Schooling the Duke (The Heart of a Scandal, #1)

by Christi Caldwell

  And mattered not at all.

  What mattered were her security and her place in this wholly uncertain world. Hands shaking, Rowena slowed her footsteps and unfurled her tightly clenched palms. Where will I go now? Returning to her family would never be an option.

  I am going to marry you, Rowena Endicott.

  Is that a question?

  She slowed to a stop, as that long-buried voice floated to the surface of her memory. She’d not allowed herself to think of him in years. Whenever he slid into her thoughts, she’d easily buried him away. A task that hadn’t always been easy, to bury thoughts of the man who’d once been friend then lover... and then nothing at all. But eventually, she’d banished the memory of Graham Linford to the far recesses of her mind, so the pain of that long-ago betrayal could heal.

  Mayhap it was the uncertainty roused by the headmistress’s summons that rekindled the horrors of a similar summons of long ago. Rowena stared unblinkingly at the end of the corridor ahead. She was no longer the cowering child intimidated by a title, dominated by a powerful duke. In the time since she’d established a new life inside the finishing school, she’d shaped herself into a strong, capable woman in charge of her own fate. If she were sent away this day for some imagined failing by the miserable woman who ran this institution, then she would go out into the world with her experience as an instructor and begin again. Just as she’d done before. She could begin again. Panic churned in her stomach, making a mockery of her confidence.

  Rowena started as a soft, reassuring hand settled on her shoulder. Elizabeth gave a slight squeeze.

  With that truth and the other woman’s unspoken support fueling her, Rowena squared her shoulders. “It will be fine,” she said softly. “Go see to your tasks.” She’d not see another in Mrs. Belden’s potential bad graces because of her.

  Her friend lingered. “You’re certain?”

  Forcing a smile for the younger woman’s benefit, she nodded. “I’ve long been in Mrs. Belden’s favor. Surely I cannot fall so quickly out of it.” That assurance was made as much for Elizabeth as for herself. Yet, any woman employed in this hallowed institution with a brain in her head knew that to be false. Mrs. Belden was as fickle as the day was long.

  Elizabeth briefly gathered Rowena’s hands in an emotional display that would have seen her sternly warned by the headmistress. She released them and started reluctantly down the hall, pausing to cast a final searching look at her.

  Rowena kept her lips turned up, straining those muscles. But as soon as Elizabeth disappeared around the corner, she let that false expression of mirth go. Drawing in a deep breath, she resumed her forward march. For all the heartbreak life had thrown at her, hadn’t she ultimately prevailed, triumphing over cruelty and finding herself on her own two feet? Albeit with the help of a now-dead duke. Oh, how she abhorred a Society where she had so little control over her fate and future. She wanted a life where she dictated the course. Not because a nobleman interfered on her behalf or against it, but because of who she was—a bastard.

  If you’re sacked for your mother’s sins, you’ll have no place awaiting you but one on your back. Returning home was never an option. She’d been cast out with the same expediency the Lord had banished Lucifer, and Rowena had learned from that moment that she’d only herself to rely upon.

  Bile stung her throat. She stopped outside the hated door and, as she’d been told from her first day as an instructor, took a slow, steadying breath, battled back nausea, and scratched on the panel. Like a bloody cat. If she’d ever run this, or any school for young ladies, her employees and charges would all give an appropriate, unapologetic knock.

  “Enter.” The headmistress’ frosty, curt reply penetrated the paneled door. Schooling her features, Rowena stepped inside. She flexed her palms to still the trembling.

  The older woman sat behind her desk as she always did, scribbling away at a page inside a leather folio. Rowena often suspected the gray-haired headmistress took her meals and spent her nights in that very chair: the throne of her small kingdom. Was that the fate of all women who ascend to the rank of headmistress? She would be contented with happy students and a lifetime of security.

  “Close the door, Mrs. Bryant,” Mrs. Belden ordered, not taking her gaze from the book that commanded all her attention.

