Chapter Three
The eighth Duke of Montclaire was having a perfectly dreadful morning, and it hadn't even reached ten o'clock.
"Your Grace," his valet, Sinclair, ventured carefully, "perhaps the burgundy waistcoat would be more..."
"The black." Alexander stood before his mirror like a man preparing for his own execution, which, in a sense, he was. "Everything black."
"Rather funereal, Your Grace."
"How appropriate, as I'm about to bury my dignity." He adjusted his cravat with the precision of a man who believed that perfect neckwear might somehow salvage an impossible situation. "Tell me, Sinclair, have you ever been forced to prostrate yourself before your enemies?"
"Not recently, Your Grace."
"Well, I don't recommend it. It's remarkably bad for one's posture."
Sinclair wisely said nothing, merely holding out the rejected burgundy waistcoat with the persistence of a man who'd been dressing dukes for twenty years and wasn't about to stop now.
"The black," Alexander repeated firmly. "If I must go begging to the Coleridges, I'll at least look like I'm mourning my self-respect."
The valet sighed but produced the requested black waistcoat, though his expression suggested he was mourning something too; possibly his employer's good sense.
Alexander surveyed the final result in the glass. Perfect. He looked exactly like what he was: a man of impeccable breeding being forced to do something unspeakable. The effect was rather spoiled, however, by his cousin Frederick's sudden arrival.
"My goodness," Frederick announced, breezing into the bedchamber without so much as a knock. "You look like you're attending your own funeral."
"How prescient of you. I am."
"Don't be dramatic. It doesn't suit you." Frederick threw himself into a chair with the carelessness of someone who'd never met a piece of furniture he couldn't make friends with. "It's just marriage."
"To a Coleridge."
"Yes, well, we all have our crosses to bear. Mine is an inability to win at cards. Yours is apparently matrimony to a merchant's daughter. Though I must say, yours comes with a better income."
Alexander turned from the mirror to fix his cousin with a glare that had been known to send parliamentary opponents into retreat. "Did you come here for a reason, or are you simply practicing being irritating?"
"Can't it be both?" Frederick grinned, unperturbed. "Actually, I came to offer my services. Moral support and all that. Someone needs to keep you from actually doing anything foolish."
"I don't need moral support. I need a miracle. Or perhaps a convenient bout of plague."
"The Coleridges aren't that bad," Frederick said, though his tone suggested otherwise.
"The Coleridges," Alexander said with the kind of precise enunciation typically reserved for pronouncing death sentences, "are exactly that bad. Have you forgotten the Jennings’ ball?
The eldest one practically counted the silver.
And those twins; laughing at their own jests, which weren't even amusing. "
"And the daughter?"
Alexander paused in the act of selecting gloves. "What daughter?"
"The one you're supposed to marry. Miss Coleridge. I assume she exists?"
"One assumes." He pulled on his gloves with unnecessary force. "Though I've never noticed her, which tells you everything you need to know. She's either too plain to be seen or too scheming to be obvious about it."
"Those are your only options? Plain or scheming?"
"She's a Coleridge. What else could she be?"
Frederick appeared to consider this. "Happy? Sad? Fond of butterflies? Allergic to strawberries? You know, an actual person."
"Don't be ridiculous." Alexander collected his hat with the gravity of a man selecting weapons for a duel. "Coleridges aren't people. They're a collective irritation that happens to walk upright."
"You're going to be a delightful husband."
"I'm going to be a dutiful husband. There's a difference." He moved toward the door, then paused. "And no, you cannot come with me."
"But..."
"No."
"I could wait in the carriage. Provide a swift escape route if needed."
"Frederick."
"What if they harm you? Who will inherit? I don't think I'm ready for the responsibility..."
"Goodbye, Frederick."
Alexander left his cousin mid-protest, descending the stairs with the measured tread of a man approaching his doom. The journey to Coleridge House was mercifully short—only three miles, though they were quite possibly the longest three miles in England.
The neighborhood, when they reached it, was exactly what he'd expected.
New money trying desperately to look like old money and failing rather spectacularly.
The houses were big but somehow wrong. Too much gilt, too many columns, as if someone had looked at a picture of a proper estate and decided to add everything at once.
Coleridge House itself sat like a wedding cake that had gotten ambitious—all white stone and unnecessary ornamentation.
