Chapter 6
Two Weeks Later
If there was one thing Dominic had grown quite accustomed to, it was the looks he got wherever he went.
The night with Celia Briarwood had been a balm upon his soul. He had been able to be himself with her. For a little while.
Luckily, he was a man who was not easily cowed or hurt. Oh, no, he had known enough hurt to last a lifetime, and instead of allowing those looks to conquer him, he had only become more bold and brash.
After all, what could one do?
He was not raised to be a humorless little fool, despite the fact that his father had eventually yielded into the breach of suffering.
Yes. Everywhere Dominic went in London, he knew there were whispers. People turned and looked at each other, brows were slightly raised, as they discussed his past.
He was not just the Duke of Roseford, a man who was powerful. A man who had more wealth than any of them could hope for. A man who most would dearly love to marry their daughters or their sisters to in the hopes of attaching themselves to such power and wealth.
But there was one problem—the black sheep of the family of the ducal line.
Dominic’s father. Edgar Longfield, the Earl of Kempton.
Dominic’s father had been a traitor.
A traitor to England, a traitor to a dukedom, and a traitor to the very idea of the empire.
And yet Dominic had loved his father dearly for it. How could he not? He had been raised with the ideals of the Enlightenment and all that that entailed.
He had been raised to believe in the importance of writings by those like Thomas Paine, John Locke, and Montesquieu.
His father had turned his back on the great mausoleum of the Duke of Roseford, cut ties with his own father, Dominic’s grandfather, slipped off into the mist, boarded a ship, and sailed to the United States of America. Of course, it had not been the United States of America then.
His father had fought. His father had fought for the Americans, the colonists, the rebels. The winners.
My God, what a scandal it had been! Oh, the tales Dominic had heard as a small boy at his father’s knee, for he had been born right after the victory. His mother had been so proud of his father then.
Perhaps that was why he liked the Duke of Westleigh and all the Briarwoods so much. Though, much to his dismay, he had not seen Miss Celia Briarwood in weeks.
It had not taken him long to discover the scandalous history of the Briarwoods, but he wanted to laugh.
None of them had anything like his own skeleton in their closets, except the fact that they had no closets as far as he could see.
Just like himself. His skeleton was dancing wild out in the open.
He rather admired the fact that the Briarwoods also seemed to let their skeletons dance quite freely.
And oh, how he had admired Celia, who had, regardless of her clear spinsterhood and lack of interest in the male sex in general, taken an interest in him and been kind to him.
Despite the fact that she’d tried to hide it with a rather prickly nature. A nature he heartedly approved of.
And now, as he stood in the foyer of the grand club that had paid host to centuries of important men, instead of sighing or feeling woebegone or resigned that he had left the land of liberty that he had had such hopes for and returned to his lineage’s homeland, Dominic threw back his head, straightened his shoulders, and followed the butler up the steps.
He had been summoned.
Well, could one truly summon a duke? Likely not, but all the same, it felt like a summons. And as Dominic headed up those beautiful stairs lined with a carpet that had been brought in from a country far to the east, he drew in a breath, ready for whatever the day would bring him.
It was the only way to meet a day, as if anything could happen, because anything genuinely could. He passed marble columns and cut busts of old men who had made old rules. It was tempting to smash all of them, to reach out and crash them to the floor and let the plaster spread or the marble crack.
But he kept his hands to himself, choosing to let them fall along the folds of his great coat. The butler led him into a rather boisterous room filled with gentlemen reading papers and drinking coffee, whereupon he spotted a group of men at the back corner.
How could he not? They were all tall. They were all broad. They all looked seasoned, as if they had endured years of bad weather and somehow made it through.
The Briarwoods.
Yes, they were a lot to be admired, but he wasn’t entirely certain what they could possibly want with him. As he strode those last steps and the butler bowed, he gave his own slight inclination of his head to show he understood that there was a mark of respect due to them.
The Duke of Westleigh turned, his dark hair streaked with silver and his long coat swirling about his still-strong body.
“You came,” Westleigh all but boomed grandly. “I was not sure if you would, Your Grace.”
