A Bride for the Heartless Duke (Marriage by Midnight #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Forty minutes.

A woman could learn a great deal about herself in forty minutes at the altar.

The silence of the church wrapped itself suffocatingly around Isadora Fairbourne as she stood alone before the rector, her family gathered behind her. Over the past forty minutes, the church had begun to feel less like a house of God and more like a gallows.

Nathaniel should have been here by now. She had never thought much of his punctuality, but surely when a man agreed to marry a woman, he might trouble himself to attend the wedding.

The late May sun poured through the windows and sent dust motes spinning.

Behind her, her aunt fidgeted on the pew, satin rustling.

New satin. Flowered, flounced, trimmed in enough lace to appease the Regent himself—commissioned for the occasion of Isadora’s wedding, while Isadora herself stood at the altar in a gown a decade out of fashion.

She smoothed a trembling hand down the slim skirt of her yellow dress. The empire waist was tight just below her bust, embarrassingly high; the color both washed out her skin and made her red hair look an even more abominable shade.

Had she been allowed her mother’s wedding gown, she might at least have been humiliated in something beloved.

Embarrassment prickled her eyes. Her uncle’s pocket watch ticked obnoxiously loudly as he drew it out again to check the time.

Perhaps his horse had thrown a shoe. Perhaps her betrothed lay in a ditch on the Tadcaster road—and she was a wicked creature for beginning to hope so, but at least it was an excuse.

After another round of whispers and a nod, her aunt and uncle rose as one and linked arms. “You may remain a little longer,” her uncle said to Isadora, “but we have other matters to attend to this afternoon.” He waved his cane vaguely in the direction of the rector.

“You may marry them with a witness if the boy shows, of course.”

“Yes, sir,” the old rector obliged.

Isadora could have sunk through the floor.

The church door slammed behind them, shutting her inside. Everyone had left, save for the rector and a small freckle-faced boy assisting him.

The rector blinked at her from behind his lenses. “My dear, we have a service scheduled in twenty minutes, do you suppose he—”

“He’s… he’s not coming, is he.” The words were numb in her mouth.

Mr. Nathaniel Windham had left her standing at the altar.

She would not be married. After all this hope that she might finally have a life that could be hers, away from society’s gossip, away from callous relatives who saw her only as a burden, it had come to nothing.

No doubt something better had come along for him.

When it came to Isadora, something better always came along.

“Perhaps a drink to refresh you?” The kind rector motioned to the boy, who disappeared into the rectory and returned, bringing some wine in a goblet—the one they usually used for communion.

“Not to worry,” he said with a gentle wink, handing it to her.

“I expect God will turn a blind eye, just this once.”

Isadora sipped, the wine sour on her tongue. In a few minutes, she would have to leave the church and venture back home, and by suppertime, every drawing room in York would have her name on its lips. Jilted. Four-and-twenty and jilted at the altar.

How could she ever show her face again?

Worse, her aunt and uncle may well cast her off entirely. At her age, with no husband or prospects, she was less a niece and more a household affliction according to them.

“I—” Isadora lowered the goblet, now empty of its wine. Her humiliation had left her dizzy, the ache in her chest so large she felt as though it might swallow her whole, but new determination left its mark, too.

She would not allow her cousins to cast her into a corner again.

“I think…” she murmured as the rector carefully carried his Bible back to the glass case on the wall where it belonged, “I think I will go to London.”

He twisted and peered at her over his spectacles. “Is that so?” The rector was an ancient man, perhaps in his seventies, a little stooped with age, but with kindly eyes.

“Y-yes. My sister is in London,” she said weakly.

“And how do you propose to get there?”

“I—” Frankly, she hadn’t thought that far. She ducked her head to the garish yellow silk that looked so terrible with her coloring.

It had been beautiful once, for some other woman, in some other decade. Her aunt had crowed over its provenance for a fortnight—a housekeeper’s sale that was a tremendous bargain, a gown that had supposedly once belonged to the late Duchess of Winchester herself—

The late Duchess of Winchester…

Whose husband’s estate sat twelve miles from York.

The idea was absurd.

