Her Arranged Duke (Regency Second Chances #9)

Chapter 1

“They are staring at us.” Mary pressed her gloved fingers against the lace of her skirt and resisted the urge to turn around.

Behind the vestibule doors, the low hum of two hundred guests had shifted into something sharper.

Whispers.

The kind that traveled through pews like fire through dry grass.

Her father, the Earl of Langham, adjusted his cravat for the fourth time. “They are not staring. They are admiring. You look lovely, my dear.”

“They are whispering, Papa.”

“People whisper at weddings. It is what they do.” Lord Langham tugged at his cravat again and glanced toward the doors. His face had turned a shade of gray that appeared whenever something threatened his reputation. “Now, stand straight. Lord Grentport is expecting a bride, not a wilting flower.”

Mary stood straight. She had been standing straight for the better part of an hour while the ceremony was delayed for reasons no one had bothered to explain to her.

Her wedding gown, a confection of ivory silk and seed pearls that her father had selected without consulting her, pinched at the waist and pulled at the shoulders.

The veil itched. Her bouquet was too heavy.

She was twenty-one years old, and she was about to marry a man she barely knew because her sister had vanished four months ago.

And because their father needed the scandal buried beneath something respectable.

Lord Grentport was respectable. That was the kindest thing Mary could say about him.

The vestibule doors swung open. Mary’s breath caught, expecting the processional music, expecting the signal to begin. Instead, Lord Grentport strode through the gap with his jaw set and his eyes hard.

He was not walking toward the altar. He was striding toward her.

Mary’s stomach dropped.

“The wedding is off,” Grentport gritted out as he stopped before them.

Mary blinked. Beside her, Lord Langham made a strangled sound.

“I beg your pardon?” her father sputtered. “Grentport, what on earth—”

“One scandal, Langham.” Grentport held up a finger.

His face was flushed beneath his carefully groomed whiskers.

“One scandal I could weather; your eldest daughter disappearing before her wedding was irregular, but I was willing to overlook it for the sake of the match. But two?” He shook his head. “Two is beyond the pale.”

Mary stepped forward. “What are you talking about?”

Grentport looked at her as though she were something unpleasant he had found on the sole of his boot.

“The Duke of Blackholm’s doorstep, Lady Mary.

A baby was left in a basket this very morning with his brother’s handkerchief and your sister’s engagement ring.

Every person in the church is talking about it. ”

He gestured toward the doors, where the whispers had grown loud enough to push through the wood.

“They are saying the child belongs to your sister and the Duke’s brother. And I will not attach my name to a family that breeds scandal the way other families breed spaniels.”

The floor tilted beneath Mary’s feet.

A baby. Charlotte’s ring.

She gripped her bouquet and forced herself to breathe. “That cannot be true,” she said.

“It is all over London.” Grentport was already turning away. “I wish you well, Lady Mary. But I will not be made a fool.”

Lord Langham lunged after him, catching his sleeve. “Now see here, Grentport. We can manage this. These are rumors, nothing more. If you would simply—”

Grentport wrenched his arm free. “Unhand me.”

“Please.” Her father’s voice cracked. The gray in his face had turned white. “You gave your word. We had an agreement. If you would only—”

Grentport shoved him.

It was not a blow, exactly. More of a push, a flat palm against Lord Langham’s chest. But her father was sixty years old with bad knees and worse balance. The force of it sent him stumbling backward, and he hit the stone floor.

Grentport did not look back. The vestibule doors swung shut behind him, and the sound of his boots faded down the church steps.

Mary dropped her bouquet and ran to her father. She kneeled beside him, heedless of the silk pooling on the cold stone, and gripped his arm. “Papa. Are you hurt?”

Lord Langham sat on the floor of the vestibule with his legs splayed and his cravat askew, and the look on his face was not pain.

It was ruin.

She had seen that look once before, the morning Charlotte’s bed was found empty and her trunks gone.

“This is the end,” he whispered. His hands shook as Mary helped him to his feet. “This is the end of us. Our name is finished. Your sister, that foolish, reckless girl—”

“Papa.” Mary gripped both his arms and held him steady. “Listen to me. You must go inside and address the guests. Tell them whatever you need to tell them. The wedding is postponed. I am unwell. Anything.”

“And what will you do?”

“Find out whether what Grentport said is true.”

Her father stared at her. His mouth opened and closed. For a moment, Mary saw him as Grentport must have seen him: a man drowning in water he did not know how to swim in.

He nodded. His chin trembled, but he nodded, and he turned and pushed through the vestibule doors into the church. A wave of whispers rose to meet him.

Mary gathered her skirts in both fists and walked out the front entrance of the church.

The family carriage waited at the curb, the driver dozing on the box. She climbed in without help, hauling the ridiculous train of her gown in after her.

“Blackholm House,” she told the driver. “Now.”

“Heat the milk first. Not boiling. Warm. If you scald it, you will answer to me.”

Evander pointed at the cook, who bobbed a curtsy and rushed toward the kitchens.

