Chapter 10
Dominic was not making strides.
As a matter of fact, there was not a stride to be seen. If anything, he was moving at a snail’s pace. If he was to be brutally honest, a snail would outpace him, if he was to compete with said animal.
He didn’t know what was going so entirely amiss. He was a duke. Surely he should be able to have sway over the people he intended.
He had met with his estate agent. Johnston had assured him that he should be able to get the lords with estates adjacent to his to get onside with his political aspirations and that he should be able to ensure several seats in Parliament also voted with him.
But beyond that, Dominic did not seem to be able to get people to listen to him. Oh, they’d discuss the weather, horses, the colonies, as so many still liked to call them, and every other topic that might lead one to tea, lemonade, or a proposal of marriage.
And that was incredibly frustrating. What was the point of abandoning the life he had always known, which was, in many ways, much better than the one he was currently experiencing, if he could not even get a toehold in?
Then there was the fact that he could not get Celia from his mind. Every waking hour, thoughts of her invaded his thoughts. Delightful, delicious, important thoughts.
God, he wanted her.
And if she were his duchess, he had a feeling everything would fall into place.
No, she was no grand society lady, but she understood things in a way that he did not.
She had a tenacity that he genuinely approved of, and he had a sneaking suspicion that if he married the saucy young woman, as opposed to any other lady in the ton, that he’d actually be happy.
Happiness was no small thing in his personal opinion.
One needed happiness to somehow overcome all the misery that was the general state of life.
And happiness, though he showed it to the world, had always been just out of reach for him.
Some might argue that the death of his father and the death of his mother made happiness impossible for him, but he refused to believe that.
Having a good wife, well, that would counteract a great deal of the difficulty that he knew and was experiencing, but she did not wish to wed.
She’d made that imminently clear.
He wondered if she could be persuaded.
As he stood in his room in the East End and gazed out the window, looking down at the tumult on the wild street below, he wondered what the bloody hell he should do about all this.
Probably, he should go live in his grandfather’s house, but he could not. The memories of that officious man and how he had gotten most of his wealth made Dominic ill. The old man had been an ominous shadow in his life for a short time… A time that had resulted in the death of his mother.
He sometimes wondered if things would have been very different if his mother had not brought him back to England to meet his grandfather when his father had been in one of his bouts of despair.
He could still remember how his father had vanished into the darkness of his disappointment, and his mother had been impoverished and desperate and had tried to get the help of Dominic’s grandfather. His grandfather had proved cruel, controlling, and still abhorrent.
And the weather had destroyed his mother’s health. Consumption had taken her. And Dominic? Dominic had run away from his grandfather’s house, boarded the first ship back to America, and never looked back.
He’d returned to his father. But he’d never really felt himself on solid ground again after that. So, he had developed a laugh and a grin, and the ability to push feelings away.
His grandfather had written him over and over again, tempting him with untold riches if he but returned and learned how to be the next duke.
Dominic had refused.
He hated using that wealth now. But he had justified it to himself that as long as he used that wealth to free people, then it was wealth being used for a good cause.
But the truth was his grandfather’s house on the river had been built with the ill-gotten gains of sugar plantations and the products grown and made by slaves in the Caribbean.
And Dominic knew how that money was gained, and he had no desire to touch it.
The only way he could justify using any of it was to bring down the systems that had built it.
So he had to be content to live in his one room in the East End.
He and his father had never been wealthy in the United States of America.
His father had been a soldier. He too had, in many ways, followed in his father’s footsteps, trying to fight for what was right, giving lectures, arguing, making speeches, fighting for abolition.
But now he was in a very different position. He was a man of power… But apparently, he didn’t know how to use it because he had never learned.
A thunderous knock rattled his door. He turned towards it. Who the bloody hell was that? He had paid his rent.
Maybe Johnston had come with a new list of things that he had to do or invitations he needed to accept.
He headed to the door, pulled it open, and his jaw dropped nearly to the floor. There in the frame stood Miss Celia Briarwood and Miss Emilia Briarwood. They looked very alike, but he immediately knew which one was his.
