A Duchess in Name Read online

  “Was this what you summoned me from Italy to tell me? I thought something might have happened to the girls.”

  “The girls are well. You are well. They’re all well, except the one who mattered.” Waring raised his glass to Edmund’s portrait. Andrew was quite used to his father’s unapologetic adoration of Edmund to the exclusion of everyone else, but his casual cruelty never became easier to listen to, especially when it encompassed his sisters.

  Waring blew out a heavy breath and motioned to a chair by the fireplace. “Sit.”

  “I prefer to stand.” Such a juvenile response. He hated that his father drew it out of him so quickly. Like when he was a small boy and thought any attention from his father, even negative attention, was worth it. But that was before he’d learned the truth. He was a son in name only, and no affection would ever be forthcoming from his father. That was only for Edmund.

  Waring hated his wife, and took it out on the bastard son she’d borne. Edmund had been no help, lording his status as the favorite over Andrew. Then Louisa had come along, undoubtedly another man’s child, as the duke and duchess had stopped sharing a bed, and he’d feared his father’s vindictiveness would find a new focus.

  He would never forget the first time he saw her, when he was twelve years old and was home on holiday. His mother had departed with a new lover as soon as she’d recovered and his father was busy drinking his way across London. Edmund had been gone, too, pursuing his own brand of debauchery. Andrew had climbed the stairs to the nursery and found Louisa, sleeping in her crib, a tiny pink face and a wisp of dark hair the same color as his own peeking out of the blanket. For the first time in his life, he’d felt love for someone in his family, and he resolved to stand in front of her and protect her—and eventually Emma, too—the way Edmund had never done for him. The girls would be loved, even if it was only by him.

  “Suit yourself,” Waring said as he took a long swig of his Scotch. It was scarcely eleven in the morning, and from the look of him, his father had been at the Scotch for some time.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is all about? You scared me half to death with that telegram, insisting there was an emergency—”

  “We’re ruined.”

  Andrew stared at his father’s back for a minute. His neutral, unconcerned tone was at odds with the words he’d uttered.

  “Excuse me, ruined? What does that mean?”

  “It means exactly what I said. This family is ruined. Bankrupt. Destitute. The money is gone.”

  “Gone.” Standing in the middle of his father’s lushly appointed study, surrounded by an ostentatious display of wealth, it sounded absurd.

  “You heard me. We are utterly penniless.”

  Surely his father was exaggerating. Money was tight. It had been for years. But they had kept their heads above water in the end. Waring had a terrible head for business. He must not have understood what his business manager told him. It couldn’t be all gone. “I don’t understand.”

  “Are you as slow as the handsome, featherbrained lover of your mother’s who spawned you? The money is gone.”

  He let the insult wash over him. “Yes, Father, I manage finances all damned day. I understand the concept of insufficient funds. I’m asking you to explain where the money went.”

  Waring paused to take another long drink. “I made an investment in a railway. It was meant to be sound. I was assured it was sound. Guaranteed to return a handsome profit.”

  “Nothing is guaranteed,” he heard himself say. This was beginning to sound very bad, as if the walls around him were closing in. He could scarcely breathe.

  “Well, this was as good as guaranteed.”

  “But it failed.”

  After a moment, Waring nodded. “It failed. The company went under overnight and took all the money with it.”

  Andrew raked both hands through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. “Well, you’ll retrench. Sell the estate in Scotland, Kenthorpe in Yorkshire, this townhouse.”

  Waring let out a tired chuckle. “Those are already gone.”

  “You sold it all?”

  “Expenses, boy. It costs a fortune to keep this family afloat. Everything not entailed has been sold off over the years. All that’s left is Briarwood in Hampshire. This house is mortgaged to the rafters. They’ll be here any day now to seize it. It was supposed to be temporary. I borrowed against it, just until Edmund could marry the Sheffield girl and then I meant to pay it all back. But he died and left me with you.” He gestured toward Andrew in disgust. “And you refused to come home and do your duty by finding a wife, so I invested what was left.”

  His modest life in Italy had never been paid for by the family. He’d arranged the financing for the dig entirely on his own, making the grant money stretch for as long as possible, while back home, his father sold off the family property piece by piece to pay for his excessive lifestyle. How much had been spent on liquor and gambling alone? And then he’d made one final, foolish gamble with all that was left. Andrew’s outrage and disgust nearly strangled him.

  “If you’re ruined, Father, I don’t see what I can do about it.”

  “There is quite a bit you can do. Or I should say, there’s one thing you can do. One thing you must do.”

  Randolph had been right. He’d been running away from his hateful parents his entire adult life and now they were thinking they could sink their claws in him, that he’d be the one to save them. Him, of all people, the bastard son his father despised.

  “If you’re telling me I should marry—”

  “I’m telling you that you must marry.” Waring finally spun around to face him, his bloodshot eyes furious. “It’s high time you do your duty to this family.”

  Despite the horrific scene unfolding, Andrew laughed, a sharp, humorless bark. “Duty? You think I feel any duty at all to this family? I think I expressed my feelings on the subject of familial duty when I left for Italy the moment I finished Cambridge. I’ve done well enough without you since then, and I can keep on in the same way, without you.”

