‘‘With you as heir, he’d need to.’’ Crow Fanshaw wouldn’t know a mangel-wurzel from manure, and they both knew it.
The baronet didn’t take offense. ‘‘What, ruin m’boots in dirt? M’valet would give notice, then where would I be? ’Sides, Virgil’s managing to fill his nursery nicely, two boys and a girl. Then there are m’cousin’s parcel of brats if he needs extras. I’m safe.’’ He raised his glass in a toast. ‘‘Condolences, old friend.’’
Ware frowned, lowering thick dark brows over his hazel eyes. Easy for Crow to laugh, his very soul wasn’t engraved with the Ware family motto: Semper servimus. We serve forever. Forever, dash it, the duke unnecessarily reminded himself. His heritage, everything he was born and bred to be and to believe, demanded an heir. Posterity demanded it, all those acres and people dependent upon him demanded it, Aunt Eudora demanded it! God, King, and Country, that’s what the Wares served, she insisted. Well, Leland made his donations to the church, he took his tedious seat in Parliament, and he served as a diplomat when the Foreign Office needed him. That was not enough. The Bible said be fruitful and multiply, quoted his childless aunt. The King, bless his mad soul, needed more loyal peers to advise and direct his outrageous progeny. And the entire country, according to Eudora Warrington, would go to rack and ruin without a bunch of little Warringtons trained to manage Ware’s vast estates and investments. At the very least, her annuity might be in danger.
Leland checked his watch again. Ten-ten. He felt as if he were going to the tooth-drawer, dreading the moment yet wishing it were over. ‘‘What time do you have, Crow?’’
Crosby fumbled at the various chains crisscrossing his narrow chest. ‘‘I say, you must have an important appointment, the way you keep eyeing your timepiece. Which is it, that new red-haired dancer at the opera or the dashing widow you had up in your phaeton yesterday?’’ While the duke sat glaring, Fanshaw pulled out his quizzing glass, then a seal with his family crest before finally retrieving his watch fob. ‘‘Fifteen minutes past the hour.’’
Ware groaned. ‘‘Almack’s’’ was all he could manage to say. It was enough.
Fanshaw dropped his watch and grabbed up the looking glass by its gem-studded handle, tangling ribbons and chains as he surveyed his friend for signs of dementia. ‘‘I thought you said Almack’s.’’
‘‘I did. I told you, I need an heir.’’
‘‘But Almack’s, Lee? Gads, you must be dicked in the nob. Castaway, that’s it.’’ He pushed the bottle out of the duke’s reach.
‘‘Not nearly enough,’’ His Grace replied, pulling the decanter back and refilling his glass. ‘‘I promised Aunt Eudora I’d look over the latest crop of dewy-eyed debs.’’
Crosby downed a glass in commiseration. ‘‘I understand about the heir and all, but there must be an easier way, by Jupiter. I mean, m’brother’s girl is making her come-out this year. She’s got spots. And her friends giggle. Think on it, man, they are, what? Seventeen? Eighteen? And you’re thirty-one!’’
‘‘Thirty-two,’’ His Grace growled, ‘‘as my aunt keeps reminding me.’’
‘‘Even worse. What in the world do you have in common with one of those empty-headed infants?’’
‘‘What do I have in common with that redhead from the opera? She’s only eighteen, and the only problem you have with that is she’s in my bed, not yours.’’
‘‘But she’s a ladybird! You don’t have to talk to them, not like a wife!’’
The duke stood as if to go. ‘‘Trust me, I don’t intend to have anything more to do with this female I’ll marry than it takes to get me a son.’’
‘‘If a son is all you want, why don’t you just adopt one? Be easier in the long run, more comfortable, too. M’sister’s got a surplus. I’m sure she’d be glad to get rid of one or two, the way she’s always trying to pawn them off on m’mother so she can go to some house party or other.’’
The duke ignored his friend’s suggestion that the next Duke of Ware be anything less than a Warrington, but he did sit down. ‘‘That’s another thing: No son of mine is going to be raised up by nannies and tutors and underpaid schoolmasters.’’
‘‘Why not? That’s the way we were brought up, and we didn’t turn out half bad, did we?’’
