by Archer, Kate
The Lord’s Desperate Pledge
The Dukes’ Pact Series
Book Three
By Kate Archer
© Copyright 2020 by Kate Archer
Text by Kate Archer
Cover by Wicked Smart Designs
Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.
P.O. Box 7968
La Verne CA 91750
[email protected]
Produced in the United States of America
First Edition November 2020
Kindle Edition
Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.
All Rights Reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
License Notes:
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Additional Dragonblade books by Author Kate Archer
The Dukes’ Pact Series
The Viscount’s Sinful Bargain (Book 1)
The Marquess’ Daring Wager (Book 2)
The Lord’s Desperate Pledge (Book 3)
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Publisher’s Note
Additional Dragonblade books by Author Kate Archer
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
About the Author
Prologue
White’s, London 1817
The six old dukes had settled themselves into their own snug corner at White’s. Young bucks might swan around the bow window, pretending supreme disinterest in who might note their expertly tied neckcloths, but these seasoned old gentlemen had more sense. Soft chairs, good claret, and a cheery fire to take off the chill were in order.
At this moment in their history, it was the Duke of Gravesley’s time to crow, and that particular duke was no stranger to the attitude.
“He’s done it,” the duke said. “My boy has married Lady Sybil Hayworth—there is finally a Marchioness of Lockwood and she is charming. Of course, I cannot claim to like the girl’s father, he’s as prickly as he ever was, but that’s a small price.”
“Lord Blanding? Prickly?” the Duke of Bainbridge said. “That’s putting it delicately.”
The Duke of Gravesley was in too high spirits to reminisce about Lord Blanding’s confoundedness at the wedding breakfast. He said, “I understand the dear girl has already taken steps to whip Kendall Hall into shape. My son had the thing done up as some sort of hunting lodge. Now he writes that she takes them all in hand, various carpets roll out of the house, wallpaper flies from the walls, and everybody awaits her instructions. He’s remarkably cheerful over it—precisely what that young rogue has always needed. I expect we’ll soon hear of a grandchild on the way and praise God it be a boy.”
The Duke of Wentworth winced as a servant gently placed his gouty foot on a cushioned stool. “I say, though, this effort to drive our sons into marriage and children seems to lead to the most confounded circumstances. There is no end of talk about what went on at Lord Hugh’s house party. Sabotage on the water, wagers of every sort, even a house fire?”
“Do you say we give it up?” the Duke of Dembly asked. “I’d be happy to see the end of so many questions from my duchess.” The Duke sighed, long and deep. “She always has so many questions. And comments. And then more questions.”
“Gentlemen,” the Duke of Bainbridge said, “we have made a pact between us. We do not throw up our hands in surrender at the smallest difficulty. They will all marry and we will see grandsons.”
“Hear, hear,” the Duke of Glastonburg said. “Chin up, Dembly.”
The Duke of Dembly shifted in his chair. “That’s what my duchess always says.”
Chapter One
Hayes Summersby, Viscount Ashworth and eldest son of the Duke of Dembly, trotted his horse through the early dawn streets of London. Horus occasionally reared his head, the lord’s favored mount being fond of an early morning jaunt and having been cooped in a stable all evening. Hayes held the reins in one hand and patted his inside coat pocket with the other. It had been a profitable evening and he was becoming more and more convinced that establishments like Lady Carradine’s club were where he should spend his time and efforts.
He’d spent the past year investigating every gambling opportunity that might be had in London. It was necessary that he do so—his father had, through bad management and one failing investment after the next, put his inheritance in a precarious position. By the time Hayes had grasped the enormity of the situation, they had skated dangerously close to a mortgage or a sell-off. It still made his heart pound to think of it. If he had not chanced to discover the situation through some dark hints dropped by the family solicitor, they would have lost everything by now.
His father was a distracted and haphazard sort of gentleman. The management of multiple estates had been quite beyond him. For years, while the duke had admired his collection of dead butterflies, or spent hours rearranging his books, or even days at a time hiding from his duchess, he’d allowed lazy and corrupt stewards to run things into the ground. Worse, whatever money there was coming out of the farms was invariably invested in a losing opportunity. The duke’s hopes were always raised high and his scrutiny and skepticism kept low. The estates had paid a heavy price for it.
