Chapter Two
“You are brooding again.”
Sebastian Harcourt, seventh Duke of Ashworth, did not look up from the letter he was pretending to read. “I am reviewing estate correspondence. That is an entirely different activity.”
“Is it?” His brother, Evan, settled into the chair opposite with the effortless grace of a man who had never in his life troubled himself over anything more serious than the cut of his waistcoat. “You have that expression—the one that suggests the weight of the dukedom is crushing your very soul.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“I am never dramatic. I am merely observant.” Evan helped himself to the tea laid out on Sebastian’s desk, undeterred by the fact that it had not been offered.
“Mother is here, by the way. She has brought Miss Crane—and a list of eligible young ladies that, I suspect, rivals the Domesday Book in both length and scope.”
Sebastian set down the letter—an earnest discussion of drainage in the eastern fields, and therefore far more appealing than matrimony—and regarded his brother with the flat stare of a man contemplating fratricide.
“She promised she would not do this again.”
“She promised she would not do this until after Michaelmas. Michaelmas was last week. She has, technically, kept her word.”
“‘Technical’ is a charitable way to describe an ambush.”
“Is it ambush if you saw it coming?” Evan grinned, entirely unrepentant. “Come now, Sebastian. You are thirty years old. You must marry eventually. Why not approach the matter with an open mind? Some of the candidates may prove surprisingly tolerable.”
“I have examined the candidates—repeatedly. At every ball, dinner, and house party I have attended these past seven years. They are not tolerable; they are tedious. Interchangeable young women saying interchangeable things—laughing at remarks that are not remotely amusing—pretending fascination with subjects they do not in the least care about.”
“Possibly because you insist on discussing drainage improvements.”
“Drainage improvements are important.”
“They are not romantic.”
“I am not attempting to be romantic. I am attempting to manage an estate that employs three hundred people and encompasses fifteen thousand acres. The romance of drainage—”
“—is precisely the sort of sentiment that explains why you remain unmarried.” Evan rose—still grinning—and moved toward the door.
“Mother is in the blue drawing room. I suggest you prepare yourself. She has that gleam in her eye—the one that historically precedes announcements of social engagements you did not know you had agreed to attend.”
Sebastian watched his brother depart with the resigned air of a condemned man observing the construction of the gallows. Evan was right, of course. Their mother was nothing if not persistent—and her persistence regarding Sebastian’s matrimonial future had only sharpened with each passing year.
He understood her concern. He was the duke—the title, the estates, the long weight of Harcourt history rested upon his shoulders. His duty was clear: marry, produce an heir, secure the succession. It was what dukes did. What dukes had always done.
And yet—
Sebastian rose from his desk and crossed to the window, looking out over the immaculate grounds of Ashworth Hall.
His father had stood at this very window, he thought—had gazed upon these same rolling hills, these same carefully tended lawns—this same view that was beautiful, valuable, and entirely, irrevocably his.
The old duke had been a hard man. Cold. Exacting.
Incapable of expressing approval even when it was deserved.
Sebastian had spent his childhood striving to earn his father’s regard, and his adolescence learning that he never would.
The old duke had wanted an heir, not a son—a vessel for the title, not a person with thoughts and feelings and the audacity to be anything other than what his birth required.
Sebastian had been three-and-twenty when his father died.
He had assumed the responsibilities of the dukedom at once because that was what was expected.
He had managed the estates, attended Parliament, fulfilled the endless obligations that accompanied his position. He had done everything correctly.
And in doing so, he had discovered that everyone wanted something from him.
Everyone. The mothers who thrust their daughters toward him at balls.
The gentlemen who sought his political influence.
The servants who depended on his generosity.
The tenants who looked to him for protection.
The entire machinery of society that saw not Sebastian Harcourt, but the Duke of Ashworth—a title laden with expectations he could never quite satisfy and obligations he could never entirely discharge.
He was tired.
Not physically—he was young, healthy, perfectly capable of dancing until dawn if circumstance required. But tired in some deeper sense. Tired of performance. Tired of falseness. Tired of conversations in which nothing true was said and nothing honest was allowed.
