The Duke's Holiday
Read The Duke's Holiday Online
Authors: Maggie Fenton
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #Regency
THE DUKE’S HOLIDAY
Book
One in
The Regency Romp Trilogy
By
Maggie Fenton
Copyright © 2014 by Margaret Foxe
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced
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Email her at [email protected].
COVER ART by Clarissa Yeo at
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DEDICATION
Dedicated to my mom, who kept pestering me about publishing
“that cute Duke of Mumford story”. Thanks for supporting me in all of my
artistic endeavors. I may even let you read the whole thing this time, mom, even
the naughty bits … well, maybe not. They’re pretty naughty, and you’re … well,
you’re my mom.
THE DUKE’S HOLIDAY
"When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in
the country one amuses other people."
-Oscar Wilde,
The Importance of Being Earnest
, Act 1
One
IN WHICH THE DUKE
RECEIVES UNSETTLING NEWS
LORD CYRIL
Halbert Algernon Monk, the eleventh Duke of Montford, got drunk for the first
and only time in his life at the tender age of twelve. His best mate, Sebastian
Sherbrook, managed to procure a bottle of Blue Ruin from a stablehand for a sum
of money they later found out to be outrageous – a crown indeed! –
and the two of them, curious as only twelve year old boys can be on the subject
of vice, hid in a copse of elderberry bushes outside their dormitory at Harrow
during the winter holidays (as neither had families to go home to), drank down
the whole bottle like it was water, and scoffed to each other how little effect
it had on them.
Five minutes later, they were
in
the elderberry bushes, not just hiding amongst them. And eventually his lunch
and Sebastian’s lunch were also in the elderberry bushes, and
on his new boots
. But for the brief
euphoria before that terrible, messy fall, the experience was an unmitigated
disaster.
Yet he had an explanation at long last for the one thing in his life his
usually agile brain could not seem to take in. Namely, why his parents, who had
been two rational, fairly perceptive people – or so he’d been told
– had given him not one, not two, but three perfectly dreadful names. The
sort of names that made a little boy shipped off to Harrow at eight years old an
easy target for his peers. For, until that point in time, he had been raised by
a team of solicitors, tutors, and house servants, and had been obeyed like a
petty despot since he’d learned to speak in sentences.
Harrow was indeed a rude awakening. In that first year he was tripped,
teased, pinched, punched, and the butt of countless schoolyard jokes, most of
them taking the form of the ever-popular limerick.
His parents, he decided, had been drunk when it had come time to name
him. It was the only thing that made sense.
That revelation – and the sad state of his boots – was enough
to convince him of the myriad dangers of alcohol. He was never drunk again. He
was no teetotaler by any means, but he knew his limit when out with his more
reckless mates. He knew he’d had enough when any of his names started to sound
good to him. When that happened, he put down his glass, stepped away from the
decanter, and called it a night.
The only good thing to have come out of his parents dying tragically when
he was four was inheriting the title and availing himself of a name that was
blessedly un-ridiculous. Having no immediate family left, there was no one to
call him by his given names. He was His Grace to servants and strangers and
just plain Montford to his circle of intimates.
No one had dared utter Cyril, Halbert, Algernon, or even Monk, to his
face since his second year at Harrow when he had given Evelyn Leighton,
Viscount Marlowe, aforementioned bully, a drubbing so fierce that molars, spit,
and blood had been flung about the schoolyard in a ten foot radius. It was the
one time in his life he had not fainted at the sight of blood, so distraught
was he.
Never mind Marlowe was twice his size and a year older. Never mind he’d
been suspended for the rest of the term, banished to one of his guardian’s
country estates, without the company of anyone but the staff. Something inside
of him had burst after one of Marlowe’s infamous cuffs to his neck and an
uninspired limerick that rhymed Algernon with hard-on. He’d jumped upon Marlowe
in a frenzied whirl of arms and legs, spouting a litany of curses so foul even
Sebastian, already world-weary at age ten, had gasped in astonishment. He’d had
to be pulled off of Marlowe’s stunned, nearly unconscious form by the combined
efforts of two instructors.
No one had teased him after that.
And that drubbing had won Marlowe’s heart, it seemed, for from that day
forward, Marlowe had decided to be his bosom friend. The sick bastard.