Leland picked a bit of imaginary fluff off his superfine sleeve. Not half bad? Not half good, either, he reflected. Crow was an amiable fribble, while he himself was a libertine, a pleasure-seeker, an ornament of society. Oh, he was a conscientious landowner, for a mostly absentee landlord, and he did manage to appear at the House for important votes. Otherwise his own entertainment—women, gaming, sporting—was his primary goal. There was nothing of value in his life. He intended to do better by his son. ‘‘I mean to be a good father to the boy, a guide, a teacher, a friend.’’
‘‘A Bedlamite, that’s what. Try being a friend to some runny-nosed brat with scraped knees and a pocketful of worms.’’ Crosby shivered. ‘‘I know just the ticket to cure you of such bubble-brained notions: Why don’t you come down to Fanshaw Hall with me for the holidays? Virgil’d be happy to have you for the cards and hunting, and m’sister-in-law would be in alt to have such a nonpareil as houseguest. That niece who’s being fired off this season will be there, so you can see how hopeless young chits are, all airs and affectations one minute, tears and tantrums the next. Why, if you can get Rosalie to talk of anything but gewgaws and gossip, I’ll eat my hat. Best of all, m’sister will be at the Hall with her nursery brood. No, best of all is if the entire horde gets the mumps and stays home. But, ’struth, you’d change your tune about this fatherhood gammon if you just spent a day with the little savages.’’
Ware smiled. ‘‘I don’t mean to insult your family, but your sister’s ill-behaved brats only prove my point that this whole child-rearing thing could be improved upon with a little careful study.’’
‘‘Trust me, Lee, infants ain’t like those new farming machines you can read up on. Come down and see. At least I can promise you a good wine cellar at the Hall.’’
The duke shook his head. ‘‘Thank you, Crow, but I have to refuse. You see, I really am tired of spending the holidays with other people’s families.’’
‘‘What I see is you’ve been bitten bad by this new bug of yours. Carrying on the line. Littering the countryside with butterstamps. Next thing you know, you’ll be pushing a pram instead of racing a phaeton. I’ll miss you, Lee.’’ He flicked a lacy handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed at his eyes while the duke grinned at the performance. Fanshaw’s next words changed that grin into so fierce a scowl that a lesser man, or a less loyal friend, would have been tempted to bolt: ‘‘Don’t mean to be indelicate, but you know getting leg-shackled isn’t any guarantee of getting heirs.’’
‘‘Of course I know that, blast it! I ought to, I’ve already been married.’’ The duke finished his drink. ‘‘Twice.’’ He tossed back another glassful to emphasize the point. ‘‘And all for nothing.’’
Fanshaw wasn’t one to let a friend drink alone, even if his words were getting slurred and his thoughts muddled. He refilled his own glass. Twice. ‘‘Not for nothing. Got a handsome dowry both times.’’
‘‘Which I didn’t need,’’ His Grace muttered into his drink.
‘‘And got the matchmaking mamas off your back until you learned to depress their ambitions with one of your famous setdowns.’’
‘‘Which if I’d learned earlier, I wouldn’t be in this hobble today.’’
The duke’s first marriage had been a love match: He was in love with the season’s reigning Toast, Carissa was in love with his wealth and title. Her mother made sure he never saw past the Diamond’s beauty to the cold, rock-hard shrew beneath who didn’t want to be his wife, she wanted to be a duchess. There wasn’t one extravagance she didn’t indulge, not one risqué pleasure she didn’t gratify, not one mad romp she didn’t join. Until she broke her beautiful neck in a curricle race.
Ware’s second marriage w
as one of convenience, except that it wasn’t. He carefully selected a quiet, retiring sort of girl whose pale loveliness was as different from Carissa’s flamboyance as night from day. Her noble parents had managed to conceal, while they were dickering over the settlements, that Lady Floris was a sickly child, that her waiflike appeal had more to do with a weak constitution than any gentle beauty. Floris was content to stay in the shadows after their wedding, until she became a shadow. Then she faded away altogether. Ware was twice a widower, never a father. To his knowledge, he’d never even sired a bastard on one of his mistresses, but he didn’t want to think about the implications of that.
‘‘What time do you have?’’
Crosby peered owl-eyed at his watch, blinked, then turned it right side up. ‘‘Ten-thirty. Time for another drink.’’ He raised his glass, spilling only a drop on the froth of lace at his shirt-sleeve. ‘‘To your bride.’’