His mother wished him to marry. Very well. He would meet the candidates she selected. He would attend the engagements she arranged. He would do his duty—as he always had.
But he could not wholly suppress a hope—small, foolish, almost certainly futile—that somewhere among all the interchangeable young ladies with their interchangeable smiles, there might be one who saw him.
Not the title. Not the wealth. Not the influence, nor the connections, nor the thousands of acres of prime English countryside.
Just him.
It was, he knew, an unreasonable hope. Dukes did not marry for love; they married for advantage. And even if love were possible—how would he recognise it? How could he trust it? Every woman who had ever shown interest in him had been interested in what he represented, not who he was.
Over the years, he had learned to sense the falseness—the too-eager laughter, the too-bright smiles, the conversations that revolved endlessly around his preferences while revealing nothing of the speaker’s own.
He had grown adept at armouring himself against it, maintaining a polite distance that discouraged intimacy.
It was lonely, being a duke.
Not that he would ever admit as much. Not to Evan, who would make a jest of it. Certainly not to his mother, who would only redouble her matchmaking efforts. Loneliness was weakness; weakness was not permitted. He was the Duke of Ashworth. He had responsibilities.
He turned from the window and straightened his waistcoat.
Time to face his mother.
***
The Dowager Duchess of Ashworth was not a woman who believed in subtlety.
“Darling,” she said, as Sebastian entered the blue drawing room, “you look tired. Have you been sleeping poorly? You must take better care of yourself. A duke cannot afford to be anything less than vigorous.”
“Mother.” Sebastian bent to kiss her cheek, noting with resignation the stack of papers on the table beside her—the infamous list of eligible young ladies, and, if Evan’s assessment was accurate, of formidable length. “How delightful to see you. And Miss Crane.”
Helena Crane rose from her seat by the window and offered a curtsey that was perfectly correct without being in the least obsequious.
A handsome woman in her mid-twenties, she had served as his mother’s companion these past two years, and Sebastian had always appreciated her quiet competence—and her complete lack of matrimonial interest in him.
“Your Grace.”
“Please, be seated. I understand my mother has come bearing news.”
“Not news, precisely.” The Dowager settled more comfortably in her chair, like a predator preparing to savour a particularly gratifying meal. “More in the nature of… opportunity.”
“Mother.”
“Do not take that tone with me, Sebastian. I am merely fulfilling my obligations as your parent and as a member of this family. The succession must be secured. You have had seven years in which to find a bride of your own choosing, and you have conspicuously failed to do so. I am simply offering assistance.”
“I have not failed. I have declined.”
“You have declined everyone. That is its own form of failure.”
Sebastian lowered himself into a chair and prepared for battle. “I have declined to marry women who regarded me as a means to an end rather than as a person. Surely that is not unreasonable.”
“It becomes unreasonable when the alternative is no marriage at all. You are a duke, Sebastian. Women will always see you, in some measure, as a means to an end. That is the nature of your position. The question is whether you can find one whose ends align sufficiently with your own to form a tolerable partnership.”
It was—infuriatingly—a rational argument. His mother was always rational, which made disputing her infinitely more difficult than if she had merely been unreasonable.
“And you believe this list”—he gestured toward the papers—“contains candidates whose ends may align with mine?”
“I believe it contains candidates worth examining. Lady Marchmont is hosting a house party in Kent in the coming weeks. I have accepted on your behalf—do not look at me like that; you were going to refuse, and I could not permit it—and several excellent young ladies will be in attendance.”
“Which young ladies?”
The Dowager smiled the satisfied smile of a woman who had anticipated the question. “Miss Georgiana Ashwood is said to be quite accomplished. Her family is respectable—connected to the Thornfield baronetcy, if I am not mistaken—and she is considered one of the beauties of her season.”
“Georgiana Ashwood.” The name meant nothing to Sebastian. “What do we know of her beyond rumour?”
“She plays the pianoforte admirably and speaks French with a creditable accent. Her mother is… ambitious, though that is hardly uncommon. Her father is inoffensive. There is a younger sister, not yet out, and some sort of poor relation residing with them—a cousin, I believe—but nothing scandalous.”
“A poor relation?”