The Duke's Disaster

by Grace Burrowes

  “No doubt. Bishops are the worst gossips, after all.”

  “You are such a bastard.” Noah’s favorite bastard in the world, in fact.

  James adjusted the pillow against his left lower back, which an old riding accident tended to make stiff on chilly days.

  “Were you really only trying to give Thea time to grow accustomed to you?”

  “Of course.”

  James said nothing.

  “Well, partly.” Mostly?

  “And the other part?”

  “How do you tell a woman she’s acquired maternal responsibility for two bastard children you neglected to mention before you so bitterly castigated her for her own silences?”

  “You tell her humbly,” James said. “I have been married these three years to the most adorable lady in the world, but it might surprise you to learn ours has not always been a blissful union.”

  Perhaps James had been making frequent use of his traveling flask and was already slightly tootled.

  “I am that lady’s brother, James.”

  James waved a dismissive hand. “I am her husband, and it is my job to make Patience’s way on this earth smooth and pleasant, to protect her from all harm, including the occasional minor irritation visited upon her as a result of my own human shortcomings.”

  “Do your philosophical peregrinations have a point, James?”

  “As a husband,” James went on, “I’ve learned a trick you have yet to master, Anselm, and if you don’t shut up, I won’t share it with you.”

  Perhaps Noah was more than slightly tootled himself, for he was about to listen to marital advice from his brother-in-law.

  “I am the embodiment of the attentive ear, Baron.”

  “You should be, for I am about to impart to you the same secret Wilson imparted to me, and Heath imparted to him,” James said, naming Noah’s remaining brothers-in-law. “Pay attention: when your wife has painted you into a corner, or your own stupidity and stubbornness have—which in present company is more likely the case—then you must use the heaviest artillery in the husband’s arsenal. You must toss pride and even dignity to the wind. You must sacrifice your all for the cause. In short, you must humbly and convincingly apologize.”

  The fire in the hearth snapped cheerily for a few heartbeats before Noah gave a snort of laughter.

  “Years of marriage to my three sisters, and that’s all you lot can come up with? Apologize? Marriage isn’t public school, James, that a virtuosic display of the civilities will impress all the fellows almost as much as a vigorous round of fisticuffs. You want me to apologize to Thea? Well, I already did, before we even quit the room.”

  “We quit the room?” James let the question hang in the air, his tone so, so innocent.

  “Very well, Heckendorn, we did not quit the room. I quit the room, thinking to give the lady some privacy to compose herself.”

  Noah was not tootled, but he was desperate enough to air grand bouncers before his oldest friend. Had Thea felt the same bewilderment as the wedding approached? The same inability to push simple, honest words past her pride?

  James abandoned his chair to take the same pose by the mantel Noah’s grandfather had favored.

  “Anselm, you have a lot to learn and a long way to go. You ran. We all run. The ladies start ranting and crying and catching us out in our selfish follies, and we bluster and stomp and threaten, and then we get the hell off to high ground, go for a ride, or a pout at the club. At least be honest with yourself. You left out of consideration for your own pride, not your lady’s.”

  Noah hadn’t even left to salve his own pride. He’d simply panicked and run. “If you weren’t married to my sister…”

  “I’d still be one of your oldest friends,” James said gently. “Apologize to Thea, sincerely, and soon. If not for your own stubborn sake, then for the children’s and hers. Once you’ve waved the white handkerchief of husbandly humility—”

  James’s head came up, a hound scenting game, and whatever additional drivel he’d been about to dispense must have flown from his tootled grasp.

  “I hear the carriage,” he said. “If the rain keeps up, we might impose on you for the night, Anselm, so compose your delicate sensibilities, and prepare to deal with your sister and Thea’s sibling as well.”

  “God save me,” Noah muttered. “I’ll warn Thea, you warn Cook, and send a footman to let Harlan know we’re entertaining.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.” James whipped off a salute. “And you shall apologize to your wife.”

  Noah made a rude gesture and stomped off in search of the lady to whom he’d already planned to offer another apology.

