Duke of War (Regency Gods #5)

Chapter 1

“But… but… I’ve heard he’s killed hundreds!”

Miss Phoebe Turner exchanged a wide-eyed glance with her younger sister, Hannah, their eyes meeting unerringly despite the darkness of their father’s carriage.

Their father, as usual, seemed completely immune to the pulse of his daughters’ emotions. Immune or uncaring, that was.

“Don’t be melodramatic, Hannah,” Viscount Turner said with only slightly less frustration than he would have shown to his elder daughter. “He was at war. It’s impossible to know how many men he has killed.”

And that was their father when he was trying to be comforting.

Hannah’s eyes went even wider, panic clear in her expression as she looked at Phoebe, seeking aid.

Phoebe tried not to sigh… or at least, not to sigh audibly.

Generally, Phoebe didn’t fret over much about not irritating her father—for one, she seemed to irritate him solely by existing.

For another, placating difficult men was not something she believed in doing.

But one could make allowances, she reasoned, when trapped in a carriage. Besides, this was truly about Hannah, not Phoebe.

That was something that Phoebe hadn’t expected.

Frankly, she hadn’t expected almost any of this, mostly because her father had mostly ignored Hannah—which was the way he showed his favor for his younger daughter. Still, when he’d ordered his daughters to pack enough clothing for a few days, Phoebe had been suspicious.

“Where are we going?” Phoebe had asked, even as Hannah had already been dutifully rising to her feet.

Her father had scowled at her. This had been his longstanding habit, but he’d grown particularly prone to scowling after the… incident.

“Must you always ask questions, Phoebe?” he asked, exasperated. Then, before she could say anything, he added, “We’re going to visit an associate of mine. We’ll be gone for three days. Make yourselves presentable.”

Phoebe remained suspicious. Her father didn’t have associates—at least not the kind that would invite him and his daughters to come visit.

Besides, the whole reason they’d come to the country in the winter, a contrast to their habit of staying in London year-round, was so that Lord Turner could keep his elder daughter away from any prying eyes.

She’d fallen for his caustic dismissal, however, which had led her to believe that whatever her father had planned, it was designed to protect Phoebe’s (extraordinarily questionable) reputation.

Phoebe had braced herself for whatever unpleasantness her father had in store.

She would have put her money on him shipping her off to live as some long-forgotten great aunt.

The joke would have been on him, however.

Old ladies got up to all kinds of things that men could never imagine.

Phoebe would have loved playing chaperone.

But her father had waited until their country house was out of sight, until the darkness of night was all that they could see in any direction, before revealing his true purpose.

“Hannah,” he said, sounding pleased with himself in a way that never boded well for his daughters, “you are betrothed. Felicitations.”

“What?” Phoebe had yelped.

“Excuse me?” Hannah had cried.

Their father had smiled, a smile so big that the white of his teeth shone in the darkness.

“I have arranged an engagement with the Duke of Redcliff. You’re going to be a duchess.”

Hannah had practically choked on the words.

“But… but… I’ve heard he’s killed hundreds!”

Phoebe would never admit it, not when it would put her on her father’s side against her sister, but she also considered this to be a touch melodramatic.

The Duke of Redcliff was the object of much speculation among the ton, mostly because sons of dukes simply did not go to war, not even when they inherited unexpectedly.

But Aaron Warson hadn’t just gone to war; he’d been a legendary figure, ascending all the way to the rank of admiral. He’d spent years in the Royal Navy, earning accolades for his bravery and ferocity in battle—though Phoebe couldn’t swear that these stories weren’t exaggerated, either.

The part that she did know was true was that nobody had seen the Duke in Society for the past several years, at least. Phoebe was close friends with one of the Duke’s cousins, and even she hadn’t ever laid eyes on the man.

He hadn’t even come for Ariadne’s wedding several months prior, and the extended Lightholder family, from which the duke was descended on his mother’s side, was notorious for the tight web that was woven between the various branches of their family tree.

