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

by Henrietta Harding

  “My goodness,” Rebecca said, her smile pure. “I can’t imagine where you learned that I loved raspberry crumble the most?”

  “Perhaps it’s all those long-lost years when you insisted we pick raspberries for hours, so that Molly would make you one,” Tabitha said, laughing. “I assume you haven’t changed.”

  “In no way at all,” Rebecca said.

  Rebecca walked to the kitchen to fetch two china plates, two forks. Molly suggested tea and Rebecca readily accepted. Molly’s brows furrowed, causing Rebecca to pause before she shot back to Tabitha.

  “That man is coming here today once more,” Molly said.

  “Yes,” Rebecca replied.

  “Perhaps Tabitha should remain with you? Just in case,” Molly said. She was tentative, knowing that she walked on strange and formidable ground. This, a suggestion, Rebecca knew, to keep Tabitha there, if only because Rebecca was normally on much better behaviour with Tabitha by her side.

  Rebecca sighed and gave a grave nod. Molly, above all, had nothing to gain from this arrangement. Thusly, she wanted only the best. “I will ask her.”

  When Rebecca returned, she clicked the plates on the little table before the sofa and outlined the news to her friend. “Owen is, in fact, coming this afternoon, and we would be delighted to host you. As a kind of chaperone. That is, if you’re willing. I know I’ve been rather dreadful.”

  Tabitha accepted, to which Rebecca said, with insistence, “But if he isn’t right for me, you must allow me to do whatever it is I need to do, without pause. You must allow me to press whatever buttons I wish to. I refuse to marry a man with whom I will be unhappy for the remainder of my life.”

  “You have my word,” Tabitha affirmed.

  Although it was still mid-morning, the girls tore into the raspberry crumble and, for a long moment, it seemed that everything could go on the way it used to: just two girls, gossiping, telling old tales. At one point, Tabitha recounted a story about a boy they’d known as teenagers and crafted the perfect face to mock him, then even leapt to her feet to imitate the way he’d walked away from them, immediately after falling into a pool of mud. “I’ll tell my mother about this!” he’d cried, and thusly, Tabitha cried now. Rebecca mopped up the tears in her eyes. Did Anthony know what a comic he had in his wife? She was wasted on him – all those hours in which she was forced to be in agreement, to nod and say, “Yes, dear.” How wretched.

  Neil and Owen Crauford arrived for lunch just past one. Mr. Frampton tumbled out of his study, swept back his hair with a firm hand and then rocketed down the hallway, beating the butler to the door. Tabitha and Rebecca watched him in amazement.

  “He loves him far more than he loves me, that’s certain,” Rebecca said, giving a sly grin.

  Before Tabitha could refute this, Neil and Owen stood before them in the doorway. The sight of Owen nearly knocked Rebecca breathless. Dark and brooding, an alien beside her father and Mr. Crauford, he glowered at her, his eyes sparkling slightly. To him, she knew, this was all but a game, and she a pawn.

  “Rebecca, the Craufords have arrived!” her father said joyfully. He stepped to the side to allow their entrance into the parlour, then hung back, seemingly entranced.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” Mr. Crauford said, with a slight bow. “I trust you’ve both been well since last I saw you?”

  “Quite, thank you,” Rebecca said. She rose and Tabitha followed suit. Both curtsied and turned their eyes to Owen.

  As though he pulled out his own teeth as he did it, he finally uttered, “Good afternoon. Very nice seeing you both again. You departed the party so swiftly, I hardly had a chance to say goodbye.”

  “Oh? I imagined we’d said everything to one another that needed to be said,” Rebecca said, still smiling, her tone pure and clear. She imagined that only Tabitha and Owen understood the sarcasm beneath.

  “Shall we sojourn to the dining room for lunch?” Mr. Frampton said. “The house has smelled delightful for hours. Our Molly has been a remarkable cook, with us for years upon years.” His eyes danced back to Rebecca as he led them down the hallway and into the dining room.

  The table had been decorated beautifully. Rebecca half-cursed Molly for this, knowing that all her goodwill was meant for Rebecca’s future. Flowers erupted out of a vase in the centre in a symphony of oranges and reds and yellows, and even Owen seemed mesmerised with them, his eyes sparkling.

  For lunch, there was first a carrot soup, which Molly presented grandly, her eyebrows high. To Rebecca, she seemed to act like a higher-house cook, someone with a bigger team of servants beneath her, perhaps in service of a duke or a lord. Rebecca noted to herself to remember this. She yearned to tease Molly about it later. To this, she felt sure Molly would reply: “Darling, I did this all for you!”

  Mr. Crauford dipped the edge of his spoon into the thick soup and made pleasant conversation, with a strange lag to his voice. From this Rebecca deduced that the man had been gambling away his funds yet again the previous night and had drunk a good many pints along with it, which had reduced him to this hungover shadow. Although Owen didn’t reveal himself much, Rebecca suspected something lurked behind his eyes, something that was certainly mixed with shame.