Isadora turned it over, waiting for it to collapse, yet instead it grew sturdier by the second.

She could return the gown. She would explain—reasonably—that the garment was faulty, which heaven knew it was, since it fit her like a sack and had brought her nothing but grief besides.

She could request a refund. Not a fortune.

Coach fare. Enough to reach London, and her sister, and a life in which nobody knew her as the overlooked spinster living with her relatives.

“Thank you for the wine,” she said to the rector, handing him back the goblet. “I… think I have a plan.”

“God bless you,” the rector said, peering at her doubtfully. “Do you need anyone to—”

But Isadora was already making for the double doors and the street beyond. The Duke’s estate was barely a dozen miles from York; she could pawn her pearl earrings for the stagecoach fare. She would knock upon his front door if she had to.

Whatever happened after, there was only one thing of which she was certain—she was not going home.

Outskirts of York

Nicholas Skeffington drew the mask down over his face, wound the last strip of cotton around his knuckles, and felt himself begin, at last, to breathe.

The cellar beneath the tavern, the Shambles, reeked of damp stone, cheap gin, and men eager to see blood. Fading lanterns smoked along the thick stone walls. There were no windows, no daylight, no polished mirrors; nothing to remind a man of whom he was obliged to be above ground.

Flexing his hands once, he stepped into the ring.

Jeers and roars bellowed from behind. In crowds like this, no one asked questions.

All anyone knew of him here was the alias he gave: Will—a scrap from his late father, William Skeffington—and all they cared for was whether he would fall first, or the fellow standing opposite him would.

Right on cue, his hulking opponent spat into the sawdust and muttered, “Heard youse used ta’ run with Markie Blackhand’s lot up York.”

Nicholas said nothing.

“Markie made me a bastard. You’ll be payin’ in his stead, laddie.”

That, at least, was new. Nicholas knew no Markie Blackhand, had run with no gang, and had no wish to inherit some dead brute’s sins. But men came to rooms like this to put their grief somewhere—and who was he to deny another man’s vengeance?

“Then make him proud,” he shot back.

Many in high society considered pugilism a disreputable sport. Gentlemen boxed at Jackson’s saloon, in good light, with rules and handkerchiefs and someone standing by to cry halt. But few actually understood the meaning of the art. Of destroying themselves in the pursuit of cleansing their soul.

Nicholas knew better.

The bell tolled.

He slipped sideways and struck—a clean blow to the head, a second beneath the ribs, quick and sure as a viper. His feet danced in circles, breaking the other man’s rhythm before it could form.

Another poking jab, and the other man’s restraint snapped before his. “You bastard—”

His eyes turned wild, the feral edge that lingered inside him—inside every hot-blooded man—taking over.

He launched himself at Nicholas with the roar of a raging bull, and Nicholas stepped smartly aside, absorbing a snagging punch to his shoulder, and using the momentum to thrust a brazen hook to an unguarded temple.

Over in a blink.

“Pater…” The word slurred out of the man as his eyes rolled white, and he folded into the sawdust. A chorus of groans and jeers followed.

Nicholas stood over him, chest heaving, arms alight with a burn that loosened the knot he carried beneath his sternum. Grief made a poor lodger. It never paid rent and it never left. This was the only thing he had found that quieted it.

“An excellent fight!”

Nicholas turned, unwinding the cotton from his wrists.

The speaker—seemingly the only man who’d wagered on him today—was tall and sandy-haired, dressed well enough for Almack’s.

In a den of varlets and boors he stood out like a peacock in a coal yard, and from his easy smile, he cared nothing for the glares already pricing his coat buttons.

“You again,” Nicholas murmured absently.

“Now, now—that is no way to speak with your biggest supporter. You have once again made me a pretty penny, good sir,” he beamed.

“Don’t think the lads at the betting benches will be best pleased.”

“Ah, no. I gather they were rather sold by that tale of woe he’d been singing up and down the tavern about his dead father.” The man chuckled. “Will, is it?”

“That’s what they call me.”

“Hm. So, not your real name, I take?”