  “Can you do it if the Royal Society of Archaeology withdraws its support?”

  As the implications of that question sank in, he stared at Waring in wordless horror.

  “Yes, I know that’s how you’ve been financing your little hobby. And I know they advanced the funds because of your title. And they’ll withdraw the funds because of my title.”

  “Stay the hell out of my life, old man.” Good God, how he hated this man, so weak and yet so arrogant. He’d do anything—anything—to cut each and every tie to him.

  “I’m happy to, once you get properly married. You won’t even need the Society’s money if you do this. You can fund all the excavations your heart desires.”

  Andrew clenched his jaw. The family was ruined through no fault of his own but now he was expected to rescue them with an advantageous marriage? The irony was nearly painful. Well, the duke could go hang and take his faithless duchess with him. The loss of the Society’s backing was a blow, but one he would survive. Somehow. He’d figure something out.

  “You had no right to meddle in my relationship with the Society, but it doesn’t matter. There are other sources for funding. You can’t blackmail me into solving a problem you created. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to Portsmouth to catch.”

  He was to the door, his hand on the doorknob, when Waring spoke again. “It’s going to be especially hard on your sisters.”

  His hand curled into the brass doorknob. Louisa and Emma.

  The truth slammed home, nearly doubling him over. In his anger, he hadn’t stopped to fully consider the implications of their situation. He could make his way alone in the world, but the girls could not. No money meant no school for the girls, no Season when they were older, no dowries to help them in marriage. They would b
e penniless, and the world was cruel to poor women. Once again, he needed to step in between his father and his sisters, to protect them from the damage he could do.

  His father might have failed his sisters, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. And the duke, that crafty bastard, knew it. Louisa and Emma were the trump cards he’d always planned to play to ensure Andrew fell into line.

  “I see I have no choice,” he hissed. Corneto wavered in his mind, his beacon on the horizon. He would find a way back there, to his home, his work. He wouldn’t give up the life he’d made for himself.

  “Believe me,” Waring snapped, “I despise being dependent on you in any way. It should have been Edmund, as the rightful heir to the title. And uniting my name with that family will be a humiliation, but—”

  Andrew spun and pressed his back to the door. “You mean you’ve already arranged it? Without consulting me?”

  Waring shrugged. “It seems I played a bit deep at cards. Overextended myself. And of course there’s nothing left with which to settle the debt—”

  “You bet me on a hand of cards?” Cavalierly using his heir to settle a debt was a new low, even for the dissolute duke.

  “He has a daughter. He’ll settle a fortune on her when you marry. And what does it matter who it is, anyway? They’re all very much the same between the sheets, you know.”

  He recoiled at his father’s crassness. “Bloody hell. How could you?”

  “How could I not?” Waring shouted, and he slammed his tumbler down on the sideboard. “It was all lost in the railway. I thought if I could win a bit back at the tables, it would buy me some time to sort something out.”

  “But you lost.”

  “I lost.”

  “And you wagered me.”

  “I’m doing you a favor, you ungrateful bastard. You’ll never want for money again.”

  He stared at his father—the Duke of Waring—who’d just thrown away the rest of Andrew’s life to save his own skin. “That’s the last thing on earth I care about, Father.”

  Chapter Three

  Weston, the butler, met Victoria and her maid as they came in from their afternoon walk in the park. “Your mother wishes to see you in the drawing room, Miss Carson.”

  “Of course she does,” Victoria muttered under her breath. Exchanging a furtive smile with Molly, she unpinned her hat and Molly smoothed her hair.

  The drawing room door was ajar. “Mother? Weston said you wished to see me.”

  Hyacinth Carson glanced up at her, her sharp eyes examining her daughter from head to toe, looking for any flaw needing correcting. Victoria stood still for the perusal and braced for the almost-certain criticism to come.

  Hyacinth slowly set down her pen. “Go upstairs and dress for tea. The pink faille, I think. And don’t let Molly touch your hair. She’ll make a hash of it. I’ll send Marie in to do it.”

  Foreboding prickled across the back of her neck. Why was her mother suddenly orchestrating what should have been a quiet meal at home? Something important was happening.

  It wouldn’t do to let her mother see that the events about to unfold had any impact on her whatsoever, so she made sure she was in command of her voice before she spoke. “Are we having guests today?” Her words came out so smoothly, with only the barest inflection of polite curiosity. All her training was good for some things. She’d become exceptional at hiding her emotions.

  “Yes, we are. The Duke of Waring and his son.”

  Victoria’s impenetrable facade fractured for an instant. Her hand came up to rest at the base of her throat and she swallowed thickly. With a rapidity borne from years of studying Debrett’s, she assembled everything she knew about this particular nobleman. The Duke of Waring—one of the oldest dukedoms in Britain. The current duke was the seventh. The eldest son and heir, Edmund, had died last year in an accident. Everyone was still talking about it when Victoria had first made her debut. The other son, whose name she couldn’t remember and whom she’d never met, had been elevated to heir. He held the courtesy title of the Earl of something Scottish.

  There was only one reason the Duke of Waring and his forgotten son would be coming to her home. But...

