Four Nights With the Duke Read online

  Charlie’s face was small, but all of a sudden she saw that it was no longer delicate. His chin was square and his eyes were fierce.

  “You’re growing up, aren’t you?” she asked, unable to keep a smile from her lips.

  “Of course I’m growing up,” Charlie told her. “All boys grow up. I shall go away to school soon. It’s going to be an adventure.”

  “No, you won’t!” she cried, the denial coming straight from her heart. “Who told you such a thing? Did the duke say that?”

  Charlie snuggled back into his covers. “Yes, he did. He’s going to send me to his school. It’s called something funny . . . like Eating. I think that’s it. He’s sending me to Eating.” His eyes were growing slumberous.

  “Eton,” Mia mumbled, shocked down to her toes. Her baby would never go away to school, where cruel boys like that dreadful Oakenrott would taunt and bully him.

  She would throw herself in front of the carriage first. Had she done this? By marrying Vander, she had ensured that Charlie would endure agonies of humiliation, not just once, but every day, for years?

  No.

  Charlie’s eyes opened again. “You can’t keep me a baby, Aunt Mia,” he whispered. “I have to grow up.”

  Her heart was thudding in her throat. Her marriage wasn’t consummated. Charlie might be better off with Sir Richard. At least Sir Richard would keep him in the house, rather than throwing him onto the back of a horse or sending him away to school.

  No. She had been right to get Charlie away from Sir Richard, no matter what.

  Charlie had fallen asleep, so she reached out and smoothed the hair that tumbled over his brow and tiptoed from the room. She had to think, but Susan was straightening her bedchamber. She needed a place where she was unlikely to be disturbed.

  Suddenly she remembered Jafeer. He was as distressed and lonely as she was. It took her a while to find a side door, but finally she slipped into the night. It was warm outside, and the sky was full of stars, like shining cherries in a bowl.

  She walked the path to the stables, letting the evening air wrap around her shoulders. Weren’t lamps dangerous in a stable? Yet the building was illuminated inside as if by daylight, and as she approached, she heard a shout.

  Followed by the high whinny of an enraged horse.

  “Oh for goodness’ sake,” she said, under her breath.

  Still, she felt better. Someone needed her. Vander didn’t care to have her around, for obvious reasons, and Charlie was growing up.

  A couple of grooms came running toward her, down the corridor away from Jafeer’s stall. They tried to stop her, but she brushed past them.

  A moment later she stood in front of the stall. The stallion’s eyes were wild, rolling, both ears flat back, his hide blackened with sweat. Mia put her hands on her hips. When he was two years old, Charlie had gone through a spell when he would lie on the nursery floor and scream.

  Jafeer, she decided, was having a tantrum. Just as she had with Charlie, Mia waited until she caught Jafeer’s eyes. Instantly, the wild loneliness drained out of his expression, and he brought his front legs to the floor with a thud.

  The groom who had been hauling on his reins, trying in vain to control the horse, let out a string of thankful curses, turned, saw her, and started.

  “Your—Your Grace!”

  “Jafeer,” Mia said, “just what do you think you’re doing?”

  The horse blew air and shook his head. He wasn’t going to throw in the towel immediately. It was all her fault, apparently.

  Mia stepped forward. “Come here,” she said, reaching toward him.

  He held out for another moment, letting her know that she shouldn’t have abandoned him in a strange place where men shouted at him. With a huge sigh he lowered his head to her.

  Mia reached her arms around his neck. “You mustn’t behave this way,” she told him. “It’s not as if I can sleep in the stables with you.”

  As if he could understand her, Jafeer gave a little snort and lipped at her hair. Susan had left it down in a style that she swore was all the mode, but Mia thought was merely untidy.

  She drew away. “There’s entirely too much light here,” she said, turning to address the stable hand. “Oh, Mulberry, there you are! Wouldn’t it be better to extinguish the lamps? Look at poor Lancelot. He wants to go to sleep.”

  In fact, Lancelot was asleep. It would take more than a terrified, homesick horse in the stall next door to keep him awake.

