A Wicked Duke's Prize: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Henrietta Harding

  This left Owen alone, his wine glass very nearly empty, and his heart bursting strangely, as though it prepared to leap from his throat. Again, he tried to draw Rebecca out of her conversation with Tabitha. But it seemed that she’d made up her mind to ignore him.

  Now, she and Tabitha turned swiftly toward the exit, latched their arms together, and paraded back towards the stables. An emptiness formed in Owen’s stomach. For the life of him he couldn’t fully label his feelings. He wished only that his father had never arranged for his future. It was the antithesis of freedom. It was nothing he could abide.

  Chapter 7

  Once Rebecca and Tabitha returned to the carriage, Rebecca felt overwhelmed with emotion, as though she was a basin overflowing with water. She screeched into her hands, her heart pumping wildly. When she drew her head up, she found Tabitha wide-eyed and panicked.

  “He’s really got to you, hasn’t he?” she whispered.

  “I don’t want to give him such credit,” Rebecca replied. “I want to bleach him from my mind for the evening – nay, for the rest of my life.”

  “What exactly was your spat about?” Tabitha asked.

  Beneath them the wheels of the carriage crumpled against the stones. Night had fallen, heavy and dark, with just a bulbous, shining moon chasing them out across the moors. Rebecca shivered, cuddled herself tighter in her coat.

  “He believes that we can still dig our way out of this engagement,” she said. The words felt poisonous.

  “And I suppose you agreed with him,” Tabitha said.

  “I don’t know. As I told you, I feel quite confused about it all. However, I think he’s overly confident about our ability to fight this. His father has no fortune. My father wants me gone. Yes, in the past, I’ve rejected all potential suitors… But Owen? How dare he reject me?”

  “Such contradiction to your thoughts…” Tabitha murmured.

  “What was that?” Rebecca returned. Anger wrapped around her throat.

  “Nothing. Really,” Tabitha replied hurriedly.

  “Goodness, I’m sorry, Tabitha,” Rebecca said, her voice heavy. “I don’t wish to execute my anger toward you. You’ve nothing to do with this. This is between myself, my father, Owen, and, I suppose, God himself. Although he doesn’t seem to be dipping down to assist.”

  The girls sat quietly throughout the rest of the ride towards Tabitha’s home. When they reached it, candles lit up the bottom floor, warm and orange. Tabitha suggested that Rebecca remain to sleep for the night, something that Rebecca immediately agreed to. She suspected that, although she felt a tension between the two of them that evening, if they awoke and breakfasted together, they might overcome it.

  When they appeared in the foyer, there was a shuffling from the back of the house. Moments later, Anthony appeared from his study. His brown curls were tousled, and his eyes were sleepy and small behind his spectacles. To his credit, when he saw Rebecca, he always greeted her warmly, and this time was no different.

  “Good evening!” he said. “Rebecca, I hope you’re staying over?”

  “Yes, if that’s all right,” Rebecca returned.

  “Any time. You know that our house is yours, whenever you wish it,” Anthony said. He stepped toward his wife and kissed her tenderly on the cheek.

  Rebecca couldn’t help but see this as a dutiful husband act, something that must be performed to uphold the rules of their arrangement. Of course, the act of it was also sweet, kind, something that caused her stomach to stir with confusion. Tabitha did look at him with something that resembled love, although Rebecca knew this to be incorrect. Tabitha had long recited the fact that she had never fallen head over heels for her husband.

  Was it possible that she’d grown in love for him?

  “Shall I show you to your room?” Tabitha asked, beaming at Rebecca.

  “I suppose so,” Rebecca said. She fumbled over her words, her tongue remembering the buckets of wine she’d drank at the party.

  “Oh, Rebecca, I’ve just remembered. Congratulations are in order,” Anthony said, beaming.

  “Whatever do you mean?” she replied.

  “The engagement,” Anthony said. His smile flickered downward for a moment, as though he’d only just remembered this wasn’t a topic he was meant to bring up.

  “Nothing is set,” Rebecca said, feeling resigned.

  “Of course. Nothing ever is,” Anthony said hurriedly. He gave Tabitha a strained, apologetic smile. “I know that you’ll find someone who’s suited to you. A difficult task, indeed!”

  Rebecca followed Tabitha up the stairs to the guest bedroom, located several doors down from the bedroom Tabitha shared with Anthony. When they entered the room, Tabitha lit several candles and splayed her hand across a spare towel, folded atop the bedspread.

  “I’m terribly sorry about what Anthony said,” she uttered immediately. “I didn’t explain to him the intricacies of it all. I don’t suppose he could fully understand. The two of you haven’t yet… come to any sort of friendship.”

  Rebecca felt suddenly riddled with guilt. Should she have made some sort of effort to become closer to her best friend’s husband? She allowed her shoulders to droop and said, “It’s quite all right. I’m terribly tired. Perhaps we can all begin in the morning.”