It was odd, but odd was not the same as murderer of hundreds.

“The Duke served his country,” Phoebe told her sister, hoping to get this conversation on the appropriate track. She didn’t think her father was right in all this, but the reason he was wrong wasn’t because of the Duke’s war record. “I daresay we should be grateful for that service.”

Hannah shot Phoebe a betrayed look.

“But,” Phoebe went on, “that doesn’t mean you can marry her off to some man she’s never met, Father.”

Lord Turner was unperturbed. “On the contrary,” he said simply, “I cannot marry you off to a man you’ve never met, Phoebe, and more’s the pity that I allowed you to achieve your majority without me doing so. I shan’t be making the same mistake with your sister.”

Hannah let out a strangled sound of protest. As well she should, Phoebe thought with a pang of regret. It was hideously unfair.

“Father,” she tried again, but he cut her off before she could get much further.

“Enough,” he snapped. “This is what is happening. We are on our way there, now, to get to know the Duke. He requested that the whole family come, and we will not disappoint him.”

Her father used his most rigid tone. He wouldn’t waver on this.

No, he’d been unhelpfully clever about the whole thing, not letting them have any information until they were already on the way, ensuring that the sisters didn’t have a chance to try to maneuver around him.

Phoebe did so hate it when her father was smart.

He continued, clearly irritated. “Besides, I do not understand why you are whining about this, Hannah. You will be a duchess. It’s an enviable position.”

“Not if he murders me!” Hannah wailed.

Phoebe frowned. This was unusually histrionic, even for her sister, who was prone to flights of fancy. Or perhaps it was just that it was an unusual audience; Hannah usually kept her tongue around their father as she knew he hated anything that smacked of emotional excess.

And while Phoebe was an expert at exasperating their father, that meant that she had the experience to know that this was very much not the place or time to press him.

“He’s a soldier, not a murderer,” she reminded her sister, hoping to bring some small measure of rationality to this moment.

“That’s easy for you to say!” Hannah snapped back.

This was… fair. Not necessarily helpful but fair.

“It is,” Phoebe agreed, using the tone that she would have used with a skittish animal, “but aside from his military service, have you ever heard anything negative about the Duke? He is a bit distant, yes, but it’s not an inherently bad quality. Plenty of people prefer the country to the city.”

“Boring people,” Hannah muttered irritably, crossing her arms in front of herself defensively.

Phoebe was having a very hard time keeping her patience.

“Hannah,” she said. “Can you just meet him before passing judgment?”

Phoebe did feel like a bit of a hypocrite in asking this because, realistically, she would be downright furious if her father had been trying to pass her off on some random man, duke or not.

But this was different. Phoebe didn’t intend to marry at all, but Hannah did.

The younger Turner sister had persevered through two grueling London Seasons, but she hadn’t yet made her match.

Or she hadn’t until tonight if their father had anything to say about it.

Phoebe was miserably aware of the bouncing carriage beneath them, each turn of the wheels on this wretched, pothole-riddled road bringing them closer to what seemed certain to spell disaster.

And here she was, the one arguing for decorum and tolerance. Tolerance toward a man. She cursed her father for putting her in this position.

Phoebe didn’t care very much about decorum or propriety, but Hannah did.

Her younger sister was generally introverted, and her willful streak was usually overshadowed by her tendency toward obedience, at least where their father was concerned.

If Hannah put up a fuss and the Duke of Redcliff spread the word that the younger Miss Turner was a harridan—or worse, the kind of woman who broke her promises—Phoebe knew that Hannah would regret it.

And protecting Hannah was the one thing that Phoebe did best.

“It isn’t fair,” Hannah cried again. “This isn’t even because of me. It’s because of Phoebe!”

This was true, and Phoebe hated that it was true, but she also felt more than a little stung that Hannah was lashing out when Phoebe was trying to be an ally.