  “If I’d known that stallion needed a duchess to make him happy,” Mulberry said, “I never would have recommended we buy him.”

  “It’s probably just a woman’s touch,” Mia said, even though she didn’t like that idea. Jafeer was hers.

  Mulberry shook his head. “No, Your Grace. Since you were here this morning, we tried all the scullery maids, the downstairs maid, and one of the dairymaids. I tried to lure the cook, but she wouldn’t come.”

  Mia ran Jafeer’s velvety ear through her fingers. “I can’t remain in the stables with you all night, silly boy. Mulberry, if you would be kind enough to extinguish all but one of the lamps, perhaps I can quiet him enough to sleep.” She turned her face and dropped a kiss on the horse’s whiskery nose. “You’re sleepy, aren’t you?” The Arabian’s eyes drooped. It couldn’t be easy having a daylong tantrum.

  Charlie used to drop to sleep like a stone after his fits, back when he was two years old.

  One by one the lamps were turned down and the stable descended into near-darkness. The men all left, with Mulberry the last to go.

  Finally it was just the two of them. Well, the two of them and two dozen other animals, slowly breathing in a warm darkness that smelled like horses and clean straw.

  Mia unlatched the door to Jafeer’s stall and entered. The moment she was next to his head, he folded up his long legs and collapsed like a house of cards.

  “You’re going to sleep,” Mia said, in a calm low voice. She sat on the floor next to him and leaned against his shoulder. He curved his neck around her, and she stroked his cheek. “Pretty soon I shall have to leave, and you will sleep through the night. I’ll visit you in the morning, and perhaps again in the evening.”

  Jafeer’s head slid off her shoulder to the straw as he fell asleep.

  Mia just sat, hand on his neck, thinking about her life. She had sacrificed everything for Charlie—her self-esteem, her self-respect, her chance at a happy marriage. But it had been the right thing to do; even thinking about his shining eyes made her smile. He wanted to learn to ride, so she’d have to allow it.

  Ever since the moment when she’d realized that her newborn nephew might die due to his mother’s extravagant use of opium during birth, and the doctor had chosen not to rouse the baby because of his deformity, she had taken responsibility. It began when she upended a pitcher of water on the baby’s head and woke him up from an opium-induced daze.

  As Mia saw it, there were times when only one possible road lay ahead, and so she had snatched Charlie from the arms of the nurse. And eight years later, she had faced a similar conundrum, and married Vander.

  She leaned back against Jafeer, pushing the subject of Vander out of her mind.

  Perhaps the count jilted Flora because he was an inveterate inebriate, along Chuffy’s lines? But there seemed to be so much pain behind Chuffy’s drinking . . . she couldn’t manage it if Frederic was in that sort of emotional state.

  Novels weren’t like real life.

  The darkest problems were like syphilis and lice. She couldn’t touch them, not in the pages of her books.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DRAFT: WEDDING

  Having grown up in an orphanage, Flora’s knowledge of the marital state is near to non-existent. The image of a gentleman on his knees knocked together in her head with a vision of herself in a silk gown, being served by a liveried butler footmen in livery.

  Flora had long dreamed of a man in an exquisite coat who would sit beside her, vowing eternal adora
tion.

  She had never imagined this . . . this agony.

  With trembling fingers she unwrapped the screw of paper the priest handed her, his face riddled with compassion.

  (“Riddled” sounds as if he has pox, which no man of the cloth should have.)

  With trembling fingers, she opened the sheet of paper. The words danced before her eyes. Black dots swam before her eyes.

  Frederic had changed his mind.

  Vander stared at the dining room door as it closed behind his wife, and felt a leaden sense of guilt settle in his gut. For a moment, before Mia smiled insincerely and bade them goodnight, he had seen misery in her eyes.

  Misery.

  He had done that.

  “You’re a horse’s ass,” Chuffy confirmed. He had taken up his fork again and spoke through a mouthful of beef. “I know she blackmailed you and all the rest of it, but your bed is made, lad. What are you going to do, spend your whole marriage sniping at her? She doesn’t even fight back. It’s hardly a fair fight.”

