Chapter 2
“That which I am, I am; I did not seek For life, nor did I make myself.”
Lord Byron
As heir to the dukedom, Hart had been too important to send away, and so he had been raised on the lap of his father, guarded and protected like the Hartwell jewels, awarded by William I upon the inception of the title.
Except where no fewer than four footmen guarded the Tremaine heirlooms, Hart’s safeguarding fell to the only man the duke truly trusted—himself.
The then marquess’s first spoken word was “duke,” an understanding of Hart’s place known even before full consciousness began.
As a babe, Hart’s nurses received strict orders for his care. No coddling. No affection.
By age six, the duke had his son reading and speaking Latin, Greek, and French.
By seven, Hart was able to outline the rules for his inheritance and identify each property, acreage, and the number of tenanted farmers (two hundred) which would pass to him.
His knowledge included, but was not limited to: all there was to know about the primary Hartwell country estate, Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire—34,000 acres, three hundred tenant farmers, four hundred and fifty village tenants, anywhere from thirty-seven hundred to thirty-eight hundred and a handful of people—in a given year—in total lived under him.
The acreage alone generated fifty-five thousand pounds per annum.
Hart’s knowledge was further extended in the same detail to the two additional Hartwell country seats: Scotney Castle in Lamberhurst, Kent, and Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, with a combined fifty thousand acres, one thousand tenants, and an annual income of eighty thousand pounds.
Hanover—one of London’s main squares, and Hartwell Townhouse on it, along with the connecting streets of Hanover, George, and Prince.
A partial piece of New Bond. A select piece of Old Bond. And all of Brook Street.
His lessons began at sunup and concluded at sundown. Sunday was a partial day of rest.
At eight, he could name and demand reports from the Hartwell staff.
This staff included three land stewards, eight bailiffs, and twenty-six gamekeepers, woodsmen, and farm bailiffs.
There were also two central estate auditors: Mr. Briggs and Mr. Stuart.
At nine, Hart—much to the duke’s pride—sacked Mr. Briggs.
Even a lad knew better than the financial officer of thirty-nine, who, by allowing rents to fall in arrears, made tenants lax. In equal turn, they viewed landlords as weak.
Among all the lessons delivered, often with a slap or a cane, the duke insisted on one above all: never marry a whore, as he had done.
A whore’s heart, a whore’s spirit—to Hart’s father, women were never to be trusted. Hart learned it well.
The late duke also made sure his son knew that it was as much his own fault—a noble acknowledgment from a noble man.
He allowed himself a single, and very costly, lapse.
He fell for a debutante with the beauty of Helen of Troy and the same wiles and spirit as the Whore of Babylon; a woman whose name had never been uttered around or before Hart.
With the same frequency and importance, the duke imparted details around Hart’s future landholdings, entailments, and possessions; he had made sure to share the one lapse he had made.
The duke had been determined to have the wild beauty.
The fact that she insisted he could not, that she would never belong to him, but another, some lesser, lower-titled fellow, had only made the duke want her all the more.
It had sharpened his need to a dangerous obsession.
Filled him with an unflagging need of which he, a man with everything, had never suffered: the need to possess. To bed her.
To own her.
In the end, the late duke had owned the spirited beauty—but she had the last laugh.
On their wedding night, she spitefully informed Hartwell that she carried another man’s babe in her belly.
Yes, the late duke’s weakness cost him greatly and could have proven calamitous. Instead, he’d been spared, as God favored dukes over whores. The lady lost her cherished bastard babe and was subsequently kept under lock and key until bred to success.
The moment he held his coveted heir, Hart, the duke had turned his wife loose back to her whoring ways.
Abandoning the son she had never wanted—at least not with the man she’d ultimately conceived with—she had picked up right where she left off with the gentleman she loved.
What did it matter to him what the Jezebel did?
He had Hart, his son. His heir. The next Duke of Hartwell.
The duchess would go on to have another babe—not with the late duke—but her former sweetheart.
Hart was raised in his father’s image and likeness.
They both possessed the same big build: broad shoulders, broad chest, narrow waist. From Hart’s hawkish nose and heavy jawline, he was by no stretch of the imagination classically handsome.
