Along Came a Duke (5 page)

“Poor Kipps! Poor Kipps!” Preston burst out. “I nearly wrecked my carriage, sent Roxley flying over a hedge, and demmed near lamed my best set of bays, but I don't see anyone wringing their hands and wailing ‘Poor Preston.' I said it before, and I'll say it again, I am not responsible if that wet-behind-the-ears child is naught but a fool to have wagered so much. If he'd been reasonable and cautious . . .” His words trailed off even as Hen's brows arched with an indignant angle.

“Kipps wasn't foolish, he was desperate,” Hen told him, rising to her feet, her temper getting the better of her. “Do you know that his sister has been ill? That the surgeon's bills have nearly run them under? That he has four more sisters who are to come out in the next three years? His father left him in dire straits. A situation you of all people could appreciate considering the tangled mire Father left behind.”

That previous niggle of guilt suddenly felt more like a nudge. Given Hen's furious expression, it might well turn into a well-placed boot in his arse.

Henry waded in again. “Now Kipps has no choice but to marry and marry quickly. The first cit's daughter who will take him.”

Preston's gaze swung toward his uncle. “Marry? Whatever for?”

“So he can pay his bills,” Henry said, getting to his feet in the same fit of exasperation that Hen was exhibiting. “He needs a fat purse to fill his coffers.”

“Well, he won't be ‘poor Kipps' then, will he?” Preston tried to quip, but his jest fell on deaf ears. Unfortunately, like the thud of his joke, he felt his own future close around him like a pair of leg-shackles.

“It is no laughing matter,” Henry said. “It's that or debtor's prison for him.”

“You have ruined us with this escapade, Preston,” Hen said, resuming her seat and staring him straight in the eye. Her usually affable blue gaze was deep and serious. “Every tongue in Town is blaming us for Kipps's fall. Have you noticed that the doorbell hasn't rung once this morning? The salver sits empty.”

“Hardly empty,” Preston corrected. “I just came in and it was buried with letters.”

Henry's face turned red and he began to bluster. “Because you and that idiot went and placed that demmed advertisement—”

Hen stopped her brother with a wave of her hand. “Preston, there are no invitations arriving—not even from the few mushrooms who would dare to presume. The only scrap I have received this week was to inform me that my vouchers for the Season had been revoked. I am banned from Almack's! Me!” The lady reached for her handkerchief.

Preston knew it wasn't to douse tears, for Hen never cried. Still, here was his aunt, making a great show of dabbing at something in her eyes.

“You don't even like Almack's,” he reminded her.

“What has that got to do with anything?” she said. “No respectable family wants to be associated with you, with us.” There it was again, that dramatic pose with the handkerchief stuffed to her supposedly quivering lip.

But as he looked closer, he could see Hen was truly distressed, and something in his chest clenched into a knot.

The same sort of knot that had had him driving his carriage into an oak to avoid a flock of geese and dragging home strays he found on his meanderings.

Demmit! His aunt knew him too well.

And to that end, Henry picked up where his sister had stopped. “Hen and I have discussed this and are in agreement that the only thing that will save us all is for you to take a wife.”

“Why don't
you
go out and find a wife,” Preston suggested just as Henry was taking a sip of his tea.

“I think you and Roxley already took care of that,” Hen said with a wry, disapproving shake of her head.

Lord Henry sputtered a bit. “Your wretched advertisement has brought out every spinster and lonely heart within a hundred miles of London.”

Preston looked from one to the other. “Advertisement?”

His uncle's brow rose into an imperious arch. “The one you and Roxley penned?”

This time it was Preston's turn to sputter a bit. Oh.
That
advertisement.

The duke leaned over and nudged his uncle in the ribs. “Don't like the bit, but you are more than happy to see me saddled, eh, Henry? Besides, you're six months older than I, so it only seems right that you dip your toe in first. You should be thanking me. I've done you the favor of fattening the pot.”

He knew better than to push Henry too far, for the next time they met at Gentleman Jim's, Preston was going to take a devil of a beating. As it was, Henry was rising to his feet, hands fisting.