  Mia hadn’t fought back. A wooden look had slid over her face that he didn’t like. Not at all.

  “I’ll have to give you some lessons in how to deal with women,” Chuffy said, waving his fork. “God knows, your mama was unusual, which is probably why you don’t understand ’em.”

  “Unusual?” Vander said, bristling. “I don’t think she was unusual.”

  Chuffy frowned at him. “What’s your meaning?”

  “She was unfaithful to your brother,” Vander said. “She took a lover and cuckolded him in plain sight of all society. There’s nothing unusual about that.”

  Chuffy put his fork down. “That’s taking the ugliest possible look at it.”

  “What other way is there?” Bitterness swelled in Vander’s heart. “I watched her, Chuffy. I saw my mother swan around ballrooms on that man’s arm. He would stay for months, sitting in my father’s place at the table. Even when I was still in the nursery, I knew it was wrong.”

  Whenever his father was to be released from the private asylum, Lord Carrington would vanish back to his own estate. Vander had never spoken to his father about what happened during his confinements.

  If the duke had known that every time he fell too deeply into melancholia to bathe himself, after he was banished to the asylum again, Lord Carrington would stride back into the house, a shock of golden-gilt hair waving above his forehead . . . It would have been terrible.

  So Vander had unwillingly become a party to deceiving his father. A party to adultery.

  “It was complicated,” Chuffy said, interrupting his thoughts. “I suppose we should have discussed this earlier.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” Vander stated.

  Chuffy rose and went to the sideboard, retrieved the bottle of wine, and poured it into the glass he’d carried with him.

  “You’re supposed to summon Gaunt to pour,” Vander snapped.

  “Are you really going to try to turn your house into a ducal establishment?” Chuffy asked. “Bit late for that.”

  That was true. Vander liked to work in the stables all day. He didn’t care to change for the evening meal, though he’d done it today. He had married a woman who dressed like an elderly housekeeper. His uncle was drunk most of the time.

  “I suppose not.”

  “I loved my brother,” Chuffy said, leaning back against the sideboard and sipping his wine. “When we were young, he was like a god to me: always telling stories, getting into trouble and talking his way out, dragging me along even though I was much younger.”

  Vander nodded. “Thank you for that.” He stood. “If you’ll excuse me—”

  Chuffy cut him off. “I will not.”

  Vander instantly froze. Before this damned marriage, no one—ever—told him what to do. He was not only a duke; he had made thousands of pounds training, racing, and betting on his horses. He commanded, rather than the other way around.

  “Nephew,” Chuffy said.

  “Of course,” he said, sitting down again. “I apologize. I’m at your service.” He could do this. He hated more than anything to discuss his parents, but he owed this courtesy to his uncle.

  “Your father’s illness came on when he was fifteen, though we didn’t understand it at the time,” Chuffy said, rolling his glass between his hands. “He started staying up all night, telling mad stories that would go on for days. At first, I stayed up with him. But I couldn’t . . .” He was silent for a moment. “I couldn’t keep up with him. He would take a horse and ride all night long. When we were in the house in Wales during the summer, he would dive from cliffs and swim back around to the village. You know how long a swim that is, lad.”

  “He could easily have died,” Vander said, frowning. “He must have been mad already. Of course, he was mad.”

  “Yes.” Chuffy took a gulp of wine and started turning, turning his glass again. “He began to grow angry, flaring up between one word and the next. It wasn’t him, not really. He was never like that as a boy. He was always at my shoulder, defending me.”

  Vander nodded. “He lost his temper with you?”

  “At first, I thought it was my fault,” Chuffy said. “That if I could somehow be a better brother, more quiet, more helpful . . . he wouldn’t grow enraged. But he always did. The anger, the blows, would come out of nowhere.”

  Vander stood again. He didn’t know what to do or what to say. He wasn’t the sort of man who knew how to console another.

  Damn it, a tear was sliding down his uncle’s cheek. “I was relieved when he married and moved out of the house,” Chuffy whispered. “My own brother.”