But he had an exalted title that dated to William the Conqueror and no need for anything more.
The late duke never squandered that lesson. Hart would do better—he would never fall to weakness.
The closest he came was the bastard brother born to the mother they shared.
The babe, Jeremy, named by their mother, had been smaller than Hart, scrawny even.
For a month after the babe’s birth, he hadn’t been taken to any wetnurse and had been ready to face the Devil who allowed his spawning, the duke said.
His hair was darker, but dark enough that no one would question his origins, and enough to make him look like Hart’s actual full-blood brother.
The duchess threatened to tell the world neither boy belonged to the duke unless she was permitted to nurse her own babe.
The duke briefly entertained Bedlam. He’d be rid of the wife who had proved nothing but trouble to him.
Her latest, too-weak-to-live bastard was sure to die.
Only children born of Hartwell’s actual blood were meant to live.
He’d be free of them and start over with a proper bride.
Obviously, such important ducal considerations had been weighed between the duke and his man-of-affairs in the presence of his true-born child.
Ultimately, it had been decided that the scandal would tarnish the illustrious Tremaine heritage.
The duchess could wean her brat. The child was weak.
His fate was as guaranteed as his previous full-blood-born bastard before him.
The babe, Jeremy, nearly perished—but he hadn’t.
To the duke’s horror, each drop the babe drank gave him strength. The child survived, and the duke raged to Hart that what should have perished grew strong instead.
Hart had been curious enough about the child hated by his father, but loved by his mother—a mother Hart was not allowed to know and who hadn’t wanted to know him.
Years later, Hart still marveled that he had been so weak as to believe in such puling sentiments.
The boys shared a single parent, and as devoted as Hartwell was to Hart, the duchess reserved her loyalty for her favored child.
One day, Hart had sneaked into the nursery to observe the oddity.
Terrified the duke would kill her beloved son, the duchess slept at the foot of the babe’s crib.
She lay stomach-down, with her arms extended before her as if, even in sleep, she warded off the devils who would steal her babe.
Hart could not help but pity the handsome woman.
He had even noted his father had been correct in calling the duchess mad.
She seemed to actually believe that if the duke decided to take the babe away once and for all, she could stop him.
Madness compelled her, indeed. Fearing Hartwell would take her beloved babe away, the duchess spent each moment of each hour of each day at the babe’s cradle until she collapsed in exhaustion and slept through the babe’s screechy bawling. Hart was certain he had never shown such weakness as a babe.
The babe’s wails nearly drove Hart mad—not because of any softness, but because the sound was maddening, scraping at bone and patience alike.
Exhausted by the howling, Hart made a grievous, lasting mistake—he picked the child up.
Hart had never held another human. Hell, he himself had never been held—at least not by the mother who so fiercely guarded her favored son, and never by the duke. Nursemaids were instructed to never show the future duke affection; such sentiments were reserved for commoners.
With his mother useless at their feet, Hart had stood stiffly, awkwardly cradling the bundle in his arms.
With every shriek, the babe’s back arched and his limbs stiffened. Like the thing was trying to flex free, fall to the floor, and slink away like some forest creature on those deformed legs.
It had been a good thing the duke had not discovered Hart at that moment because he had been squirming in a way that would have earned him ten hits from the cane.
But the thing in his arms was too tiny to be hit—not without Hart breaking it.
He had tried cursing at it as the duke did when he was most displeased with Hart or his staff. That hadn’t worked either.
But the boy, his half-brother, was an odd sort. The babe hadn’t quit its hullabaloo. It only raised a bigger racket.
In a moment of crisis, the duke would have never forgiven, Hart had even looked, for the first and only time, to the mother who had given him life for help. But she had proved as useless to him then and kept on sleeping.
As the babe’s caterwauling climbed to a crescendo that would not quit, Hart finally looked at the hated thing.
It had a face scrunched up so tight and wrinkled like an old beggar, and it was brighter than the Tremaine rubies; Hart thought the thing was born without eyes or a mouth.
Then he had thought maybe that’s why the duke hated the thing with such venom.