  Tabitha gave a lacklustre nod. She swept towards her friend, hugged her tight, then disappeared down the hallway, back to her own bed. Rebecca remained standing in the room alone, watching the flickering of the candles. What was it about her that incited such drama? Why couldn’t she just be simple, loving, a marvellous spirit, the way Tabitha was? Why did she demand so much from her life?

  Slowly, she undressed and donned one of the spare nightgowns, which Tabitha kept on-hand for such occasions. She blew out the candles and stretched out beneath the sheets of the guest bed. It felt strange, foreign, a bit too hard on her spine, and she adjusted herself, wishing for the first time that she’d insisted upon a return to her home.

  Of course, that would have allowed more conversation with her father, which she wished to avoid. He seemed overly willing to push the topic to her impending marriage, to things he’d heard about Owen, always minutes from congratulating himself on such an appropriate match.

  Rebecca slept fitfully. When she awoke, smells of breakfast swept under the crack in the door: sizzling sausages and fresh bread and a warm pot of tea. She swept her feet onto the hardwood and stared down at the impossibly bright light, which came in through the window.

  It seemed remarkable that such beautiful days could continue on, when she felt herself shoved towards the impossibility of her own future. These bright days were meant for children, for young girls who daydreamed their hours away. Rebecca wished for rain. It suited her mood.

  She dressed once more and padded down the steps. As she crept down the hallway, she heard Anthony and Tabitha at the breakfast table. Tabitha giggled in a girlish way, something Rebecca had hardly heard before, and she stopped short, listening.

  “You should have heard him, Anthony. He’s such a devil! The way he spoke of Rebecca’s past engagements, there before everyone at the dinner table!”

  “Augustus is quite a character,” Anthony agreed. His voice was warm, loving.

  “I think Rebecca could have slapped him,” Tabitha continued. “You could feel it throughout the party. Conversation about what Augustus had done. Everyone knows that he’s always looked at Rebecca as this sort of… prize.”

  “I don’t think I knew this,” Anthony returned.

  “Oh, yes. I believe Rebecca knows it as well but, of course, would never dwell on it. The two have been such good friends for years,” Tabitha said.

  Rebecca’s eyebrows lowered. Augustus’s subtle flirtation with her over the years had been nothing she’d fully considered. It never excited her. She never felt that leap in her chest when she spotted him. Tabitha’s perspective seemed foreign and bizarre to her, as though she peered in through the lens of Tabitha’s life.

&nbs
p; She paused for a moment more, willing them to say something else, something to give her more of a portrait, but all too soon, the cook appeared in the hallway and greeted Rebecca warmly. “Good morning, my dear!” she said, having grown accustomed to Rebecca’s appearance at the house. “I daresay I’ve cooked enough for three. Please, enjoy yourself, and let me know if you need anything else.”

  Embarrassed, Rebecca thanked her and eased into the dining area, where Tabitha sat, beaming before a plate of toast and sausages. Goodness, it was a strange thing to see Tabitha at the table with her husband, an immediate jolt to Rebecca’s mind, a reminder that so much time had passed since the glories of their girlhood years.

  “Good morning, my dear,” Tabitha said. “I trust you slept well?”

  She was eager to dismiss the sour colour of the previous night. Rebecca shared a smile and perched at the table beside her, between the two newlyweds. Anthony beamed at her, with a smudge of sauce on his bottom lip. Rebecca thought twice about telling him about it, deeming it inappropriate to be so rude within his own home. Tabitha hadn’t seemed to notice. Perhaps this was their common scene. Anthony, a mess, dressed in a profoundly dapper suit, speaking friendly with his beautiful wife, a woman far too good for him, in Rebecca’s mind.

  “I did,” Rebecca responded finally. Her voice crackled a bit. “This breakfast looks marvellous as well.”

  “Please! Eat,” Anthony said. His voice was warm, his gestures open.

  What could Rebecca possibly speak with him about, in order to expand their plain and flat relationship?

  “Thank you,” Rebecca said. She added a single sausage to her plate and watched the grease drip onto the porcelain, dirtying it. The married couple seemed to study her, as though she was a foreign entity, a strange human, unwilling to carry out the supposed important events of a young woman’s life. “Tabitha, I wished, in fact, to discuss a recent novel I read. You must know the writer.” She turned to Anthony and added, “She was always one of the more accomplished readers. If we sat down with the same book at the same time, I feel sure she could finish it in half the time as I.” She leaned forward conspiratorially, her eyes flashing. “I have to say, though, that my mind is more of a wanderer. I’m always in the midst of some sort of daydream.”

  Was this how she could grow closer to Anthony? She arched her brow, waiting for his response. Finally, she drudged up a question. “I don’t suppose you’ve read anything recently?”

