Chapter 8
“Do I look like the kind of gentleman that could consort with the likes of my brother?” Hector asked Jonathan as he looked distastefully at his proper London gentleman outfit. It fit him like a costume.
Jonathan smoothed the fabric over Hector’s broad shoulders with a professional proficiency.
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but no,” Jonathan said. “Though I do not think that is necessarily your aim.”
There was a mildness in Jonathan’s tone that belied the glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
“Well, no, I don’t want to look like a ponce,” Hector admitted. “Or like I spend half my time with my head up my own arse.”
Jonathan cleared his throat at length.
“Apologies,” Hector said gruffly. It was too easy to hear Jonathan’s northern accent, the one that sounded like home, and forget that he was in the London lion’s den. “I shouldn’t put you in an uncomfortable position with your employer.”
“That would be admirable, Your Grace,” Jonathan said, clearly unbothered, “except you are my employer.”
“Oh,” Hector said. “Right.”
“You’ll get used to the idea eventually,” Jonathan reassured him. “Because I am not going to let you lose your birthright to that … interloper.”
“Don’t let Matthew hear you talking like that,” Hector cautioned. “Because my victory is not at all guaranteed.”
Hell, Hector wasn’t even entirely certain that he wanted to win. There was something tempting about the idea of just going back to the North, returning to the simple satisfaction of making horseshoes that real people would use to benefit their real lives.
Unfortunately, Hector had a stubborn streak. It had served him well when he was beating metal into submission with just the force of his own arms and the hammer he wielded, but now it was going to make him fight for his stupid inheritance.
And today’s actions constituted the first step.
Hector resisted the urge to fidget with his too-tight cravat as he sat in the back of the carriage—his carriage, he reminded himself sternly, even if the idea of a carriage that was for his especial use and that sat around gathering dust the rest of the time made him feel itchy under this starched collar.
But if he were going to keep his dukedom, he needed to start thinking like a duke. Even if he hated to do so.
He needed to think like a duke if he were going to face down a duke. And he might not have known it yet, but Aaron Redcliff was due for a meeting with Hector.
It was time to put his plan into action.
“Clio, Clio, Clio!”
Phoebe came skidding into the library where Clio was reading with a small plate of sandwiches resting on her own chest. It was an undignified position, to be certain, but it also made it so she could eat and lie down and read all at the same time. Bliss.
After spending years of her life living in a Francophone country, Clio’s French was as fluent as her English, but it was rather nice to read in her mother tongue.
“Phoebe, what?” Clio asked, a hint of a whine in her tone. She just wanted to be left alone to read for a day or two. It was a fine, time-honored way to ignore her problems.
“He’s here,” Phoebe hissed. “Good God, get yourself together! Fix your hair. You’re covered in crumbs, for goodness’ sake.”
“What?” Clio asked.
And then, the Duke of Metford appeared behind Phoebe.
Clio bolted upright, sending her book and sandwiches flying.
Good. This was good. This was the kind of impression she liked to leave on people.
The duke’s eyes tracked these movements. Then, he smirked.
“You know,” she told him acidly, because there really wasn’t any point in using her manners any longer, “a gentleman would have waited in the foyer until he was invited inside.”
“Good to know,” he said, unabashed. “By the way, ye have something just here.”
He pointed to his cheek. Clio swiped furiously at her own face, but came up with nothing.
“Oh, my mistake,” he said. “Must have been a shadow.”
She let out a little growl.
Phoebe was watching this like it was the greatest night she’d ever had at the theater, but eventually she remembered that she was a duchess in her own home.
“My husband will be with us shortly, Your Grace,” she said politely. “In the meantime, can I ring for tea?”
He grimaced. “I’ve had what Londoners think passes for tea.”
“So, no then?” Phoebe asked, undaunted.
His grimace intensified. “No.”
Clio took the moment that the duke’s attention was on Phoebe to frantically smooth her hair and shake out her dress.
Phoebe gave her most winning smile. “Perhaps a walk, then? My husband is currently in Hyde Park, and I am certain that he would enjoy seeing you.”
This was one of the most bald-faced lies that Clio had heard in her life. She was rather impressed at Phoebe’s ability to deliver it with a straight face.
