A Most Unusual Duke

by Felicia Greene

  A Most Unusual Duke

  by Felicia Greene

  The barouche rattled down the earthen track with unseemly haste, the four gentlemen inside it rocked and swayed by wind and encroaching hillocks. His Grace Wesley Harrow, the new and unfortunate Duke of Witford, clutched at the sides of the carriage as if it were going to sprout wings and fly.

  ‘I know none of you wish to hear this, but I feel very ill indeed.’ He looked weakly at his friend Adam Merricott, Earl of Merston, who made a nondescript series of soothing sounds. ‘So ill I could die.’

  ‘That’s what happens if you go to a brothel and empty their most expensive bottle of brandy, I think.’ Merricott looked at him in gentle reproach. ‘Not that I have much experience of brothels. Or brandy, come to that.’

  ‘Please don’t speak of brandy. It makes me feel violently worse.’

  Reginald Parr, the Viscount of Clyde, looked at him with unconcealed annoyance. Parr had never been all that adept at hiding his emotions—if anything, he was infamous for ruling his household with an iron hand. Widowhood and two growing twins had in no way dulled the sharper edges of his personality. ‘If you think you’re going to cast up your crumpets in an enclosed space, Harrow, have the decency to tell us. I wish to protect my shoes.’

  ‘You need to spend more time around men who are the worse for drink.’ Samuel Taunton, Marquess of Bixby, gave Harrow an encouraging wink. Harrow attempted to wink back, and winced as his face gave a throb of pain. ‘I’ll know if he’s going to be ill. I don’t think we’ve reached that crucial point yet.’

  ‘Astonishing. A man conducts a grand tour of every brothel in England, and emerges a scientist.’

  ‘You ought to try a little debauchery, Parr. It might be good for you. Can’t make you any less of an angry old stick, but—’

  ‘—If you think I’d prefer to be like you, you feckless pleasure-hunter, you need to—’

  ‘Gentlemen. Stop.’ Merricott rarely raised his voice. When he did, his gentle tone darkening, Parr and Taunton sank into immediate silence. ‘We’re making it harder than it already is for him.’

  They weren’t making it harder. If anything, the comfortable bickering of his friends made the situation seem less like something out of a nightmare. Harrow leaned his head against the side of the carriage, trying to summon up the energy to tell the assembled gentlemen that they were the one, fragile barrier between him and complete insanity.

  By the standards of the ton, he was already insane. He had to be the only man in England who didn’t want to be a duke—and not just any duke. The Witford dukedom was lavish by any stretch of the imagination, including land and properties that were the subject of drooling envy at any gaming table he happened to patronise. It came with automatic entry at White’s, an invitation to every event of the Season in both London and Bath, and a line of credit at Burlington Arcade that would put even the most dedicated frivolous spender to shame.

  A pity, then, that he didn’t want it. Didn’t want any of it. Every part of the Witford dukedom, every perk and favour, had been irrevocably tainted by the touch of his father. The former duke, now deceased, who had been a thorn in Harrow’s side ever since he was old enough to understand what a faithless, debauched individual he was.

  Assuming the title felt like becoming the man he’d hated. The man who had treated Harrow’s mother with such callous indifference, installing his mistresses in the same house as his wife. The man who had sired an unknown number of bastards, never offering them anything in the way of financial help or official recognition. The man who had the nerve to act with surprise, actual surprise, when his oldest son had told him that he wanted nothing more to do with him…

  … he had asked to be disowned. He had begged for it. But his father, apparently cruel and obstinate to the very end, had kept the title for him like a millstone around his neck. He had to go to Witford House, laden down with paperwork like grain sacks on a mule, and begin to manage the unholy mess that his life had suddenly become.

  ‘Perk up, Harrow.’ Parr’s tone would sound like callousness to the untrained observer, but Harrow knew the gruffness concealed concern. A tough, uncompromising sort of concern, which presumably came from having two small children under his charge after the death of his wife, but it could be helpful in the right circumstances. Alas, these weren’t the right circumstances. ‘Be a gentleman, for goodness’ sake. Men of your breeding aren’t allowed to wilt.’

