My Inconvenient Duke (Difficult Dukes #3)

Chapter 1

Camberley Place, Surrey

Friday 30 March 1832

Raucous laughter. Drunken shouting.

“Devil take them.” Lady Alice Ancaster opened her eyes and stared up at the tester. “What time is it?”

She sat up in not quite complete darkness. She pulled the edge of the bed curtain to one side. The window curtains remained

closed, meaning her maid hadn’t yet risen—though the drunken louts would soon rouse Aunt Julia’s household.

Dawn had cracked, it seemed, but only just.

It was remarkable how much noise three inebriated men could make. She’d last seen them departing for the fishing house for

a night of carousing. They couldn’t have stayed there? They must come here, directly under her window?

“I have to kill them,” she said.

She flung back the bedclothes and said bad words. She pushed the bed curtains fully open and said worse words. She stumbled getting out of bed, but found her slippers. As her eyes adjusted to the heavy grey light of a damp morning, she discerned her dressing gown neatly laid out at the foot of the bed. She pulled it on and started for the window.

More shouting and laughter. Then the crack of a pistol.

She leapt to the window in time to see her brother fall to the ground. “Hugh!”

She ran from the room.

“Is he dead? He’d better not be dead.” Alice tried to pull free of the Duke of Blackwood’s grasp. “Let me see.”

He wouldn’t loosen his hold. She jammed an elbow into his ribs, not gently, and struck her heel against his shin. He made

a small noise, barely an “oof,” but his grip eased enough so that she could pull free.

She fell to her knees beside her brother. Black powder streaked Ripley’s face. Blood, too. He seemed so still.

She put her hand on his chest. Through layers of coat, waistcoat, linen, she felt warmth and the unmistakable rise and fall.

Breathing. Still alive.

She swallowed panic and made her voice clear and sharp. “Don’t stand there like the worthless pieces of lumber you are. Send

for a doctor. Now. Call for a litter. Make haste! He can’t be let to lie here.”

“Stunned, y’know, thash all,” the Duke of Ashmont said. “Pistol. Went off in Ripley’s face, dinnit?” He turned his bleary

blue gaze to Blackwood.

Blackwood blinked, one dark eye opening more slowly than the other. He nodded. “Went off in his face.”

“Get help!” she said.

Ashmont dragged a hand through his blond curls. He shook his head, as though he had a hope of clearing it that way. Then he

started away, stumbled, and fell over. And lay there.

“Juno, give me strength,” she said.

She became aware of the Duke of Blackwood crouching beside her. “Not... dead,” he said. He swayed, and she put out a hand

to push him away. That was all she needed, one of these great oafs falling on her.

“He might have been killed,” she said. “What is wrong with you? Drunk, shooting off pistols, so close to the house—and this

house, of all places. Do you three think of anybody else, ever? And you —the one I believed had a functioning brain. You let this happen.”

She bent over her brother. “Oh, Hugh.”

She brushed his black hair from his face. His eyes opened. Green like hers. Also bloodshot, unlike hers. She took one of his

hands. The glove was burnt in places.

“I reckon it mish-mif-misfired,” Blackwood said.

A corner of Hugh’s mouth turned up. “You... reckon?” He laughed, then winced, then started coughing.

Blackwood pulled her back and dragged her to her feet, an instant before the Duke of Ripley rolled over and cast up his accounts.

“He’s all right,” Blackwood said. “Stunned, thash all.”

“He’s burnt!”

“Yes. Go back to bed now. Cold out here. Damp. You’ll catch your death.” He waved a hand up and down, indicating her attire.

“Not enough clothes.”

He was swaying, blinking, his words slurring together.

She grasped his lapels and shook him, an impossible feat had he been sober. This was because the Duke of Blackwood, like his

two friends, was over six feet tall and solid muscle (including his head) and could not be moved when he chose not to be moved.

“ Wake up ,” she said. “Get my brother out of the wet and into the house. I don’t care how you do it, but you’d better not upset Aunt

Julia.”