“Why can’t you make Phoebe marry him?” Hannah asked their father petulantly.

“She’s old,” their father responded. It was somehow even more biting because he hadn’t meant it to be cruel.

“So?” Hannah retorted. Phoebe slumped back in her seat, finding herself extraneous to the conversation.

She wanted to protect Hannah, but Hannah did not, at present, seem interested in that protection.

“She doesn’t even believe in love. Make her be the one to marry for—for whatever reason you have. ”

“I beg your pardon!” Phoebe interjected.

Just because she didn’t believe in romantic love—since she would have to trust a man to love him, and she would never, ever trust a man—didn’t mean she didn’t believe in the concept broadly.

She loved Hannah a great deal! Even when Hannah was being as wretched as she was now!

Both her sister and her father ignored Phoebe’s outburst.

“Love is nothing,” her father scoffed. “This is an advantageous marriage. You should be pleased.”

“I wanted to marry for love!” Hannah cried.

Their father just made a derisive sound in the back of his throat, but there was something in Hannah’s tone that made Phoebe pause.

“Hannah,” she ventured, “is there… someone who has caught your eye?”

“It doesn’t matter,” their father insisted, sounding harried.

He had apparently realized that the flip side of trapping his daughters in a carriage to have this conversation was that he had also trapped himself in the carriage with them.

It rather undercut his usual argumentative strategy of making a proclamation and then stalking from the room.

“She’s going to marry the Duke of Redcliff. If she fancies someone else, she’ll merely have to stop fancying him.”

He said it as though this were so simple, and Phoebe supposed that, for him, it was.

“That’s not it,” Hannah said defensively. Something about the words made Phoebe feel even more uncertain, but she wasn’t about to press the issue with their father present. But maybe it was just as simple as Hannah not wanting to marry a stranger.

“Then there’s no problem,” Lord Turner said decisively.

“Yes, there is!” Hannah retorted.

“Maybe there is,” Phoebe tried. She felt like she was a wheel on the carriage—going around and around and around. “He might be perfectly nice.”

Hannah snorted, which was fair enough. Phoebe had never found a man perfectly nice in all her life.

“Maybe you can have a long engagement?” Phoebe ventured more cautiously. “Get to know one another.”

“No,” said their father. “It will be a Christmas wedding.”

“What?” It came as another unified yelp from the girls. It was already December.

“There’s no reason to wait,” Lord Turner said calmly.

He seemed to really believe this. “You’ve already had two Seasons, Hannah.

If you were going to marry of your own accord, you already would have done so.

I shan’t have another Phoebe in this family.

Now cease this pointless quarrelling. We’ve nearly arrived. ”

Phoebe looked out the window of the carriage.

At some point, while they’d been quarrelling, snow had started to fall.

A gentle dusting already covered the ground.

In the distance, a house was lit with candles in the windows.

Instead of seeing the light as welcoming, however, Phoebe couldn’t help but see it as foreboding, like the way a lighthouse warned ships away from crashing into the shore.

Even so, this foolish argument had gone on long enough.

They were here, now, and there was nothing to do but make the best of things.

And not just for the sake of Hannah’s reputation but because the snow was growing thicker by the minute.

There would be no more traveling tonight, not even if the Duke proved every bit as intimidating as the legend around him implied.

So, she did something she hated.

She put a cheerful face on things, even as the words don’t perform rang in her head.

“Well, let’s try our best, shall we?” she ventured, the words tasting like acid on her tongue. “Perhaps this family shall finally have something to celebrate for Christmas after all.”

Phoebe didn’t know why she bothered trying. Her efforts to smooth things over were lost in the face of her father’s ire.

“I hope you enjoy this Christmas to its fullest, Phoebe,” he said with a kind of snideness that said he did not hope this for her at all.

“Because after your little… indiscretion, you will be lucky if you ever circulate in Society again. You had best enjoy your sister’s matrimonial celebrations while you can.

Because for you? They will be your very last.”