Chapter Sixteen
“This is very kind of you, Your Grace,” Iris said, just as she’d rehearsed, and took the seat next to the Duke of Trent on the front-facing side of his gold-appointed, well-polished barouche, while Polly sat opposite her.
For heaven’s sake, it was like riding on a jeweled crown, minus the pointy bits. “I know how busy you must be.”
“Ha. Not busy enough, these days,” he returned, and thumped his cane against the floor.
The barouche rolled into the street, heading toward Hyde Park.
Afternoon in the park would be impossibly crowded, full of Mayfair residents promenading, riding, and driving about making certain to be seen in their finest daytime attire, trying to catch the eye of that certain someone, or of anyone at all.
She’d never been fond of it. Today, the idea of everyone seeing her in the company of a man more than forty years her senior, a man publicly after his sixth wife to share his bed and wipe the drool from his mouth …
Ugh. She would rather have been swimming in the Serpentine in a ball gown.
And yet, there she was. Smiling, being as polite and demure as she could manage.
What did that say about her? Iris lowered her shoulders, lifting her chin.
She knew what it said. It said that she was a woman of good birth, limited means, and a determination to provide the best life possible for her young son.
“I hear Elmond called on you earlier.” Trent sniffed as a pedestrian bowed at the barouche. “Lickspittle.”
“You have people spying on your own son?”
“I know where all my offspring and their offspring are, what they’re doing, what they’re saying, and to whom they’re saying it. He thinks you want me to get a son on you so you can claim the dukedom and pry it away from him.”
“I told him that was nonsense. You came to me. And you said you wanted to marry someone who’ll look after you and your best interests, whatever your sons’ wishes.”
He snorted. “So I did. Both my boys know they’re worthless.
I blame their mothers; Mary, my first wife, was Yorkshire peasant stock, if you go back far enough.
Face like a chicken, but her dowry—that was nothing to sneeze at.
She made it possible for me to marry prettier girls, after she turned up her toes.
You’re Midlands gentry born. Back at least three generations, on both sides.
You have the look of it, too. Willowy, that blond hair and those green—or is it brown?
—eyes. And you’ve already birthed a boy.
I’d take a son off you. What do you think of that?
If my first ones don’t behave, you’d be the mother of a duke.
A good way to keep hold of what you’ll get by marrying me.
If the brat likes you, that is. Mine hate me. It’s mutual.”
Trent continued talking, but Iris couldn’t hear it any longer.
Her ears rang, clanging like someone shaking a hundred tinny bells all around her.
She’d suspected from the beginning that he would want more children—more sons.
And she’d set it aside because the rest of it would ensure Edmund’s future.
Now, though, she’d been with Beckett. She’d kissed him, been touched by him. He made her feel … alive. More so than she had in at least the last four years. Possibly ever. A man who didn’t need her for a purpose other than wanting to have a connection. Warmth. Friendship.
Now, though, the idea of being with Trent, of having someone so uncaring and self-absorbed and so much older than she was pawing all over her because he wanted leverage against his grown sons, made her feel ill.
Dirty. As if because she’d realized that, he’d turned her into a prostitute.
Money, shelter, in exchange for sex. He made it so obvious. So blatant. So … ugly.
“Nothing to say, eh?” he went on cheerfully.
“No matter. You’ll come around to it. Your uncle told me what you wanted from him.
If you think he’d lend you the blunt to purchase a boardinghouse, you don’t know him very well.
And you’re right on the edge of being too old to be useful.
” He shook his head. “The other chit I’m still looking into, you know, she’s seventeen.
Lots of years to bear me sons, but she’s unproven.
I could flip a coin, I suppose, but I dislike wagering with my own happiness. ”
Opposite them Polly sat, her mouth hanging open.
Perhaps they could make a run for it. She had no doubt that her maid would join her in fleeing.
Running off, though—or punching him—wouldn’t solve anything.
The Baverstocks would not be hosting the Silberns after the Season, or lending them any money.
None of her other relations would lift a finger. Which left … this.
Or Beckett. He’d offered to lend her the money to purchase the boardinghouse.
Given what she’d come to know of his character, he would more than likely gift her the money.