  With still unsteady fingers, Rowena promptly closed it behind her. She’d learned early on that you didn’t speak or make a move until orders were directed specifically to you. It was a lesson handed down the day she’d arrived, a girl forever separated from her family—scared, miserable, and nursing a broken heart. Now, with this unexpected summons raising the possibility of her being sacked, she searched the headmistress for a hint of knowing.

  “You may sit,” the older woman said, at last setting down her pen.

  It was an offer that spoke volumes about Rowena’s exalted position as first instructor. All the others, the instructors included, were made to stand. Surely if she’d been found out as a whore’s daughter, she’d not be invited to sit before the decorous harpy? With smooth, practiced steps, she crossed the floor and slid onto the edge of the stiff, wooden chair.

  The older woman sat back in her seat and laid her arms along the sides of her chair. Silence stretched on as she scrutinized Rowena in an assessing manner that sent panic spiraling once more. Oh, God. She does know.

  When she was first sent here with letters of reference from the Duke of Hampstead one year after his son had gone to war, Rowena had moved through each day, breath held for the damning discovery. Not only had she given her virtue to a nobleman’s son in the grass like a common whore, but she’d also shared the blood of one of those shameful women. With each passing year, that fear had receded so Rowena, in her own mind, was left with the sins of her failings and weaknesses. She’ll not sack me. I have been good and loyal and have broken no rules.

  Not any that the woman was aware of—or, at least not at the school.

  And, yet, the headmistress had a reputation for disdaining any employee who became too comfortable in her post. Comfort makes sloppiness was the charge they were each reminded of.

  Mrs. Belden slowly removed her glasses, and then folded and set them on the immaculate surface of her desk. “The day you were brought here, I judged you as I do all. I found you wanting.” And there had been much to find wanting. An eighteen-year-old woman with eyes swollen from too many tears shed, cowering and unable to spit out her own name without stammering. “In my experience, when an older nobleman brings me a woman, she is either a by-blow or a lightskirt.”

  Rowena went still. Oh, God. She knows. “Mrs. Belden?” she asked evenly, and her palms grew moist just like that. One utterance from her, and she was transformed, once more, into that scared child she’d been.

  “I was instructed to give you employment. A girl of eighteen,” she scoffed. “A promise that you’d one day become instructor.” That is, after all, the hollow pact that had been struck. Rowena’s virtue, her name, and her family’s security for honorable employment in the Surrey countryside. The extent of a duke’s power, even after all these years, staggered her still. To make a woman such as Mrs. Belden take in an unknown, few questions asked, all because of a man’s title.

  Then again, the world of the peerage had always been as foreign to her as a country she’d never visited but often wondered and read about.

  “Countless women have come to me seeking employment in this honorable institution.” A place where young girls’ spirits went to die. “And countless more have been turned away. It requires a special woman to work here,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. Her words rang with more emotion than Rowena recalled in all her years working for the miserable harpy. “A woman incapable of emotion and feeling.” Yes, that was the person this headmistress and the students saw in Rowena. For all her failings, she’d been a master at shaping herself into someone different than the girl she’d been—a woman who now felt little and hurt less. It was far safer that way.
“It requires a woman of strength and honor. You have proven yourself to be the best of any other to come before you.”

  “Thank—”

  “It was not a compliment, Mrs. Bryant,” Mrs. Belden snapped out. “You know the rules on compliments.” Yes, they were reserved as pretty endearments for gentlemen to woo an unquestionably genteel lady, so she might become a dutiful bride. Distaste filled her mouth at those words Rowena had been forced to utter to girls in her care.

  There was a special place in hell for women who would encourage others to dampen their spirit, all to preserve one’s own security as she had done.

  The woman tightened her mouth and sat back suddenly in her seat. “Alas, you are the best,” she said, reaching inside the pocket of her apron and pulling out a kerchief. “And do you know what the problem is with being the best?”