Their selfishness passed all bounds. To behave so, at a house to which death had brought such acute grief. If Ripley had been killed...

An image flashed into her mind of a smirking face and a short, unpleasant conversation.

But her brother wasn’t dead. Yet.

She nodded toward Ashmont, who remained on the ground, smiling up at the cloud-thickened sky. “And while you’re at it, drag

Luscious Lucius over there to a trough or pump and get him back in his senses—to the extent that is possible. Do you understand?”

Blackwood’s gaze slid from her face down to her hands, still clutching his lapels. “Best let go, then, don’t you think?”

She jerked her hands free, and he staggered back a pace.

“I hate you,” she said. “I shall never forgive you.”

She wanted to cry. She wanted desperately to cry. She was so tired of this. And it was never going to get better. She knew

that. She’d known it for a good while.

They were hopeless.

Their Dis-Graces. That was what the world called the three dukes, and the world wasn’t wrong.

But she would not cry in front of them.

Ripley was alive—for now—and there was nothing she could do for or about him.

Time to face facts. These were the men they’d become. They were not going to turn into better men. They’d only grow worse,

and it was mad to hope otherwise.

She would have to make a plan.

Giles Bouverie Lyon, eighth Duke of Blackwood, Marquess of Rossmore, Earl of Redwick, etc., etc., became suddenly and unhappily

sober.

He watched Alice march away, dressing gown floating about her in the morning mist, and revealing a great deal more of her tall, shapely body than her usual attire did. No stiff petticoats concealed her hips. No gigantic sleeves turned her arms into balloons. Her nightcap had fallen askew, her braid was loosening, and long, waving locks of black hair trailed over her shoulders.

The stuff that dreams are made on.

A dream, no more. He’d made his choice years ago, an easy choice at seventeen.

His friends or the girl.

He’d made the choice here, at Camberley Place, during the annual late summer gathering of cousins and friends. He, Ripley,

and Ashmont had gone down to the fishing house, as they usually did, but Ripley was watching him in an odd way. Then, when

Ashmont settled down to serious fishing, Ripley drew Blackwood aside.

“Don’t look at Alice that way,” he said.

And Blackwood, heart pounding with guilt, instantly took offense: “What way?”

“You know what I mean. You’re getting ideas and you’ll give her ideas, and it won’t do.”

Too late , he could have told his friend. He’d got the ideas. He understood the warning all too well, though. Alice was fifteen. She

was a gently bred maiden, a lady. He, Ashmont, and Ripley were wild and rebellious and ill-behaved. They broke any number

of rules. But innocent girls were sacrosanct. Also dangerous and complicated and far too much trouble for too little fun.

Best to pretend they didn’t exist.

“If you want Alice, you’ve got to take the respectable road,” Ripley said. “My sister deserves Sir Bloody Galahad. And that’s not us. Not me, not you, not Ashmont, by a long stretch. If you’re with us, you can’t be with her. I won’t have her trifled with. I won’t have her hurt. She bore enough of that with my father.”

“I would never hurt Alice.”

“Then make up your mind. Us or her.”

Not the hardest choice at seventeen: a life of excitement—adventures, pranks, fights, parties, not-so-innocent girls, and

general rule-breaking with the two fellows who’d stick with you through thick and thin—or a life of following rules.

At seventeen he’d had more than enough of following rules.

He’d chosen the friends.

Easy enough at first. Easy enough when he and she were miles and miles apart. But when Alice was nearby, inches away...

He’d lost his head once and hurt her. He’d stuffed the memory into a deep mental cavern, but it escaped from time and time

to haunt him.

It was all too easy for a man like Blackwood to hurt her, to cause damage unthinkingly. Had Ripley been killed this morning...

But he hadn’t, and the best way for Blackwood to atone was to clean up the mess he and his friends had created.

He made himself look away from Alice’s retreating figure and attend to the business at hand.

He gazed down at Ashmont, who still lay on the ground, smiling up at the dark clouds massing overhead.

