Put Up Your Duke

by Megan Frampton

  “Your Grace, we are running out of champagne.”

  “Already?” Maybe all of the guests were just as upset by her parents and were drowning their sorrows.

  Or they were all overjoyed at being entertained by the newly minted Duke of Gage and his perfect duchess.

  “Yes, Your Grace.” Renning tilted his head. “If I might make a suggestion?”

  Run over her parents with a carriage? “Of course, what is it?”

  “If we could begin to offer white wine on the trays it is unlikely”—he coughed, to show his discretion—“that any of the guests will notice.”

  “Excellent idea,” Isabella replied. Although I’m still holding out for the carriage.

  “Your Grace!” She turned to see Lord and Lady Truscott, both with huge grins on their faces. They, at least, she knew, weren’t going to do anything to vastly disappoint her. She forced a smile onto her own face and walked toward them, her hands outstretched.

  “You look perfect, my dear,” Lord Truscott remarked, a twinkle in his eye. At least coming from him she didn’t feel as though it was a stricture, as though she would have to be perfect forever.

  “Thank you, my lord. Are you enjoying yourselves?”

  All three of them looked around them. There were people Isabella didn’t think she had ever met before dancing and smiling and eating. And drinking white wine now, of course. Everywhere there was a hubbub of conversation, and the musicians seemed to be playing just the right type of music, and she could tell—given how many of these affairs she’d attended as a debutante—that the evening was a rousing success.

  If only her whole self wasn’t in a tumult about Margaret, and her parents’ plans for her, she might actually enjoy the moment.

  “It is spectacular,” Lady Truscott said, nodding her approval. “I so appreciate that you have enough chairs for us older folk, and that the food is so delicious, and not at all too fancy. I swear, sometimes I don’t know how I am supposed to eat half the food served at these functions!” She shared a conspiratorial look with her husband, sending a pang through Isabella.

  Would she and Nicholas be like that, in twenty or so years? Or would they have settled into some sort of banal routine where they each lived their lives, parallel but not together?

  Would he allow her to have what she wanted? Whenever she discovered precisely what that was, of course.

  “Thank you, I am so delighted you came, and are having an enjoyable time.” Isabella nodded to both of them, then went off in search of her sister, knowing she had likely reached the limits of her ability to make polite conversation.

  At last Isabella spotted her, in conversation with Nicholas’s brother, Griff. He graciously bowed as Isabella made some nonsensical excuse about needing her sister for some reason. She tried not to feel resentful that likely Nicholas had shared the information about the former duke’s activities with his brother.

  “Over here.” Isabella took Margaret’s hand and led her through the ballroom, nodding at people who seemed as though they wished to speak to her, steadily threading her way through the crowd until she reached the door to Nicholas’s study.

  “Where are we going? Don’t you have to be a duchess or something?” Margaret replied, her tone light and mocking.

  “This is more important.” Isabella thrust Margaret in front of her into the room, then closed the door and locked it.

  Margaret turned to face her. “What is it? What is so important that you have to take yourself away from your sparkling social occasion?”

  “It’s not about me, it’s you. It’s . . .” She stepped forward and took both of Margaret’s hands in hers. “The parents are planning on marrying you off.”

  For once, Margaret was speechless.

  Until she was not.

  She snatched her hands back and began to pace. “Are you in earnest? They are planning on wedding me without my permission and even told you first?” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I knew they didn’t care about me, but the extent to which that is true is remarkable.” She spun back around. “Who is my bridegroom?”

  “Lord Collingwood.” Judging by Margaret’s blank face, she didn’t remember who that was. “The former Duke of Gage. The man I was supposed to marry.”

  “Oh! But why?” As always, Margaret knew precisely what question to ask. Unlike some people in Isabella’s acquaintance, but this wasn’t the time to be thinking about Nicholas.