  “What was this gathering the other evening, anyway?” Mr. Crauford asked, after he’d blabbered on enough and wanted to pass the baton of conversation. He directed the words toward Rebecca, his future daughter-in-law.

  “Oh, didn’t Owen tell you?” Rebecca said. She held her spoonful of soup aloft and furrowed her brow towards Owen. This, she knew, would annoy him, her passing the conversation on to him, who seemed not to want to speak.

  “He didn’t!” Mr. Crauford replied. “Owen, my boy, what was this affair?”

  “I must have mentioned it, Father. A good friend of Theo’s had a party,” Owen said. His eyes remained steady on Rebecca, and his tone seemed to hint toward aggression. “He conned me into being his plus-one, you see. There, I had the pleasant experience of running into my dearly soon-to-be devoted wife.”

  “What a surprise. Although, living so close to one another, it’s not a mystery why you two have similar friends,” Mr. Crauford said. He clanked his spoon against the bottom of his soup bowl and said, “And this friend. How do you know him, Rebecca?”

  “Augustus? Oh, I met him years and years ago,” Rebecca returned. “Tabitha and Augustus and I used to play together in the garden. He was always prone to attacks of tears, don’t you remember, Tabitha? Such a funny thing, isn’t it? How men are presented as these stable creatures and then you find them, stretched out on the grass, in the midst of some sort of combined sadness and allergy attack.”

  The words seemed to make Mr. Crauford uncomfortable. He clanked his spoon at the bottom of his bowl and cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Splendid the two of you could spend a bit more time together at this little dinner party. Tabitha, you were in their presence, as well?”

  “Indeed,” Tabitha said. She was the sunshine the table needed. She talked in elaborate detail about the dinner that night, the wine, the dessert. Although her words were meaningless, Mr. Crauford and Mr. Frampton seemed enamoured with the ease with which she spoke.

  Throughout, Rebecca found her eyes drawn back to Owen’s. He smirked at her, his eyes glittering. She arched her brow, a challenge. Already she’d presented herself as an annoyance, a thorn in the side of every person who sat at the table. How dare Owen declare that he didn’t wish to marry her? She would rid herself of him as quickly as she could, and she would do it the way she always had before, with her volatile and sharp tongue.

  Her father shifted in his chair, seemingly unable to look at her. Instead, his eyes traced to Tabitha, and he spewed a false laugh, as though to prove that his allegiance was with this quieter, more demure woman, rather than the one he meant to pass off as Owen’s wife.

  After lunch, Mr. Frampton swiped his massive hands across his napkin and said, “Neil, I imagine that we have several things to go over pr
ivately, regarding this union. Perhaps the younger folk can step into the garden, enjoy the beautiful sun, whilst we continue our conversation in my study.”

  “That sounds splendid,” Mr. Crauford replied. His eyes danced to Tabitha as he added, “Assuming you’re willing to stay with them, dear Tabitha?”

  “Of course,” Tabitha affirmed.

  Rebecca’s stomach stirred with rage. She detested this element of society, that she was some sort of child or creature, one who, when left unchaperoned, would perform unladylike duties and ultimately destroy her reputation. Wasn’t her reputation in tatters anyway?

  Tabitha, Owen and Rebecca entered the garden. Rebecca surged ahead to lead them towards the rose garden, which provided a better view of the pond and the line of the forest, where sunlight dappled out from between the trees. Tabitha rushed up beside Rebecca, gripped her hand hard, and whispered, “You do know that you’ve taken everything a bit too far already, don’t you?”

  “Whatever do you mean, Tabitha?”

  Tabitha lowered her voice still more, so that it was nearly impossible to understand her. “Owen hasn’t done anything wrong as of yet, and you seem to leap on him, to push him into undesirable topics of conversation. Why not take a step back? Allow him room to breathe, to grow accustomed to you?” She stuttered for a moment, then added, “You told me that you would perform your reckless duties – shove him as far away from you as you could, once he revealed himself to be a horrific match for you. But I haven’t seen this to be true as of yet.”

  “He wishes to put himself above me in every matter,” Rebecca returned, arching her brow. “I cannot abide with his arrogance.”

  She shot off to the side, where she wrapped her hand around the iron latch at the rose garden gate and sprung it open to reveal the yellows and purples and reds and pinks fully sprung out, their leaves open. The smell cascaded over them, wave after wave of early-summertime pleasure. Once she stepped within the garden, she eased toward the fountain where a statue of a girl poured water into a basin. There she turned swiftly to catch sight of Owen, sauntering in after them.

  “Won’t you close the gate, dear Owen?” Rebecca called. “It’s dreadful to have it just hanging open like that. Do you frequently allow doors to remain open, drawers and the like?”

  Owen smirked as he smashed the gate closed. “It’s something of a hobby of mine, Rebecca. I hope that’s quite all right with you. I like to make my home into the greatest possible mess. Bring the leaves in from the garden and smash them about the entryway. If there’s a tea pot about, I like to make sure I smash it. You might think it’s all accidental, but it’s really just the way I feel at home in a space.”