“This always happens when you’re about,” Blackwood said. “Can’t take you anywhere.”

The pistol. Ashmont’s idea. An ancient pistol they’d found... where? He couldn’t remember.

Had they been so lost to reason as to let Ashmont load it? Or had Ripley done that?

Or did I do it?

Blackwood’s stomach knotted. He knew, better than anybody, the correct way to clean and load a pistol.

He turned back to Ripley.

Black in the face, with streaks of red, and... well, not pretty, in short.

All things considered, not so bad.

Still.

“Done puking?” Blackwood said.

Ripley sat up fully. “Daresay.”

“Want a doctor?”

“Hell, no.”

One of the servants burst through the door of the south front and ran to them. “Her ladyship said there was an accident.”

“Don’t fuss,” Ripley said. “Send Snow to me.”

“Not only Snow,” Blackwood said. “All three of our manservants. And have the carriage readied.”

“Carriage?” Ripley said. “We got here only the day before yesterday. My aunt—”

“Lady Charles has seen enough of you. You’ve never been beautiful, but at present you’ll frighten small children and dogs.

You most certainly will upset her. We’d do well to make our exit, and quickly.”

Lord and Lady Charles Ancaster had always made Blackwood feel as welcome as their nephew. Their home had been a refuge from

the time he, Ripley, and Ashmont had first become schoolmates and friends.

Lady Charles had lost her husband two years ago. She missed him very much. They all did.

They three had behaved badly. True, they always did, and true, she was used to them and forgave a great deal. All the same,

they ought to have confined their games and dares to the fishing house down by the river, well away from the main house. As

to shooting the old pistol: unforgivably careless.

He put out a hand. Ripley grabbed it and winced as he hauled himself upright.

“M’sister frightened you, that it?” Ripley said.

“Yes.”

“Me, too, sometimes. Not sure how she does it, but mustn’t let her catch on. Can’t let her forget who’s head of the family.”

He looked over at Ashmont. “What about him?”

“We’ll throw him over a horse and take him to one of the inns at Guildford,” Blackwood said. “The servants can follow. I want

to be gone. Now.”

Most of all, he wanted not to be ashamed.

But there were cures for that and for many other maladies.

The dukes wisely vacated the premises. Since out of sight did not equal out of mind, after breakfast Alice walked down to

the fishing house. There she knew she’d find the solitude she needed. She brought a book with her.

The small stone building was a square one-room structure. It held a fireplace, an ancient marble table, and three chairs.

When the dukes visited, the servants brought down camp beds, linens, and other furnishings as well as food. Not luxurious

by any means, but luxury wasn’t what one came here for.

The servants had tidied the place promptly after the dukes’ departure.

All Alice had to do was rebuild the fire before she settled at the table to read. From time to time she looked up at one of

the diamond leaded windows.

. . . man, from the remotest antiquity, found it convenient to exert his strength to subju gate his companion, and his invention to show that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke; because she as well as the brute creation, was created to do his pleasure.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was not precisely Alice’s bible, but close enough.

“Forty years,” she said. “Forty years since you wrote this, Mrs. Wollstonecraft, and nothing has changed.”

She set down the book and rose. She walked to the door, opened it, and looked out at the river.

More than two years had passed since her Uncle Charles’s funeral. A fog of grief blanketed those days. One incident, though,

remained starkly clear.

After the will had been read and everybody else had apparently left the library, Alice had returned to search for the book

about the Knights of the Round Table.

A number of fine ancient items lived in the room. There was a chest once belonging to King James I. One of King Charles II’s

writing desks had been another perquisite of some ancestor’s position at Court. The curio cabinets held scores of treasures.

But the Recueil des Romans des Chevaliers de la Table Ronde was most beautiful and precious to her, on more counts than one. It had captured her imagination shortly before her tenth

birthday, after her own knights in shining armor, Uncle Charles and Aunt Julia, had rescued her from the Tollstone Academy

for Girls.

