My Fair Duchess (A Once Upon A Rogue Novel Book 1) (5 page)

He ripped the missive open, scanned the contents and handed it back to Bexley with a frown. She was summoning him. He barely contained an irritated grunt. They both knew he never adhered to her summons, but this time he would actually go. It was clear she needed to be reminded of the need for discretion.

“Tell Lawrence to pack my bag for a four-day trip. I’ve a need to visit my mother.”

“Certainly, Your Grace,” Bexley replied while handing Colin another envelope. This one brought a smile. He ran his thumb over Rhet― Colin stilled his finger. He was still making the mistake of calling his school chum
Rhetford
even though the man’s father had been dead for well over two years.

Colin would save the Earl of Harthorne’s letter to read when he was alone. His friend was a wordy fellow, and his letters were usually several pages long and sprinkled with windy, comical descriptions of whatever scrape he had pulled his younger, hoydenish sister out of, or sometimes Harthorne’s letters would be rather sobering with news of the declining state of his properties. “Tell Lawrence to have everything ready by three. I’m going to go for a ride and then head out after lunch.”

“And cake,” Bexley said, his mouth pulling into a smile.

“No cake,” Colin said firmly.

“If I may be impertinent, Your Grace, when will you allow your staff to show their appreciation for you by permitting them to celebrate your birthday as we used to? I know it’s unseemly for me to suggest such things to you, but I feel I must tell you that making new happy traditions in the present can help erase past memories.”

Colin winced. That last part sounded close to advice his father had given him, and Colin still thought it an unsound recommendation. “I simply don’t want to celebrate my birthday, but if the occasion ever arises that I do, you will be the first to know.” He could never explain how his mother had screamed at him on the day his father had died, which was the day before Colin’s birthday last year, that everything had gone wrong with their marriage the very instant he had been born.

“Go on, now,” Colin said, his words clipped because of the harsh memory.

Bexley nodded and disappeared out the door. Without hesitation, Colin ripped into Harthorne’s letter, hoping there was a humorous tale of his sister’s antics inside. He needed something bloody cheerful in his life, even if it really had nothing to do with him.

Dear Aversley,

I hope your birthday finds you not in the arms of any widow but of a young woman who adores you. I wish for you some dreams of what may come. To help you see what true love looks like, I am inviting you to my wedding to Lady Mary Treveport, which is to be in one week. I expect to see you at my home post haste so we may visit before I wed and am a bachelor no more.

Colin groaned. Lady Mary was a well-known strumpet. Leave it to that dreamer Harthorne to fall under the spell of a woman who was about as virtuous as Colin was. He was sure Harthorne had no clue. “Damnation,” he muttered. “Bexley!”

After striding over to his desk, Colin pulled out a piece of foolscap and jotted a note to Harthorne letting him know of his impending arrival in Norfolk in three days. He would see his mother first and then head straight to Harthorne’s After a few minutes, the
clack
of the cane echoed in the hall and Bexley appeared, red-faced from his efforts to get there. Guilt stabbed at Colin. He should have gone to find Bexley and not made the poor man trudge back up the stairs to him.

“I’m going to be gone longer than expected. Tell my valet to pack my bag for a week and then draw my bath, if you will. I’ll be leaving shortly.” The sooner he got on the road, spoke with his mother, and headed toward Norfolk to save Harthorne from the mistake of marrying a strumpet―or even marrying at all, as far as Colin was concerned―the better.

Once Bexley had gone to speak with the valet, Colin scanned the rest of the letter and laughed. Only Harthorne’s sister would climb a tree to spy on the man she was obsessed with and fall on top of said man and the woman he was kissing. As usual, Colin tried to picture Harthorne’s younger sister but got no further than his friend’s long-ago description of the girl who looked like a skinny branch with two overly long knobby sticks for arms and legs and a mass of unruly pale hair on her head.

His mood improved, picturing the girl, despite Harthorne’s ridiculous news of his impending marriage. As he recalled different stories about the sister, Colin chuckled, and even as he left to lecture his mother, he kept a tiny slither of that lighthearted feeling with which his friend’s young sister’s antics always filled him.

St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, England

Colin strode through the sunny portrait gallery of Waverly House with his mother’s butler, Fletcher, on his heels like a yapping dog.

“Your Grace, Your Grace,” the man implored in a high-pitched voice tinged with the vibrating notes of unmistakable tension. “Please, Your Grace, allow me to announce you first. As I explained, your mother is in a meeting with Mr. Nilbury.”

With a temper that had gone from a simmer to a boil with every jostling bump from his London home, Colin jerked to a halt, ironically in front of his father’s portrait, and swung around to demand the butler leave him be. Drops of perspiration slid down the man’s forehead as he puffed out short, gasping breaths. Colin clamped his mouth shut and heaved a sigh. He could feel his father’s gaze on him and hear his father’s words of wisdom. It was not this man’s fault that Mother’s idea of a business meeting with the solicitor had nothing to do with actual estate business and everything to do with her pleasure. Consequences be damned, as always.

Determined to tread in his father’s unusual footsteps and treat the servants exactly as he would want to be treated, Colin clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I promise you, Fletcher, I will ensure my mother understands I barged past you and there was no stopping me. You will suffer no consequences of failing to announce me, but if you feel you do, I will bring you to my home and make you head of all my servants there. Is this acceptable to you?”

“Yes, Your Grace. Thank you.”