  “But we’ve never been introduced. We don’t know them.”

  “Your father knows the duke.”

  She blinked. “Father will be here, too?”

  “Yes, he’ll make the introductions.”

  Her father never appeared for tea. He rarely appeared at home at all, having no interest in family life or London’s social scene. His being there for tea to receive these guests and make the introductions was momentous. It could mean only one thing. The time had finally come. They’d decided. She was getting married.

  * * *

  Her mother hadn’t sat down once since Victoria had come down for tea, flitting from one end of the claustrophobic room to the other, straightening doilies and rearranging her copious bric-a-brac. Her father was there, too, but his presence was almost forgotten, since he was nearly half-asleep in a fragile gilt armchair. He’d already had two brandies at four in the afternoon.

  “Perhaps the blue parlor would have been better.” Hyacinth pressed her hands against her tightly corseted waist. “But the light is better here. Oh, I wish I’d thought to have the cook make tea cakes. All we have is shortbread.”

  “Mrs. Phelps’s shortbread is divine,” Victoria said.

  “But this is the Duke of Waring! Everything must be of the first quality. One must rise to the occasion.”

  Victoria pressed her fingernails into her palms, the bite of pain drawing her attention from her own mounting anxiety. “One must assume the duke and his son are already well aware of why they’re coming here. The quality of our biscuits won’t affect the outcome the way the size of my bank account might.”

  “Oh, Victoria, must you be so crude?”

  “I’m only being honest. I know exactly why he’s coming. I assume he does, too. There’s no point in imagining there’s anything more to it.”

  “You will keep your impertinent thoughts to yourself while His Grace is here.”

  She said nothing more. No one cared what she thought anyway. She existed only to be attractive, polite, and to marry well, and that was apparently about to happen with very little input from her. Whenever she’d imagined her future, her husband had always remained little more than a shadowy figure in the background. Since she had almost no say in the choosing, she didn’t waste mental energy imagining some paragon of a man she’d never have. Now it seemed she would have the Earl of Dunnley, whoever that was.

  The fact that the Duke of Waring was willing to marry off his heir to someone as socially wanting as herself was slightly worrisome. Surely he could do better? Under normal circumstances, even with the power of her fortune, the heir to a dukedom was overreaching a bit. Perhaps something was wrong with the son. It was odd she’d never encountered him in Society, or even heard him spoken of. He was twenty-seven, a perfectly marriageable age, and the heir to a duke, but she’d never heard a word about him. Maybe he was sickly—diseased or deformed in some way. Maybe they’d kept him locked away for a reason.

  Whatever it was, she could endure it. Once she was married, she would be free. Tied to this stranger for life, certainly, but out of her parents’ house, out from under her mother’s thumb. Anyway, he could hardly be worse than Sturridge, so she was prepared to accept whatever walked through the door with equanimity.

  The bell rang, echoing across the marble entryway and freezing Hyacinth in place. Her father started awake with a grunt and straightened himself in his chair.

  “Oh heavens.” Hyacinth reached up to smooth her hair. “They’re here. Oh, Victoria, sit up straight. Shoulders back. Fix your hair! And for heaven’s sake, arrange your skirts properly!”

  Hyacinth swept down on her, tugg
ing at the yards of pale pink fabric and ruffled flounces until they lay in a swirl around her feet. Victoria hated the dress. She hated pink. She hated the flounces. She hated the enormous puffed sleeves. She hated what Marie had done with her hair. It was too ornate and fussy, like her mother’s. When she was free to choose her own wardrobe, every pink thing she owned would be burned.

  “Remember to smile. And ask him questions about himself. Men like to feel interesting to women. But don’t talk too much, and only about pleasant topics. We don’t want him thinking he’s marrying some strident bluestocking.”

  “Leave the girl be, pet,” Carson grumbled. “She’ll do well enough. And she’s right, after all. The boy’s marrying her for her fortune, not for her pretty face or her brains.”

  Her father’s interest in his daughter had evaporated once she’d appeared in the world and failed to be a son. At this point, she didn’t expect affection or fondness from him, so she barely flinched at the insult. Besides, he made a good point. This was about business, not love. Best to keep it as impersonal as possible.

  Voices sounded out in the entry hall. Taking a deep breath, she stood and fixed a pleasant, faintly disinterested expression on her face. A moment later, Weston opened the drawing room door.

  “His Grace, the Duke of Waring, and his son, the Earl of Dunnley.”

  Phillip Carson shoved to his feet and tugged his waistcoat down. “Yes, yes, see them in, Weston.”

  “The duchess did not come,” Hyacinth said in a loud whisper.

  “What business is it of hers?” Victoria kept her eyes fixed on the door, refusing to be drawn in.

  “Her son is about to marry you. I’d think she’d want to meet us.”

  “Their title is about to marry our money,” she corrected.

  Hyacinth was cut off from a response by the reappearance of Weston, followed by the Duke of Waring and his son.

  The Duke was probably handsome once, but it had all gone to seed. His blond hair was thinning, his soft features were beginning to sag and his eyes were bloodshot. Like her father, he looked as if he’d already had a bit to drink.