He turned to the next servant in line. “You. Find me a nursery maid. Someone experienced with infants, not a girl fresh from the country. Go to the agency on Harley Street and do not return without one.”

The footman bowed and disappeared through the parlor door.

“You.” Evander fixed his gaze on the next. “A crib. Sturdy. None of the decorative nonsense from the shops on Bond Street. And blankets. Soft ones.”

The maid nodded and hurried off. Evander exhaled through his teeth and surveyed the wreckage of his morning.

On the sofa, nestled in a wicker basket lined with wool, a newborn baby slept with his fist curled against his cheek. An engagement ring glinted where it was tied to the basket’s handle with a strip of blue ribbon.

Evander would have recognized the ring anywhere; it had belonged to his grandmother, and his brother had given it to Lady Charlotte Gillies the day the betrothal to Richard was announced.

In Evander’s hand, crumpled and damp from the grip he could not seem to loosen, was a linen handkerchief embroidered with the initials R.B., Richard Brightshaw.

His brother’s handkerchief.

All these objects pointed to one devastating fact: this baby was his brother’s child.

The last of the servants filed out. Evander sank into the chair nearest the basket and pressed the handkerchief against his knee.

The baby stirred, made a sound like a kitten, and settled again.

Four months. Four months of searching, of bribing informants and chasing whispers through every borough in London, and Richard had answered with a basket on the doorstep and not even the courage to knock.

Footsteps in the corridor snapped him out of his thoughts.

Evander looked up as Godfrey, his estate manager, appeared in the doorway.

Godfrey was a lean, gray-haired man who had served the Brightshaw family since before Evander was born, and his capacity for remaining composed under extraordinary circumstances was one of the few things Evander trusted without reservation.

Even Godfrey looked rattled.

“Your Grace.” He stepped into the parlor and closed the door behind him. His gaze moved to the basket. “Is it true, then?”

Evander held up the handkerchief. “Richard’s. And the ring on the basket is the one we gave Lady Charlotte.” He reached into his coat and withdrew a folded piece of paper. “This was tucked into the blankets. Richard’s hand. I would know it anywhere.”

Godfrey took the note and read it. His brow furrowed. He looked at the sleeping child, then back at the note. “So… It’s a boy. And he’s called Tommy.”

“Apparently.”

“What will you do now, Your Grace?”

Evander pressed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, trying to forestall a headache that was brewing.

“The child is Richard’s. That makes him my responsibility.

I will care for him until Richard is found, at which point my brother will answer for every decision he has made in the past four months. ”

He dropped his hand and looked at the basket. The baby’s lips moved in sleep, sucking at nothing. Something twisted in Evander’s chest, and he turned away from it.

“It is my duty. That is the end of it,” he finished.

Godfrey folded the note and handed it back.

“Your Grace, I must inform you that London is already buzzing. The servants who discovered the basket this morning were not the only witnesses. A crossing sweeper saw the hooded figure at your door. A newsboy saw the basket. By noon, every drawing room in Mayfair will have the story.”

A muscle ticked in Evander’s jaw. “I will handle the press.”

“Bribing the press will not suffice this time.” Godfrey clasped his hands behind his back. “This child needs more than nursemaids and heated milk, Your Grace.”

Evander’s eyes narrowed. “I have already sent for a nursery maid.”

“I do not mean a maid.” Godfrey held his gaze.

“I mean a mother. Your wife. A duchess. London needs to see stability from this house, and a bachelor duke with a mysterious infant on his hands is the furthest thing from stable.” He paused.

“A wedding would divert the public’s attention.

It would provide the child with a proper home.

And, if I may be direct, Your Grace, you still require an heir. ”

“No.” Evander stood. The chair scraped against the floor. “The very last thing I need at this moment is a bride.”

“A child needs—”

“What a child needs, Godfrey, is for the adults in his life to stop vanishing.” The words came out sharper than Evander intended. The baby flinched in his basket, and Evander lowered his voice. “I will find Richard. Richard will marry Lady Charlotte. They will raise their son. That is the plan.”

“And if Richard cannot be found?”

“He will be.”

Godfrey opened his mouth to argue further, but the parlor door swung open.

“Your Grace.”

Harding, the butler, stood in the doorway with an expression Evander had never seen on the man’s face. It took him a moment to identify it.

Bewilderment.

“Your Grace, pardon me.” Harding cleared his throat. “A bride is here.”

Godfrey’s eyebrows climbed. “Well. That’s convenient.”

Before Evander could respond, Harding was shouldered aside, and a woman swept into the parlor in a blaze of ivory silk.

Her wedding gown trailed behind her like a sail that had broken free of its mast. Her veil was pushed back from her face, and her cheeks were flushed with exertion or fury or both.

She was of average height, with blonde hair coming loose from an elaborate arrangement of pins, and bright brown eyes that swept the room until they found the basket on the sofa.

She looked at the baby. She looked at Evander.

“Is this Charlotte’s child?” she demanded.

Evander stared at the woman standing in his parlor in a wedding dress, breathing hard, with a look in her eyes that dared him to get between her and that basket.

The very last thing he needed was a bride.

And yet, it appeared, one had arrived.