The Hazards of Hunting a Duke Read online

  “You will remain here,” he said sharply, sinking back in his chair. “I cannot possibly afford to put you up in a separate residence. Now. As I was saying before I was interrupted, I find it very difficult to mourn my wife properly with you and her things underfoot,” he said, gesturing wildly to them and the furniture, which indeed had been purchased with his wife’s money. “So I have decided to go to Paris for a time. You will remain here under the care and watchful eye of my sister.”

  The three of them looked at Lucille as if they were seeing her for the first time, but Ava quickly returned her attention to Egbert. “That is all, my lord? You are to France and we are to remain here, the same as before?”

  “Aha!” he said, lifting a finger. “Not precisely the same as before. The endless days of shopping and ordering gowns and shoes and whatnot have come to a most desired end.”

  Ava and Greer gasped. Phoebe looked as if she actually might be ill.

  “Furthermore, I see no reason to pay for a coterie of servants now that you are in mourning. There will be no traipsing about this Season’s assemblies, will there? Moreover, you are three industrious young women. I should think you quite capable of making a bed and sweeping a carpet. I shall retain Cook for you, but as a daily.”

  “Oh dear God,” Ava moaned, and closed her eyes. “I beg your pardon, sir, but our mother was quite wealthy. If I may be so indecorous as to inquire…surely she left something for our care?”

  “Of course she did,” he said pleasantly. “A modest dowry for each of you. The rest is left to me to look after as I see fit.”

  “We’re doomed!” Phoebe whispered to the ceiling.

  “Oh come now!” he scoffed at them. “It’s not as if you’ve been turned out into the street! I shall see that you are properly cared for! You shall have a roof over your head and food in your belly. What more could you possibly need?”

  “What more?” Phoebe echoed, a little too petulantly for his taste. “We can hardly go out into society without proper clothing!”

  “At last glance, girl, you have more clothing than can be housed in a single room,” he sharply reminded her. “I should think that will suffice until I return.”

  “How long will you be away?” Greer asked calmly.

  He shrugged. “Until autumn at the earliest, I should think. Perhaps even as late as the start of the next Season.”

  “That is months!” Ava cried. “You will force us to live like paupers for months?”

  “Do not raise your voice to me, Lady Ava! There is no call for a theatrical performance! I have provided for your needs—paupers indeed!”

  Phoebe turned to Ava, who grasped her hand and held it tightly.

  Greer was the only one to keep her composure, looking at Egbert with such cool intensity that he shuddered slightly. “If I may, my lord…what do you mean to do with us when you return?”

  “Precisely what should have been done long ago. Next spring shall come a new social season, and I shall accept the offers for your hands that will undoubtedly be brought round,” he said with a confident smile, and rose from his seat. “And I shall do so as expeditiously as possible, for it is long since time you were all properly married.”

  Ava opened her mouth, but he spoke before she could argue. “This interview is complete! I should like to review some items with my sister, and then I have the servants to contend with, so if you will excuse us?”

  “My lord, you’ll not release Beverly from service, surely,” Phoebe begged.

  “Won’t I? Three young women in perfectly good health do not need the assistance of a woman to dress themselves each day!” he said sternly. “You may help one another. Come, now, I’ll not have your despair! You shall manage quite well on your own and with Lucille’s help, I assure you! Now, then, go on with you.”

  The three of them reluctantly gained their feet.

  “Here, now, you mustn’t look so downcast,” Lucille said sternly. “Your face will bear the permanent lines of it if you continue to frown!”

  They glanced uneasily at Lucille as they walked out, heads down, lips pressed firmly together.

  “Oh dear,” Lucille sighed when the door closed behind them. “That did not go very well at all, did it?”

  “It went perfectly well, Lucy,” Egbert muttered, but his mind had already moved on to how he might release the servants.

  The servants were gone by the end of the week. Ava, Phoebe, and Greer stood in the foyer, fighting tears as they bid good-bye to servants who had been in their mother’s employ for so long they were considered family—family who had been tossed out onto the street with nothing more than a fortnight’s salary and the promise of a reference.

