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

by Henrietta Harding

  A few days prior to the ball, her father found Rebecca in the garden, hunched over a book. He cleared his throat several times before Rebecca noticed him, having flung herself as deep into the fictional universe as possible. She peered up at him, her eyes glossy, and he beamed down, his hands on his hips.

  “Good afternoon, dear one,” he said. “I have splendid news. Your sister has decided to join us for afternoon tea. She and the boys have collected themselves in the parlour, and they await us even now.”

  Rebecca slowly drew her book closed and heaved a sad sigh. She hadn’t seen Evelyn since the previous time she’d been at their childhood home, when she’d crowded her, demanded that she marry Owen Crauford. Now that she’d grown muddled in her thoughts regarding Owen, she yearned not to see her – if only because she felt it would confuse her still more. Evelyn longed for nothing more than to cause displeasure to her sister. This, she supposed, was a symptom of being the youngest child.

  “You must join us, darling,” her father said, after Rebecca’s overly long pause. “Evelyn awaits.”

  “She’s always waiting for a reason to suggest my imminent failure. I’m sure my lateness will be a worthy topic,” Rebecca said.

  “Come now! So close to the announcement of your engagement? There can be only good news, only smiles, from now on,” her father said.

  His smile was oddly infectious. He stuck out his elbow, and Rebecca slipped her arm through it, giving a slight roll of her eyes. They appeared back in the shadow of the house, cool beneath the shade of several oak trees. From the back hallway, already, Rebecca heard the squawk of the children, Peter and Oliver.

  “I suppose she grows endlessly bored there at the estate with Ulrich,” Rebecca murmured.

  “Darling, don’t say such spiteful things,” her father returned.

  “You know it’s true, just as much as I,” Rebecca said.

  Her father gave a sure smile – an indication that he did, in fact, know precisely what she meant. However, before he could fully answer, both Oliver and Peter sprung out from the parlour and dashed madly to Rebecca. Rebecca dropped her father’s arm and crouched low to collect them in a large hug. She growled as she hugged them, then whipped them about, so that their legs flung about in the air. Evelyn stepped out from the parlour and cried, “Not so rough, Rebecca! Goodness…”

  Rebecca dropped the boys back onto their toes and gave a dutiful smile to her sister. “Good afternoon, Evelyn. Such a marvellous time to drop by. I’m always looking for a reason to step away from my incredibly exciting novel.”

  Evelyn rejected the sarcasm. She returned the smile, a demure one, and then returned to the parlour. The others, as though guided by an unseen force, followed. Before Rebecca knew what to make of it, she perched on the sofa directly across from her sister and found herself listening to the ins and outs of Evelyn’s recent hired hand in the stables, fixing the rafters. It was dry and wretched conversation, the sort that did Rebecca’s head in. Mr. Frampton adored this sort of talk and asked seemingly endless questions.

  Finally, Evelyn yanked her head around to stare directly at Rebecca. Her smile widened and seemed to grow oddly evil. Rebecca blinked at her, refusing to switch her expression.

  “I cannot wait to see what you’ll say next,” Rebecca said.

  “You always have to preface everything, don’t you?” Evelyn replied.

  “No. I can simply read minds.”

  The boys, stretched out with toys on the floor, glanced up, mesmerised.

  “Auntie, can you really read minds?” Oliver asked.

  “Yes, in fact. I know what you’re thinking even now,” Rebecca said.

  “What is it?” Oliver scrunched himself tight on the floor, preparing himself.

  “You’re thinking that you’d like another piece of shortbread, but you’re entirely too frightened to take one, because your mother has told you that you’re only allowed two,” Rebecca said.

  Oliver’s jaw snapped open. He gawked at her, then glanced at his mother and whispered, “She’s right, Mother.”

  “For goodness sake,” Evelyn said. She yanked the platter of shortbread from the low table and delivered them to both Oliver and Peter, casting a dark expression back toward Rebecca. “You’ll understand when you have children. If you ever have children. I’ve heard that you haven’t yet fought your way out of this engagement, however. To your credit.”

  “To my credit!” Rebecca said, her words dripping with sarcasm. “It’s marvellous that you worry so about my happiness, sister.”

  “I just imagine you alone throughout your later years. I know you’d look back at this time with regret,” Evelyn continued. She leaned forward then, her eyes shining. “And you know, it’s not as though Owen doesn’t have others interested. The world is a frantic one, Rebecca, and Owen is quite handsome. You must do what I did with Ulrich, what Tabitha did with Anthony!”

  “You compare my life with yours and Tabitha’s?” Rebecca snorted.

  “Don’t say you wish to speak ill of Anthony once more,” Evelyn said. Secretly, after their marriage ceremony, Evelyn had cut across the little party and whispered into Rebecca’s ear, He’s really quite green, isn’t he?

