The Duke's Stolen Bride, Page 2

  She hadn’t visited there in years. Idly, she wondered if the duke had restored the place since he took ownership or if the gardens were still overrun with weeds.

  Indeed, she had heard tales of this Duke of Warrington. She’d heard about the women who paid call on him. They passed through the village in carriages at all hours of the day and night.

  Rumor had it not all of them had left his house. Women went in, but not all came out.

  She’d rolled her eyes at such ridiculous stories. Simply because no one witnessed their departure did not mean they had failed to leave.

  Mrs. Pratt, her neighbor to the west and the biggest gossip in the shire, had delivered several innuendo-laden morsels on that subject to Marian and her sisters.

  Charlotte and Nora had listened in rapt fascination. Mrs. Pratt’s farm sat closer to Haverston Hall, so they took her nattering as truth, unfortunately, assuming she was a witness to whatever gossip she recounted.

  “I’m sure these women left when you were sound asleep.” Marian had tried to interject some sensibleness into the nonsense. She didn’t want her sisters to believe everything they heard, especially from a woman with a penchant for gossip.

  “As likely not.” Mrs. Pratt’s face had puffed and reddened in affront over Marian’s reluctance to believe her. “Their screams could curdle your blood.”

  “Screams?” Nora had asked with wide eyes.

  “Aye.” Mrs. Pratt had leaned forward over their fence. “Mr. Pratt was tending the hogs before supper and he could hear them carrying on up at the manor house, their wails for help echoing on the air like a banshee’s shrieks.” She nodded fiercely, her cheeks jiggling with the motion.

  “I am sure it was just the wind,” Marian had attempted to reason. “It howls through the shire. If women were missing, it would be noted and the proper inquiries would be made.”

  “Who would question a grand man such as he?” Mrs. Pratt had snorted. “What a naïve miss you are for all your worldly travels. Who would dare approach him with such inquiries?”

  Marian had designated it as salacious gossip and told her sisters as much.

  Except now, staring at him, she thought the moniker appropriate.

  “Depraved duke?” he asked. “That’s what they call me?” Unlike others who might be concerned or annoyed, he appeared mildly amused. “Alliteration. Clever.”

  “You mean you’re unaware?”

  “Now who would be so bold as to let me know such a thing?” He looked her over, clearly implying: aside from you.

  She watched him a moment, waiting to see if he would say more on the matter. When he held silent, she added, “Does that sobriquet offend you?”

  “Sobriquet,” he mused, sounding almost impressed. “That has a rather gentle connotation. Not what leaps to mind when you hear the word depraved.”

  “Does it offend you?” she repeated.

  After a beat, he answered her, “I’m not a man given to offense, girl.”

  Girl. The single word had the power to make her feel small and insignificant.

  “Are you not?” She frowned. “How singular. Can that even be possible? Everyone is given to offense.”

  He considered her at length again before answering. “Not me.”

  “Rubbish,” she quickly rejoined.

  He angled his head, and she got the sensation that she had caught him off guard. “You refute me, girl?”

  Again with the girl. As though he sought to remind her of her place.

  “I disagree with you, yes,” she clarified, not about to be cowed. He might be a duke, but he wasn’t her master—no matter the service he had done her.

  “One would have to care to take offense,” he said carefully, slowly, as though marveling that he was having this conversation with her. She supposed it was rather personal, rather intimate, for two strangers. Although considering their introduction, not so intimate.

  “Oh. And you don’t care?” How very fortunate for him. As far as she was concerned, only the very privileged could assert such a claim. She did not possess that luxury.

  He reached for his glass on the table. Lifting it, he surveyed the amber liquid. “I care for my lands. A fine whisky. A good meal. A first-rate shag.” His gaze dropped back on her, intense and probing. “There is little else.”

  She sputtered with indignation. The wretch! If he sought to shock her, he had succeeded.

  She could not imagine not caring. She cared too much. About many things. The list was endless, but at the top of it were people. Family.

  “That’s very sad.”

  He stiffened, and she knew at once that he did not like that. Contrary to what he’d claimed, she’d struck a nerve—and she was glad of it.

  “I’m not the one hiding from lenders beneath tables. You strike me as sad.”

  There was a fair share of disdain in his voice. She flinched, but he’d wanted that. He’d wanted to lash out at her.

  “Thank you again for your assistance.” She wrapped herself in as much dignity as she could muster, reminding herself that he was no better than she was. A condition of birth placed him at the top of the social hierarchy, but that was all. A vagary of fate could have landed him hiding from peddlers beneath a table. Instead of her.

  With her shoulders back, she strolled from the room.

  Chapter 3

  Nate really needed to stay out of this damnable village.

  Up until now he had bypassed Brambledon on his way to Haverston Hall. The last thing he wanted to do was interact with the locals. He wasn’t fond of interacting with anyone he didn’t have to—not even those of his own rank. Especially those of his own rank. Most of them were unbearable. Pompous blowhards, the lot of them.

  With the exception of Pearson, his man of affairs, Nate didn’t engage with many people at all and he preferred it that way. He wasn’t social. He knew that. He wasn’t sorry for it, even if Pearson insisted on calling him a misanthrope.