Leland couldn’t do it. The wine would turn to vinegar on his tongue. Instead, he proposed a toast of his own. ‘‘To my cousin Tony, the bastard to blame for this whole deuced coil.’’
Crosby drank, but reflected, ‘‘If he was a bastard, then it wouldn’t have mattered if the nodcock went and got himself killed. He couldn’t have been your heir anyway.’’
His Grace waved that aside with one elegant if unsteady hand. ‘‘Tony was a true Warrington all right, my father’s only brother’s only son. My heir. So he got to go fight against Boney when the War Office turned me down.’’
‘‘Protective of their dukes, those chaps.’’
‘‘And he got to be a hero, the lucky clunch.’’
‘‘Uh, not to be overparticular, but live heroes are lucky, dead ones ain’t.’’
Leland went on as though his friend hadn’t spoken: ‘‘And he was a fertile hero to boot. Old Tony didn’t have to worry about shuffling off this mortal coil without a trace. He left twins, twin boys, no less, the bounder, and he didn’t even have a title to bequeath them or an acre of land!’’
‘‘Twin boys, you say? Tony’s get? There’s your answer, Lee, not some flibbertigibbet young miss. Go gather the sprigs and have the raising of ’em your way if that’s what you want to do. With any luck they’ll be out of nappies and you can send ’em off to school as soon as you get tired of ’em. Should take about a month, I’d guess.’’
Ware frowned. ‘‘I can’t go snabble my cousin’s sons, Crow. Tony’s widow just brought them back to her parents’ house from the Peninsula.’’
Fanshaw thought on it a minute, chewing his lower lip. ‘‘Then marry that chit, I say. You get your heirs with Warrington blood, your brats to try to make into proper English gentlemen, and a proven breeder into the bargain. ’Sides, she can’t be an antidote; Tony Warrington had taste.’’
The duke merely looked down his slightly aquiline nose and stood up to leave. ‘‘She’s a local vicar’s daughter.’’
‘‘Good enough to be Mrs. Major Warrington, eh, but not the Duchess of Ware?’’ The baronet nodded, not noticing that his starched shirtpoints disarranged his artful curls. ‘‘Then you’d best toddle off to King Street, where the ton displays its merchandise. Unless ...’’
Ware turned back like a drowning man hearing the splash of a tossed rope. ‘‘Unless . . . ?’’
‘‘Unless you ask the widow for just one of the bantlings. She might just go for it. I mean, how many men are going to take on a wife with two tokens of her dead husband’s devotion to support? There’s not much space in any vicarage I know of, and you said yourself Tony didn’t leave much behind for them to live on. ’Sides, you can appeal to her sense of fairness. She has two sons and you have none.’’
Leland removed the bottle and glass from his friend’s vicinity on his way out of the room. ‘‘You have definitely had too much to drink, my tulip. Your wits have gone begging for dry land.’’
And the Duke of Ware still needed an heir.
Heaving breasts, fluttering eyelashes, gushing simpers, blushing whimpers—and those were the hopeful mamas. The daughters were worse. Aunt Eudora could ice-skate in Hades before her nephew returned to Almack’s.
Ware had thought he’d observe the crop of debutantes from a discreet, unobtrusive distance. Sally Jersey thought differently. With pointed fingernails fastened to his wrist like the talons of a raptor, she dragged her quarry from brazen belle to arrogant heiress to wilting wallflower. At the end of each painful, endless dance, when he had, perforce, to return his partner to her chaperone, there was la Jersey waiting in prey with the next willing sacrificial virgin.
The Duke of Ware needed some air.
He told the porter at the door he was going to blow a cloud, but he didn’t care if the fellow let him back in or not. Leland didn’t smoke. He never had, but he thought he might take it up now. Perhaps the foul odor, yellowed fingers, and stained teeth could discourage some of these harpies, but he doubted it.
Despite the damp chill in the air, the duke was not alone on the outer steps of the marriage mart. At first all he could see in the gloomy night was the glow from a sulphurous cigar. Then another, younger gentleman stepped out of the fog.
‘‘Is that you, Ware? Here at Almack’s? I cannot believe it,’’ exclaimed Nigel, the scion of the House of Ellerby which, according to rumors, was more than a tad dilapidated. Hence the young baron’s appearance at Almack’s, Leland concluded. ‘‘Dash it, I wish I’d been in on the bet.’’ Which propensity to gamble likely accounted for the Ellerbys’ crumbling coffers.