  Invariably everything was some manner of test with this woman. “What is that, Mrs. Belden?” she asked, because invariably the woman would always be the one with the answers.

  “The problem is,” the woman repeated, leaning forward, her chair groaning under the weight of that slight movement. “Noblemen require the best. And the needs and wants of the peerage matter most.”

  Rowena bit the inside of her cheek hard. That truth had been handed down years earlier, at the hands of the Duke of Hampstead and his son. There were no further lessons required from this woman.

  The older woman pursed her already pinched mouth. “Yes, the desires of a nobleman come before even this institution.” With that, she looked expectantly at her.

  “They come before all,” Rowena at last managed to utter. The headmistress was too arrogant and blinded by her own self-importance to ever hear the biting sarcasm in her retort. But then, no one in these hallowed halls, including the head dragon of them all, would ever hear or see anything less than dignified from her.

  On a sigh, Mrs. Belden dusted the rims of her spectacles. “Precisely. It is why your services are required elsewhere.” She paused and looked Rowena squarely in the eyes. “A powerful nobleman who has been named guardian to a young... lady.” By the sneer on the woman’s lips, she found the young girl in question wanting. “Regardless, the lady requires a companion.”

  The muscles of Rowena’s stomach twisted. Surely this was some mad jest. And yet, in all her years here, this cold, unfeeling woman before her had never revealed a hint of a grin, smile, or giggle. And with that, the façade of demure lady was cut out from under her. Rowena surged forward in her seat.

  “What?” she blurted for a second time that day. Panicky questions ran frantically through her mind as with but a single exchange, the well-ordered existence she had singlehandedly shaped for herself was thrown into tumult.

  “Mrs. Bryant,” the older woman said in clipped tones. At any other time, Rowena would have dropped her gaze in a demure rendering of the lesson handed to her students. Not now. Not when presented with the prospect of being shipped off and sent into a world where she didn’t belong. Nor ever aspired to. His world. That difference between them had seen her entire existence ripped asunder.

  “My apologies,” Rowena managed in even tones.

  “As I was saying, your services have been requested.” Not hers, specifically. Rather, the best instructor. After all the years she’d worked to cement her position as the first instructor to preserve her place, now she’d be sent away for it. “However, the gentleman wishes to interview you, and determine your worth. If he approves, you are to depart for London.”

  “London,” she squawked. The place where Graham Linford, the new Duke of Hampstead, had years earlier set himself up as rogue, and then, by the papers’ reports, as an austere, powerful, and coolly aloof duke. Just like his father. Her lips twisted in a pained rendition of a smile. Then could there have been any other fate for him? The searing words he’d inked on a sheet of vellum served as a forever reminder of what came in loving and dreaming beyond her station. “How old is the girl?” she asked, when she trusted herself to speak.

  “Seventeen.”

  Not a girl, then. Rather, just one year younger than Rowena herself had been when she’d been forced to leave her family and friends and the only true home she’d ever known. She pressed her eyes briefly closed. But life was and always would be vastly different for a lady of seventeen and a courtesan’s daughter of a like age.

  Now she’d be forced to return to London. A place she’d not been since her mother and stepfather packed her up and made for the country to begin a new life. As a young girl, she’d been euphoric when they’d put the busy, unkind streets behind them. She’d vowed never to return. And why should she have wanted to? She and her mother had been derided by those powerful lords and ladies they passed shopping and during jaunts to the park.

  Yet once more, the proverbial rug had been tugged out from under her feet. Only this time, she’d be plunged directly into that cold, unfeeling world. A place inhabited by Graham. I am going to throw-up. Rowena made a desperate bid at self-preservation. “Though I am”—horrified—“flattered, Mrs. Belden, I have no ego and recognize that each instructor in your employ is possessed of equal skill, logic, and character.” In short, they’d had the spirit knocked out of them, just like her. “Surely it would prove problematic to remove me from my role and fill it with a new instructor. Would it not?”

