Royal Regard (5 page)

Through clenched teeth, he growled, “I’ve
been a duke for ten minutes. I will marry when I tell you so, and
not before.”

“Four years and your heir a second cousin,”
Nockham nagged. “Your sister reminds me every morning at table. The
last thing you need is some other man’s wife. And lest you imagine
you will wed the widowed baroness—”

“Countess.”

“—you need someone young enough to give you
children. She is well past thirty and Holsworthy never got a child
on her.”

Nick eyed Lady Montingham’s grey hair and
egret-feathered turban crossing the room with him in her sights, a
girl in tow who looked no older than twelve. Deliberately assuming
his most haughty mien, he turned his shoulder to speak more
intently to Nockham, hoping she would see his temper and leave him
be. Perhaps, if he looked serious enough—as though he were
discussing the loss of his entire fortune, for instance—she would
just apply to his sister.

“Stop talking about children unless berating
the age of the schoolroom misses paraded before me. The girl with
Lady Montingham should still be in leading strings.” He tossed a
contemptuous glance and the lady changed course with her debutante
to join the fresh-faced, young breeding stock surrounding Allison.
Nick’s shoulders relaxed a bit.

They seized up again when Nockham casually
jibed, “If you turned your adoring gaze toward the little girl with
Lady Montingham, you’d make everyone’s life easier, including mine.
You’ve been damned lucky, playing the second son all these years,
but the need for an heir is not news.”

“I was rather hoping to leave this world long
since, killed defending a lady’s honor or dispatching a scurrilous
villain.”

“More likely your throat slit by a cardsharp
or mind poisoned by demon rum. But all that is done. No more gaming
hells. No more blue ruin. No more French mistresses. You have a
duty.”

“To the Devil with deuced duty!” The last
thing Nick would discuss was the misguided notion he hadn’t
fulfilled his. Having been given every opportunity, and every
reason, to shirk, he had instead made his mother happy by returning
home before she died; bolstered his brother and the duchy, even as
he watched David’s body fail; ensured his sister would never want
for anything, even if her presently annoying husband died
penniless; and nearly doubled the value of his family’s substantial
holdings. No one he cared for would lose anything if the dukedom
passed to his second cousin.

Nick dodging the subject of marriage seemed a
small price for everyone else to pay.

“No French mistress has graced my bed since
before the Revolution, nor have I drunk gin since I buried my
brother.” He waved his gloved hand in Nockham’s face. “Gaming
hells, I will grant you.”

He looked for Lady Holsworthy one last time,
but she and her cousin had vanished. Shrugging philosophically, he
concluded there was no sense in tempting himself. Nockham was quite
right; he had given Allie his word, and she was dying to begin the
introductions.

Besides, there was no need for Lord
Holsworthy to become suspicious before Nick had even danced with
his wife.

Adolphe Fouret stepped into an
alcove behind a folding wooden screen to surreptitiously toss back
a mouthful of cheap rum from his flask. Ridiculous custom at this
miserable establishment, serving tea and lemonade to grown men who
needed to be good and drunk to stomach the endless matchmaking
mamas and their marriageable misses. Not to mention, no matter the
lies the hostesses told about exclusivity, they would allow anyone
in knee breeches to walk through the door. Even a merchant, if he
had enough money in the bank.

The rough liquor burned the back of his
throat, but didn’t erase the humiliation of a common tradesman
telling him off, as though the Duc de Malbourne was a whoremonger
asking to pay a
sou
for his wife. That a man no better than
a sailor had even been allowed to speak to a duke was intolerable;
his words and tone should have seen him drawn and quartered: “I
will not countenance your advances toward my wife, Sirrah! Be gone,
ere I am forced to demonstrate my contempt more plainly!”

Earl and Countess of Huntleigh, indeed. As if
Adolphe needed any further proof King George was as mad as his
father.

She was ugly as a street dog, with a mouth
like a hellcat, and couldn’t even dress herself properly. Swarthy
skin like a gypsy, even darker than his own, and he doubted she
could dance a step, as adamantly as she was avoiding the floor.
Once she was his
duchesse
, he would keep her locked in an
armoire
until she learned not to disgrace him in public.

Holsworthy should be grateful someone else
wanted to dance with her, so he would only have to touch her in the
dark—if he still had the stamina to screw her. With no children to
show for it, he probably never had, not that Adolphe could blame
him. It would take an Act of Parliament to get hard in her bed.

But for her merchant husband’s enormous
fortune, Lady Holsworthy was as worthless as a provincial
banknote.

Good God
, this polka music was almost
as grating as the teasing girls who had no idea what they weren’t
offering. He would give anything to be back in Dover, enjoying the
crashing silence of his seaside cliffs and the charms of
Marie-Thèrese, with whom his fascination was coming to an end. She
would have to be disposed of soon and another woman acquired, but
for now, she was preferable to the unending misery of English
aristocratic entertainments.

If King Louis had kept his word, Adolphe
would be in the Vosges now, in his ancestors’
château
, not
at this grubby little dance hall peddling his title to repay debt
amassed so Louis’ court-in-exile could live beyond its means. But
he had been waiting five years to hear the French king had
reinstated his property, and Adolphe’s creditors had finally lost
patience with his claims to a noble fortune.