Hayes had exchanged some strong words with his father, the first of a hard nature that had been spoken between them. The duke had finally relented and turned the management of the estates over to his son. There had been the caveat that nobody was to know it, especially his duchess, and so the duke routinely took himself off to his library and shuffled various papers this way and that to create the illusion of remaining at the helm of the family sh
ip. The newly-hired stewards knew the truth of it though, and communicated all serious business to Hayes by letter. Nobody else was the wiser, so the duke held onto his dignity while Hayes took the steps needed to rescue the family legacy.
Hayes had put good men in place, increased efficiencies, straightened out lax tenants, and trimmed expenses where he could, but it was not enough. His mother could not live without two carriages, his sister could not survive without her expensive fripperies, his younger brother appeared to require three horses at Oxford, and his father could not carry on without a cellar full of champagne and port. The estates were on their way back to firm footing, but he’d required an infusion of money to fund his family’s bare necessities lest they undo all of his good work. More money could only be had one of two ways—marriage to an heiress or gambling. It had not taken a moment to decide which direction he would go; he had no wish to marry so soon and he would never marry only for money. That sort of thing was a distasteful business that smacked of the marketplace. Whoever his lady turned out to be, he would bring her into a situation that stood on stable ground and did not need rescue from a dowry. His self-respect demanded that much.
Once making his decision, he’d holed up in a rented house and studied. When he was satisfied that nobody, with the exception of Hoyle, understood odds and strategies better than he did, he ventured to sample all London had to offer, from White’s to low hells and everything in between. He found the gentlemen’s clubs too fixated on chance bets and had no wish to risk even a pound over which direction a bird might fly, or which lord would produce a son sooner, or which color cat would first appear on the sidewalk. In truth, he was wholly uninterested in games of chance and thought only fools approached a hazard table without foreseeing what was to be the end of it.
He was only interested in games of skill—it was in those games that one had the best odds of trouncing a man who had overestimated his own abilities. He was particularly skilled at piquet. There were times he had difficulty finding somebody who would challenge him at it, and other times gentlemen sought him out in droves, it appearing to be some sort of badge of honor to play against him. He did not take much joy in relieving gentlemen of their funds, but it was a necessary occupation. When he thought of what might have happened if he had not taken the reins—his younger brother forced from Oxford, his sister’s dowry gone—he felt a surge of energy that propelled him forward.
He had been to Lady Carradine’s club often and it had a number of advantages. Lady Carradine herself was the primary recommendation. The air of the place was more a private house of a genteel lady than a gambling establishment. There was none of the opulence found at some other places he frequented—all shabby façade when one looked closely enough. There were no copious glasses of wine always at one’s elbow, meant to muddle the mind and judgment and invariably declining in quality as the night wore on. There was not even a hazard table, as Lady Carradine often said she would not be responsible for some young fool losing an estate over a roll of a dice and then doing a violence to himself. She charged a monthly fee, as any club might do, and fair interest on loans from the house bank. The emphasis was on serious attention to skilled gambling, and that was what he preferred. That she called it “Lady Carradine’s Club for Ladies and Gentlemen” and had the odd musical evening was a touch absurd, but if the lady wanted to pretend it was anything other than a gambling house, that was fine with him.
One might go to Lady Carradine’s to play at any number of card games, confident the house was on the up and up. A gentleman could be assured that the cards were not marked, and if one needed to borrow, the daily rate was reasonable. The betting sometimes did not go as high as some more famous clubs, but Hayes preferred it that way. The bets went high enough and fortunes were not made by one lucky night, though they could certainly be lost in one un-lucky night.
Lady Carradine’s was a fair set-up, and as he knew all too well, fair was not often encountered in the world of gambling. There were no sharpers or shills and nobody was a pigeon unless they were determined to make themselves one.
That the club allowed females was the one point he did not find in Lady Carradine’s favor. She had set up the place to cater to them and kept a sharp eye on the proceedings. There were never ending rounds of tea and dry cake—the sort of dull refreshment one might find at Almack’s. There were middle-aged matrons whose sole employment seemed to be assuring Lady Carradine that everything went on proper—their hawk eyes perennially scanning the room. Gentlemen turning up the worse for drink did not get through the door. The air of the place was of a private house party where a lady might be free to sit down to cards.