  “I’ve said nothing about Anthony in weeks,” Rebecca said. “In fact, I’ve heard recent news that he’s on the brink of becoming something of a new man.”

  Evelyn arched her brow. “You sound sarcastic. Are you sarcastic?”

  “Nearly always,” their father said, then collected his hands on his knees and stared at them longingly.

  “He’s to be a father. Although this news is to remain in this room,” Rebecca said.

  Evelyn’s mouth rounded in shock. Her father’s face snapped up, and his eyes glowed.

  “My goodness! Tabitha’s to be a mother!” Evelyn said, with more sincerity than Rebecca had heard in years.

  “It’s always this with you, isn’t it?” Rebecca returned. “You’re always willing to give such goodwill and honour to the people who wish to follow in your footsteps.” But she swallowed then, forced her heart to calm. “But in all honesty, I’m thrilled for my Tabitha. Although she’s quite ill right now, she does seem genuinely happy.”

  “Oh, and I’m sure she wishes for you to become a mother soon!” Evelyn said. “My best friend –”

  “Who? I didn’t realise you had friends,” Rebecca said, lending a sneaky smile.

  “You wretched creature, you grew up with them! They braided your hair!” Evelyn said.

  “Always so easy with you, dear Evelyn,” Rebecca said, chuckling.

  “Yes, well. Regardless…” Evelyn adjusted, her eyes still bright. “If Tabitha is to be a new mother, and you’re to marry this year, you’ll be able to have your children together. And my boys – they’ll know your children as a bit younger, of course, but there will be no less love. They’ll teach them everything they need to know. Won’t you, boys?”

  Peter and Oliver squatted with their shortbread, entirely focused on the task at hand. Evelyn returned her attention to Rebecca and said, “You’ll marry him, won’t you, Rebecca? Our father, me, Ulrich, we all yearn to welcome your husband into our family.”

  “Did you really come all this way to report to me that Ulrich wishes me to marry?” Rebecca said. “If so, please tell him my thanks. I wouldn’t have gone through with it without him.”

  “She’s wretched, isn’t she?” Evelyn said to their father, although she still had a steady grin, one Rebecca didn’t entirely trust.

  How Rebecca wished to tell her sister and her father that Owen, himself, was in the midst of struggling to get out of this. But it felt like such an insult, a strange thing to report about herself. She shook off her own distasteful smile and asked her sister, “And what of you? Do you suppose you’ll have more children?”

  Evelyn’s face grew pale. Her mouth opened to nearly the size of a cave and she blurted, “Sister! What has got into you? Asking me such outwardly horrendous questions.”

 
; “And yet you speak so openly about my future,” Rebecca said. She slipped forward, gripped a shortbread, and then nibbled at the edge, watching as her sister stewed in this realisation.

  “Very well,” Evelyn said, setting her jaw. She turned to their father, her eyes hard, and said, “Father, I really love what you’ve done with the shrubbery out front. You must pass along your gardener to me. Ulrich simply detests his!”

  Rebecca was safe, if only for the moment. She dreaded what might occur weeks from then, if Owen was able to tear the betrothal apart. Surely Evelyn would point to Rebecca as the perpetrator, the lost cause. Rebecca would have to agree, or else label herself as un-marriable.

  Goodness. Suppose Evelyn and Tabitha were correct? Suppose this was her final chance?

  At the door prior to her departure, Evelyn hugged Rebecca a bit tighter than she normally did and muttered into her ear. “I’m terribly sorry for all my reckless prying. I sit at home and I – well, you know what I do.”

  “You worry,” Rebecca said.

  “It’s what I’ve always done. I’ve never been a young girl. Even when I was a young thing, there was always something to care for. You came along, and Mother passed away and…”

  “I know.”

  Rebecca didn’t wish to dig into the hard-hitting facts of their wretched relationship. She didn’t wish to stare down the truth, that Evelyn had largely raised her, that her mother had long since gone away. Now, Evelyn strung a piece of Rebecca’s hair behind her ear and clicked her tongue.

  “You really do look tremendously like her, Rebecca. It’s almost as though you’re her twin.”

  Rebecca had heard this several times, yet each time it felt like a strange glimmer of hope. This, her final connection to her dead mother, a woman she’d never be allowed to meet again before heaven. She felt her eyes crest with tears and attempted to shove them back. But already, Evelyn pressed her hand a final time on Rebecca’s cheek and then swept out of the house, towards the waiting carriage. It was late afternoon, yet it was early June already, and the sun cast a thick blanket of heat over everything.

