasn’t her place to cast such a judgment. Instead, she held his gaze a long silent moment.

  “Now that you ask, Your Grace, I do have my suspicions about the steward.”

  Rhys fumbled a stone but caught it before it fell. Leaning toward his housekeeper, he whispered eagerly, “Tell me more.”

  Nothing made sense.

  The previous day, Bella had organized her book into three distinct parts and today the words seemed to run together on the page. Sorting and arranging, which usually gave her such pleasure, only stoked the irritation that had been stewing since opening her eyes.

  She could blame fatigue or the distraction of having strangers in her home, but mostly she blamed Rhys for bursting back into her life uninvited.

  How dare he disturb all the poise and contentment she’d been working toward for years? And without even a bit of warning. Even now, hours after they’d parted, she felt like a kaleidoscope being twisted, its pieces tumbling one over the other.

  Five years should have been sufficient. More than long enough to put her foolishness aside. Seeing him again shouldn’t have disturbed her peace of mind one iota. She’d fought for that peace, practiced it day after day until it was a habit every bit as firmly ingrained as her desire to speak to him every day had once been.

  She’d pushed thoughts of him aside so often that she told herself she’d forgotten how he looked and sounded and smelled, his unique spice and leather scent.

  But it wasn’t true.

  She remembered him completely, but memory was nothing to seeing the man in flesh and blood. Rhys had always exuded a vibrant energy she could feel from across a crowded room, but last night the billiard room had been empty. His nearness had surrounded her like a soothing warmth she hadn’t known she needed. Somehow, unfairly, time had lent him more appeal. Even as disheveled and exhausted as he’d looked, he was handsome. Devastatingly so. Especially whe
n he smiled. That lip-tilted smirk of his was perhaps what she’d missed most of all.

  For so long she’d told herself what she felt for him was childish nonsense. The infatuation of a girl with no real sense of what love or romance meant. She’d vowed to be unfeeling if they ever crossed paths again.

  Forgiveness, yes. She could offer him that, but nothing more.

  Last night, he’d expressed regret and she’d accepted his apology. That should have ended all that remained unresolved between them.

  So why did nothing feel resolved?

  One thing she knew with unwavering certainty: she couldn’t help him, despite how much the impulse gnawed at her. The girl who gave in to every whim and fancy was gone. New Bella had plans and they were set as firmly as the stones in the rough-hewn wall separating Yardley land from the Claremont acreage.

  Setting her manuscript aside, she stood and put on her jacket then glanced at the mirror and decided the simple knot she’d pulled her hair into would have to do. Breakfast was long over and at this hour guests would be assembled outdoors for croquet.

  Outside, Bella found the late summer sun shining on a freshly manicured lawn of vibrant green. Her mother and Louisa were consulting with servants about tables that had been moved out onto the veranda. The gentlemen seemed engrossed in the middle of a game.

  Bella was pleased to note that Teasdale was not among their number. She’d hoped embarrassment and shame at their behavior would drive him and Mr. Nix to depart early.

  Unfortunately, the wealthy mill owner remained and, as usual, he was talking. He and the other gentlemen stood with their backs to her, unaware of her approach.

  “Some would call a woman ruined for Miss Prescott’s behavior last evening.” Nix’s voice had a whiny pitch to it, and Bella bit her tongue to stop from revealing his behavior the previous evening. What would the others think of him for plotting to wager for her like a filly at Tattersall’s?

  In truth, Bella was thrilled by his disdain. Let him judge her a hoyden for speaking to an old friend. She looked at the situation strategically. With Nix and Teasdale out of consideration, she only had to contend with playing polite debutante to two gentlemen. Hammersley, who was far too old, and Lord Wentworth, who was far too quiet.