  She said it as bluntly as she knew Margaret would want to hear it. “It seems that he is good with money, and he’s promised to stop contesting Nicholas’s ascension to duke if he marries you.”

  Isabella clasped her hands in front of her in a supplicating position. “You cannot agree to do this, even for me.”

  Margaret gaped at her, then she flung her head back and laughed.

  Perhaps her sister had already been driven mad by the thought of her future bridegroom. Because laughter was absolutely the last response Isabella expected.

  Margaret shook her head. “Of course I wouldn’t agree to it, silly. Why would it even make sense for me to do something like that? No offense to either you or your lovely husband, but I see no need to sacrifice myself just to maintain a title. The idea!”

  “Well, you don’t have to be so mocking about it,” Isabella said, feeling like an idiot for assuming her sister would even entertain such a notion. Margaret was her own person, able to express her own opinions—which she did, often—and she valued herself enough, even if her parents did not, not to give up on any future chance of happiness for another.

  That was Isabella’s job, and she had done wonderfully at it. Except despite it all, and unexpectedly, she was happy. She liked Nicholas, when he wasn’t being an obtuse ass. She also had to admit that it was a lovely bonus that he was as attractive as he was, and that she liked kissing him so much.

  “So what will you do?”

  Margaret smiled, as though she knew something Isabella did not. Probably something to do with self-confidence and refusing to back down from any situation. “I will take care of it, don’t worry about it.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “The less you know, the better,” her sister replied, patting Isabella’s hand. Apparently keeping things from Isabella was a common occurrence. And Isabella did not like it at all.

  Epigraph

  From the unedited version of A Lady of Mystery’s serial:

  “What do I have to do?” Jane braced herself for what the witch might say—pluck out a hair, or an eye, or a tooth.

  The witch smiled. “You just have to keep looking, and never lose hope.”

  Jane felt relief that she wouldn’t have to go through any pain, but then annoyed that the witch was telling her to do precisely as she was doing.

  Although perhaps the witch was telling her to trust herself and her instinct, such as the instinct that had brought her back to the castle in the first place.

  “Thank you,” Jane replied. “You have been very helpful.”

  She took Catherine’s arm and walked to where their horses stood.

  “She didn’t tell you anything! If it were me, I’d ask for my money back,” Catherine said in a whisper.

  “She told me everything I need to know,” Jane said, a feeling of hope blossoming in her chest.

  —THE PRINCESS AND THE SCOUNDREL

  Chapter 25

  The evening was as dull and full of platitudes as Nicholas had feared. Plus he had only gotten to dance with his wife once, and even then, she kept looking around the room as though searching for problems to solve. She certainly hadn’t met his gaze more than a few times, and that definitely irked him.

  But now the ball was over, it was a rousing success, according to all the guests who bid him goodbye, and it seemed to have reassured Society that he and his wife were entirely respectable people who could maintain the proper dignity required of a duke and duchess. How that was proven through spending vast amounts of money to give people food,
drink, entertainment, and a place to congregate he couldn’t quite figure out, but it seemed to be the case.

  He strode the twenty-three steps from his bedroom to hers as quickly as he could, eager to see if her mood had changed. Perhaps she had been anxious about the ball, worried that her efforts wouldn’t reflect well on him and his new bride. She shouldn’t worry, he would tell her, she was perfect.

  He knocked, then entered, relieved to see that not only was Isabella’s maid not there, but Isabella was also in her nightclothes. Things were looking up.

  She was seated at her dressing table, brushing her hair, the diamonds he’d given her lying in a heap on the table.

  She met his gaze in her glass, and he knew, immediately, that things were not back to normal. The woman looking at him was angry. Very, very angry.

  “When were you going to tell me? That is, if you were going to tell me at all?”

  Thoughts of what he could have possibly forgotten to tell her flashed through his mind—that he really could tell a better story if he put his mind to it, that he was nearly desperate to bed her, that he’d chosen her room decorations himself, you’re welcome—but it didn’t seem as though any of that would cause as much ire as she was currently expressing.