By Cambridge, with Sherbrook and Marlowe by his side – not to
mention having sprouted up to an impressive six foot two inches tall – he
was no longer teased. He was Montford, one of the wealthiest, most powerful
aristocrats in the kingdom, even at eighteen. Of course, behind his back, some
braver souls – including Sherbrook and Marlowe – labeled him The
Monk, because of some of his more peculiar personal habits that could not be
hidden behind any title.
He had always been fastidious, what could he say?
For instance, he liked his boots shined until they were like mirrors. And
when his boots weren’t on his feet, he liked them to be lined up in the wardrobe,
heels precisely aligned. He had his valet, Coombes, arrange his jackets and
waistcoats by color – black, grey, blue, green, etc. – and his
breeches by category – a drawer for riding, a drawer for morning, one for
afternoon, and one for evening. And he liked his cravats starched, ironed, and
tied just so. If he spotted, felt, or suspected a wrinkle, he had Coombes fetch
a fresh one immediately. He invariably went through half a dozen by the end of
the day – twice that if he’d been out riding about his estates or fencing
at his club.
He’d given up on Coombes shaving him just to spare himself the anguish of
discovering a stray hair mid-morning and Coombes’ inevitable tears when his
error was pointed out. He therefore shaved himself. And after he was done with
his morning ablutions, he made sure that all of his brushes, razors, strops,
and bottles – square, not round – were lined up on the table at
perfect ninety-degree angles.
And then there was his desk. His desk was his haven. A more orderly desk
in London could not be found. His inkwells, paperweights, blotters, and ducal
seal sat in a neat, even row at the top center, precisely three inches from the
edge. His stationary sat directly in front of his chair, so meticulously
stacked it looked like a single, thick rectangle.
He allowed his man-of-affairs, Stevenage, to sort his correspondence into
tidy piles, the bottom right hand corners aligned. When Stevenage had taken over
his position after the retirement of Stevenage the Elder – for he had
inherited his job in much the same way Montford had inherited the dukedom
– the man had taken it upon himself to align the correspondence just so,
revealing a love of detail and order that spoke directly to Montford’s heart.
Stevenage, suffering from the same obsessive affliction as his employer,
was more than happy to put the Duke’s correspondence into pristine piles. A
pile for estate affairs. A pile for banking receipts. Another for House of
Lords business. Another for his personal correspondence. Another for the social
invitations he wanted to accept (a very short pile). Another for the social
invitations he
didn’t
want to accept
but was obliged to (a rather large pile). And another labeled Miscellaneous
– correspondence that, like the oversized books in his library he’d
banished to a far corner, defied categorization and utterly nettled him.
The Miscellaneous pile –
That
Pile
– nettled Stevenage as well. Montford often caught his man-of-affairs
glancing at it as nervously as he himself did when he thought no one else was
looking. Stevenage was, if at all possible, even more concerned with the order
of things than Montford himself.
And Stevenage was, on this particular morning, looking
extremely
concerned when Montford
entered the library to take up the morning business. His man-of-affairs was, as
usual, immaculately dressed in stiff, unrelenting black superfine, the kind
that only solicitors and undertakers seemed to wear, his cravat simply but
neatly tied, his steely gray hair combed and pomaded, and his gold spectacles
as unsmudged as ever. But the brown eyes behind the spectacles were a little …
well,
wild
, and the man kept glancing
over to
That Pile
on the desk.
Montford knew something was dreadfully wrong when Stevenage tugged upon
his cravat, disordering it ever so slightly.
“What’s wrong?” Montford demanded.
“I don’t know how it happened, Your Grace … how it was overlooked. Indeed
I do not know …” Stevenage trailed off into incoherence, a first for the
usually acute man.
Montford sat down at his desk and braced himself, then noticed an opened
letter clinging perilously to the cliff’s edge of
That Pile
, as if it had been dropped there, willy-nilly, by his
man-of-affairs. Or had sprung to life of its own accord like some pernicious barnacle,
uncaring of the chaos it caused.
Montford sucked in a breath and told himself to remain calm. “Remain
calm, Stevenage, and tell me the problem.”
“Alyosius Honeywell is dead, Your Grace.”
Hmm
.
Well, this wasn’t exactly
bad
news. He had been waiting for years for Alyosius Honeywell to kick off, hadn’t
he? “And what’s the problem?”
“Well, er … it appears … Your Grace … that he has been dead for … er,
some time.”
“Some time.”
“A year.”
