Defiant Bride of the Duke

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

The first knock was so soft that Sebastian Percy, Duke of Ravensmere, did not hear it at all.

The second, he heard only because it came between two lines of his letter.

He dipped his pen once more, finished writing the sentence before him, sanded the fresh ink with practiced precision, and only then lifted his head.

"Come."

The study door opened a cautious few inches.

His butler, Mr. Hopkins, stepped inside with the expression of a man entering territory where books were considered more valuable than people.

"Forgive the interruption, Your Grace."

Sebastian removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"If the house is not on fire, Hopkins, you needn't apologize."

"No, Your Grace."

"A pity. Fires at least, are decisive."

Hopkins, long accustomed to such remarks, merely inclined his head.

"Cook wishes to know whether Your Grace intends to dine."

"I have."

Hopkins waited.

"When?"

Sebastian frowned slightly.

"There was tea."

"Tea was at four."

"An excellent hour."

"It is now half past eight."

Sebastian looked toward the darkened window as though the night itself had arrived unexpectedly.

"Then tell Cook I shall dine in twenty minutes."

Hopkins allowed himself the smallest hint of satisfaction.

"I shall tell her."

"And Hopkins?"

The butler paused.

"Have something substantial sent up. I have been working since luncheon."

"I shall tell Cook."

Sebastian returned to his manuscript.

"And if she sends broth, send it back."

A faint smile touched Hopkins's mouth.

"Yes, Your Grace."

He had scarcely reached the door before another footman appeared.

"Your Grace. The Dowager Duchess is here."

Sebastian closed his eyes. “Tell me my mother is not in this house."

"I am afraid I cannot tell you that, Your Grace."

"You could attempt it. I would not hold the lie against you."

"She is already past the hall, Your Grace. I did not think it wise to attempt to stop her."

Sebastian set down his pen and glanced at the estate ledger beside him, the columns of quarter-day rents from the Hartley farms neatly totaled and cross-checked twice, as he preferred them. He adjusted the small stack of correspondence squared at the corner of his desk.

A note from his steward regarding the drainage works at the north boundary.

A letter from his solicitor concerning the renewal of the Kentish leases.

A third, from a former tutor at Cambridge, inviting him to contribute a paper to a society journal, which he had already set aside to answer at his leisure, since it was the least urgent thing in the room.

"Hopkins, could you tell her I am dead?"

Hopkins paused. "Your Grace?"

"Temporarily."

"I fear Her Grace would insist upon seeing the body."

"Of course she would. I was hoping you might say I had been called away to Scotland."

"Your Grace has recently been to Scotland."

"Then the Continent."

"Would you like me to mention an approximate date of return?"

"No. The more distant and uncertain, the better."

Hopkins inclined his head.

"I shall see what I can do."

Before he could take a step, a familiar voice came from the corridor.

"You most certainly shall not."

The Dowager Duchess swept into the room without waiting for permission, dressed in deep sapphire silk despite the lateness of the hour, the rich color lending brilliance to the silver threaded through rich chestnut hair that had once matched her son's almost exactly.

Her features remained finely cut, her blue eyes keen beneath delicately arched brows, and there was still enough beauty about her to explain why portrait painters had once quarreled over the privilege of capturing the young Duchess of Ravensmere.

She knew it and used it, the way she used everything..

The footman bobbed his head. "Shall I bring tea?"

She halted precisely three steps inside the study. "I do not intend to stay long enough to require tea."

"You never intend to stay long," Sebastian said, "and yet."

"And yet."

"Mother." He rose, because manners survived even where affection had not, and inclined his head with the exact, correct degree of courtesy owed a duchess, nothing more. "This is unexpected. I do not recall inviting you to Grosvenor Square."

"You never do. I have found it saves considerable time to simply arrive."

She settled herself into the chair across from his desk without being asked, folding her hands with a composure that signalled she had come with a purpose and did not intend to be moved from it.

She never arrived without purpose. He had stopped expecting otherwise years ago and found this expectation easier to live with than the disappointment of hoping for anything else.

"I assume you did not call simply to admire the shelves."

She surveyed the study with the quick, assessing look of a woman accustomed to finding fault and rarely disappointed in the search, though this time she found rather less to fault than usual, the shelves ordered, the desk clear but for the ledger and three letters, the room just as precise as he preferred every part of his life to be.

Then she looked back at him. "You are hiding, darling."

"I am working."

"You are hiding inside your work. You know there is a difference, because you have been doing this since you were a boy, whenever it upset you to be seen wanting anything.

" She said it without heat, the way she might have observed the weather.

"You did not attend the Harcourt dinner.

You did not attend Lady Fenwick's musicale, though I am told you were specifically and repeatedly invited. "

He made himself meet her eyes squarely, because she had a way of finding the soft ground in an argument if he let his attention wander, and he had learned that the only defense was full engagement.

"I have work that matters to me, Mother.

Actual work. Not the performance of usefulness that passes for occupation among most of the men I am obliged to call my peers, but genuine scholarship that will outlast every one of us.