‘‘Bet? What bet?’’
‘‘The one that got you to Almack’s, Duke. By Zeus, it must have been a famous wager! Who challenged you? How long must you stay before you can collect? How much—’’
‘‘There was no wager,’’ Ware quietly inserted into the youth’s enthusiastic litany.
The cigar dropped from Ellerby’s fingers. His mouth fell open. ‘‘No wager? You mean . . . ?’’
‘‘I came on my own. As a favor to my aunt, if you must know.’’
Ellerby added two plus two and, to the duke’s surprise, came up with the correct, dismaying answer. ‘‘B’gad, wait till the sharks smell fresh blood in the water.’’ He jerked his head, weak chin and all, toward the stately portals behind them.
Leland grimaced. ‘‘Too late, they’ve already got the scent.’’
‘‘Lud, there will be females swooning in your arms and chits falling off horses on your doorstep. I’d get out of town if I were you. Then again, word gets out you’re in the market for a new bride, you won’t be safe anywhere. With all those holiday house parties coming up, you’ll be showered with invitations.’’
The duke could only agree. That was the way of the world.
‘‘Please, Your Grace,’’ Ellerby whined, ‘‘don’t accept Lady Carstaire’s invite. I’ll be seated below the salt if you accept.’’
No slowtop either, Leland nodded toward the closed doors. ‘‘Tell me which one is Miss Carstaire, so I can sidestep the introduction.’’
‘‘She’s the one in puce tulle with mouse brown sausage curls and a squint.’’ At Ware’s look of disbelief, the lordling added, ‘‘And ten thousand pounds a year.’’
‘‘I think I can manage not to succumb to the lady’s charms,’’ Ware commented dryly, then had to listen to the coxcomb’s gratitude.
‘‘And I’ll give you fair warning, Duke. If you do accept for any of those house parties, lock your door and never go anywhere alone. The misses and their mamas will be quicker to yell ‘compromise’ than you can say ‘Jack Rabbit.’ ’’
Leland gravely thanked Lord Ellerby for the advice, hoping the baron wasn’t such an expert on compromising situations from trying to nab a rich wife the cad’s way. Fortune-hunting was bad enough. He wished him good luck with Miss Carstaire, but declined Ellerby’s suggestion that they return inside together. His Grace had had enough. And no, he assured the baron, he was not going to accept any of the holiday invitations. The Duke of Ware was going to spend Chr
istmas right where he belonged, at Ware Hold in Warefield, Warwickshire, with his own family: one elderly aunt, two infant cousins.
Before going to bed that night, Leland had another brandy to ease the headache he already had. He sat down to write his agent in Warefield to notify the household of his plans, then he started to write to Tony’s widow, inviting her to the castle. Before he got too far past the salutation, however, Crow Fanshaw’s final, foxed suggestion kept echoing in his mind: The Duke of Ware should get a fair share.
ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS
Diane Farr
The vicarage was small and shabby, and so was the girl. But when Her Grace placed an imperious finger beneath the girl’s chin and tilted her face toward the light, the better to see her features, a certain something flashed in the child’s expression—a look of astonished reproach—that slightly altered Her Grace’s opinion. The girl met the duchess’s eyes fearlessly, almost haughtily. Just so, thought the duchess, a faint, grim smile briefly disrupting the impassivity of her countenance. This milk-and-water miss may be a true Delacourt after all.
The duchess dropped her hand then, remarking idly, ‘‘You are offended by my examination. Do not be. A woman in my position must be careful. I am forever at risk of being imposed upon.’’
Ah, there it was again. The flash of swiftly suppressed anger, the unconscious stiffening of the spine. She had spirit, this unknown grandchild of the duke’s Uncle Richard.
She spoke then. Her voice was sweet and musical. At the moment, however, it was also crisp with annoyance.
‘‘I am sorry, Your Grace, that I must contradict you, but there is little risk of your being imposed upon by me. I have not sought you out in any way. You have come to my home, ostensibly on a visit of condolence, and asked me the most extraordinary questions— scrutinized me as if I were some sort of insect—all but placed me under a microscope—’’
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