  “That’s good to know,” Rebecca replied. “I imagine you also like to jump in the bed at night with muddied feet?”

  Owen stepped closer to her, his eyes glittering. “In fact, if my feet aren’t coated in muck as I step into bed, I freeze to death. I hope that isn’t a struggle for you.”

  “No. Frequently, in fact, I like to take to the woods and sleep under the trees,” Rebecca said. She felt their mania rising, each leaping up and up to win the previous ridiculous argument. “I find it better if I rise in the morning with my hair coated with the insects of the forest.”

  “That must be how you retain such a stellar red colour,” Owen agreed, mocking her.

  “If only we could make this work,” Rebecca returned, crossing her arms over her chest. “Dreadful that we’ll never really be married, isn’t it? We really would make quite a marvellous pair.”

  Tabitha seemed embarrassed, her energy frenetic. She shifted her weight and licked her bottom lip, her eyes dancing from Owen to Rebecca and back. “Don’t you think it’s marvellous, how close your fathers have become?” she asked, attempting to latch onto any possible topic.

  “Yes. Your father is quite a character, isn’t he?” Rebecca said. “All those aimless nights at the gambling table. Do you really think he believes he’ll one day be prosperous?”

  Owen furrowed his brows. Even his hands clenched into fists. All these moments, he’d been eager to tease her, to play along. But now she’d found the grit of it all, the thing that caused him heartache and rage. If she pointed her words in this direction, she felt sure the engagement would be off in no time. He would break it off. And thusly, in a sense, she would win.

  “I think you’d better step back into topics that you understand,” Owen replied, his voice a mere growl.

  “And yet, this seems to be the one that most pertains to the issue at hand, don’t you agree?” Rebecca said.

  Rebecca’s heart pumped. Tabitha seemed on the verge of collapse. Rebecca had forgotten just how pleasurable it was to make someone like Owen sweat. Had he been another of her suitors, he would have already rushed through the gate, ambled down the path, blurted to his father that he couldn’t take her a moment more. This woman will never be my wife! But of course, Owen was a more difficult man, a man with a higher tolerance.

  This made him all the more fun.

  But slowly, a slight smirk stretched upon her lips. The smirk was echoed back across Owen’s face. They faced-off, arms crossed, chins high. And Rebecca understood, suddenly, that he had already read the rules of the game, and he yearned to win.

  Chapter 10

  Owen stood, perplexed in the rose garden at the Frampton estate. This beautiful woman stood before him, her eyebrow arched, her lips in a rather loathsome smirk. Throughout the past several minutes, he’d grown increasingly enraged toward her, yearning to rip into her, to declare what she said a lie. But only now did he have the sense that, in truth, she had him on a string, making him dance about. It was her whim. It was her fancy.

  She’d crafted her own game out of him and he both resented it and respected it. In fact, it was the same game he might have played with her, if she hadn’t leapt upon it first. Tabitha, the friend, stood off to the side, as though she was in the midst of witnessing an attack. Her hands crept up towards her breast and the fingers clenched tightly together. Was she perhaps praying? Praying for their safety, their kindness, for the chaos to end?

  “I see what you’re doing, Miss Frampton,” Owen said now, matching her crooked grin.

  “Do you? I can’t imagine what you think you see,” Rebecca returned coolly. “We’re just two nearly newly beloveds, having a little chat in the garden. Not much to deduce from such a simple situation, is there?”

  “A clever woman, you are,” Owen said. He took a step towards her. Wonderfully, she flinched at his approach, as though she’d wanted to keep a healthy distance. “I imagine that you assumed I would be out of the garden by now. That the moment you poked at what you knew would upset me, I would go running, perhaps even report to my father what a monster I perceive you to be.”

  Rebecca’s smile fell from her face. Owen took another step towards her, so that now he stood only a foot or so away. He inhaled the floral scent of her perfume and found it unique, pleasurable, nothing he’d caught from a woman before. Something in his stomach stirred, although he yearned to shove it away. He was unaccustomed to such thoughts. Rebecca, of course, was one of the more beautiful women he’d ever seen – a fact that seemed to poke fun at his predicament. This didn’t mean he planned to lie down and allow her to walk all over him, the way other men did.

  “Admit it, Rebecca. Perhaps if you did, we could begin to speak more freely, as we did the other night,” Owen continued.

  “Why would I wish to have such a frank discussion with you?” Rebecca replied.

  Owen’s smile grew wider, which counter-balanced hers, now nearly completely receded. “I suppose because, well, I’m next on the chopping block. I’ve discussed it over with others in the area. My friend Theo seems to understand your reputation better than I.”

  Rebecca’s eyes flashed towards Tabitha. Tabitha didn’t return her gaze and kept hers to the ground, seeming to give extra analysis to the moss surrounding the fountain.