Chapter 8
“Do you know where her mother lives?”
The Duke of Rivers stared at the Duke of Windbourne and felt both a moment of elation and a moment of trepidation.
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Rivers said, shuffling the papers on his desk together until they were squared perfectly.
“Because she won’t give it to me,” Windbourne explained patiently. “She’s proud and doesn’t want help and I admire her for it, but her mother won’t be helped if her pride stands in the way.”
Rivers arched a brow.
This was the sort of scenario that he, Fennyman, Lord Philip, and Harlowe, of course, had hoped for.
The Marriage Managing Society was having its effect! He should be thrilled. He was thrilled.
The four of them had been working for this match for over a month.
They had deduced the proper partner. They had come up with the plan, and all was going well.
It had taken them some work, but now their plans truly were in order, except the Duke of Windbourne was now going off course.
He wasn’t supposed to be going behind her back to help Miss Stillbrooke.
“Why not be transparent, old boy? You really should ask her where her mother lives.”
“She’ll think I want to make her my mistress, that I’m trying to make her beholden to me.”
“Are you?” Rivers asked, his mouth drying. He willed the duke to say no.
Windbourne drove a hand through his hair. “Ha. There are far easier ways to get a mistress. Now, I don’t want to have to hire a private investigator or a Bow Street runner, but I will. She doesn’t want my help. Or anyone’s. But she needs it.”
“Do you want favors from her?” Rivers asked, feeling the need to ask again. He had to be certain because if he had made a mistake, he and the Marriage Managing Society were going to have to pivot fast.
“No,” Windbourne insisted, grinding his teeth. “I’m not that kind of a rogue. Look, I have a host of ladies who’d like to take up the position. I don’t need her favors.”
Rivers rolled his eyes. “No arrogance there, is there?”
“You know I speak the truth.” Windbourne huffed out a breath. “The same is true for you too. It doesn’t matter if a duke is handsome or if he’s pleasant or if he’s rude. Ladies want him for the power that he can bestow. But she’s different and I can’t escape how much I…”
The Duke of Rivers nearly shot up from his chair and applauded. The man was falling in love! Instead, he said measuredly, “It’s true.”
“You know as well as I do that if I went out and proposed to ten ladies tomorrow, ten ladies would say yes,” he drawled.
Rivers groaned. “The legalities of a mess like that don’t bear thinking about it. Dare I mention breach of promise?”
“I’m not going to propose to ten ladies, Rivers.”
“Glad to hear it, old boy,” Rivers said. “So, she does not wish to be beholden to you? That is a good thing. Don’t you think?”
Windbourne stalked to the window. “Of course it’s a good thing, but it’s not going to help her mother any, and her mother needs help.”
Rivers finally nodded. “All right. I will give you her mother’s address so that you might send a doctor out to her and help immediately, since our dear young lady will not accept charity.”
“Why do some people have so much trouble accepting help?” Windbourne asked, glaring out the window as if wished he could throttle everyone.
Rivers fought a smile. Windbourne reminded him of himself. They both wanted the world to simply understand that if people made better choices, they’d have better results.
Rivers crossed from behind his desk, headed towards the window, and clapped his fellow duke on the back. “Why does the moon go around the Earth? Why does the Earth go around the sun? Do we need to know why? Sometimes people are just stubborn. And it would seem that she is stubborn.”
Rivers frowned. As a matter of fact, Miss Stillbrooke was perhaps more stubborn than he had suspected. He had rather hoped that the lady would see quite quickly how a relationship with the Duke of Windbourne would work to her advantage, but it seemed the lady was holding firm.
A good thing, a good thing! But now he had to wonder how the devil this was all going to unfold.
He headed back to his desk and wrote the address down quickly before holding it out to the duke. “Send for the doctor then. Do what you can for the mother, but don’t push too hard with the young lady, will you? Unless, of course, you’re planning to marry her.”
He waited for a laugh, for any sort of indication that Windbourne thought that idea was impossible.
But Windbourne didn’t.
And he suddenly found himself very pleased. In fact, he wished he could dance about the room. “Do I hear church bells ringing, old boy?”
“You could hear them clanging,” Windbourne drawled. “But I think even if I asked her to marry me, she’d tell me to tip a pike.”
That didn’t bode well. Rivers cleared his throat. “Probably because she doesn’t believe you’d really do it. Do you want such a thing?”
Windbourne took the paper and tucked it into his pocket.
“I don’t know,” he said. “For the first time in my life, I’m not entirely sure what I want.
I have to get married. She is unlike anyone I’ve ever met before, but do I want to drag her into my world?
Do I want to drag her into the world of a duchess when she is free? ”
“Poverty isn’t freedom,” Rivers replied flatly.
Windbourne blinked. “You’re right, of course. But once she’s in the ton again, she won’t be able to get free of it. And it could be difficult. After all, she’s in trade.”