Perhaps he wasn't going to have to wait . . .

“Preston, this is hardly helping!” Hen told him. “You! Sit!” she ordered her brother.

“It is a matter of keeping the family together, you reckless fool,” Henry replied, even as he sat as his sister had bid. He might be able to pummel Preston in the boxing ring, but neither of them could out argue Hen. “I could marry, but then what? You'll still be gadding about causing one reckless scandal after another.”

“In other words,” Preston began, “I need to be as dull and sensible as all those mushrooms and
cits
you pander to in the House of Commons.”

Hen pressed her lips together and narrowly avoided smiling at this insult. “Henry does have a point. You must consider the lineage. And our position in society.”

“Hang Almack's and the rest of them,” Preston replied. “Besides, I don't see the rush. Grandfather added you two to the family tree when he was well into his dotage.”

The old duke's marriage to the young and comely widow Lady Salsbury had been yet another
on dit
in a long life of scandals, especially when she'd gone and produced a spare heir and a daughter all at once. Society had been shocked. Who would have thought the old duke capable, let alone Lady Salsbury—who'd had four husbands before her marriage to the duke and not a child to show from any of those unions?

“Dash it all, Christopher,” Lord Henry said, completely forgetting himself, “you need to infuse some cash into your estates, and I am trying to help you do just that. These
cits
and mushrooms you mock have more ready brass than you do. Than any of us do. The world is changing, and mark my words, one day it will be the merchants and shop owners who run this country.”

“Good heavens, what a distasteful notion,” Aunt Hen declared, her nose wrinkled at the very thought. “Really, Preston, it is simply a matter of getting married to a proper lady and securing an heir. Then Henry will do the rest, and all of us will be redeemed.”

There it was. Get married. The solution to everything.

Why couldn't his aunt be more like one of those chits from that little village Roxley had dragged him through? If it were true—that none of them had any desire to be wed—he might consider moving there. Permanently.

But his momentary plans for escape were for naught, for Lord Henry reached across the table and caught up his sister's list. “Hen has the perfect lady in mind. She comes with a decent bloodline and a goodly inheritance.”

“How kind of you,” Preston replied.

Hen ignored his sarcasm. “I cast this paragon in your direction with much trepidation, Preston. There are others there as well. Just in case.”

“Truly, Hen, I am no monster,” Preston told her, avoiding even a glance in the direction of Henry's outstretched hand. Wherein lay his future bride. “I hardly see why one bit of scandal should force me into the parson's trap.”

“One bit of scandal?” Hen shot back. “Look behind you, Preston! You've left a wake of ruin in your path this Season and it is only the first week of May!”

“Isn't that doing it up a bit, Hen?” he dared. Even as the words fell from his lips he knew he'd fallen into a dangerous mire.

“Lord Holdwin's daughter?” She held up her hand and ticked off one finger. The rest of her fingers fell in quick succession. “Lady Violet, Miss Seales, the Earl of Durston's twin daughters—”

“They only count once, for I could never tell them apart,” he tried to joke.

Hen appeared ready to douse him with her tea. Or rather the entire urn. “And shall I remind you of how this Season began? With Lord Randall's daughter?”

Preston scuttled up in his seat, rising to his own defense. “That foolish chit shouldn't have followed me out into the garden. At her own debut ball, no less.”

“You ruined her!” Aunt Hen shot back. “And put a blight on our reputations because you couldn't control yourself.”

“I didn't ruin the gel. I kissed her,” he corrected. “I hardly call that ruin. Besides, isn't she engaged now to that Scottish fellow?”

“Yes, but he's a mere knight, and hardly the lofty and well-connected prospect that Lady Randall had her heart set on,” Aunt Hen complained, refilling her brother's cup of tea and adding the two lumps of sugar he liked in it.

“Wasn't Michaels a knight?” he prodded, referring to Hen's second husband.

“A baron,” she corrected.

