Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“Is there a problem with the brandy, Your Grace?” asked the footman in club livery as he passed by the fireplace where the Duke of Ravenhill had been staring into the flames for the past quarter hour, his glass untouched.
“We have a particularly fine cask of Armagnac, or an unusual Spanish brandy that arrived this week, if you wish to try something new.”
“Hmmm?” Dorian Voss turned his head at the question, taking a few seconds to recollect his surroundings in the club’s lounge, and the presence of the drink on the table beside him.
“No, no. This cognac is perfectly fine, thank you, Smithers. You know I am not a man to hurry my drink. The best things in life are even better when enjoyed slowly, I believe.”
“Very true, Your Grace,” the man nodded and continued on his business.
Dorian lifted his glass now and inhaled the brandy fumes appreciatively before setting it back on the table untasted. It had been a busy day in a busy week and he was satisfied with the result of his efforts, although it would be going very far indeed to say he was pleased.
The scandal sheet writers had been silenced under the combined weight of reasonable payment and the threat of being cut off by some of their best sources in the demimonde, who also happened to be good friends of the Duke of Ravenhill.
The announcement of the imminent wedding in the Times had also cooled general interest, just as Dorian had predicted. The world was less interested in supposedly good news than in scandal, vice and bad endings.
“I suspected I would find you here,” a familiar voice broke in on his depressing reflections, and Dorian found his old friend Cassius Emerton settling himself in the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace.
“But why so morose, Dorian? No one would think that you were about to lead one of the most beautiful young women in London to the altar.”
“Yes, I am about to acquire the duchess I never wanted or needed for the duchy of Ravenhill,” responded Dorian with somewhat bitter humor. “Lady Rose is indeed very lovely and I have nothing against the young woman but I would much rather we had never met. It would have been better for both of us.”
Cassius smiled slightly, neither surprised nor shocked by his friend’s attitude. Dorian had never pretended to play by society’s rules and Cassius had always preferred honestly-living rogues to hypocritical defenders of supposed virtue.
“Well, unfortunately, you did meet, and became irretrievably entangled in a most bizarre accident in the grounds of my home, Dorian. Now you must live with the consequences. It would have been funny if it had happened to another man, wouldn’t it?”
Dorian smiled, acknowledging the truth of this, and appreciating Cassius’ irreverent humor.
The Duke of Ashbourne was the one man he had trusted enough to reveal the whole story of his encounter with Rose Williams, and perhaps the only man whose views on morality and marriage remotely chimed with his own.
“That night at Ashbourne Castle belongs in some bawdy ancient comedy doesn’t it? I’m the lust-ridden fool who mistakes one lady for another in the darkness, rushing in so confidently and receiving only a slap in return for my amorous caresses.”
Cassius only chuckled to himself and signaled to a waiter for a drink.
“It’s not even as though I was remotely inebriated at that damned ball,” Dorian added. “In my defense, I can only say that I had not been thinking with my head – not after that waltz with Leonora and all those wicked little whispers we exchanged. Damn it all!”
“Plautus himself could not have set up the scene more perfectly, including the arrival of the two angry brothers. All that was missing was some dramatic intervention from the indignant lady you inadvertently abandoned.”
“Leonora, Lady Lepford, was still waiting for me in the other rose garden,” the Duke of Ravenhill noted glumly.
“The one near the gardeners’ huts. Apparently, she waited for twenty minutes and then gave up due to the cold.
I had a letter later, once Leonora heard the gossip and guessed what must have happened.
After initially being furious with me, she is now as amused as you. ”
“Amused? I suppose I am, in a dark sort of way,” Cassius admitted. “I am also concerned for you, Dorian. I respect what you are doing and I know why you are doing it, but it cannot be easy.”
“It is not,” Dorian confirmed shortly. “Although it feels like the gods are playing a huge joke on me and punishing me in the manner the world believes I deserve.”
“Punishing you with a comely wife of generous dowry, whom my own beloved Josephine assures me is the sweetest young woman in the kingdom?”
Dorian looked unimpressed by this interpretation of his “punishment” but held his tongue until the waiter had set down Cassius’ drink and left them alone once more.
“I never wanted any of this,” he told his friend.
“Marriage, social entanglement, obligation. I spent my life avoiding such snares and trammels. I never even wanted my damned cousin to die without issue and make me a duke. Yet here I am, Duke of Ravenhill, fallen headfirst into a most ridiculous trap and about to be married, against both my own inclination and that of my future wife.”
“Why not give Lady Rose a chance before you reject marriage so decidedly?” suggested Cassius, sipping his brandy.
“When you get to know her, perhaps it will feel like less of a burdensome state for you. Until I met Josephine, I had sworn off marriage forever. Yet once she was in my life, I could never be happy without her.”
Dorian sat back in his chair with his hands behind his head.
He could understand why the Duke of Ashbourne had fallen so hard for the spirited and expressive Lady Josephine.
He also perceived the erotic sparks that flew between them with highly experienced eyes.
His own case, however, was entirely different.
“What could Lady Rose Williams and I possibly have in common?” he asked. “I will be kind to her, of course, and she will have the title, rank and security I can provide. But I cannot see that we will have many shared interests or acquaintances, or that our union can ever be more than a formality.”
“What does Jane Chatham say, may I ask?” Cassius put to him quietly, with a smile. “I assume you have spoken to her about your marriage.”