  * * *

  “Thea?” Noah shook her shoulder gently. “Wife? Time to wake up.”

  “Not yet.”

  “We’ve company, Thea.”

  Her Grace snored softly on.

  “Araminthea, Duchess of Anselm.” Noah tried for a more stern tone, but God in heaven, she was adorable in slumber. “Sweetheart, your sister’s coming to call.” Seeing Thea snoozing away, her cheeks streaked with tears, Noah was hard put to recall why he’d been in such a towering temper with her.

  This time.

  “Just let me catch a few more—Nonie?”

  “No need to panic.” Noah brushed a lock of hair off Thea’s forehead. “The coach was just coming up the drive a minute ago. You’ve been crying.”

  She looked confused for an instant, then her eyes narrowed, and she flopped to her back.

  “You made me cry, you odious man, keeping your children from me, while you strut about in righteous indignation over my own lapse. I don’t like you very much right now.”

  James’s daft sermon rang in Noah’s ears as did all his own rehearsed apologies. “You have some insight into how I felt on our wedding night. I hadn’t planned for you to feel deceived, but here we are.”

  Thea twitched at the folds of his cravat. “And where, precisely, is that?”

  Noah turned and sat on the edge of the bed long enough to pull off his boots, and then climbed up to sit beside Thea, his back to the headboard.

  Where it left them was hurt, mistrustful, and married. “We are both angry, misunderstood, and weary of it.”

  “Very weary.”

  “I propose a truce. The children are innocent of any wrongdoing, and we must put their welfare ahead of our squabbles.”

  As apologies went, that effort was pathetic.

  “This is not a squabble, Noah.”

  “It’s not the Siege of Rome, either, Thea. We’re unhappy with each other, but we can either acknowledge what can’t be changed, or cling to our miseries. I honestly do not want to make you miserable.”

  Which was a relief and a disappointment both. Shouldn’t a marriage have a higher ambition than not-miserable?

  Thea began rummaging between the sheets. “What I want is to keep the vows I spoke before the vicar, Noah.”

  Love, honor, obey. Interestingly, nothing on that list overtly required absolute honesty—or apologies.

  “Those vows seem daunting now, don’t they?” Noah mused.

  “Challenging.” Thea tossed a white, balled up handkerchief onto the bedside table. “I relish a challenge, usually.”

  “As do I.” Something positive passed between them, and the tension Noah sensed in Thea relaxed.

  “I have too much pride,” Noah said, “but sometimes pride is all one has. I don’t know how else to be.”

  “I understand pride, Noah, and when I wasn’t either crying or sleeping off my tears, I realized you don’t know me well at all. If you knew me better, you’d know I’d love to be a mother to Janine and Evelyn. You and I are married, we are supposed to be the foundation for an entire family, and the girls are part of that family.”

  Thea clearly aspired to higher ground than not-miserable, which ambition was a worthy attribute in a duchess.

  “I could not predict your reaction to not one but two bastard children in the nursery,” N
oah said, taking Thea’s hand, “and I’m more comfortable with situations I can predict. Still, I should have told you. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  Noah expected some cataclysm in response to his apology—the bed canopy to fall, perhaps—but Thea merely withdrew her hand and patted his knuckles.

  “And I overreacted, for which I’m sorry,” she said easily, as if apologies were nothing unusual between spouses. “I know why you’re here, though, acting the diplomat and spouting sweet reason, Noah. If we’re to have company, you’re concerned I’ll rant and sulk, and embarrass you before others. I won’t. Never, not unless you push me to it with everything in you.”

  Noah had needed that reassurance, for his own parents had staged rows that had made Drury Lane look boring and Waterloo a friendly skirmish.

  “I will try not to provoke you, Thea, but I am by nature a cautious man, and our marriage is off on a bad foot.”

  “It isn’t the Siege of Rome,” she said, tossing back the covers and bouncing to the bottom of the bed, “and we haven’t come to blows or embarrassing the servants yet.”