The duke looked as though he, too, would not enjoy any such thing. He seemed as though he was sucking on a lemon when he said, “That would be pleasant, thank you.”
Clio and Phoebe briefly excused themselves to don their spencers and bonnets for walking, during which Clio spared a moment to have a mental crisis.
What was he even doing here? He’d made himself perfectly clear the other day …
Or, no, he hadn’t made himself clear at all, given that baffling almost-kiss, but he’d made it clear enough that he didn’t intend to pursue any kind of—anything with her.
So, why was he here? Demanding to talk to her brother?
It did not bode well.
She took extra care with her toilette, half out of a desire to redeem herself from the whole ‘bosom full of crumbs’ incident, half because she felt no desire to return downstairs to rejoin the unpleasantness of waiting with the duke.
When they returned to the drawing room and began, footman in tow to protect the tender virtues of the ladies, Clio found that she was feeling too stubborn to be the first one to give in and ask what, precisely, was going on here.
Phoebe had no such compunctions.
“So,” she said, twirling her parasol merrily, as though this were a perfectly ordinary social outing, “what brings you here, Your Grace?”
Metford was staring furiously at the street ahead of them as though it had done him an injury, his hands clasped in front of him atop the handle of his walking stick.
For all his brusqueness and lack of polish, he was doing a remarkable impression of a ‘brooding gentleman’ at the moment.
If only the weather would cooperate with a proper drizzle, he could be the image on the frontispiece of a gothic novel.
“I have business with your husband,” he said without looking at either of them.
Phoebe waited for more information. It was not forthcoming.
Phoebe cast a wide-eyed look at Clio behind the duke’s back.
You see what I’m dealing with, Clio sent back with her eyes.
And Phoebe had dared to suggest that Clio was attracted to him! Just because he had the arms, and the handsome face, and all of that stone-hewn strength about him? Outrageous.
They lapsed into an agonizing silence as they continued the short walk to Hyde Park. The duke was visibly miserable, which was one consolation to Clio, who was also miserable. Phoebe seemed entirely unbothered.
There was an awful ruckus going on in the park, and as they approached a cluster of gentlemen gathered around something, Clio realized that her sister by marriage had left out an extremely important detail about what her husband was doing during his outing.
It was a bloody shooting competition.
Clio yanked on Phoebe’s arm, pulling her back a few paces behind the duke as he took in the scene before them.
There were perhaps half a dozen competitors stretched out over a series of targets.
Perhaps a dozen more people were watching and offering commentary.
Most were gentlemen, though one or two had wives or sisters on their arms.
“Seriously?” she demanded to Phoebe, who was looking insufferably pleased with herself. “You thought that what this situation needed was an audience? And guns?”
Phoebe shrugged with far more nonchalance than the situation warranted.
“Sometimes men just need to—” She waved an absent hand. “—do man things.”
Clio gaped at her.
Phoebe remained unbothered.
“Also,” she admitted, “I just wanted to see what would happen.”
If Clio thought they were embroiled in a scandal now, she couldn’t wait to see what people said about her after she murdered Phoebe.
The duke—either to his credit or as an irrefutable sign that he was touched in the head—paid no mind to the loaded and primed weapon in Aaron’s hand and approached the competition with as much assurance of his welcome as if he’d received an engraved invitation.
Several gentlemen gawped. Aaron just gave him a very dry look.
The duke arched an eyebrow.
“Men,” Phoebe sighed.
Clio approached before someone got shot.
There was no movement on anyone’s part toward the guns, however, merely some irksome masculine posturing.
Eventually, though, Aaron seemed to grow tired of this foolishness, not that he said anything to the duke. Instead, he turned to Clio—because, she thought privately, men were ridiculous and dramatic.
“It has been only a few days since the … incident,” he said, and she had to clench her hands into fists to stop herself from rolling her eyes at the meaningful pause in his words.
It was a fair sign of how fearsome Aaron’s reputation as a soldier remained that any uninvolved gentlemen hastily removed themselves from earshot.
“And I have already noticed a notable decrease in the number of invitations we would normally receive at this point in the Season.”
If they had been in private, Clio would have made a quip about Aaron keeping his own social schedule. For now, she tried to convey her mockery with a look, not that her family had proven particularly susceptible to that.