I fail to see why an evening spent pursuing that is inferior to an evening spent watching young ladies angle for a duke's attention over lukewarm claret. "

"Ah." She said it softly, almost pleased. "There it is."

"There is what?"

"The real objection. It is not the claret." She tilted her head. "You believe every woman in that ballroom wants the title and not the man attached to it."

"I believe," Sebastian said with a sigh, "that a duke's company is rarely sought for his conversation."

"You believe that because you have decided it in advance and stopped looking for evidence to the contrary.

" She said it lightly, but there was steel beneath her words+.

"You are a brilliant man, Sebastian. You would never accept so lazy a conclusion in your own field.

Yet here you sit, having met perhaps a dozen young women in as many years with any real attention, and you have already written the verdict for every woman you have not yet met. "

"That is not lazy, Mother."

"That is bitterness wearing pattern as a disguise, and I would know, because I taught you rhetoric myself and I recognize my own tricks when you use them against me.

" She reached over and moved the unopened letter an inch to the side, as though it personally offended her, and folded her hands again. "You were not always like this."

"I was younger."

"You were hopeful." Something moved behind her eyes, quick and old, there and gone.

"I know precisely where the disappointment started, darling.

I was there for it. But you have let one season of watching your father's judgment fail convince you that every person's affection is a transaction waiting to be revealed, and that is not caution.

That is a wound you have never let close, dressed up as wisdom. "

"This is not about Father."

"It is always a little about your father," she said, not unkindly, "in this house.

But that is a conversation for a different evening, and I did not come here to relitigate it.

" She straightened in her chair, and Sebastian recognized the shift in her posture the way a sailor recognizes a change in wind.

Here it came. "I came to tell you that the Duchess of Fairmont is hosting her annual ball on Thursday, and you are going to attend it. "

"I am not."

"You are, because I have already accepted on your behalf, and it would embarrass us both if the Duke of Ravensmere failed to appear at an event his mother confirmed in writing a fortnight ago. One evening, Sebastian. That is all I ask."

Sebastian set down his pen with particular care while trying not to raise his voice. "You had no right to accept for me."

"I had every right. I am your mother, and someone in this family must occasionally act in its own interest, since you show so little inclination to do it yourself.

" Her gaze moved briefly to the ledger, the letters, the whole ordered architecture of his desk.

"You manage this estate better than your father ever did, I will grant you that freely.

But an estate is not a succession, and a title without an heir is simply a debt waiting to be called. "

"How fortunate that I am aware of my own obligations without needing them recited to me."

"Are you." She tilted her head, something sharp moving behind her eyes.

"Then perhaps you might explain why, at nine and twenty, you have not troubled yourself to court a single young lady with any seriousness, while half the mothers of London stand ready to hand you their daughters on request. Is one evening in a ballroom truly so unreasonable? "

"It is unreasonable to ask a man to spend an evening being appraised like breeding stock by every mother in London with an unmarried daughter."

"It may well be unreasonable," she agreed, "and you will endure it, because dukes have been surviving ballrooms since ballrooms were invented, and you are not so delicate as you are currently pretending to be."

"I have no interest in being handed anything. You of all people ought to understand the transaction plainly enough. You conducted a version of it yourself."

Something flickered across her face, brief and controlled. "That is unkind."

"It is accurate, which I understand is worse.

" He said it evenly, the way he had learned to say most things to her, without heat, because heat only ever gave her something to work with.

"You are not here because you are troubled for my happiness.

You are here because the succession requires an heir and my continued absence from ballrooms reflects poorly on a house you have spent thirty years protecting.

I would rather you simply say so, and spare us both the performance of sentiment neither of us feels. "

The silence that followed was longer and colder than any that had passed between them in recent years, though neither of them looked away from it.

She rose then, smoothing her skirts, and Sebastian understood with some dismay, that the argument was already over—had perhaps been over since the moment she sat down. "I will have Hopkins send word round to your tailor about the coat."

"I did not agree to attend."

"You did not disagree loudly enough, and quickly enough, and I have known you a great deal longer than you have known yourself, darling, so I will trust my instincts over your protests.

" She crossed to the door, then paused, looking back at him with an expression that was almost, though not quite, gentle.

"You are allowed to want more than books, Sebastian.

Wanting is not the same as being made a fool of. I promise you that."

"I want a great many things. An evening free of interruption chief among them."

"Then you ought to have locked the door," she said serenely, "instead of leaving it unlatched for anyone determined enough to walk through it," and swept out before he could decide whether that was meant as advice about the door or about something considerably larger.

That, he reflected darkly, was exactly the sort of parting shot she liked best: the kind that lodged itself somewhere behind the ribs and refused to be dislodged by reason.

He sat alone for a long moment after the door clicked shut, listening to her footsteps recede down the corridor, to Hopkins's low murmur and her answering laugh, to the silence that settled back over the study once she was well and truly gone.

One evening, he told himself, picking the pen back up, willing his attention back to his letter and the stalled paragraph on the third page. One tedious, forgettable evening, and then I may return to my life exactly as I left it.

He did not, in that moment, believe there was any version of Thursday’s Ball that would be capable of changing that determination.