  “Nor shall we.”

  As the words left his lips, Noah didn’t know if he were uttering a promise or a prayer.

  * * *

  “Marriage must agree with my brother.” Patience offered the observation casually, but Thea understood it as a warning shot prior to an interrogation. Harlan was showing Nonie the third-floor conservatory, while Noah and James were closeted in the game room, leaving Thea to fend for herself.

  As usual.

  “I’m not sure marriage agrees with His Grace,” Thea said, “but he likes to accomplish what he sets out to do, and he set out to find a bride this Season.”

  “Well put.” Patience slipped her arm through Thea’s. “And most of these fellows”—she waved her other arm at the portraits marching the length of a fifty-foot wall—“set out only to wench, swive, and occasionally take up arms for King and Country. Noah is a changeling in our family.”

  “Do you mean that literally?”

  Patience paused before a dark-haired, blue-eyed, laughing courtier in hose and ruffed collar.

  “This one was supposedly a favorite of Good Queen Bess,” she said. “A particular favorite, whose exertions to please his monarch resulted in elevation of the title from viscountcy to earldom. Noah is a Winters by blood. Of that, there can be no doubt.”

  The fellow had a handsome smirk and looked on the verge of winking.

  “Noah would never do such a thing?” Thea asked.

  “He would not.” Patience moved on to the next portrait, an equally rascally looking fellow. “Noah seldom comes to the portrait gallery, in fact, because these rakish fellows make no sense to him. I’m sure he tells himself they were from an earlier time. They weren’t evil, they might not have enhanced the family coffers, but until recently, they didn’t decimate them either.”

  They all certainly dressed well. “Until recently?”

  “I shall be blunt,” Patience said, pausing before a portrait of a smiling couple in elaborate wigs and embroidered finery. “I doubt Noah spelled it out for you when he was doing his, what, three days of wooing?”

  Whatever he’d done, he hadn’t spent those days wooing. “Four.”

  Patience moved the frame half an inch, so the portrait hung squarely. “You let him get away with this, Thea. What could you have been thinking?”

  “Honestly? I was thinking the settlements were very generous, because they provided not only for me, but for Nonie and any daughters of our union as well. If I asked it of the duke, I believe he would take my brother in hand too.”

  Though Thea hadn’t wanted to ask Noah for much of anything lately.

  “Ask it of him,” Patience said, strolling along. “Noah thrives on responsibility. You want to know about our family finances? When Papa was alive, the duns were circling, threatening to foreclose on the unentailed properties, for he’d mortgaged them all to pay for his lightskirts and queer starts. My late uncle was no better, though of the three, he was the least profligate. Uncle Meech is on a stipend, and while it’s generous, Noah is adamant that Meech manage within it.”

  “I have not met this Uncle Meech,” Thea said. “He was rusticating at the time of the wedding. Noah holds him in affection, though.”

  Noah held his brother, his sisters, the little girls, his roosters, his horses…all save his duchess in great affection, or so Thea felt.

  “Meech was one of Noah’s guardians when Papa died, and he’s not a bad sort.” Patience frowned at a portrait of a lady holding a small, walleyed dog wearing a jeweled collar. “My grandmother in her salad days.”

  The one who’d loved flowers? “She must have adored that dog. Noah has retrieved the finances from ruin?”

  “I was only a girl when Papa died, and Harlan wasn’t even born,” Patience said. “I knew the servants were always exchanging portentous looks over the mail tray. I noticed the frequent callers from the City who were received only in the parlors that had no windows, that sort of thing. Noah dealt with it all, and James says the situation was frightful, because he and Noah were barely out of public school.”

  “Then Noah never had those useless years,” Thea said. “The ones immediately after university, when young men get into so much trouble and nobody holds them to account?”

  When they had fun, made mistakes, got their hearts broken, and made silly wagers.

  “Noah has never had the fribbling years, while Uncle appears trapped in them, along with his other cronies and partners in mischief.”