He supposed the likes of Mrs. Jameson and Lady Edith, both notorious for gambling away their husband’s money, must play somewhere. And then there was that peculiar older lady who was forever chattering about something. He was wholly uninterested in playing against any of them and wholly irritated by their overwrought emotions when the play did not go their way. It was not to be his problem to explain to those husbands what had happened to their four hundred pounds, and he very much wished not to have his name mentioned during the tearful explanations. Females did not have the steady nerves required for laying down substantial sums over a hand of cards.
Still, he supposed the general atmosphere of the place, tea-soaked as it might be, was useful to him. There would be no young and drunken fools inconveniencing him by loudly challenging him before vomiting on their own shoes in Lady Carradine’s establishment.
Hayes leapt down from Horus in front of his house on Berkeley Square. He’d rented it at a dear price, but his winnings helped him afford it. A groom, ever ready for his arrival, raced out of the early morning shadows to lead his horse to the stables.
His penchant for gaming had produced a remarkable surplus. He’d been able to fund his family in the way they’d become accustomed. He’d thought one other particular benefit would be that it would stymie the old dukes in their ridiculous pact to force him and his friends to marry. He’d come near to threatening his own father to give it up, but the Duke of Dembly claimed he’d no choice in the matter, his friends were that determined, and that he was more of an onlooker than anything else. Hayes had pointed out that his father could hardly cut him off, as it was himself that held the purse strings. Ominously, the duke had claimed he’d take the purse strings back if necessary. That, of all things, could not be allowed to happen. His father would run the estates back into the ground, and they both knew it. They had reached an uncomfortable impasse on the subject.
Hayes reminded himself that he had one thing his father did not—an iron will to restore the family’s estates. He would not be pushed into marriage. He would marry at some point, of course he would. But he would decide when and to who and he would bring that lady into a comfortable situation. The very idea of counseling a wife that she must curtail her purchases or some other small-minded directive filled him with disgust.
In any case, he had not yet encountered any female he could contemplate joining with forevermore. There were no end of pleasant ladies one might dance with, converse with, match wits with and tip one’s hat to. Pleasant was not enough.
It was true that he and his friends had lost Hampton, and now Lockwood despite their best efforts, to the state of matrimony. But that still left himself, Dalton, Cabot and Grayson. They would hold the line and when their funds were cut off, his winnings coupled with Dalton’s house would keep them afloat. If it came to it, his mother could live with only one carriage, his sister could make do with what she had in her wardrobe, his brother could survive with only one horse, and his father could drink his last bottle of champagne before Hayes Summersby would be pushed into a marriage he did not seek. When the estates were on solid ground, and when it was the right lady, he would not need to be pushed. He would chain himself happily enough.
But not until then.
*
Lily Farnsworth mused over the array of dresses strewn about her bedchambe
r. Never had this particular room been so graced with all manner of fine things. More usually, she might find herself examining a year-old garment and contemplating how she might spruce it up to look like new. Or, at least not horribly old.
The fine clothes almost inspired a sort of nervousness, an idea that they could not be afforded, though she did not owe a bill. All her life had been a series of calculations, what could be had and what could not, and it felt very foreign to find herself in the midst of such abundance.
The clothes had begun arriving after she’d sent a letter to her childhood friend Cassandra Knightsbridge, now to be known as Lady Hampton. She’d written Cassandra that she’d scraped together enough money for a season and would come in a month. Her father had no need of renting a house, Lily would stay with her aunt, Mrs. Amelia Hemming. Though the lady did not live at a particularly fashionable address, it was respectable enough. Lily had marshalled together the funds for theater tickets, a rented carriage to carry her about, a sum to compensate her aunt for the increased expenses of a houseguest, and perhaps even the means to host one dinner party, though not an elaborate affair. She’d used all her wits and skills to create a barely credible wardrobe, comprised of her old dresses reworked, reclaimed fabric from the attics, and a judiciously small amount of new material. Nobody, she cheerfully assured herself, would guess that the blue velvet spencer had once been curtains. The end result of all her labor was the bare minimum, but it was just enough as long as nobody was looking too closely.
Lily had hoped, by telling Cassandra of her arrival, that her friend might provide some few introductions. She did not aim for the moon, but she doubted her aunt knew the sort of people who might throw a fashionable ball. She suspected Mrs. Hemming of maintaining a small circle of friends her own age who preferred tea and whist to dancing or routs.