  “But I ain’t got nowhere to go, milady,” Old Derreck, their gardener and horseman, said to Ava as he pushed a thick hand through a shock of gray hair. “I got nowhere to lay me head.”

  Ava caught a sob in her throat, threw her arms around him, and held him tightly to her. “I’m sorry, Derreck. I’m so very sorry.”

  “Here,” Phoebe said, pulling Ava’s arms from the old man and taking his hand in hers. “Take this.” She pressed three gold crowns into his palm—the last three gold crowns Phoebe possessed. “It’s hardly anything, but it will at least provide you with lodging for a time.”

  “Until I can send Lord Ramsey a note on your behalf,” Ava interjected, thinking of one of her mother’s friends. “He’s always in need of a good gardener. I am certain he can find you a position in his household,” she promised, cringing inwardly at her lie. She had no idea what Lord Ramsey needed or didn’t need, but she would beg him to take Old Derreck in as a favor to her mother’s memory if nothing else.

  Beverly was the last to leave, and the three of them cried as they clung to the woman who had helped them bathe and dress for as long as they could remember. “There, now, wipe your tears,” Beverly said bravely. “I’ll not have you carrying on for me. I’ve been meaning to visit my mother in Derbyshire for ages. So wipe your tears, all of you. Lady Downey would not like you to cry. She’d ask what you would do to improve your lot, wouldn’t she?”

  Beverly was right, but it didn’t hurt any less.

  When she’d left, Ava closed the door behind her, feeling the weight of her sorrow and worry of what would become of the three of them like a heavy winter cloak about her shoulders.

  “I hate him,” Phoebe whispered.

  Ava gathered Phoebe and Greer to her, and the three of them retreated to their rooms to grieve in private.

  Lord Downey left two days after that, his step amazingly light for a man whose waist circumference seemed to equal his height. By the following Monday, a little on dit buried deep in the pages of the daily newspaper suggested that three young women known very well about town had lost their fortune to their stepfather and would undoubtedly be in search of another man’s fortune as soon as they could put aside their mourning clothes.

  That small mention was, as far as the three of them were concerned, a death knell for their social life. Fortune was everything to the ton, and those who did not possess at least a bit of one were not, as a rule, particularly welcome in the salons of those who had fortune in abundance.

  They agonized for days what to do, and finally agreed on a course that was unconventional, and in some cases, ill-advised. They were a bit desperate, true, but they were far more determined to find their way in the wake of their mother’s death.

  Four

  LONDON

  MARCH 1820

  I t was Jared Broderick’s bad luck to have returned to London after a particularly harsh winter a full fortnight after his father. It had given the old man time enough to meddle in his affairs, long enough for him to have arranged an interminable luncheon with Lord Robertson and his family. The duke had not, it would seem, mellowed over the winter months while Jared had remained at Broderick Abbey, managing to stay out of his father’s sight and, he’d hoped, his mind. He’d entertained Miranda only thrice in an effort to maintain a low p
rofile.

  Yet if anything, the old man seemed even more determined in his mission to see his only son married to Lady Elizabeth Robertson.

  Lady Elizabeth Robertson had not improved in looks or mien, as one might have expected after a full Season out. To be fair, Jared was basing his opinion on one exceedingly dull luncheon at which he was still engaged. The woman had said very little and eaten much less, which was not, he supposed, sufficient information by which to judge a person’s entire character.

  But his opinion of her had not changed.

  He thought he would crawl out of his skin if he was forced to endure one moment more of this luncheon, and as he watched Lady Elizabeth take precisely measured bites of her whitefish, his mind wandered again to his father’s most recent threats.

  It was his own fault—he should have held his tongue yesterday when his father asked him if, after a winter of contemplation, he realized he must put Miranda aside for the sake of the dukedom.

  “No,” Jared had said wearily.