“Jane was wise enough only to listen,” Dorian answered. “We both knew what I must do and there was nothing either of us could say to change the situation. But tell me, what manner of woman do you really think Rose Williams?”
Cassius accepted the change of direction without resistance, evidently understanding all the reasons why Dorian might not wish to speak of Jane here and now.
The Duke of Ravenhill had other matters on his mind.
At the same time, he was always fiercely conscious in places like this of the need to protect his connection with Jane Chatham, for her own sake.
“Rose is shy and sweet-tempered, but fun-loving, and a great reader of romantic novels. I can see that she has led a very sheltered life, even by the standards normally applied to young ladies. You must excuse her some ignorance of the real world. Josephine tells me that at Westvale Park, Rose is not even permitted to read the more respectable gossip sheets.”
“I hate the way most families of the ton raise their daughters,” remarked Dorian with feeling. “As though ignorance of the facts of life was any sort of virtue!”
He leaned over and stoked the fire as he spoke, throwing on another small log and taking his temper out on the embers, before looking back to Cassius again.
“Shy is an interesting descriptor, however,” Dorian mused.
“I cannot say that Lady Rose has ever been shy with me. She refused every innocent overture I made at Ashbourne Castle, you know, sometimes in the coolest and wittiest manner. She was the only woman at your house party who would partner me neither in dancing nor cards, nor even sit beside me to listen to the pianoforte.”
“We did rather warn her off you,” Cassius admitted with a rueful smile. “Not that it seemed to do much good in the end.”
The Duke of Ravenhill took no offense at this admission. As he had said, he had little in common with Lady Rose anyway and would not have suffered greatly from the lack of her company, even if her determination to avoid him had intrigued him a little.
“Shy,” he said to himself, shaking his head in rejection of the word.
“I do believe Rose is overwhelmed at times. If her eldest brother didn’t talk over her all the time, perhaps other people could hear her voice more clearly.
At Ravenhill House she may read whatever she wishes, and I shall let her practice the art of civil conversation. ”
“That sounds like a good beginning,” Cassius commented with approval. “I suspect marriage to any woman as sheltered as Lady Rose has been should better begin in the drawing room than the bedroom.”
“I have no bedroom plans at all for Lady Rose presently,” the Duke of Ravenhill said firmly, prompting a raised eyebrow from his friend. “It would seem wrong to seduce a woman who does not even know the meaning of seduction.”
“She will be your wife, Dorian,” the Duke of Ashbourne pointed out. “Is it not your job to teach her that lesson and make it a sweet one?”
Dorian shook his head.
“I have no taste for innocence. If a woman wants me, she must be able to make her desires clear.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Cassius murmured as he drained his glass. “I see trouble ahead on that road, Dorian. What about your own desires?”
“What of them?” Dorian asked, of no one in particular and looked back into the fire.
Soon after, the clock struck seven and the Duke of Ashbourne excused himself to return home, leaving Dorian alone with his thoughts once more.
The question of his own desires was one he had not yet fully faced, let alone answered.
It would need to be answered soon enough.
The Duke of Ravenhill knew himself and knew the strong passions that ran in his blood, demanding fulfillment with a force that could overcome his own reason as much as his lovers’.
Lady Rose was very beautiful and would be living in his house, if in a separate and distant suite. Her innocence might be defense enough against ravishment for now, but if her desire was ever fully awakened, he would have to change his course, one way or another.
Of course, if it was as simple as showing his wife the delights of physical pleasure, there would be no problem. Dorian was confident that they could both enjoy such an introduction in due course.
Then what exactly was the problem? Closing his eyes, Dorian admitted to himself that it was all bound up in the question of marriage.
With his present lovers, any of them could come and go as they pleased. There was no obligation, no expectation and certainly no vows or promises – only mutual pleasure, basic respect and sometimes friendship. It was a set up in which he could see clearly and feel confident.
In a marriage, however, the very permanence of the structure carried a sense of oppression.
People might fall out of love as easily as they fell into it, after all, and love could even turn to hate.
The thought of ever being tied to someone who hated him, but was unable to leave, turned Cassius’ stomach.
Briefly and unwillingly, his thoughts turned to his own parents, once a famous love match and later descended into a vicious struggle for what looked like mutual destruction.
The rows, the infidelity and the raging emotions had not made for a happy home.
When they died together in a boating accident seven years earlier, Dorian had grieved but also felt relief that their terrible marriage was finally over.
No, he would not wish such a fate on himself or on Lady Rose, whom he had sworn to protect.
Still, as Cassius had pointed out, she was very beautiful and she was to be his wife.
Dorian already knew how soft the skin of Rose’s throat felt under his lips and recalled vividly the sound she had made before she jumped back from him.
It had not been a cry of fear or revulsion. While surprised and a little indignant, it had been essentially a sound of pleasure at his touch. He knew such sounds well enough. Dorian could not deny that this realization excited him a little, just as the cry itself had done in the rose garden.
What sensual potential lay beneath Rose’s surface? One day he was sure he would find out…
His mind now made up on the question of desire, Dorian rose without looking back at his abandoned drink.
If his new wife ever showed him her desires, he would fulfill them, but he must also keep her at sufficient distance to protect them both.
Whatever happened, they must not fall in love. It would be the beginning of the end.