  ‘I am allowed, Parr. I was more than permitted to avoid the funeral, curse my father’s name, and drink myself into a stupor, and I’m more than allowed to feel worse for wear now. Particularly when my life is about to become more complicated than it’s ever been before.’

  ‘Only because your current existence is simple to the point of being stupid.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with simplicity. Or stupidity, come to that. I champion both.’ Harrow tried to summon up the energy for a glare, but failed. He leaned weakly back against the side of the carriage, closing his eyes. ‘Now, alas, I have to give up both states in exchange for land I don’t want to manage, houses I don’t want to live in, and a prospective stepmother in my childhood home who I have to discard without offending her sensibilities.’

  A curious silence greeted the end of his sentence. Harrow opened his eyes to find his friends exchanging guarded looks with one another.

  ‘I thought you were going to tell him, Merricott.’ Taunton raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I thought we’d left it to Parr.’

  ‘Me? I’m a good judge of my own talents, and even I know I’m not the person for that.’

  ‘What on earth do you all mean?’ Harrow lifted his head with real effort. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He’d never seen Merricott look so uncomfortable. Twenty years of close friendship had made the man an open book to Harrow, but he couldn’t interpret his current expression. ‘Well… something.’

  ‘What did the old goat do? What land did he sell off? What house did he accidentally burn down?’

  ‘It isn’t the house. Or the land.’ Taunton looked oddly shameful. For a man whose reputation rested on complete shamelessness, it was a disturbing development. ‘It’s… well, it’s…’

  ‘It’s the wife.’ Parr looked out of the window for a moment, his face unaccountably grave. ‘The almost-wife.’

  ‘My almost-stepmother.’

  ‘Yes.’ Merricott looked as uncomfortable as he did. ‘I suppose. If you want to phrase it like that.’

  ‘How else should I phrase it? It’s the truth, isn’t it?’ Harrow blinked. ‘Well?’

  His friends had lapsed into the most curious silence. The carriage lurched for a moment, the rough earthen track of the road ending, smooth white gravel now crunching under its wheels.

  They were approaching Witford House. The jewel in his father’s extensive collection, housing a collection of Dutch art, a treasured display of Persian armour and an almost-stepmother. A stepmother who he had deliberately avoided reading, learning or conversing about, knowing that she would be both desperately unsuitable and embarrassing.

  From the looks on his friends’ faces, the woman was much more embarrassing than he’d ever suspected. What was worse, he was ten minutes from seeing her face-to-face.

  ‘What?’ He looked wildly at his assembled friends, every bump in the road making his head throb all the more. ‘What have you all been hiding?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it hiding, Harrow.’ Taunton spoke gently—never a good sign from a man who usually preferred to be bracing. ‘There—there hasn’t been a good time to discuss it.’

  ‘Why does there need to be a good time to discuss the woman my father was going to marry? And why do you all know about it?�
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  ‘Everyone knows about it.’ Parr spoke flatly, his dark eyes boring into Harrow’s with an intensity that bordered on discomfort. ‘You avoid any scrap of news concerning your father, but the rest of the ton doesn’t.’

  ‘My father’s second marriage is being discussed by the ton?’

  ‘Your father’s second marriage would have been a topic of discussion whoever he was marrying.’ Parr paused. ‘As it stands, given the identity of the woman in question, the discussion is more animated than it otherwise would be.’

  ‘Why?’ Harrow stared at Parr, his head aching. ‘Who on earth was he going to marry?’

  ‘I think we should all remain calm while discussing it.’

  ‘I can’t very well discuss it calmly without knowing what the hell I’m about to discuss!’

  ‘Now now, Harrow. Language.’ Merricott clicked his tongue; Harrow fell into irritated silence. ‘And it’s… delicate.’

  ‘How delicate?’ Harrow rubbed his painful brow, regretting the night of oblivion more powerfully than he had before. ‘Is it a maid? A foreigner? A bloody pirate queen?’

  ‘No. None of those things.’