  “No? That is all you will say?” the duke had asked incredulously. “I do not think you understand me, sir. If you refuse to put her aside, then I am prepared to expose your greatest mistake and all those associated with it.”

  At first, Jared thought he’d misheard him, but when he saw the look of triumph in his father’s eye, he was stunned. “Are you threatening me, your grace?”

  “Threaten is perhaps too harsh a word. I am trying to impart the depth of my conviction,” the duke responded evenly.

  “You have a rather cold way of imparting your conviction.”

  “I do what I must to ensure the sanctity of the name Redford.”

  Jared had scoffed at that. “Can you truly say that in the same breath you use to threaten me? My God, I don’t believe you care for anyone or anything other than your blessed name!”

  “That’s ridiculous,” his father had said, waving a bony hand at him. “I care for you, but you are too bloody stubborn to see it. Yet I care for your honor more, which you have so carelessly squandered. Do as I ask, Jared,” the duke continued at Jared’s groan of exasperation. “Marry Lady Elizabeth. Her family is awaiting your offer. Perhaps you will speak to her father at luncheon tomorrow.”

  “I will not speak to him,” Jared said calmly. “I will not be forced into marrying her.”

  The duke sighed, and he looked, Jared thought, older than he had at their last meeting, four months ago. “I am warning you—don’t push me to do something you will regret.”

  “I don’t push you to do anything, your grace. I have only asked that you leave me to live my life as I see fit. It is a request any man might make of his father,” he snapped, and walked out, ignoring the duke’s shouted warning that he would do what it took to keep his name from being tarnished.

  Jared had left Redford House feeling as he always felt after these interminable interviews—as if his father had placed an invisible vise around him and was slowly turning the screws, torturing him with his demands, forcing his hand.

  London was swelling with the Quality as they began to make the trek from the country to town in anticipation of the Season, and he rather supposed yesterday’s row had already spilled across Mayfair, for his father’s servants, he believed, were amazingly fast in their ability to spread untoward gossip among the ton.

  To stave off any more gossip—and for deeper, more complex reasons that he did not fully understand—Jared had come to the Robertson luncheon as commanded. He’d come to keep the peace, he supposed, fearful that his father would make good on his threat and hurt more people than just Jared. It had pained him to do so, for the day was lovely and quite warm for an early March day.

  But here he was—stuck in a drafty mansion, seated across from a demure Lady Elizabeth while her mother spoke of their winter—imagining days and weeks and months and even years of such tedium stretching before him.

  “We had a repair done on the east wing,” Lady Robertson was saying, as if he might possibly care what they did. “But what with all the rain and snow, the work was not completed.”

  “Ah,” he said, forcing himself to look away from Elizabeth’s deliberate chewing.

  “Once we have completed the work, we shall host a weekend affair for all of our good acquaintances. We’ve a dozen bedrooms in that wing alone.”

  “Very good,” he said idly, and glanced at Elizabeth again. She smiled shyly. He smiled very thinly, trying to think of one thing—anything!—that would be more excruciatingly painful than to spend an entire weekend in the country with this family.

  He could think of nothing.

  Elizabeth carefully folded her linen and put it on her lap. She was so proper he was certain the slightest breach in etiquette would break her in two. He shifted his gaze away, caught his father glaring at him, and shifted his gaze to his plate.

  Fortunately, Lady Robertson turned her attention to the Season’s social calendar, noting—for his benefit, he supposed—the number of balls to which Elizabeth had received invitations. Jared scarcely heard a word she said, for her endless monotone gave him ample opportunity to relive the spat he’d had with Miranda last evening.

  Miranda was growing weary of the ongoing disagreement with his father, which seemed to have grown more vitriolic since they had returned to London. “I can’t possibly imagine why you won’t do what he asks to appease him,” she’d said as she sat prettily on her chaise in her silk dressing gown. “Once you put a child on some girl, then we might continue on, shan’t we, and it won’t be the least bit different than your father’s affair with Lady Sullivan, will it?”

