Chapter One
Two years later
Marcus sighed as he put down his quill, his eyes weary from going up and down the seemingly endless columns of figures, page after page of numbers in the annual ledger, which painstakingly recorded the productivity, the expenditure, and the, admittedly pleasing, amount of monthly and annual profit generated by the many farms attached to the Sirenwood estate.
Fortunately, the entries complied by Marchmont, the estate bailiff, a man who was both honest and meticulous in his record keeping, required only that Marcus check them and sign the bottom of each page.
This signified that, as His Grace, the Duke of Sirenwood, he had had his eyes upon them and approved of Marchmont’s calculations.
He always approved of Marchmont’s calculations.
It always felt like a little victory each time he signed off a sheet, yet equally, they never ceased coming.
Though he might sign off the weekly sheets on, say, a Wednesday, feeling as though he had achieved something, the ledger would reappear on his desk, its pages filled with fresh notations, demanding his attention, within the following seven days.
With mind-numbing regulatory, the same would happen at the end of each month.
The annual meeting with Marchmont and his legal people for the end of year financial tally was something he dreaded.
Thankful that this one task was completed for the day, he decided to ignore the many others demanding his attention.
He got up, yawned mightily, stretched to relieve the tension that had built up in his back and shoulders, and went over to the window.
Intent on contemplating the nature outside for a few moments, he opened the window and leaned on the sill, breathing in the fresh air.
There had been a shower earlier that afternoon, punctuating the August heat with a welcome burst of coolness.
The surrounding trees and the expanse of lawn rolling away from the house were startlingly green, refreshed by the recent moisture.
The air was laden with the scent of greenery and flowers wafting in from the garden and park.
Marcus drew it deep into his lungs, attempting to drive out the lingering dry dustiness of ink and paper.
It worked, to a certain extent, in soothing his physical senses.
However, it did little to lessen the burden on his soul of his many ducal responsibilities, which he had been carrying around with him since assuming the title following Trevor’s tragic death two years before.
His grief at the loss of his brother was now a persistent dull ache somewhere in the region of his heart.
Yet at the same time it was as if Trevor was always at his shoulder, overseeing everything he did, to see that he did it properly.
And Marcus was never sure that he had, for where Trevor had seemed to thrive on the endless tasks of estate management, the repetitive paperwork, the role as magistrate dispensing justice in the local courts, and that in Parliament as a lawmaker in the House of Lords, to name but a few, Marcus had to admit that he struggled with it all.
Granted, part of that was due to the fact that, as son and heir to the dukedom, Trevor had been trained by their father virtually from birth to assume such duties on the old Duke’s passing.
As the ‘spare,’ Marcus had received no such training.
With Trevor’s sudden death coming so unexpectedly and at such a young age, and the title passing to Marcus, his grief for his brother had been overlain and even extended by having to assume the necessary workload almost immediately.
Even with his mother’s help, it had been like trying to catch hold of a whirlwind.
The first few months had been a miserable blur as he attempted to grasp previously unheard of and unfathomable activities in the midst of his grief.
Now, two years down the line, on a practical basis, he was managing better.
However, at the same time, with each passing day, his soul grew heavier, until there were times, like today, when he was sure he would be crushed out of existence by all the demands placed upon him.
That was his burden to bear alone, he knew.
But with his brother’s demise there had come another burden to shoulder as well, one which was ephemeral and impalpable and horribly pernicious at the same time.
Only a few weeks after his brother’s fatal accident, he began to hear the whispers from the Ton suggesting that he’d had something to do with Trevor’s death.
That had been too shocking and distressing, bringing the grief back in full force as well as a stinging sense of injustice.
But worse was to come when it became clear that what people were actually saying was that he had connived to kill his brother as a means to take over his title.
And he had no way of proving them wrong.
“Darling, why are you so sad? Look at the lines on your face. You seem so careworn.”
It was his mother’s voice intruding on his thoughts. Marcus turned to face the elegant figure of the Dowager Duchess Henrietta St. Clair.
“How do you do that, Mother?” he asked, for she had somehow contrived to enter the room unheard.