  “No, not much,” Anthony replied, eager with his words. “And I didn’t know that Tabitha was such a reader, either. It seems you’ve spent much of your time with your sewing and embroidery as of late, if I’m not mistaken?”

  Tabitha nodded and gave a meek smile. Her cheeks glared red. Rebecca wanted to scold her, to demand why she’d marched so far from her ordinary behaviour, the things she genuinely adored. But of course, this was outside the bounds of what she’d told herself today would be between them.

  “I find embroidery quite dull, of course,” Rebecca continued. “I wish I could sit with it for hours on end. Occupy myself. I know that’s what dutiful women are meant to do.”

  “I do find it pleasurable,” Tabitha returned, a comment that made Rebecca’s stomach curdle.

  “Are you working on anything interesting right now?” Rebecca asked.

  “I spotted something quite pretty on your lap the other day,” Anthony said, as though it was up to him to answer for Tabitha, rather than Tabitha herself. “Something floral, wasn’t it, darling? Something with roses?”

  “Lilies and tulips, actually,” Tabitha said. “But thank you.”

  Rebecca hurriedly ripped into her breakfast, sensing that if she didn’t escape the trenches of this horrendous relationship shortly, she might explode. When she was finished, Tabitha and Anthony had begun to discuss something about their gamekeeper, with Tabitha in total agreement with what Anthony said. Rebecca jumped up from the chair, which nearly toppled out behind her, and said, “I do hope you don’t mind. I’ve just remembered. I must return to my father before the afternoon.”

  The lie felt plain and thick across her tongue. Anthony and Tabitha shared a glance, although Rebecca had the suspicion that they communicated different things. She and Tabitha had continually been able to read one another’s minds, since they’d been young girls. It wasn’t likely that this man, her arranged husband, could possibly see behind Tabitha’s eyes.

  “How dreadful that you must go,” Tabitha said.

  “Yet understandable,” Anthony replied. “Shall I show you out?”

  Rebecca glanced at Tabitha, willing her to say no, he would take care of it. But Tabitha nodded, her grin widening, as though she was terribly pleased that her husband had offered to do such a task.

  “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’ll show myself out. I don’t wish to interrupt your meal,” Rebecca said.

  But Anthony didn’t catch the hint. He dotted his napkin across his sauce-covered lips and said, “Nonsense. It will only take a moment. Shall we?”

  Rebecca said a stern farewell to Tabitha, then directed herself toward the foyer. There, Anthony opened the door for her – ever the gentleman – and walked her to the stables. Apparently, he assumed that Rebecca had been thrilled with the conversation about Tabitha’s embroidery, and there he remained, discussing the intricacies of his mother’s previous sewing endeavours. Rebecca made tiny throat noises in response. What was it with this man and his inability to read people?

  At the stable, the stableman erupted off his haystack and barrelled toward her horse to dress it. The entire affair only lasted a minute or two yet seemed to go on for hours. Rebecca shifted her weight from side to side, willing the final clip on the saddle to close, indicating he was finished.

  At last, Rebecca gave Anthony her final goodbye.

  “I look forward to the next time we see one another. Given your closeness with my wife, I know it will be soon,” Anthony said. His smile was serene, pure.

  Rebecca yearned to smack him across his cheek, to scream that Tabitha wasn’t just his wife, that she had a name.

  But she stretched a smile between her cheeks, one that ached with falseness, and said, “Yes, my lord. I look forward to our future time together. I know it will be illuminating.”

  Chapter 8

  Rebecca whipped down the road, her legs strewn to the side and her hair curling out of its once-perfect up-do to sweep down her back. Her eyes grew glossy with the turning wind, which seemed oddly frantic for mid-morning. When she turned down the road toward her own estate, she spotted storm clouds brewing at the base of the horizon, grey and bulbous. This was a sign, a wretched one.

  Proof that she’d be locked in the house throughout the day, forced to face the thoughts that stirred and crept in the back of her mind. She felt her best friend slipping from between her fingers, becoming this other, perfectly cultivated wife. Beyond that, her freedom had begun to grow hazy at the edges, an idea of something she’d clung to throughout her life and into her early womanhood, something her father wished to rip out from under her, for the good of his name.

  Once she arrived at the stables, raindrops splattered her cheeks and hair. The stableman collected the reins and she slipped off the saddle and then traced a line down the horse’s nose.

  “Best you get inside, my lady,” the stableman said, his voice gravelly. “The storm brews quickly.” He pointed toward the closest tree, a mighty oak, whose limbs rustled back and forth insistently, as though yearning to point out something. “Besides,” the stableman continued. “One of your sisters is here.”

  Rebecca’s heart thudded, her lips turned down. She thanked the stableman, gripped her skirts, then bustled to the door, knowing full well that whatever conversation awaited her on the other side wouldn’t thrill her in the least. Even as she appeared before the door, unknowing of which of her sisters had chosen to return to their former home, panic laced through her fingers, down her spine.