  “Tell you what?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, put her hairbrush on the table, and stood, spinning to face him. “That the former duke was causing problems for you in terms of the title. That he is—was—threatening to bring the case to Parliament. Didn’t you think to tell me something that important? I’m your wife, Nicholas.”

  His insides tightened as he processed what she’d said.

  She was right.

  He hadn’t told her, not because he didn’t trust her, but because he wasn’t accustomed to sharing anything with anybody, especially not a woman. True, he’d told her he liked reading serials in the newspapers, but that wouldn’t affect his—their—future.

  “I’m sorry.” He held his hands out. “I didn’t think—well, I just didn’t think.”

  Her expression softened, and he felt an overwhelming relief that perhaps, at last, he’d managed to say the right thing.

  She nodded and bit her lip. “If we are going to make this marriage work, Nicholas, you need to tell me things. Not just things like if you’ve had a pleasant day, or not, but important things like that your title is possibly in jeopardy.”

  Nicholas glanced away from her penetrating gaze. No wonder she had found the carpet so irresistible—it was much easier to have a difficult conversation when one was looking at it, and not the other conversationalist. “You’re right. I made you promise to tell me things, didn’t I? So of course you have the right to demand the same thing of me.”

  Nicholas walked to the bed and flopped onto it, holding his arms out. “And now I would like to tell you that I want you in my arms right now, my lovely, perfect wife.” It was a tactic, but it was also the truth. If he didn’t feel her near him, and soon, he didn’t know what he would do.

  She began to walk to him, but the look in her eye made him wary. As though she were going to pounce, not lie against him. Although pouncing could be pleasurable in its own way, so perhaps he should not be concerned.

  “Thinking about you not sharing things made me realize that I haven’t been entirely truthful with you, either.” She sat at the foot of the bed cross-legged, not in her usual position against him. Her dark hair flowed down her back, and her night rail wasn’t fastened all the way up, so Nicholas was distracted. But trying desperately hard to pay attention to her words rather than how much he wanted her.

  “Not truthful about what?” God, she wasn’t about to tell him she had been in love with someone, was she? Or that she had secret aspirations of becoming just like her mother?

  “I don’t like the color pink.” She spoke as though she were confessing some terrible crime, not a dislike of—

  “Oh,” he said slowly, glancing around the room that he’d decorated for her. Entirely in pink, ranging from shades found in the deepest rose to the lightest wisps of sun-kissed clouds. He really did not know her at all, did he? “So why did you choose the gown you wore this evening?” Did she harbor a secret self-loathing? Or maybe was practicing some sort of self-sacrifice, only instead of a hair shirt she was donning a pink gown?

  “I did it to punish you,” she replied, as though that made any sense at all.

  He felt his eyes widen in surprise. “What? How would that punish me?”

  She must’ve thought about what she’d said, since she laughed as she shook her head. “I can understand why you’d be confused. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.” She looked off into the room. The exceedingly pink room. “I asked you yesterday for something I wanted, and you didn’t seem to want to accommodate me.”

  “What did you ask for?” Had he not passed her the milk for her tea or something?

  She met his gaze. “I wanted you to teach me how to box.”

  “I told you I would after the ball.” He winced at how defensive he sounded. For all his years spending time with women, he didn’t know if he’d ever truly understand them. Or this one, at least, the only one he wanted to truly understand.

  “But you didn’t sound pleased about it.”

  “Isabella,” he said in an exaggeratedly patient tone, “there are going to be times when I say something in a different way than you might expect. That does not mean you go off on some sort of mad punishment by wearing a gown whose color you hate—not that that makes any sense,” he said in a mutter, “but what you should do, what I am asking you to do, is to talk to me.”

  She arched a brow. “Just as you talked to me about the former duke’s case?”