“Do what, dear?” she asked, closing the door behind her.
“Slide in so silently. Was not the door closed? Did you come through it like a ghost?”
She gave a low chuckle. “Now, that would frighten you, would it not?”
“Your tendency for creeping up on me frightens me already.” That, he knew was unfair, but his mood was low, and she had unwittingly presented herself as a convenient target for his irritable gloom.
“Marcus, I assure you, I made no effort to be silent. You were merely sunk in your own thoughts and did not hear the door, that is all.” Her satin gown swished as she crossed the room and joined him by the window, her still beautiful face filled with concern as she scrutinized him with her keen blue eyes.
Not wanting to meet her eyes lest she see the depth of his depression, Marcus immediately looked back out of the window again and said laconically, “Thank you for your kind observations about the lines on my face and my careworn aspect. Pardon me if I do not find them at all cheerful.”
His mother smiled gently, and despite her relatively small stature compared to her son’s, she reached up to brush a stray lock of his dark hair from his forehead with tender maternal affection. Instinctively, Marcus moved his head out of the way.
“Heavens, you wretched boy. Can a mother not offer her son some affection?” the Dowager asked, shaking her perfectly coiffed head.
“I am not a boy. I am one and thirty. I no longer have need of such indulgences from you.”
“My, what a sorry mood I find you in. It is a shame that you should see fit to speak to your mother so rudely,” she complained with only the mildest hint of heat. “You make it even more difficult for me to deliver the bad news I have come to impart.”
Marcus let out a small, exasperated groan and ran a hand though his hair. “Oh, what is it this time? Is the roof caving in perchance? Have all my investments gone up in smoke? Is France about to invade?”
“As you well know, neither of those things are happening.”
“Well, what then? I am sure that whatever it is you have come to tell me, it will be bothersome in some way.”
“Goodness, with this attitude of yours, I almost dread to tell you. In your rage, I fear you may choose to strike me with your desk ornament and subsequently find yourself in a most regrettable predicament.” Despite her dramatic words, she appeared entirely unruffled, and she sat down in a nearby armchair, arranging herself with her habitual grace.
“If it comes to that, Son, I guarantee I shall make a point of haunting you nightly, gliding silently through doors and walls as it takes my fancy. Perhaps I shall appear behind you in your shaving mirror. I think it could be rather amusing to be a ghost.”
Despite himself, the absurd image brought a half-smile to Marcus’s face, as his mother’s dry sense of humour often did.
“All right, Mother, I apologise for being so gloomy. Blame the ledgers. I have been at them all day again, and my brain is worn to a frazzle. I have very little patience left,” he admitted, crossing the room to pour himself a brandy.
“Would you like something to drink, Mother?” he asked at the same time.
“Mmm, a small glass of brandy would be nice, dear. I feel I need one, and I am positive you will need that brandy when you hear what I have to say.”
“Oh dear,” Marcus said with a sense of foreboding as he brought back the drinks. He handed her the glass, and then sat down in the chair opposite her before taking a long swallow of the amber liquid in his glass. “Well, do proceed and divulge your intentions, whatever they may be.”
The Dowager Duchess sipped delicately at her brandy and then said, “Miss Lockhart has just handed me her resignation letter. In tears.”
“What?!” Marcus exclaimed, his heart sinking to his boots. “Resigned, has she? Not another one. But, what is the child doing to them? That’s the third governess this year, and it is still only August.”
“More of the same complaints, I’m afraid.
Evelyn is extremely withdrawn, inattentive, forgetful, uncommunicative, deeply uninterested in just about anything, except drawing pictures and animals.
Apparently, she lacks the basic skills in mathematics, history, English, and oh, more or less every subject under the sun actually,” his mother recited.
“I told you that you would need that brandy, did I not? I think I might need a whole bottle of this to get over it. The entire interview was extremely vexing.”
“Good grief,” Marcus moaned with rising desperation. “You tried to talk her out of it, did you not?” he asked.
“Of course, I did. What do you take me for? I even offered to increase her salary by a third.”
“No go?”