The gardens were… well, they were certainly enthusiastic.
Roses climbed where they shouldn't, herbs mixed with flowers in cheerful chaos, and was that…
indeed, that was definitely a vegetable patch visible from the front drive. How wonderfully middle-class.
His carriage drew to a stop before the front steps, and Alexander took a moment to steel himself. Somewhere inside that architectural embarrassment was Miss Coleridge, his future bride, the woman who would bear his children and share his name. The thought was not appealing at all.
The door was answered by a butler who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else; a sentiment Alexander could appreciate.
"The Duke of Montclaire to see Mr. Coleridge," he announced himself with all the enthusiasm of a man declaring his own ruin.
The butler's eyes widened slightly, though whether from awe or alarm was unclear. "Your Grace. We've been… expecting you."
I'll wager you have, Alexander thought grimly as he was led through an entrance hall.
The drawing room door opened, and Alexander stepped into what could only be described as an ambush disguised as a social call.
***
Meanwhile, in that very drawing room five minutes earlier, chaos reigned supreme.
"He's here!" Charles announced, peering through the curtains with all the subtlety of a cannon blast. "Heavens, look at that carriage. Could it be any more pompous?"
"It's the Montclaire crest," Edward added, pressing his nose to the glass. "That is too much for a morning call, is it not?"
"Get away from the window!" Robert barked, pacing the carpet with the energy of a caged bear. "We're not peasants gawking at passing nobility."
"Aren't we?" Henry drawled from his position by the mantel, brandy already in hand despite the hour. "I rather thought that was precisely what we were. Peasants being honoured by His Grace's condescension."
Ophelia sat in her usual corner, hands folded in her lap, wearing her second-best morning dress—a pale lavender that made her look like she was gently fading into the wallpaper, which was rather the effect she'd been hoping for.
Her mother sat beside her, radiating maternal concern and occasionally patting her hand in a way that suggested she thought her daughter might bolt for the door at any moment.
"Remember," Robert said, pointing at each brother in turn, "we're civil. Coldly civil. Politely civil. But civil."
"You've said civil so many times it's lost all meaning," Charles complained.
"And no challenging him to anything," Robert continued, ignoring the interruption. "No duels, no races, no wagers, no..."
"No fun whatsoever," Edward finished glumly.
"This isn't meant to be fun. It's meant to be..."
The butler appeared in the doorway like the herald of doom. "Your Graces, the Duke of Montclaire."
And then he was there, filling the doorway with his presence in a way that had nothing to do with his actual size and everything to do with sheer aristocratic audacity.
Alexander entered the room with the kind of studied indifference that suggested he'd rather be walking into a den of actual lions. His gaze swept the assembled company with the warmth of an arctic wind, pausing on each face just long enough to categorize and dismiss.
The eldest brother...bigger than expected, looks ready to throw something. The second... the one with pretensions to wit. The twins...they're actually wearing matching waistcoats. How delightfully provincial. The mother...nervous but trying to hide it. And…
His gaze reached the corner and found her. Miss Coleridge.
She was… unexpected.
Not in any dramatic way—she wasn't a hidden beauty or a secret diamond. She was simply not what he'd pictured. Quieter, smaller, more contained. She sat so still she might have been part of the furniture, except furniture rarely watched one with such carefully neutral eyes.
Brown hair, neither fashionably styled nor unbecomingly arranged. Brown eyes, neither particularly large nor particularly expressive. A face that was pleasant enough but would never stop traffic or inspire poetry. She was, in a word, forgettable.
Perfect.
A forgettable wife was exactly what he needed. Someone who would fade into the background, cause no scandals, make no demands. Someone he could safely ignore for the rest of their natural lives.
"Your Grace," Robert said with a bow so minimal it bordered on insulting. "How… good of you to call."
"Mr. Coleridge." Alexander returned the bow with precisely the same degree of negligible respect. "I trust I find your family in good health?"
"Tolerably well," Robert replied, managing to make it sound like a threat.
"How delightful." Alexander's tone suggested he found it anything but. "And your father? I had hoped to speak with him directly."
"Indisposed," Henry supplied smoothly. "A convenient headache."
The temperature in the room dropped several degrees as everyone absorbed the implication that Mr. Coleridge Senior couldn't even be bothered to meet his daughter's potential husband.