There was something about the arch of her brow, the turn of her lips, and the sauciness of her stare. She was slightly taller than her sister, Emilia. Both of them were redheaded, both of them fair, and both of them looked as if they could give a man what for or a talking to if they chose.
“And to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” he asked, bemused. He looked back at his empty food cupboard. “I have nothing to give you, alas, though I could send round to the bakery next door and have some buns sent up.”
Celia and Emilia burst into the room as one, heading in, circling.
Emilia let out a gasp. “You were not jesting, sister. He has no possessions.”
“See, I told you,” Celia exclaimed.
“Are you judging me for having no possessions, Miss Emilia?” he drawled, letting his hand fall from the door.
“Not a bit of it,” Miss Emilia returned. “I’m quite impressed. You are not bogged down. I know so many gentlemen who spend their entire lives collecting snuff boxes as if another snuff box will fill the hole in their heart. My hat is off to you, Your Grace.”
He gazed at her rather jaunty but plain straw bonnet.
“Thank you,” he said. “Still, I am confused as to why the two of you are here. I am, of course, eager to have a discussion with the two of you, as you are both excellent conversationalists, I believe. Do you wish me to come with you to your Shakespeare school? If that is the case, I shall—”
“Of course we wish it.” Celia said, the ribbons on her bonnet dancing with the vigor of her enthusiasm. “But not right now. We have something else planned.”
He blinked. “Oh?”
“Yes,” said Emilia.
“For your own good.” Celia added.
“My own good,” he echoed. That had an ominous tone to it. Who liked doing anything for their own good? Being on the receiving end of that was usually unpleasant.
Children who had to have medicine, those who got punishment when they wouldn’t eat their supper, cures in the country, and so on.
“You’re coming with us,” Celia declared, as if she would brook no argument.
He looked from sister to sister. “I am content to do so if you but tell me the destination.”
Celia drew herself up. Emilia too. They were a united front.
“You are coming to Heron House,” Celia said firmly.
“I should dearly love to see it,” he returned, wondering what all the fuss was about. An invitation was an easy thing. “I hear it is a haven for art.”
Celia cleared her throat. “You are coming to stay.”
Again, he swung his gaze from sister to sister. “I was under the impression that you had originally planned to avoid me. Did our last interlude change your mind so thoroughly?”
Emilia coughed and looked to the windows.
Celia’s cheeks burned with color, but she did not retreat. “You are correct, I did. But I do not think that is a good idea now.”
“You don’t?” he queried.
Emilia shook her head. “I agree. We all understand what you hope to accomplish,” she said before she glanced about, assessing.
“And staying here is disastrous for that plan. But we also understand you don’t wish to live in your ducal home.
And I applaud your sentiments. But without a place to entertain? It is a disaster!”
Celia nodded ruefully before she added quite forcefully, “She’s correct. I’m correct. We’re both correct, Your Grace.”
“All right,” he said. “There is a great deal of correctness occurring from the both of you. But what makes you think I shall come and stay at Heron House?”
Celia drew herself up. “Do you actually want what you say you want?”
He blew out her breath. “Of course I do.”
She shrugged then, as if his decision was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Then you will come and stay with my uncle, the duke, and live at Heron House until we can find you a better establishment, and you can do the sort of entertaining that you need to do to win people over to your side. At Heron House, you can be a part of the entertainments and have a place people can call upon you.”
“That’s not necessary,” he said, folding his hands behind his back.
“Yes, it is,” Celia countered rather ruthlessly. “You think you don’t need saving, but you do. From yourself. You’re going to make a muck all of this, and then you’re going to be just as dejected and miserable as your father.”
He gaped at her. Good God, she was forceful. “That is a very low blow,” he said.
She raised her chin. “Sometimes low blows are necessary,” Celia said.
Emilia nodded. “It’s true. Sometimes people need a very strong reckoning with reality.”
As seemed necessary with the two of them, he swung his gaze from sister to sister once again. “And this is my strong reckoning with reality, your presence here telling me what to do?”