Dominic laughed. “Well, how could I deny you, Your Grace? Two dukes! How could one not wish to have such a meeting between such families of utter scandal?”
Westleigh tsked, then sighed as if he found it tremendously sad, before he said, “Oh, we have not been very scandalous as of late.”
Dominic arched a skeptical brow. “That’s not entirely what I understand. It does seem as if you people are capable of drumming up a scandal every now and again. Are you hoping to avoid another one? Have you brought me here to tell me to stay away from Miss Celia Briarwood? Is that it?”
The Duke of Westleigh looked at the men about him, who were his extremely large brothers: Lord Ajax, Lord Hector, Lord Zephyr, and Lord Achilles.
They exchanged glances, swinging their eyes back and forth. Their lips twitched, then all of them, as one, in a rather raucous chorus, let out of a guffaw of laughter.
“You think we’ve called you here to put you off, old boy?” said a large blond-haired man, whose hair was lined with silver too. Lord Ajax, Dominic thought.
“I appear to be mistaken,” he said, raising his hands in supplication. “My apologies. Perhaps you are all forward-thinking and would be happy to let your niece—or is it daughter, Lord Hector?—marry someone like me?”
“She has no intention of marrying,” said Lord Hector plainly, but without any hint of malice or warning.
Then he folded his arms over his broad chest. “So if you do desire her hand, it will not be easily won. And if that is the road you take, my boy, it will be a difficult one, but we shall all salute you in the attempt. She knows her mind. Not one of us would be able to turn it any way.”
The Duke of Westleigh nodded. “Indeed, Celia and her sister, Emilia, have long since declared their intention to remain spinsters. So if she takes a look at you and decides to abandon that path, who are we to gainsay her? And we must, in fact, applaud you for whatever qualities you have that would make her consider abandoning that which she has claimed to always want.”
“You don’t mind?” Dominic asked, confused.
“Mind what?” Lord Hector, Celia’s father, asked as he tilted his head to the side.
Lord Zephyr’s brow furrowed, but then he nodded, understanding. “You marrying into our family? Not a bit of it.”
“If you can get in, that is,” added Lord Achilles merrily, examining his knuckles as if they knew exactly how to break skin. But it was a mischievous look rather than a malevolent one.
Dominic cleared his throat. He was a big man, and knew his way about a fight, but these men all together were quite a sight to behold. “I just wanted to clarify, because many people don’t seem to like me very much, even though they smile and nod and bow.”
“The ton will smile and nod and bow to a duke,” the Duke of Westleigh proclaimed, “but they don’t really like us either. They envy us, old boy, or wish they were us, and no doubt they’ll feel the same about you.”
Dominic gave a tight smile. “That is a lofty aspiration. I don’t mind putting my eyes on it, actually, but that’s not why I’m here in London.”
“Ah, so you are not here to find a bride?” Westleigh drawled, his eyes dancing with a surprising fire. “Coffee for the boy.”
“Boy?” Dominic echoed. He was now over thirty.
“Forgive me, young man,” Westleigh said, putting an atoning hand over his heart. “I am not so very old myself, but I do feel it these days.”
“As do we all,” Ajax added. “The current events of our world really are quite a lot.”
Dominic nodded. “I won’t argue with you there. I have just witnessed financial collapse in Savannah, Georgia.”
“Financial collapse is also occurring here, as I’m sure you’ve seen,” warned Lord Achilles.
He had noticed. He’d heard about the riots in London and the poverty that was growing ever worse.
“You were living in Georgia?” blurted the Duke of Westleigh, astonished.
He was used to surprise when he said this, and he needed to explain.
“Live there? No. I was visiting. It is a beautiful city full of beautiful squares and painful things. It has a remarkable history. It was where my father died.”
“Oh?” Lord Ajax asked, clearly also surprised.
“I’m so very sorry,” the Duke of Westleigh said. “That must have been very painful for you.”
“It was,” he said, willing himself not to think back to his papa, whose heart had been broken at the end.