  He winced again. She was right again, damn it. “I promise as well. I will speak to you about important things, even if I don’t wish to bother you with them, and furthermore, I promise not to go dressing in colors I loathe to spite you.”

  She laughed, then began to move toward him. Thank goodness. “And now I would like to tell you what I want. I want to”—but before he could hear what it was, there was a sharp knock at the door.

  There had better be a good reason for this interruption, he thought as he looked at his wife.

  “Who could that be?” she asked aloud, not that Nicholas would have any more idea than she would. She reversed her movements, getting off the bed and walking to the door. She grabbed her dressing gown and put it on quickly, wrapping the edges together to ensure she was as proper as a woman in her bedroom with her husband could possibly be.

  “What?” she said, flinging the door open.

  Her mother stood there, still wearing the gown she’d worn to the ball. Her father stood just behind, two hot patches of red on his cheeks. Renning followed, his face flushed, his expression outraged. Isabella wished she could tell him it was no use to try to stop her mother when she had a purpose. As she well knew.

  “Where is she?” her mother said, her eyes blazing.

  “Where is who?” Isabella replied, even though she knew perfectly well to whom her mother was referring.

  “You know who.” Apparently her mother knew Isabella knew perfectly well also.

  “I have no idea.” What had Margaret done? More importantly, where had she gone?

  “What is it? Where is who?” Nicholas said, coming up to stand behind her at the door. “Is Margaret missing?” Because it seemed everyone knew who wasn’t there.

  Her mother gave a short nod. “She left your house with us, and then I went to remind her to return my necklace, and she was missing. Gone,” her mother added, as though it was unclear.

  Isabella felt a low panic begin to unfurl in her belly; Margaret had said not to worry, that she would handle it. Was this Margaret’s way of handling it, by running away, or had something else happened? Where was her sister?

  “You two are close, surely she must have mentioned something.” Her mother punctuated her words with a sniff, as though it was beneath her to even imagine that the two siste
rs were close. Or that Margaret would have confided anything to Isabella.

  But since she hadn’t, her mother wasn’t far off.

  “She must have said something after you told her about the marriage, at least.”

  Isabella was grateful that Nicholas didn’t interrupt with any questions—such as what marriage, and why Isabella was telling her things about it.

  Isabella shook her head. “No, she didn’t. When is the last time anyone saw her?” They were all still standing at the door, as though this was going to be a short discussion. She gestured to her state of undress. “Nicholas and I will be downstairs in five minutes, perhaps you could ask Renning to show you to the drawing room.”

  “Five minutes,” her mother replied, giving one assessing look to Nicholas. At least it wasn’t disapproving, although if anyone could find something to disapprove of in someone as handsome as Nicholas, it would be her mother.

  Once the door was shut, Isabella stared at Nicholas, who was already drawing her into his arms. It felt so right there, even though things weren’t precisely right. She’d deal with all of that later, right now the most important thing was finding her sister. Her marriage, her imperfections, her life now had to take second place to her sister’s safety.

  “I’ll call for my horse, she can’t have gotten far. You and your parents can stay here while I am out.”

  “Pardon me?” Isabella drew back and looked up at his face. “Are you thinking for a moment that I wouldn’t come with you to look for my sister, who I love more than anything in the world?”

  His face was a duplicate of the confusion he’d had in his expression when she’d asked him about boxing. And caused her to feel even more upset.

  “But it’s not . . . It wouldn’t be . . .” he said, as though that were something she could understand.

  “You mean it’s not appropriate, and it wouldn’t be suitable, is that what I am to understand?” Well, never mind, she did understand. She continued, not waiting for his reply. “We just talked about this, didn’t we? I want to go look for my sister, with or without you, and that is just what I plan on doing. You don’t even know why she ran off, do you? You’re just dashing off into the night to go look for someone you barely know.” She held her hand up as she saw him open his mouth. “You can join me, or you can stay here with my parents and wring your hands. It is your choice,” she said, moving away from him to the bellpull.