  It was a futile bid. And yet, by the furrowing of the older woman’s brow, a practical argument. And the headmistress was nothing if not practical. Hope blossomed in her breast.

  “I do largely agree that all my girls are of like accomplishment, I also see you’ve risen above in your capabilities. Otherwise, you’d not be first instructor,” the headmistress pointed out needlessly. That position had presented the possibility of greater stability and a larger salary. Now her experience would be used against her. Mrs. Belden folded her hands primly on her desk. “I am not illogical, Mrs. Bryant.” Rowena’s heart kicked up a beat, as with that single utterance hope was restored. “I’ll allow him no more than a year of your services.” Oh, God, a year? It may as well have been an eternity plus a day. “His Grace was very specific in—”

  Another bloody duke. Those men with their inflated sense of self-importance and arrogance who ruled the world.

  A knock sounded at the doorway and the headmistress was interrupted. “Enter,” Mrs. Belden called out, climbing to her feet with a stiff elegance.

  Rowena followed suit and dipped her head with the deferential respect she’d believed herself incapable of years earlier. God, how she despised these pompous nobles. All of them expecting the earth to halt its movement and people to drop their eyes and dip their curtsies. She firmed her jaw. Though, there was one noble she despised above all others. And as long as she did not ever again have to see the Devil Duke of Hamp—

  “His Grace, the Duke of Hampstead,” the servant introduced.

  And all her years of smooth grace flew out the proverbial window, Rowena spun about with such speed she knocked the delicate chair over where it landed with a loud crack. Her heart thundering, she ignored the shocked gasp and words of recrimination from Mrs. Belden and the servant setting the chairs to rights. Rowena’s eyes remained fixed instead on the towering, dark duke now coldly assessing her.

  In all her remembering of this man, he’d been frozen in time as the lean, easily smiling gentleman of his youth. A dull humming filled her ears. This broad, towering bear of a man with his chiseled features and powerful muscles straining the fabric of his elegantly cut garments belonged more on an ancient battlefield than in a headmistress’s office. The jagged scar that zigzagged down the right portion of his face started at the corner of his eye and ended at his chin.

  She focused on breathing. Nay. She’d merely misheard the servant. This fearsome gentleman bore no hint of the man who’d stolen her heart, won her virtue, and then left without giving her another thought. She was going mad. Hearing things. Imagining him, even when she’d schooled herself in all the ways with which to forget.
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  “Mrs. Bryant?” the headmistress barked, snapping Rowena to attention.

  Then, the gentleman smiled, dimpling his left cheek. Graham’s smile, only harder, wiser, angrier.

  He’d promised to return. And he had.

  Only, eleven years too late.

  Chapter 3

  Long ago, Graham had become master of his emotions—over nearly everything and everyone.

  Or so he’d believed. Until this very moment. His heart hammered like the beat marked upon a drum through long marches across the European countryside. It pulsated inside his confused mind until his fingers twitched with the need to gouge his eyes and drive back the vision of her. For despite his mastery of emotion, there was still this one.

  The one who’d refused to relinquish her hold, so he might shape himself completely into a wholly unmovable duke. It was surely why he saw her before him even now.

  He stared unblinkingly, willing her gone. And yet... she remained. Miss Rowena Endicott stood before him, like a thief caught with her hand in a lord’s purse. As she should, the miserable little chit. She’d been the dream that had sustained him through countless battles. Her whispered words of love had given him the strength to kill, to avoid being killed, because ultimately at the end of his life he’d have traded his eternal soul to return to Wallingford and see her once more. His gaze went to the long, graceful column of her throat, as it moved spasmodically; that slight movement the only indication she was effected by his presence here now. How many times had he touched his lips to that satiny soft skin? He should want to wring that beautiful flesh. The faithless, feckless deceiver.

  For in the end, she’d been careless with her words and flippant with her heart, choosing another when he had been off fighting to survive and return home to her. And in the end, whom had she chosen? A man who, by her placement now here as instructor, had left her in dire straits.