Rivers blinked, then snorted. “My, how judgmental you sound?”
Windbourne snorted right back. “Not I, but everyone else.”
“Go on,” Rivers said, not wanting him to think of any other reasons to worry. “Go help her. It will all sort itself out in the end.”
“Are you sure?” Windbourne asked softly.
“Oh, it always does,” Rivers replied. “You just have to have a bit of faith.”
“I struggle with that,” Windbourne said honestly.
Rivers nodded. “I know you do. You’ve seen things that no one should.”
Windbourne gave him a nod, patted the mother’s address in his pocket, then headed out the door.
“All right,” Rivers called. “Out you come.”
Fennyman and Lord Philip, younger brother of the Duke of Westfort, and Rivers’ butler, Harlowe, darted out.
“That’s good,” Harlowe said, clapping his hands together. “He wants to help the mother. He’s going to ask the daughter to marry him any day.”
Fennyman hesitated. “Possibly,” he said.
“Possibly,” Rivers echoed, arching a brow before he threw himself down in his chair. “Don’t give me possibly,” he said. “They are a clear case and belong together.”
“I didn’t say they don’t belong together,” Fennyman said. “But you know how delicate the human soul is. They might be stubborn.”
“We’re all stubborn,” Rivers protested. “They’re not going to be that stubborn. I won’t allow it again.”
Fennyman laughed, the dark sound matching his dark hair and clothes, and his demeanor. Though he did have a dry sense of humor, likely because of all the foibles he’d witnessed in human nature. “Oh, you won’t, Your Grace? You won’t put up with the little humans behaving as humans do?”
Rivers snorted. “I will march them down the aisle myself if I have to,” he said. “I will arrange a situation in which they are caught.”
“We have been here before, Your Grace,” he said. “You just have to be patient. As you say, it always works out in the end.”
He gave Fennyman a sharp glance. “You don’t believe that,” he said.
Fennyman paused. “You’re right. I don’t. I’ve seen it not work out too many times, but I hate destroying your endless sense of optimism.”
Fennyman owned a gambling club and saw people destroy themselves on an almost daily basis.
And Fennyman had been born to wealth, though not a high station, but then cast out and forced to live in the gutter as a child.
Fennyman understood people better than most ever possibly could.
In fact, Rivers sometimes thought Fennyman could look inside his soul and see the deepest secrets there.
Lord Philip, who was still quite young and unbowed by life’s burdens, crossed the room, sat upon the desk, and hooked one leg over the other, giving Rivers a pout worthy of a West End showgirl. No doubt to wind Rivers up.
“Things are moving too slowly for my taste,” Lord Philip pronounced. “I must say I far preferred the other matches. These two are going to be stuck in a house together. How are we going to make anything exciting happen, if they both insist on being honorable?”
“Exciting,” Rivers echoed. “This topic of mistresses has already come up. And his sense of good is so intense that it will be a miracle if the two hold hands, let alone kiss.”
Fennyman folded his arms across his broad chest. “Nature will play out. Attraction never fails, and my man has reports from inside that the two are definitely attracted to each other.”
Harlowe looked around at the others. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s quite complicated because she’s his employee. We knew this could be risky, but perhaps we should have introduced them in another fashion.”
Rivers ground his teeth, then tapped his desk. “We needed them together a great deal, and that would never happen, given her status.”
Harlowe nodded. “Yes, servants just aren’t well thought of.”
“She’s not truly a servant,” Fennyman said, “but she might as well be.”
“And that’s going to make them both hesitate,” put in Lord Philip. “How do we make them not hesitate?”
“Well,” Rivers began, “I suppose we could always…”
“No,” Harlowe roared.
“No,” Fennyman said.
“What?” Rivers said. “I was just going to…”
“Your suggestions are always terrible,” Fennyman said.
“Then you come up with something,” Rivers declared.
Fennyman winked. “I always do.”
This one was supposed to be as easy as a dream. Summer was coming to a close, and Rivers needed one last excellent match for this Season before he had to retire for the year and come up with a new set of potential brides and grooms.
The Duke of Windbourne needed a wife. The Duke of Windbourne needed help. The fellow didn’t know how much help yet, but Rivers did. The man was as powerful as a storm and as vital. He’d swept into England, becoming the center of gossip and society immediately, but he was heartbroken.
His father’s death had done things to him, and Rivers could understand that. His own father’s death had done many things to him as well. Young men were always desperately trying to recover from the deaths of their fathers, but Windbourne’s circumstance had been particularly bad.
He had returned to London, and he had even helped Rivers unknowingly unite the last couple. Or at least he hoped it was unknowingly, though he had suspicions that Windbourne was on to him. So, he’d just have to be more careful. But not too careful. He had marriages to make happen.