A knight with no Camelot to fight for. “Exceptionally so, but perhaps it was good, because my father had reached the end of his suffering. He wanted to be surrounded by memory, memory of his friends who had fought with him so hard in that great battle in that city.”
The Duke of Westleigh cleared his throat. “The Siege of Savannah?”
He was surprised the duke was aware of the revolution’s history, but also pleased. He nodded.
“Many good men died there,” the duke said simply. “On both sides.”
“They did,” Dominic agreed. “I am surprised you are so sympathetic to the cause my father chose.”
The Duke of Westleigh narrowed his eyes.
“If you think we cannot sympathize for the death of any good man, no matter what side they’re on, you are mistaken.
And though my family is English, we were definitely on the side of letting the colonies go.
It was an unneeded war and a great deal of unneeded expense. And death.”
“But your father won his great desire. Why was he so sorrowful?” asked Lord Zephyr.
Dominic’s throat tightened, for it was a complicated subject that was most difficult to discuss. “He, like many great rebels, are always sad to find that the ideal they fought for does not come to be fully realized,” he said.
“Ah,” the Duke of Westleigh said wisely. “Dreamers often have to wake, and it is no easy thing.”
“Exactly so,” Dominic replied. He did not wish to speak of how heartbroken his father had been to realize the limitations of freedom in the land he had supported.
“And are you a dreamer?” asked Ajax as he played maid and poured out a rather dark looking cup of coffee into a blue painted cup decorated with pagodas. Ajax thrust the cup at Dominic.
He took it, grateful to have something to distract him. He particularly liked coffee. He far preferred it to tea, though tea was a beautiful beverage. He drank the dark liquid. “I am here because I am not at all a dreamer. I am most certainly awake.”
“Oh dear,” Westleigh said, disappointed. “Entirely? A little dream here and there is rather important.”
Achilles nodded his agreement, causing the light to dance on the stickpin in his immaculately tied cravat. “One must have a few dreams. Otherwise, one might become quite cynical.”
“Unfortunately, it is too late,” Dominic said with a nonchalant shrug. “I am most cynical, and yet I still wish to change things.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place,” said the Duke of Westleigh, clapping his big hands together, his signet ring shining. “Though I confess, the more we attempt to change things, it does sometimes seem like the worse things get.”
“I can’t have that,” Dominic all but growled. “There definitely are a few things that need to be changed, and I felt like the only way I could truly have an effect was to come here and take up the title I have inherited.”
“And what exactly is it that you wish to change?”
“The abolition of slavery across all British holdings,” he said. “The Slave Act of 1807 is simply not enough.”
The lot of them looked at him, their jaws dropping. “Indeed. One would have thought since you were in Georgia, that you…”
“Georgia is a difficult place, and I am wary of speaking on it too closely because it has never been my home,” he said.
“Did you know that it started out as a colony that did not allow slaves at all? Or Catholics, actually,” he added grimly.
“It wasn’t perfect, but they had good ideals, and they actually had quite an alliance with the first people there, but it all went to rack and ruin.
Just like my father’s dreams of a country that was based upon those immortal words written by Thomas Jefferson, the idea that all men are created equal.
It seems that many of the men who fought for those ideals did not actually believe in them.
Men are not allowed to be equal because power reigns, and so if I have power, I must use it to help all men. ”
“Hear! Hear!” declared Lord Achilles. “I am much of the same mind.”
“We all are,” the Duke of Westleigh said firmly. “We shall introduce you to Robbert Wedderburn as quickly as possible. He was born in Jamaica. His mother was a slave, and he is a very prominent voice in abolition.”
Dominic nodded. “Thank you. I am eager to aid him with the privilege I have been given.”
Westleigh beamed and clapped him on the shoulder. “It is good to know you have come back not to revel in power, but to use it like a tool.”
“That’s all power is,” he said without hesitation. “A tool, and anyone who thinks differently is quite mistaken. Now, if that’s all I’ve come here for, I suppose I can go then.”
“Oh, no,” the Duke of Westleigh said. “Not at all, old boy. You’ve told me what I wanted to hear. It will not be easy. No good thing is. But there are many people in this country who will want to help you. Together, we can use our power for good.”