But then it would stay between them. A loan or a gift, it would be there, with both of them knowing it, with her owing him something whether he declared that she did or not.
And he would marry Lady Pauline, and the new marchioness would know that he’d spent hundreds of pounds on …
who? A neighbor? The mother of his daughter’s friend?
All it left her was a handful of what-ifs.
What if she hadn’t gotten strawberry cream on Beckett’s jacket the night they’d met?
What if she hadn’t decided she belonged with someone who needed her to fix them?
What if she hadn’t told Beckett over and over again that she didn’t want more children, didn’t want to be a wife, didn’t want to be anything but Edmund’s mother?
What if she’d been able to rein in her temper and keep from lashing out at everyone who slighted her?
Any one of those things might have changed her life.
But it was far too late now. She’d dug her own hole, as surely as Edmund was digging his in the garden.
And Beckett had decided he wanted a partner, someone to help advise his daughter, rather than a wife.
And he’d found that woman. Iris was a stopgap, a temporary bit of solace, while he made up his mind.
Even so, if she allowed in the wisp of a daydream, she could see herself falling madly in love with Beckett Raines.
Part of her worried that she’d already done so.
And that was why she refused to indulge in dreams, the silly, useless things.
“Still nothing?” Trent mused. “I was under the impression that you had a mouth on you, Mrs. Silbern. I like that, along with the wiggling and shouting.”
For just a moment, Iris shut her eyes. “Are you attempting to offend me?” she asked slowly, opening them again as she faced him.
“I am. And you sat there and let me do it. Now, we both know how much you need me. No misunderstandings. I get what I want, when I want it, and you get what you need for your boy. But don’t expect me to adopt him.
My boys are my blood. No exceptions. If you make me another one and Francis or Henry or their offspring annoy me, then I’ll see about declaring my first two marriages null and void.
You’ll make another Howard or two for me, whether I cut the older ones out of the inheritance or not. ”
They turned onto the path in Hyde Park. Iris spent the next forty minutes pretending to smile as everyone who looked in her direction no doubt realized how desperate she must be that she would wish to wed a skeletal, crass, randy old man.
It would give her a title, the Duchess of Trent, and then the Dowager Duchess of Trent.
At least that couldn’t be taken away—though she imagined Lord Elmond would certainly attempt to see it stripped from her, or from whoever became his next stepmother.
“I do still have a choice,” she noted. “So what assurances are you willing to give your bride?” she asked as they began yet another circuit of the park. “I require something unbreakable to protect my standing and income after your death.”
“You’re mercenary, aren’t you?” He chuckled.
“I’ll have something written up so you’ll keep your title and your boy has, say, a hundred quid a year.
I suppose you’ll need a stipend, too, since Elmond will boot you out of the house before I’m even cold.
What sounds reasonable in exchange for giving you a life of luxury and a title?
Fifty a year?” He laughed again. “That’s only if you outlive me, which none of the others managed. ”
For Trent this was obviously a game, and one he enjoyed immensely. He knew how much she needed this marriage, and he pushed her just an inch short of that. “I would accept five hundred a year, Your Grace.”
He snorted. “Oh, I imagine you would. Be careful with your negotiating, Mrs. Silbern. You haven’t won the contest yet. What if your rival only asks for twenty a year? Or tells me that my love is all the payment she requires?”
Iris smiled at him with gritted teeth. “Then I suppose I shall lose.”
“Ha! I have too many greedy offspring and their brats to go flinging money at everyone, but I’ll see that you get a hundred a year. Same as your boy. His stops when he turns … thirty. You’ll have yours for life. Fair?”
Not in the least, but she wasn’t going to get a better offer anywhere else. “In theory,” she said, still reluctant to step into this mess with both feet, “I agree.”
“Glad to see you do have some common sense. A female can’t go about hitting and insulting lords and lordlings. Sometimes you have to accept your place in the world and smile—then wish them all to the devil under your breath.”
“Oh, I am, believe me.”
He shifted, moving close enough that his thigh pressed against hers. “I like you, Mrs. Silbern. I may want a taste before I make my decision. You know, sampling some milk before I purchase the cow.”