  Chapter 17

  “Just dreadful. A dreadful man.” Neil Crauford hadn’t given up on his wildly disdainful talk regarding Kenneth Frampton since their previous visit to the Frampton home. This rather pleased Owen, as it became a source of entertainment for him. When he spotted his father hovering over his desk, eyeing the books with a furrowed brow, he normally stopped to listen to his father’s muttered words. This, he heard now, hovering in the doorway.

  “Did you say something, Father?” Owen asked.

  Mr. Crauford nearly leapt from his skin. His eyes snapped towards his son, and he forced his shoulders down, his lips to perk up. “Of course, son. I was simply taking a look at the books.”

  “I didn’t hear you come in last night,” Owen replied. “I don’t suppose you were out gambling again?”

  His father’s cheeks burned red. “I don’t suppose it’s really any of your business where I was.”

  Owen didn’t allow his smile to falter. Rather, he crinkled his lips to the side and said, “You don’t suppose it’s my business? And yet, here I am, willing and able to sweep in and save this family’s name, with a marriage to a beautiful, decently rich prospect.”

  “We’ve discussed this over and over, Owen.”

  “And you’ve said it over and over. That we haven’t a penny left. And then you retreat. Enter the world to gamble still more of it away!” Owen stepped towards his father’s desk and stretched his fingers out on either side, leaning lightly forward, his black eyes centred on his father’s slightly lighter ones.

  “What do you want me to say, son?” his father stuttered. “Do you want me to say that I cannot stop? That I’m terribly addicted? I feel I’ve said all these things before. I’m backed in a corner, son. To sit here in my study, alone at night… It’s a wretched thing for me. I itch to go to the tables. I know no other way.”

  The passion that glowed behind his father’s eyes was oddly illuminating. Owen pitied his father, this reckless man, and still felt an immense love for him. How could he not?

  “What time is it now?” Owen asked.

  The question seemed to surprise his father. His eyes flicked towards the clock as he answered, “It’s just past eight in the evening. You must know this. We’ve only just eaten dinner together.”

  “Yes, but. It’s evening once more. Which must mean that you, my dear father, are itching to go back to the tables,” Owen said.

  His father didn’t answer. Instead of pressing him for more, Owen turned to his father’s fine selection of whisky and scotch, grabbed a glass, and poured himself and then his father healthy portions. He clunked the glass before his father and gestured to it.

  “This won’t help,” his father said, studying Owen with apprehensive eyes. “The alcohol makes my fingers itch.”

  Owen arched his brow, then clunked into the chair across from his father. He yanked his feet up on the desk itself, a sight that would have blown his father’s head off his neck ten years before. Now, at age twenty-six, on the brink of making an enormous sacrifice for his family, Owen felt owed this minor act. Owen lifted the glass towards his father’s and together the two men clinked. Then they drank, both pairs of eyes closed. When Owen opened his again, his father peered at him suspiciously.

  Perhaps he assumed that Owen was there to dig himself out of the engagement. This wasn’t outside the bounds of reason. In fact, Owen had already considered it in the previous few seconds. Yet of course, faced with his father’s horrendous gambling addiction and the downfall of their familial name, he didn’t deem it an appropriate time to bring it up.

  But before he could accuse him of anything, Owen said, “I’m attending a ball tomorrow evening. Perhaps you remember. I agreed to attend prior to this entire engagement business.”

  His father’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. He leaned over his desk, almost conspiratorially, and said, “Do you suppose that Rebecca will be there?”

  “I believe she will be,” Owen returned.

  “Your first and perhaps final ball together, unmarried,” his father said. He sipped his drink thoughtfully and said, “I remember when I first danced with your mother at a ball, one terribly similar to this, I’m sure. I was so nervous, Owen. I knew in the first few moments that I wanted her to be my wife. It’s the way someone’s like, not even how they look, that tells you.

  “Perhaps it’s dreadful to tell you this, now,” his father continued, his eyes growing cloudy. “I’ve forced you into a marriage outside of your will. Regardless of whether or not you dance with the beautiful Rebecca Frampton tomorrow, you’ll still be required to marry her. Perhaps the two of you will fall in love. Perhaps you’ll grow fond of one another. Perhaps you’ll be forty and unwilling to look one another in the eye. Certainly, your mother and I now…”

  Owen dropped his eyes towards the dark drink before him. His stomach stirred with apprehension. He’d long known that his parents didn’t have much to speak about these days, that his mother was embarrassed by his father’s gambling and inability to keep the family money intact. Her love had long-since dried, it seemed.

  “Have you thought about talking with her?” Owen asked.

  His father’s cheeks sagged. He sucked down the last of his scotch and then erupted toward the cabinet once more for a refill. “I think that time has passed, son.”

  Owen collected his fingers together beneath his chin and watched his father in his familiar pattern. Now that he’d trapped him in the study, he felt sure he could force him to miss the nightly buy-in at the gambling table.