  “Anyone would understand,” Vander said, moving around the table to put a hand on his shoulder. “My father was out of his mind. Cracked.”

  “He turned from me to your mother,” Chuffy said, his watery eyes meeting Vander’s.

  Vander suddenly went cold all over.

  “I was so grateful for my release . . . but it just meant that he turned that anger against her. Didn’t you ever wonder why you never had a sibling? Or why your mother never conceived a child with Lord Carrington, since they were together more than twenty years?”

  Vander’s jaw tightened. He didn’t like where this conversation was heading.

  “After you were born, she couldn’t have any more children, because your father—my brother—took that away from her.” Chuffy’s voice was low, tortured.

  Vander turned away instinctively, stumbling as he did.

  “With his fists,” Chuffy added, taking a deep gulp of wine.

  Vander’s gut convulsed and, unable to help himself, he threw up on the floor.

  “Hell,” Chuffy muttered. “I shouldn’t have told you.” He grabbed a cloth from the sideboard and tossed it over the vomit.

  “I should have known.” Vander took a glass of water from the table. “How could I not have seen it?”

  “He didn’t mean it,” his uncle said urgently. “It wasn’t his fault, lad. The madness would take over . . .”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.” Vander put down the empty glass and strode to the door. In the corridor, he paused and said, “Gaunt, I was sick on the floor. Please convey my apologies to whomever cleans it up.”

  “The fish soup!” the butler exclaimed.

  “No, no, the soup was excellent.”

  Chuffy followed him to his study, clutching the bottle of claret in his hand. “You always had that trick of throwing up at bad news,” he said, leaning against the doorframe.

  Vander frowned. He had no particular memories of vomiting.

  “You were a bellwether for my brother’s madness,” his uncle said. “When the mania came on, I knew you would lose your meal. I think it saved your life a time or two.”

  “Surely not,” Vander said, his voice rasping.

  “Everyone tried to protect you, of course, but you were small, and children are terribly fragile, aren’t they? My brother insisted on going into the nursery, no matter how
many footmen were stationed at the door. Mind you, he didn’t mean it. He had delusions, you see. Sometimes he thought it was his duty to kill you.”

  Vander searched his memory. “I remember he once mistook me for a burglar . . .”

  “That’s what we told you.” Chuffy’s voice was so sad that Vander could hear the tears. “Yet he loved you, and your mother, and me as well.”

  Vander cleared his throat. “That’s not enough.” He met Chuffy’s eyes. “He may have loved us, but he didn’t protect us. He didn’t make certain that we were safe. Quite the opposite, it seems.”

  The corner of Chuffy’s mouth twitched. Regret and shame were battling in his uncle’s face.

  “I’m glad you told me,” Vander added.

  That was a lie.

  Chuffy nodded and upended the bottle.

  “I’ll be in the stables,” Vander said, and escaped past him into the entry, then out the front door into the shadowy darkness.

  Chapter Nineteen

  NOTES ON FREDERIC’S REPENTANCE

  ~ day after Frederic cruelly leaves Flora at the altar, his deceitful friend breaks down and confesses that Flora had never kissed him. It had all been a lie.

  ~ Frederic realizes All Too Late the plight that his terrible jealousy has led him to. Loss of the Woman of his Heart, etc.

  ~ Rushes to her house, only to discover it repossessed by Mr. Mortimer’s solicitor, and a new (formerly impoverished) maiden established there.

  ~ Horrified, he realizes that Flora’s clothes and jewels were delivered to his house before the wedding.

  ~ She has naught but the gown she had worn for the ceremony.

  ~ Agony of Repentance. Ha!

  ~ In a frenzy, Frederic vows to give up his fortune/horses/servants until such time as he recovers his Beloved. Sets out on foot, following stories of a Divinely Beautiful woman in tattered wedding dress, begging for bread.

  Vander headed down to the one place in his world where everything made sense, only to be met on the way by Mulberry. A moment later he was running down the path toward the stable. What in the hell was Mia doing, going near that horse again?