Montford jumped to his feet. He sat back down. Then he jumped up again,
strode to the window, and looked out onto the busy Mayfair street below, trying
to get his head around the news.
Dead. For a year.
It seemed that even in death, Alyosius Honeywell – a man who had been
the bane of Montford’s well-ordered little kingdom since Montford had assumed
the full reins of his title – had thumbed his nose at him. Montford’s
only consolation was that Alyosius Honeywell’s given name was even worse than
his own.
Not that he had ever met Honeywell. Not that Honeywell knew he was a bane
to a Duke … No, scratch that. Honeywell knew
exactly
how much his existence vexed Montford. He knew as well how
little Montford could do to be rid of him, however much he taunted and teased
in his haphazard reports sent down from Yorkshire. The Honeywells had been a
thorn in the side of the Montford Dukes for nearly two centuries now, ever
since one of Montford’s illustrious female ancestors had unwisely married into
that family of … of …
What
were
the Honeywells?
Merchants? Confidence men? Fairy people?
At the very least, they were upstarts.
Mushrooms.
Or they had been two hundred years ago, when they’d swindled a long ago
Duke into a contract so convoluted no team of solicitors since then had been
able to extricate the dukedom from its grasp. The contract had allowed the
Honeywells to become the proprietary tenants of one of the ducal estates in
Yorkshire for as long as the Honeywells endured. And the Honeywells had
endured.
And endured.
And to add insult to injury, they made ale.
Blech
. They used acres and acres of prime farmland to cultivate
their wheat and barley for their foul plebeian brew. Honeywell Ale. It was,
sadly, ubiquitous in every pub north of London. Or at least it was ubiquitous
when it was available, which was
not very
often
, as it was made in small quantities. There was invariably a rush on
the pubs when the yearly shipments were sent out.
Sherbrook and Marlowe stockpiled the stuff, the traitorous bastards.
Needless to say, Honeywell Ale did not turn a sizeable profit. The ten
percent that went to the duchy each year was a pittance, hardly worth the
effort of a receipt. All that prime farmland, wasted. It was enough to make
Montford want to cry. And he hadn’t cried since he was four years old. He liked
seeing his holdings prosper, his investments blossom. It pained him to have
this one glaring, gaping blot upon his record of success.
But if Honeywell was dead … and since Honeywell had no sons, that meant …
What did that mean? And why had he not been informed?
“A year?” Montford asked, turning back to his man-of-affairs with a
glower that sent Stevenage’s fingers back to his cravat. Montford pointed
towards the letter. “Who is that from? What does it say?”
“It is from the president of Dunkirk Brewing Company. A Mr. Lightfoot. It
seems he wants to purchase Honeywell Ale – that is, Rylestone Hall and
the rest of the estate, now that Mr. Honeywell has … er, passed on.”
Now that was vaguely interesting. Dunkirk was the largest brewing concern
in Yorkshire. As profitable as Honeywell Ale was not.
“What the devil could he want with Rylestone?” Montford muttered.
“Apparently, the land is in close proximity to Mr. Lightfoot’s own
property. He wants to expand the business.”
Montford’s interest in the letter and its proposal began to wane. It was
all very well and good for Mr. Lightfoot to want to build his business, but
Montford did not see how this could be of benefit to
him
. He didn’t give a jot about Lightfoot or his desire to become
an ale impressario. And he certainly had no intention of selling Rylestone Hall
after it was finally the dukedom’s again.
“Who the devil has been
writing to us, then, Stevenage? If Honeywell’s been dead a year, who’s been
sending us those damned reports?” He gestured, rather impatiently, towards a
gargantuan rosewood bureau set against a far wall, in which all of his old
correspondence sat neatly filed.
“I … don’t know, Your Grace. That’s just it, I don’t know,” Stevenage
said bleakly.
“Well, don’t stand there like an idiot,” Montford grumbled. “Fetch me the
last report that devil sent me.”
Stevenage scurried over to the bureau. Several minutes passed, in which
Montford returned to his seat and began thrumming his nails against the desktop
with impatience. At last, a squeak came from the direction of the bureau, and
Stevenage held up an envelope as if he’d pulled a prize fish from the river.
“Well, come on, man, haven’t got all day,” Montford grumbled, which of
course was a lie. He hadn’t anything to do today, as his affairs were, as
usual, neatly tidied away. Except, of course, for the matter of Aloyisius
Honeywell.