This day she found her unpleasant cousin Lord Worbury lurking in the library. He was bent over the book, which lay on the

royal writing desk.

He gave her an assessing look, up and down, his light brown eyes mocking.

She responded with a coolly polite smile. She’d humiliated him years ago. He’d got what he deserved, though he’d never see it that way.

“Congratulations,” he said. “Ripley gets everything.”

Uncle Charles’s will hadn’t mentioned Worbury because Uncle Charles knew he was a poisonous black mold on the Ancaster escutcheon.

“It was mainly Ripley’s to start with,” she said. “Camberley Place was our father’s and his father’s, and so on, as you know.”

Uncle Charles had taken it over when she was a child, when her father had begun neglecting his properties. Economizing , Papa called it.

“And Ripley’s heir will inherit everything,” Worbury said. “Not you. Not Lady Charles. None of her daughters.”

“How kind of you to be concerned on the ladies’ account,” she said. “But as you must have heard a short time ago, my uncle

left his wife amply provided for. His daughters have married well. Certainly Ripley will make sure that no member of his family

wants for anything.”

“I daresay he will. Ripley’s a generous fellow. And if—heaven forfend—he leaves us, John Ancaster will carry on in the same

manner. All will be well.”

He smirked and stroked the book cover, and it wanted every iota of her self-control to keep from bashing his head on the desk.

How dare he touch it? How dare he pollute this house with his presence? But he was a vulture, and somebody had died, and he

was bound to hope he could pick at the carcass. Nobody had wanted to chase him away, because he was all too likely to make

a scene and cause Aunt Julia further distress. They’d treated him to cold courtesy instead. He pretended not to notice, but

of course he’d nurse a grudge.

“Quite so,” she said. She started to turn away, to put distance between them before her temper got the better of her.

“Let’s hope they both live long, then, eh?” he said. “Or sire sons before they go. Because after them, it’s...” A long

pause ensued while he pretended to think. “Oh, dear. The next in line for the dukedom seems to be me.” He shook his head.

“And then, I suspect, it will not be quite the same.”

Alice came back to the present, her gaze still upon the river, sparkling in the capricious sunlight.

“No, nothing will be the same,” she said softly.

Only a simpleton would believe the day would never arrive when Worbury inherited, when all this and more would be his. The

morning’s events had made that as clear and sharp as a slap in the face.

She remained at the fishing house, looking into the future. Eventually rage and anxiety settled to a bearable level. Late

that afternoon, she felt composed enough to consult her aunts Julia and Florentia.

The conversation was long and painful.

When she wrote to her best friend, Alice kept matters to essentials.

My dearest Cassandra,

It seems I cannot go on being content with my life as it is. My brother and his two friends show no signs of moderating their behavior. To ask for maturity is asking for the moon. With John Ancaster’s recent death, my not-distant-enough cousin Worbury becomes my brother’s heir. Since Ripley’s behavior promises an untimely demise, I need not explain the consequences for the dukedom and all those dependent upon it. I am only one of many, but one of the few able to do anything about it.

I’ll soon be five and twenty, and as the aunts pointed out, my situation is not secure. Unlike you, I haven’t seven more or

less loving brothers or open-minded grandparents. Ergo, I must undertake the perilous quest of finding a husband. This involves

two dragons: Society in general and Men specifically. The ton isn’t wrong to disapprove of and fear my brother and his friends.

These same people don’t know me very well, which means I shall have to establish my Perfectly Unexceptionable Wife credentials.

As to the Male of the Species: You know what my father was like. My mother had no inkling when she wed him, and she was helpless

to stop him from sending me away to that so-called school. Marriage is a gamble, and one isn’t wrong to worry about choosing

badly. Still, you and I have taken all the precautions we can. We’re not helpless women.

In sum, I cannot rejoin you in Florence, and you are not to think of returning to England for the present. The aunts say it

will want six months to a year for the scandal to die down and for your father to “achieve a calmer frame of mind,” as Aunt

Julia puts it. She, meanwhile, is writing a letter to Ripley, warning him to stay away from London until I have completed

my quest.