  He didn’t hate people. He simply eschewed their company.

  He knew men had friends. Lifelong friends they made at school. Such was the way for many. Only not him. For Nate, school had not been a place to foster friendships.

  He’d been small as a boy. His parents had dumped him at school at the tender age of six so they did not have to concern themselves with him as they went about their diversions. They fetched him home occasionally. A few times a year he was briefly spared the abuse of his classmates. As the runt in the pack, his peers enjoyed nothing more than tormenting him . . . beating him. There had been no help, no remedy for him. It was simply his existence. A friendless, lonely existence full of mistreatment.

  He’d finally sprouted his eighteenth year—ironically. Once he was free of school, once he had escaped his bullying classmates, he’d shot up. Now he was broad of shoulder and over six feet and could protect himself.

  On more than one occasion, he had spotted some of those lads out about Town. They were all smiles and pats on the back, as if they were old friends and not vipers. As if they had not inflicted pain on him.

  He had not forgotten those bitter years. Indeed, he had not. All the little lordlings of his childhood were now ready to be his friends, but he had no use for them. He’d rather remain friendless than allow them into his life.

  Hunger had compelled him forth to the village tonight. Several of Haverston’s staff, including the cook, had quit since he’d arrived. Apparently they found him objectionable. He snorted. And now he knew why. They call you the depraved duke.

  He had yet to replace the cook with someone who could create an appetizing menu. He’d succumbed to the temptation of a good meal and ventured out from Haverston Hall. Apparently that had been a mistake. Lesson learned.

  If he had kept to his usual habits, then a harried village girl with a barbed tongue would not have disturbed his peace while he was trying to enjoy his dinner.

  He could still see her in his mind. Fiery eyes. Tendrils of fair hair falling untidily around her face.
Her dress was dirt-smudged from her time under the table. She was comely enough, but not to his taste.

  He preferred his women more polished. Amenable. Courtesans who knew what they were about and did not possess a saucy tongue. He hired them for their services, and when they were done they left him. It was business. A simple transaction. No harm to anyone. Both were satisfied with the arrangement and compensated in their own fashions.

  None of those females were like the little virago who dared to make a place for herself at his boots beneath a table and then flay him with her saucy tongue for his assistance.

  He should have exposed her and declared her presence to the tradesman hunting her. It would have been the responsible thing to do. He owed her nothing, after all.

  He was not certain why he obliged her. Perhaps it was the plea in her eyes. He could not detect their color beneath the table, but there was no mistaking the glimmer of desperation in her gaze or the ring of it in her voice.

  Before he knew what he was about, he was doing exactly as she bade and concealing her. Then, when she’d emerged bold as day, he’d conversed with her. Talked to her. He didn’t know the last time he had exchanged so many words with a female.

  He might eschew Society and friendships, but he had women aplenty in his life. Or rather, in his bed. Tupping did not require conversation. He never talked to any of his paramours at length. It was unnecessary.

  Bloody hell. If he had a proper cook at Haverston Hall, he would not have felt so compelled to stray from the comfort of his home.

  Home. The word rang hollowly.

  All those years spent in hell—at school—he couldn’t claim any such place existed for him, but Haverston Hall had been the closest place to a home he ever had. He’d spent one long-ago summer there with Mr. Haverston, a distant cousin of his mother. A summer when he was happy, free of the bullies at school. A summer when he’d met Haverston’s goddaughter, Mary Beth.

  They’d spent their days fishing at the pond, visiting the fair in town and talking about pirates. Her fascination with pirates had rivaled his own. She had been his first real friend and he wanted to keep her forever. As young as he was, he had known then he would grow up and ask her to marry him.

  When he presented himself at the tender age of twenty and asked for her hand in marriage, she had accepted. Even though they had not seen each other in ten years, she had said yes. He’d thought their marriage would be more of the same joy they’d found with each other that summer. He’d thought they would be happy, that they would build a life and family with each other.

  Instead he discovered Mary Beth was but a glimmer of her old self and possessed very little memory of their summer together. Just the same, losing her as she attempted to bring their child into this world had been a blow.

  When Haverston had expired and left him the manor, Nate could not have been more surprised. The old man had been without heirs and kindly enough, but Nate had no idea he liked him well enough to leave him his estate.

  Nate had taken residence at the manor for nostalgia’s sake. As though he could recapture his youth here, those days that he had frolicked with Mary Beth.

  As though he could go back to being the lad he once was. Unfettered. Carefree.

  Free from pain and loss.

  Snorting, he reached for his glass and downed the last bit of it. Fanciful bit of rubbish.

  The past couldn’t be undone. There was no place free from pain and loss. It did not exist for him.

  When he walked through the house with its deserted rooms and the grounds wild and overgrown with weeds, he hardly recognized the place from that long-ago summer. He certainly couldn’t see Mary Beth in the now musty rooms and shadowed halls. Not as she had been then—a little girl with ribbons in her hair, laughing at all his antics and sharing his childish dreams of the high seas.

  He knew he could air the place out and brighten it up—bring it back to its former glory. He could if he had the motivation. Perhaps if Mary Beth and their babe had lived, he would have done it for them.