  ‘Well what, then? Is it… could it…’

  His eyes widened. The drunken clouds in his head vanished, leaving nothing but cold, painful suspicion.

  It couldn’t be.

  ‘It’s important to specify that—that no-one knows the exact nature of the rapport.’ Merricott looked warily at Harrow. ‘The character of it, as it were.’

  If his suspicions were correct, the exact nature of the rapport wouldn’t matter a whit. The whole idea of it, even in its most innocent form, was horrible enough to drain his face of blood.

  ‘It can’t be her.’

  Marricott’s agonised look only confirmed his suspicions. ‘Harrow, it’s not as if—’

  ‘My God, it is her.’ He hadn’t said the name in years, and the sound of it felt odd in his mouth. ‘Diana.’

  As he said the name, the assembled gentlemen relaxed. Their evident calm, the fact that they had all known about it, barely touched the surface of the pain now filling Harrow’s chest.

  Diana Montcrieff. The darling of the ton, seven years ago. The woman who he had given his heart to, sworn everything to—the woman he had asked to marry.

  The woman who had laughed in his face in response to his proposal.

  ‘Diana Montcrieff was going to marry my father.’ He said the words dully; they didn’t sound real, even as they hung in the air. ‘Diana. My Diana.’

  ‘Not your Diana, Harrow.’ Parr sniffed. ‘I hate to be cruel but—’

  ‘Then don’t.’ As always, Merricott’s gentleness outweighed Parr’s severity. ‘Don’t be.’

  Diana Montcrieff, the only woman he had ever loved. The woman he knew he still loved, on the nights where alcohol or pure misery managed to chase away his anger. Diana, the person he had given his soul to—his father had proposed to her, knowing the story? She had accepted?

  It was not to be borne. None of it. Without Merricott’s hand gently restraining him, he would throw himself out of the window of the carriage without a second thought. Or order the driver to take him to the nearest cliffs, and throw himself over those.

  ‘She’s in Witford house now.’ Once again, the words didn’t seem real. ‘Waiting for me.’

  ‘I doubt she’s anywhere else. Not after all that business with her father.’ Merricott spoke with an abundance of tact; Harrow forced himself not to react, despite being seized with curiosity. Had something happened to Diana’s family—to the status that they had always enjoyed in the ton? ‘She was to move there forthwith, or to another of the Witford properties.’

  ‘Then she’s there. And I am to meet her unprepared.’

  ‘I doubt she’s any more prepared than you are, Harrow.’ Tautnon shrugged. ‘Your father was relatively hale and hearty for his age. His death was unexpected—you said it yourself, when you heard.’

  ‘Diana was never unprepared. She was always conniving.’

  ‘And you’re already unreasonably angry.’ Merricott’s smile faded. ‘Come now. Patience.’

  ‘She was going to be his mother-in-law.’ Parr tutted. ‘I’d be bloody impatient as well.’

  ‘Well how on earth am I supposed to be? Patient, or raging?’ Harrow looked out of the window; to his horror, the grand facade of Witford House was growing more and more visible. ‘Because all I want to do in this particular moment is shoot something, or be sick. And I don’t want to do either anywhere near Diana.’

  ‘How are we supposed to calm you?’

  ‘By telling me that the whole story is nonsense, and I’m about to meet some blameless dowager! Not the woman who I wanted to make my wife!’

  ‘The barouche is coming, ma’am.’ The maid spoke quietly, watching the face of her mistress with extreme caution. ‘He’ll be here any minute.’

  Other women would have flinched. Some would have cried, or prayed. Diana Montcrieff, turning from the window, merely nodded in assent.

  ‘Thank you, Lavinia.’ She looked down at Lavinia, who hurriedly curtsied. ‘You may go.’

  Even if she wasn’t the Duchess of Witford—and would never be, at this point—it was still important to behave as if she was. It would help her feel less like collapsing into tears as she stood in the morning room of Witford House, the life she had hurriedly built shattering into pieces around her. She stood with regal stillness, the picture of refined melancholy, as the maid took her leave with a final curtsey.