This is a horrid short letter on so grave and disruptive a subject, I know. However, it is as much as I trust myself to say intelligibly at present. By the time we return to London, I hope to have achieved a calmer frame of mind myself.

I love you dearly and miss you dreadfully,

Your most affectionate,

Alice

London

Evening of the following day

The Duke of Ripley was late joining his two friends at Ashmont House. They gathered in Ashmont’s capacious dressing room,

as they often did before an evening’s entertainment.

“Change of plans,” he said. “Can’t stay in London.”

He flung himself into one of the three chairs set before the fire and tossed a letter onto the small table there.

Blackwood took up the letter. He recognized the handwriting. “From Lady Charles.”

“I’ll save Ashmont the trouble of reading it, rather than risk injuring the delicate workings of his brain,” Ripley said.

“Aunt Julia says Alice is going on the Marriage Mart, and I’m to keep well away, so as not to cast a shadow over the proceedings

and frighten away her lovers.”

Blackwood froze, his startled gaze on his friend and his mind going black for an instant, as though Ripley had thrown him

against a wall.

He was aware of Ashmont speaking, but the voice seemed to come from a great distance.

“Marriage Mart?” Ashmont said. “Alice? But she never bothered about it before.”

“She’s bothering about it now,” Ripley said.

“That’s a facer,” Ashmont said. He rubbed a knuckle against his perfect nose. “Alice getting married. Already. What a funny thing. I had an idea she’d marry me one of these days, you know, after I was ready to be reformed and everything.”

“Alice is too intelligent to marry you, even if I’d allow it, which I wouldn’t.”

“To tell the truth, I wouldn’t allow it, either, if I were you,” Ashmont said. “If I had a sister, I wouldn’t let her marry

any of us.”

Of course not , Blackwood thought. Out of the question. Alice deserved Sir Bloody Galahad, not a drunken troublemaker of a degenerate who

let his friends fire defective pistols.

All the same, it was... hard to take in.

He found his voice at last. “This is a surprise. She said nothing of such plans. The opposite. She and Lady Kempton planned

to return to the Continent.”

“Read it for yourself,” Ripley said. “The point is, I’ve promised my aunt I’ll be a good boy and go away, as she commands.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Past time Alice thought of marrying. I ought to be glad she doesn’t mean to try her

luck with foreigners. Titles over there don’t mean much, and half these so-called noblemen haven’t a pot to piss in.”

Blackwood unfolded and smoothed out the letter his friend had wrinkled. He began reading, but the words blurred as his mind

retreated to the past.

The first time he’d seen Alice, she was ten years old. He’d watched, heart in mouth, while she climbed out of a second-floor

window of Camberley Place and descended via the ivy-encrusted bricks.

Alice was escaping durance vile, her brother had explained.

“She had a bad time of it early in the year,” he said. “A grim sort of school my father sent her to. Don’t know exactly what happened there, but it didn’t agree with her. Now she and my Aunt Julia’s niece Cassandra Pomfret are practicing to be warriors or knights or some such. Maybe both. All things considered, it’s best to let Alice go her way, because she will, whether we like it or not, and then things get complicated. So the rule is, we keep out of it, unless, you know, there’s murder or that sort of thing.”

Other memories crowded in. Alice that day, jumping to the ground and throwing a triumphant grin his way as she ran by the

two boys. Alice teasing Blackwood when he failed to decipher the girls’ secret code. Alice squinting as she aimed a pistol

while his hand guided her arm to the correct position. Alice, her head tipped back, looking up at him and laughing, her green

eyes sparkling with mischief.

Alice, in his arms, once.

All in the past and the past was done, he told himself. He’d made his choice, and it was a decade too late to un-choose.

He let the curtain fall, shutting out the scenes.

He refilled his wineglass and read the letter through.

He set it aside. “We’d better start packing,” he said.