  Thea took a seat on a velvet-cushioned bench, not wanting the conversation to end prematurely, for Noah would never share this information with her.

  “Is he received, your uncle?” she asked.

  “Oh, everywhere,” Patience said, peering at a painting of a woman with a shepherdess’s crook and several fat, woolly sheep about her. “Meech and his set are a regular fixture at the house parties, in the ballrooms during the Season, and in the autumn reprise of the Season. They circulate all the best gossip, and are considered minor arbiters of fashion.”

  Even the mention of house parties made Thea uneasy. “While for your family, Rome might have been burning.”

  “Well, the footmen certainly weren’t being paid as promptly as they should have been. Nor the maids, or the merchants.”

  Thea rose to inspect the shepherdess, because from a distance, the sheep appeared to be smiling.

  “Do you suppose Noah thinks he must buy his way through life?” she asked.

  Patience linked their arms again. Like Noah, she was apparently a toucher. “What a lonely notion. I would say Noah believes he must work his way through life. He’s too serious by half, and doesn’t know how to go on unless he’s solving some problem or other.”

  Or creating a problem. “But you love him.”

  “Oh, yes.” Patience’s smile was radiant. “I love him, so do my sisters, our husbands, and so will our children. Noah’s tenants love him, and household staffs love him. We owe him a great deal, and always will.”

  Thea wasn’t sure what to say to that, because a man so thoroughly loved and appreciated should not be limited to buying his bride.

  Across the gallery, the laughing courtier smirked at Thea, the walleyed dog eternally panted, and the sheep milled about at the feet of their titled shepherdess.

  They all seemed to say the same thing: the duke who’d bought his bride, however much Thea might lament his approach to courting, did not deserve damaged goods for his coin.

  * * *

  At dinner, true to his word, Noah’s demeanor gave no hint of discord between him and his wife. Thea held up her end of the bargain, smiling and steering the conversational barge to topics of general and cheerful interest. Patience excused herself from the drawing room civilities when the ladies rose to take their tea, and a particularly tender look passed between James and his lady.

  What would Thea have to do to earn such a glance from her husban
d? Noah was watching her, not tenderly, but with a regard Thea couldn’t quite discern.

  He tucked her hand over his arm as they approached the drawing room.

  “Dear Wife, you must not wait up for me. Subduing James over the cribbage board might be a lengthy undertaking. He is to be a papa, you see, and his pride needs a sound drubbing.”

  Hence that tender look.

  “Here we go,” Harlan said from where he was escorting Nonie behind them. “The battle of the gods, but they leave the decanter undefended in their absorption with the hostilities.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Patience observed, “you will be expected to ride out with these old warhorses, and in your case, the decanter will have been painfully victorious.”

  “Heed your sister,” James said, “for the rain has stopped, and I’ve a notion to see how Wellspring is getting on.”

  Noah paused outside the parlor door. “Thea, I bid you a pleasant evening, and please do not think to give up your slumber in the morning for a soggy ride. I’m sure you’ll want to visit with your sister.” He kissed her cheek and departed after good nights all around.

  Nonie had been oddly subdued for most of the day, but when Thea closed the door to the drawing room, Nonie wrapped her in a hug.

  “Oh, Thea, you truly are a duchess, aren’t you?”

  She was and she wasn’t. “What does that mean?”

  Nonie gestured to the room in general. “This whole house is what I mean. Did you know Noah has been to North and South America? Harlan said he’d been to Egypt and the Levant as well. That’s four continents, Thea, and he’s rich as a nabob and owns property in seventeen different shires and counties, including Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and France.”

  “Five continents,” Thea countered. “But no, I wasn’t aware he was so well traveled. Tea, dearest?”

  Nonie plopped down onto a sofa. “Please, for I must settle my nerves, Thea. Harlan is absolutely delicious, and so is James. I’ve called upon the others too, since the wedding breakfast, and they are all lovely, and they all wanted to descend on you here at Wellspring, but James wasn’t having any of that.”