  The place fit him better as it was now. As he was now. The depraved duke.

  That’s what everyone around here calls you.

  The village girl had not minced words in relating that fact. She let him know what was being said behind his back—and then she had the temerity to call him sad. Him! When she was the one so clearly in a sorry, desperate state.

  His appetite gone, he dropped a few coins on the table and rose from his seat. He’d been delivered a good many insults in his life. His status and position did not shield him from that. Words far more ugly than sad had been heaped on his head. And yet sad grated upon his skin.

  His stepfather, more than anyone, enjoyed piling invectives upon him. The man never hid his resentment of Nate. He had very few memories of his own father. He’d passed away when Nate was still in swaddling, but his stepfather was scarcely civil to him. It was as though Nate’s mere existence served to remind him that his wife had been with someone else before him—someone who happened to be a duke and outranked him. Irrational, but resentment was rarely logical.

  Emerging outside, he didn’t see the girl anywhere. She’d vanished. A few people strolled on the street, but she was not among them.

  A lad fetched his horse and Nate was soon headed home, burrowing into his cloak and pulling his hat low as a fine mist of rain started.

  He was chilled by the time he reached Haverston Hall. In the foyer, a servant relieved him of his cloak, hat and gloves. He retired to the library, eager for the warmth of the fire. He held his hands out to the flames.

  “Ah, there you are.” Pearson entered the room. His father had been the Warrington stable master, but Pearson had expressed no interest in following in his footsteps. When Nate offered him a position as his man of affairs, he’d gladly accepted.

  “Here I am,” Nate agreed, turning his hands over so the backs could be warmed.

  “Why so forlorn? Did you not have a satisfying dinner?”

  “Better than anything I would have had here, to be sure.”

  “Then—”

  “They call me the depraved duke. Did you know this?” he asked abruptly. “I suppose that’s why the cook quit.”

  Silence met his declaration and Nate looked over his shoulder. One glance at Pearson’s face and he knew she had told him the truth—not that he’d doubted her. She didn’t strike him as a liar. If anything, she was too forthcoming.

  “Ah. Learned that, did you?” Pearson frowned and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Who told you?”

  Because, clearly, it was not the kind of thing one would share in casual conversation, but then, his conversation with the audacious chit had not been casual. Which only served to annoy him more. Who was she to insert herself with such familiarity into his life?

  That’s very sad.

  It continued to gall him . . . which he knew was in direct opposition to his claim that he didn’t care for much of anything.

  Apparently he cared enough or she would not have annoyed him so greatly.

  “Someone in the village,” he replied.

  Pearson’s eyes widened. “Indeed. Well, he must not have put much weight into the rumors about you to reveal that directly to your face.”

  “Actually, I think she did believe them.”

  “She?”

  “Yes.”

  “Intrepid lass.” Pearson nodded almost approvingly.

  Nate grunted and faced the fire again. “More like foolish,” he muttered.

  “Hm. Whatever she happens to be, she made an impression on you.”

  He couldn’t disagree with that—even if he would like to.

  Chapter 4

  Marian pushed thoughts of the depraved duke with his devilish dark eyes and the tenacious coal peddler from her mind as she stepped inside the cozy confines of her kitchen.

  She was home. She expelled a happy breath. Even if it was only a fraction warmer inside the house than outside, she was home at last and glad of i
t.

  The kitchen was her favorite room in the house. It was full of fond memories she could wrap around herself. Memories of when Mama was alive. Her mother may have been gently bred, but she had enjoyed spending afternoons in the kitchen, participating in the preparation of their meals.

  Marian could envision Mama now, standing at the worktable in her striped pinafore, flour smudged on her nose, wrist-deep in dough as she laughed at one of Cook’s anecdotes.

  Standing in the threshold, Marian leaned a shoulder against the wall with a quiet sigh and surveyed the current scene. The room seemed a little smaller now, a little darker—certainly not as cozy as in years past.

  The years before she became a governess and left home.

  The years before Papa died and she returned to take care of the family.

  That thought made her wince. Take care of the family.

  She didn’t feel as though she were doing that very well. It was an enormous all-consuming task. The wages she brought in tutoring local children were hardly enough to make ends meet. Coal was the very least of their needs. There was everything else. Food. Maintaining the house. Oh, yes, and food.

  And Eton, of course. Phillip needed to finish school, and considering he was only ten and three years old, that would be some time yet. He needed to stay there if he was to have any kind of future. If any of them were to have a future.

  Cook was gone, too. Old age had prompted her to move in with her daughter and her family in Dorset. They’d replaced Cook briefly before Papa died, but after his death there had been no possibility of affording such a luxury.

  So much change. So much lost. So much gone.

  It was up to her to care for everyone. To get them through this. And they would get through it. Somehow. She’d get them over this mountain and onto the other side.

  The day her father collapsed, they not only lost him, they lost their livelihood. As the town’s only doctor, he’d been a man of modest but adequate means. They’d always had food and clothes and fripperies she would not dream of indulging in now. Now there was only deprivation. So much loss and it was unrelenting.