“Same difference,” Lord Henry muttered, for he hadn't been in favor of his sister's impetuous marriage to a man whose elevation had been so recent that there had hardly been time to let the ink dry on the Letters Patent.

“As it is, Lady Randall is going to have a terrible time when she tries to bring out her other daughters,” Hen said, steering the conversation back to the subject at hand.

“Then Lady Randall ought to have kept a better eye on that minx,” Preston told them. “And I will note I wasn't the first one into that pasture. The gel knew exactly what she was doing. Damn near had my breeches open before I could—”

“Oh good heavens!” Hen sputtered. “I don't think
that
needs to be repeated.”

“Well, she did,” he told them. “Mayhap I did let slip I was going out for a cigar, but I can hardly be responsible if she is hen-witted enough to follow. Or offer to show me what she learned at school.” He glanced over at Hen. “Imagine my surprise to discover the girl's lessons included a variety of courtesan's tricks. Is that what they teach in Bath? I thought the order of the day was dancing and poetry. Or have we men been mistaken all these years about the curriculum of a Bath education?”

Aunt Hen, who had spent three years at Lady Emery's, rolled her gaze upwards. “I hardly think what a girl learns in finishing school is the point.”

Henry, who had no desire to know what “tricks” his sister might have learned in her time in Bath, pulled the conversation back on point. “I can't go over to White's these days without being buttonholed by yet another aggrieved father or brother who claims you've slighted some female member of their family.”

Preston huffed a grand, exasperated sigh and threw up his hands. “Now I'm responsible for the maidenhead of every young lady in London?”

“This,” Hen said, “is getting us nowhere. Those names are what we are here to discuss.” Taking the note out of her brother's grasp, she handed the slip of paper over to Preston with her usual determination and leaving him no means to object. There just was no refusing Hen when she set her mind to a subject.

Hence the three husbands.

Reluctantly, Preston accepted her proposal and took a glance at it. The first name sounded vaguely familiar in a dull sort of way, but before he had a moment to put a face to the memory, Hen continued, “These ladies are not to be kissed. Not to be ruined. Nor to lure to some secluded alcove—”

A direct reference to Lady Violet. And in his defense, that chit had caught him by the arm and hauled him behind that curtain. Last time he'd turn his back on some country miss. That one had possessed the grasp of a plowhand.

“—but to
court
. With the intent of marrying one of them.” Hen settled back in her seat and smiled at Preston, then at her brother.

For they both knew that once Hen had Preston married off, she'd set her cap on seeing Henry settled as well. She'd always held that her position as the eldest of the three gave her license to rule over her brother and nephew.

It had been that way since the day she'd taken her first step and lisped her first “mine.”

The duke sighed. “And if I refuse?”

Then to his surprise, it was Henry who answered. “We'll move out.”

Preston glanced over at the man who was more a brother than an uncle. “Leave?”

“Yes,” Hen said, with all the determination of a Seldon. She had inherited that much from her father. It was a Seldon trait that never failed to find its way into the blood.

“You'd abandon me?” Preston asked, though he knew he needn't. Once a Seldon made a declaration, it was carved in stone—no matter if it drove them into deeper waters and left them drowning.

“Yes,” Hen told him, giving every bit of proof he needed to know she would. And Henry as well.

But they couldn't! It was only the three of them left. Mulish obstinacy they had in spades, but sadly the Seldons weren't a prolific lot. And the three of them had always stuck together. Henry and Hen had been his only family since . . . well, since always.

Preston glanced around the large room and the rest of the vast rooms in the house and shivered. They'd be cold and hollow without them. No one coming and going. No one to take his meals with.

Something he hadn't felt in years too many to count rose up inside him. Not since the day he'd come to live in this house. Alone? They couldn't do this to him. They wouldn't.

One look at the set of Hen's brows, the line of Henry's jaw, said only too clearly they would.

“You've left us no choice, Preston,” Hen said, rising from her seat and setting her napkin down on the table. “Either you marry and take a respectable place in society, or we will leave and never come back.”