Louis had no right to renege on his promise.
It wasn’t as though the woman had been a virgin or someone’s wife
or mistress, and French women never meant
non
. How was
Adolphe to know the king’s nephew nursed a fondness for her, when
she looked nothing like his other women?
Childhood
friend
—more likely the first girl to suck Antoine’s cock, and
he fancied himself in love even now that she was a dried-up, ugly,
old hag.

So, the rightful king was back at the
Tuileries, but because of the high-handed Duc d’Angoulême and a
prattling woman who didn’t know enough to lie back and enjoy
herself, the rightful Duc de Malbourne would lose his
lands—again—if he didn’t marry a sizable fortune very soon. If only
he had choked the life out of the miserable bitch when he was
finished, his duchy would have been restored with all the
others.

“
Monsieur le Duc?
” An alabaster
forehead, two virtuous blue eyes, a riot of white-blond curls, and
a set of perfectly plump red lips poked around the screen slowly,
so as not to catch him at anything untoward. As though a man of his
rank and position would act improperly in public.

He clenched his jaw, preparing to step back
into the room with whichever girl this was who thought to be
compromised, and so force him to offer for her. His nostrils flared
as he carefully twisted the cap back onto his flask and stowed it
in his pocket. His smile seethed.

“
Oui, ma chère?
” As he turned, he
cleared the echoes of harsh drink from his throat and regained his
silky voice. “You are looking for me?”

It was the fetching young lady in the silver
muslin gown. He wasn’t sure of her name, as fetching young ladies
were
un
denier
a dozen at Almack’s, and her dowry was
a pittance.

“
Ma mère m’a
envoyé vous trouver pour la prochaine danse
.”
Her execrable French scraped up his spine like a
rusty nail on a washboard.

“Of course, my sweet, I had forgotten we were
to dance this set. Your
maman
is quite right to remind me. I
have been looking forward to it all evening.”

She sidled closer, swaying her hips like a
Parisian streetwalker, pressing pert breasts against his arm,
selling the promise of her maidenhead for the fortune she assumed
he had. She looked up at him expectantly, her lips almost pursed
for a kiss.
Mon dieu
, she was beautiful—ripe for
despoiling—but if he touched her, he would be on the wrong end of
her father’s pistol by dawn. And all he would get for it was a dry
kiss tonight and a dry cunt in his bed the rest of his life. There
was no point in that unless there were hundreds of thousands of
guineas attached.

He engaged his considerable charm and
instinct for self-preservation, saying, “I remember you have said
the
gavotte
is an especial favorite of yours, as it is
mine.”

He reached out his hand to grasp her elbow,
sweep her back into the crowd, and remain unmarried another day. If
he could avoid the cunning traps of these prudish English women, he
would remain free to ensnare the riches he really wanted.

As was their habit after an early
end to an evening out, the backgammon board lay open between Bella
and Myron, the third game to determine the best three of five,
Bella in the lead. Candles and lamps burned low in the library of
their townhouse, thankfully leaving the dated, dull décor in
shadow. Myron had stirred the fire up before he sat down. To
Bella’s mind, it was always too cold in England, and her husband
was nothing if not solicitous.

Myron rolled a one and a two, closing a
point, but still making little progress. Bella’s lips twisted, as
she had been hoping to hit at least one of the solo tiles on her
next roll.

Instead of the two and six she needed to take
one of his pips to the bar, the dice turned up a one and a
four.

“Blast!” She now had no option but to break
up a made point to leave two draughts vulnerable to his next
move.

Myron’s only reaction to her language was,
“Captain Johnson is an admirable man, my dear, but his vernacular
no example of propriety.” She merely grinned at the
long-established reproach, and eventually he followed with a sigh
and a more productive topic.

“Two investors in the new cargo ship,” he
said, “and I won six hundred guineas for the alms box. Not such a
bad evening.”

Myron was forced to gambling to court the
investment of wealthy gentlemen who spent their evenings playing
cards, but always donated his winnings to the poor, since he
considered gaming for money as sinful as adultery or imbibing
spirits or making a business deal without a contract.

“According to the whispers,” she said,
pouring him a cup of tea and adding a splash of milk, “we will be
the Earl and Countess of Huntleigh by daybreak tomorrow.”

“Pinnester says the end of the week.
Nevertheless, you mustn’t succumb to the sin of pride, my dear.
Earls and countesses are no closer to the heavenly host, and gossip
does not signify. It won’t do to count eggs before they are laid,
especially when a capricious king must do the laying.”

She tried to stifle her giggles at the
thought of Prinny’s bulk sitting on a bird’s nest, riffling his
feathers, forcing an egg from his nether regions. Myron chortled at
her sniggering description before they both erupted into full-blown
hilarity.

Eventually, she wiped a tear from under her
eye and chided herself, “How unfeeling of me to poke fun at His
Majesty when the poor man just lost his father. And he is so very
kind to us. Surely such incivility must be more sinful than taking
pride in my husband’s many accomplishments.” She patted his
wrist.

Myron rolled a four and a six, miraculously
missing both of her lone tiles, but bringing his first into the
home board. He contemplated her suggestion, most likely measuring
against biblical precepts, but only replied, “Perhaps.”