  At the mention of his father’s long-standing affair with a woman who had survived his mother, Jared flinched inwardly. He was never really certain why, but the notion of his father bedding someone other than his late mother had always pricked him. He supposed it was because it was done so openly. He could remember a time when he was a boy, the servants discussing before him the need to send linens up to Lady Sullivan’s house, for the duke did not care for her coarse sheets. Even then, it had seemed insupportable for his father to take vows of fidelity before God and then forsake them.

  Yet here he was, contemplating that very thing.

  It wasn’t unusual, really. In some circles—his, to be exact—it was expected. Marry one woman for pedigree and fortune; make love to another. It was, for better or worse, the way of many couples among the Quality.

  “For God’s sake, just do as he asks, Jared,” Miranda said again with great exasperation as she began to brush her long dark red hair. “It is the only way we shall ever be together in any measure of peace—of that I am convinced.”

  “We might be together in peace if we were to marry,” he said, surprising himself as much as Miranda. He was fond of Miranda in a lover’s way, and in that moment, it occurred to him that if he would be forced to marry, why not marry Miranda? “My father might disown me, but at least we would live as man and wife and bring our legitimate children into the world.”

  Miranda made a cry of alarm and dropped her brush. “I think all that clean country air has made you mad, darling. Of course he would disown you, for I will never possess the credentials necessary to appease your father. And if he disowned you, you could not give our children the things you had as a child. I daresay you would never forgive yourself.” She’d turned and looked at him pointedly. “And I daresay, neither would I.”

  Her response had stung him. He understood how women were taught to think of marriage—power and wealth meant everything, apparently even to Miranda. Yet the confirmation that his title and fortune meant more to her than he did cut like a knife.

  Now, as the Robertson meal was ending—just before he feared he would be driven to leap from the table and fling himself out of the windows onto Audley Street below—Lord Robertson suggested the ladies take their ices in the solarium with the duke. “I thought perhaps Lord Middleton and I might enjoy a cheroot. You do enjoy a good cheroot, do you not, my lord?”

&nbs
p; Jared glanced at his father, whose expression was so full of expectation that he wanted to scream. He shifted his gaze to Lord Robertson and smiled. “Thank you, my lord, but I must beg your leave.”

  No one said anything for a moment until Elizabeth made a small sound of despair, and the duke…well, the duke turned dark. A very unpleasant shade of red.

  “Please do forgive me, but I have another engagement I simply cannot miss,” he added, almost cheerfully. “It is a parliamentary matter.”

  “Middleton—” his father started, but Jared was already rising from his chair.

  “I had quite forgotten it until this morning, your grace,” he said pleasantly, and smiled at his host. “You will forgive me?”

  “Of course,” Robertson said, looking confused.

  Jared quickly went to the mother and took her hand in his. “Thank you, Lady Robertson, for a lovely luncheon,” he said, and turned to Elizabeth. “Lady Elizabeth, I have thoroughly enjoyed your company. I look forward to the time we might dine again,” he said, and took her hand, brought it to his lips, kissed her cold knuckles, and quickly let go.

  Elizabeth looked at her mother, her eyes wide with consternation, but Jared walked on, to the head of the table, passing a string of footmen who had, no doubt, been brought out to impress him. He offered his hand to a stunned Lord Robertson. “Thank you again, my lord.”

  “But I thought…I thought we were to have the afternoon,” he said weakly.

  “Another time, perhaps,” Jared said, and bowed low. He scarcely looked at his father. “Your grace,” he said before he walked out of the room.

  Let his father make good on his threats. Jared was beyond caring at the moment, for he could not possibly endure another moment in that dining room. If he had to marry, so be it. But he would not, under any circumstance, marry Lady Elizabeth Robertson.

  He went directly to his club and sent word for Harrison to join him if he was able. When Harrison appeared an hour later, Jared felt restless, and given that the day was bright and unusually warm, he convinced his old friend that they should ride in Hyde Park.