Colin nodded, and with a sideways glance at his father’s portrait, he continued down the hall, leaving the problem of the butler behind him but not the hollowness he still felt from losing his father. Colin dismissed those emotions as he walked and focused on the strategy he’d use with his mother. He needed to get on the road to Norfolk to stop Harthorne from marrying Lady Mary, and the best way to cut through his mother’s lies in an efficient manner was to catch her in her lover’s arms. His gut twisted at the thought. He paused outside the closed parlor door and said a silent prayer that both parties were fully clothed. The last thing he wanted to do was find his mother in the nude―again―with yet another man. Once was enough.

Carefully easing the door open, he stepped into the gold-and-green parlor. His chest tightened, and a surge of disappointment filled him. He wasn’t sure why, since he had expected the scene, but seeing his mother with her forehead pressed against Mr. Nilbury’s chest made Colin want to cross the room, rip them apart, and remind the man he had a wife at home. Damn it all.

Long ago, he’d given up hope that she might change, but the sharp ache in his chest was unmistakably familiar to the pains that had plagued him when he had first learned of his mother’s dalliances.

“It’s always so nice to see you, Mother,” he called while striding through the room toward her.

She jerked her head up and swiveled to face him while Mr. Nilbury stumbled back a step, a deep flush covering his fat face as he gaped. Colin stopped in front of his mother and took in her appearance. Not a hint of a blush tinged her skin. At least Mr. Nilbury had the decency to look embarrassed. “I see you are up to your old habits again.”

Finally, a flush stained her cheeks. “I’m not, darling. I swear it.”

The endearment caused him to pause. He could not recall his mother ever calling him anything but
Nortingham
and then
Aversley
upon his father’s death. Nothing resembling love had ever been part of their relationship. What the devil was she up to?

“I have somewhere important I need to be. I simply came here to tell you to cease carrying on with Mr. Nilbury unless you want to once again become the talk of the
ton
.”

“Your Grace,” Mr. Nilbury rushed out, “you’ve the wrong of it. This is not what it appears and whoever has told you otherwise is mistaken. I’m a married man.”

Colin flicked his gaze to his solicitor. “I’m glad to hear you’ve remembered it. You’ll forgive me, though, if I find it hard to believe you, given my mother’s past history and the fact that I walked in on such a cozy scene.”

Mr. Nilbury’s face deepened in color. “I was only comforting her.”

This was exactly the sort of thing Colin did not have the time or the patience for. “Give up the ruse,” he snapped. “You two were seen together in public by someone other than me, and it must have been quite a sight for my informant is convinced you are lovers.”

“We are no such thing,” Mr. Nilbury retorted. “Whoever this informant of yours is he or she is incorrect. Two weeks ago, I was on my way to deliver a letter to your mother that she was to deliver to you once she read it. She happened to come upon me in town and insisted on reading it immediately. The contents made her upset, and I do recall offering her comfort as anyone would.”

“A convenient excuse,” Colin said. He had heard his mother’s lovers spout ridiculous lies many times before, but he had somehow expected more of Mr. Nilbury. He had respected and trusted the man.

“Don’t bother trying to persuade him of the truth,” Colin’s mother said with a sigh. She turned on her heel and strode toward her escritoire while still talking. “All he has ever known is me at my worst.” Wood sliding against wood filled the quiet room as his mother opened a drawer, rummaged through some papers, by the sound of it, and then shut the drawer with a click before facing him. She grasped an envelope in her hand that she slowly held out as she advanced and finally stopped before him.

“Your father instructed Mr. Nilbury to give this to you on your twenty-fifth birthday,
after
allowing me to read it.”

Shock slammed into him. “What?”

His mother cocked her head. “We were just discussing how to tell you, but I suppose the best way is simply for you to read it.”

He struggled to control the emotions suddenly coursing through him. A letter from his father
.
It was an unbelievable gift.

He glanced at his mother and stilled.
She was nibbling on her lip, and a frown puckered her brow. Uneasiness curled inside him. He’d never seen her act concerned about a thing in her life, and she truly did seem anxious now. With his heartbeat thumping in his ears, Colin unfolded the foolscap and glanced down at his father’s scribbled handwriting:

Dear Colin,

Since you are reading this letter, it means you are now twenty-five, still unmarried and, I fear, as jaded about women as the day I died. I know this attitude stems from the problems your mother and I faced, but what you do not know is that I was the cause of your mother’s heartache. As for you, my son, I wish for your happiness, which I know you cannot attain on your current path. You might be surprised to learn that I truly believe only a marriage of love will bring you contentment. I want you to take the next year to let go of your anger and find the sort of love I always held for your mother. Since I know you will refute this wish, I am making it a demand with a steep stipulation. If you are not married within one year’s time of reading this letter―and your mother must deem the marriage one of love―then I have instructed Mr. Nilbury to strip you of all my unentailed land, which effectively means you will be penniless since the entailed estate, unfortunately, has never been profitable. The only advice I have to give you is to be careful of your wording when you give a vow to God.

My love is with you,

Father

Staring down at the foolscap, Colin swallowed hard and folded the letter while fighting to slow his speeding pulse. What the devil did he mean by being careful of his wording when giving a vow to God? What vow? His pulse jumped another notch. He took a deep breath. Becoming angry would not help. How could his father think he could force Colin to fall in love?

Colin curled his fingers around the letter, the paper crunching in his hand and stabbing at his flesh. He would never be so stupid as to allow himself to become like his father, but he was not foolish. He was not going to lose everything by refusing to take a wife. Colin stared at his hands. His mother was to judge whether his marriage was one of love? He choked back a laugh. His father must have been delirious near the end.