Nicholas shrugged, turning back to the proprietor of the grimy tavern to collect his winnings. He had no need of the money and always tossed it to the street urchins on his way back home, but refusing payment invited more questions than it was worth.

“Where did you learn?” the fop pressed, propping a shoulder against the wall. “I have rarely seen such masterful technique.”

“You a pugilist?” Nicholas retrieved the shabby coat he had bought off a beggar that afternoon.

“Lord, no!” he laughed, as though this were the most ridiculous thing in the world. “But I have studied a bit with the great Jackson himself.”

Nicholas grunted. Perhaps this dandy had—from what he’d seen of him, his clothes were fine enough, and he certainly had the money—though Jackson rarely offered personal lessons to nobles these days.

“Oliver Chant,” the man offered without cause, extending a hand. “About time we be introduced!”

Nicholas shook it and offered nothing in return. Men who introduced themselves in places like this generally sought something—a partnership, an arrangement, a fighter who would win or lose to order. Nicholas’s code of honor was slim, but that particular clause was carved in stone.

Still, Chant merely smiled. “I hope to see you here again, Will,” he said. “It’s a pleasure watching you work. You never fail.” He jangled his purse with a wink. “And I do appreciate a man who delivers consist—”

“Oliver, was it?” Nicholas paused at the foot of the stairs and snatched down the arm holding the purse.

“Since you walked in, at least six pairs of eyes have priced everything on you down to your stockings. Now, unless you’d like to be carried home in a sack, I’d spend less breath on the finer points of boxing and more on the quickest route to your carriage. ”

Chant’s easy grin snuffed out like a pinched candle. He glanced about the cellar.

Nicholas climbed the stairs and let himself out on a side street into the York evening.

In the corner, a boy of perhaps ten begged with grimy palms upturned.

He dropped a handful of shillings into them and watched the child bolt down an alley, quick as a rat, before anyone bigger could relieve him of it.

He had doled out the rest of his winnings by the time he reached the Blue Boar, a rather more salubrious establishment that knew him by his true name.

Once he received the clothes his groom had stowed for him in the stables and had carefully tucked his mask under the seat of his carriage, he rode home as the Duke of Winchester.

That burdensome title settled over him like a coat cut for a different man.

The house was dark when the carriage finally rolled up the drive. Past eleven, and every window blind save one, high in the east wing, where a tiny light burned well past the hour it should have been snuffed.

Gregson met him in the dark foyer with a guttering candle as he took Nicholas’ coat and hat.

“Where is Mrs. Bell?” he asked the butler.

“Gone to her sister’s, Your Grace,” Gregson replied. “She… sent word she would not be returning.”

Nicholas groaned inwardly. Another nursemaid. Another resignation. “Is she asleep at least?”

He didn’t wait for an answer as he moved through the hall, past the drawing room with its cold grate and the dining room laid for a supper he had no appetite to eat.

A thin line of candlelight showed beneath the door of the little writing room beside the nursery that had once belonged to Grace.

Same territory, same taste for late hours.

He eased open the door without sound.

Sophia sat at the small desk in her nightgown, one stockinged foot tucked beneath her, her hair falling in dark loops over her shoulder.

Her tongue was caught between her teeth—much like his own would be—as she dragged a pen across the paper by the light of a dying candle stub. She hadn’t heard him.

He crossed the carpet quietly. He ought to scold her, but she had already turned eight, and he never once did.

At the top of her page, in large uneven letters, was written:

QUALITIES REQUIRED.

Beneath it came a solemn list.

Must not mind questions. Must know how to plait hair properly. Must let me stay up at night. Must remember the song about the blackbird. Must like Papa even when he comes home late.

“That is a demanding post,” he said softly.

She startled, blotting the page with ink. “Papa!” Those tiny alabaster arms flung around him, almost knocking the breath from his lungs.

Chuckling, he murmured, “I pity the next applicant already.”

“It is not for a nursemaid,” she said, her cheeks turning pink.

“No?”

She looked down at the list, suddenly younger than eight. “Nursemaids always leave—”

“Because you drive them away,” he reminded with a curled brow.

After a moment, she added, almost politely, “Well, I thought perhaps a mother would have to stay.”

Not this again…