  She would have to become accustomed to living without staff. Living without wealth, or splendour, or safety—the one thing she had truly wanted. The thing she thought she’d gained, like a spectacular treasure bestowed unexpectedly, when the former Duke of Witford had asked for her hand in marriage.

  The old gentlemen had always made it clear that she would be parcelled away in some pleasant townhouse, with enough income to ensure a fine Season until the day she died. That had always been the arrangement—unorthodox, perhaps, but clear enough for Diana. She had known ever since the sudden death of her father that marriage for love, wonderful as it sounded, was a fantasy.

  She needed stability. Security. And the former Duke of Witford, elderly and frail as he had been, had been sharp-minded enough to understand exactly what she needed. A legal, binding commitment, a civility that bordered on friendship, and absolutely no suggestion of anything carnal.

  She had worried about the essential oddness of such an arrangement. Old men who promised marriage to young women normally only wanted one thing—well, two things. Pleasure, and then heirs as a result of that pleasure. But Arthur, despite his reputation for debauchery, had made it very clear that he wished to do nothing but help her.

  Alas, he had died before anything had been signed. She was adrift, now—cast to the winds of fortune, without her last protector, and at the mercy of… well, of…

  ‘Wesley.’ She whispered the word to the vast, sheet-shrouded gallery. She hadn’t permitted herself to say his name in so long, so unutterably long, that the name felt faintly sinful as it left her lips. Like blasphemy.

  Wesley Harrow, Arthur’s son. The man whose heart she’d broken in the year of her first Season, when she’d been drunk on her own power as a beautiful darling of the ton. The man who she’d only realised she cared for when it was much, much too late.

  Old grief. Old pain. Pain she hadn’t thought she would ever need to confront, given the glittering life she thought awaited her. But right when she was about to make the perfect, money-drenched, loveless marriage of her parents’ dreams, her father had died under a mountain of hidden debt.

  No more marriage. No more future. When Wesley’s father had made his unusual proposal, Diana knew it was the best offer she was ever likely to recieve. She had taken it without a backward glance.

  Wesley wasn’t meant to matter. He never spoke to his father, never visited him—they didn’t even look alike. He had always hated Arthur for the sin
s of his past, and Arthur had accepted his son’s hatred. Diana had known it wasn’t her place to attempt a mending of bridges, a softening of the hardness between father and son—as a prospective second wife, a young second wife, her place was to be decorative and charming.

  She had pushed Wesley out of her mind during the arrangements for she and Arthur’s marriage. She had managed not to think of him while touring Witford House, seeing the grand spaces in which he had been raised. She had even managed not to think of Wesley when the old duke had bowed, kissing her hand with lips that felt dry as dust, and thanked her for her acceptance in the manner of a man buying a particularly fine horse.

  She had only succumbed to thoughts of Wesley when safely in her own bed, in rooms that Arthur paid for without a second thought. There, with a shame that racked her from head to foot, she had wept for what could have been. Only in darkness could such regrets be properly considered, and mourned—daylight was for survival, and nothing else.

  It was daylight now, but she didn’t feel as if she were surviving. If anything she was drowning, drowning in a vast sea, with no helping hand in sight.

  She flinched as the sound of new footsteps filled the house. There was no correct way to stand, to present herself—she had chosen the most modest of her gowns, but it still felt strangely gaudy now she knew Wesley was to see it. She didn’t want to look rich in front of him, didn’t want him to think of his father’s money dressing her, grooming her. She forced herself to stand still, as if considering the sunlit garden with every ounce of her strength, as the door opened again.

  Lavinia was silent this time. Even her maid understood the import of this first meeting. Diana turned, head half-bowed, to see Lavinia vanishing into the corridor.

  Wesley stood at the threshold of the door.

  He was much, much more handsome than she remembered. She had deliberately avoided him since the rejected proposal; he shunned any gathering his father attended, and so she had found safe harbour. She assumed that he had found his own circle, his own friends. Friends that had watched him grow into the man she saw before her now, his face full of the harsh, sculptural quality that she had glimpsed hints of in the past.