“I’m sure that any talk will pass,” she said with an airiness that she didn’t feel.
“You can’t know that, Clio,” Aaron said forbiddingly.
Clio was unimpressed by her brother’s irritation; she knew him well enough to know that, when it came to Phoebe and her, any bluster was nothing more than noise.
But the duke did not seem to know that. And it was this that made him speak.
“Don’t talk to her that way,” he gritted out. He set his walking stick neatly aside against the table holding the weapons, then reached for one of the nearby guns and pointed it at a target. Clio supposed she ought to be pleased that he hadn’t aimed the thing at her brother.
Aaron raised his eyebrows. It was combative, but there was also a glint in his eye that said that he relished the budding argument. You could take the man out of the war, but you couldn’t take the soldier out of the man.
And now there were guns involved. God help them all.
“You presume to tell me,” he said, challenge thick in his tone, “how to speak to my own sister? On what grounds?”
The duke’s eyes narrowed. He weighed the pistol in his grip.
“You know what I’ve come to discuss, Redcliff,” he said, the words sharp as steel.
He pulled the trigger with a deafening bang. In the distance, a hole appeared on the target. It wasn’t quite in the center, but it was impressively close for his first try with a new weapon.
Aaron inclined his head. An invitation for more.
He raised his own gun and shot. His hole was far closer to the middle. Smugness radiated off him in waves. A muscle worked in the duke’s jaw.
Oh, very well, Clio could see why Phoebe was entertained, she supposed. It was the same kind of thrill from watching fencing. Except fencing would have been safer, and wasn’t that a thing to think.
“I’m not going to leave her to hang,” the duke growled after a moment. He picked up another gun and fired again. This shot was better, but still not as good as Aaron’s.
“So, I was right,” Aaron said with the smug attitude of someone who was winning. It was clearly more about the conversation than the shooting. Clio wanted to bash them both over the head with their weapons.
“It’s not fair to leave an innocent young woman to suffer the social consequences of something we did together … even if I maintain that nothing improper occurred,” the duke continued.
“Or, in other words, I was right,” Aaron repeated.
“Aaron,” Clio said through gritted teeth.
Both men ignored her.
“I agree,” the duke told her brother, “that marriage is the right solution.”
Aaron looked like the cat who had gotten the goddamn canary.
Clio was happy for him, at least, since this counted among the most humiliating moments of her entire life.
It was bad enough that she was the talk of Society.
It was bad enough that Gwanton was apparently getting away without a blemish on his reputation, even though the whole thing really was his fault.
It was bad enough that she was being shuffled off into marriage by a man who was willing to take her with only the utmost reluctance.
It was all of that and the fact that they were talking around her, like she was some sort of idiot child who couldn’t even advocate for herself.
She was sick of it.
She pushed past them; both men let out a simultaneous cry of dismay as she walked between them and the targets, never mind that both their weapons were already spent.
She ignored them. It wasn’t as though they deserved any less, given how they were ignoring her.
Aaron grabbed her arm, though, his grip gentle but unyielding.
“Clio,” he said.
The acid response was ready on her tongue—Why should I even stay if I’m apparently unnecessary to this conversation?
—but Aaron took one look at her stormy expression, and the stubborn iron went right out of him.
He gave her a nod so full of understanding that Clio felt her anger doused as effectively as if he’d thrown a bucket of water over her.
“I will, of course, need to speak to my sister,” Aaron said smoothly, giving Clio a tiny nod of reassurance. He glanced back at the duke. “Privately.”
Only then did the Duke of Metford glance over in Clio’s direction. There was some kind of turmoil in his eyes, but Clio didn’t know how to read him the way she knew how to read her brother.
Didn’t know how to read him yet, something inside her chimed. If this went the way it seemed like it was going, she would have the rest of her life to figure out all of the Duke of Metford’s expressions.
She … wasn’t certain how she felt about that.
“Very well,” the duke said after a long moment. “But I have lingered long enough. I do not have more time. Come to me when you have your answer.”
And then, with no regard at all for decorum or manners, he dropped his gun and strode from the park, not pausing for so much as a good day, leaving a parade of staring faces in his wake.
It was foolish, but Clio felt strangely tempted to smile.