The Duke's Brother Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE .

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  CHAPTER TWO .

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  CHAPTER THREE .

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  CHAPTER FOUR .

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  CHAPTER FIVE .

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  CHAPTER SIX .

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  CHAPTER SEVEN .

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  CHAPTER EIGHT .

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  CHAPTER NINE .

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  CHAPTER TEN .

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  CHAPTER ELEVEN .

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  CHAPTER TWELVE .

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  CHAPTER THIRTEEN .

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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN .

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  CHAPTER FIFTEEN .

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  CHAPTER SIXTEEN .

  .

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN .

  .

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN .

  .

  CHAPTER NINETEEN .

  .

  The Duke’s Brother

  Claudia Stone

  Copyright © 2017 Claudia Stone

  All rights reserved.

  For Ger, for all your help with Regency Romances and life in general.

  About the Author

  Claudia Stone was born in South Africa but moved to Plymouth as a young girl. Having trained as an actress at RADA, she moved to New York to pursue her dream of acting on Broadway in 1988. She never did see her name in lights, but she did meet a wonderful Irishman called Conal who whisked her away to the wilds of Kerry, where she has lived ever since.

  Claudia and Conal have three children, a dairy farm and a St. Bernard called Bob. When she has any time left over, Claudia enjoys reading Regency as well as writing it.

  Fans can write to Claudia at [email protected]

  If you would like to hear from Claudia about her new releases, you can sign up for her newsletter by clicking the link below:

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  CHAPTER ONE

  .

  The Duke of Blackmore had never much cared for the endless paperwork that holding a Ducal Seat entailed. His business affairs were looked after by Miley & Son of London, and the young Duke was happy to leave the mirthless heaps of contracts for the elderly solicitor and his offspring to read on his behalf.

  Sometimes, however, he was obliged to meet with them in person and sign his name - with a flourish - upon a dotted line.

  “Your Grace,” Old Miley said, shuffling into the dim office where Michael Robert Horatio Linfield, Sixth Duke of Blackmore sat waiting for him. The young Duke, just eighteen years of age, inclined his head by way of greeting. He was not known for his way with words.

  “I have a few leases that need to be signed by you in person. Your properties on Bond Street are being let by a Dutch bank,” Miley rasped, coughing into a grey handkerchief before going to the table and pushing the pages across to His Grace for inspection.

  “Very good,” Blackmore said curtly, picking up a fountain pen and dipping it in ink in order to autograph the pages before him, but the elderly solicitor stopped him with a wave of his hand.

  “A witness, a witness,” he wheezed, his consumptive chest gurgling; “We need a witness.”

  He shuffled to the door and let out a loud roar to summon Ted Burke, the office clerk, to witness his Grace signing the leases. With very little fuss the Duke added his signature to the page, followed by Old Miley and finally Ted Burke.

  “If that’s everything sir,” Ted said, slightly cowering in the presence of such a titled aristocrat as Blackmore; “I needs to be heading to St. Giles’ to rectify the matter of ‘is Grace’s brother.”

  “Edward?” the Duke asked with a raised eyebrow. Edward, his younger brother, was safely ensconced in Eton so there was very little bother, that Blackmore could think of, that the chap could have created in St. Giles which required Ted Burke’s rectification.

  “Er, no,” Ted said, glancing at Old Miley nervously, sensing he had done something wrong; “Your other brother: your half-brother Sebastian.”

  Michael allowed a heavy silence build, as he considered what the lowly clerk had just informed him of. The carriage clock on the desk ticked with an obscene loudness as Old Miley cleared his throat uncomfortably, loosening what sounded like an awful lot of phlegm as he did so.

  “Your father was aware of the boys’ existence,” Old Miley rasped, taking a chair as the effort of combining standing and talking became too much; “He named him Black – for he was only half a Blackmore, and he settled a twenty-pound annuity upon the brat’s mother. Which is not an inconsiderate amount of money for a woman of her ilk.”

  Michael raised an eyebrow – he had guessed that the woman was probably of the serving classes; his late father had almost made a sport of ruining the maids in his latter years.

  “If that is the case then what problem is it that now needs rectifying?” Blackmore asked, his words slow and even.

  “Well,” Ted Burke spoke now; “It’s just the young lads mother is now dead your Grace. And Sebastian Black is in effect an orphan. A man by the name of Cedric Hurst wrote to inform Mr. Miley just this very day, and I’m going to go an’ take the young lad to the workhouse.”

  “The workhouse?” Michael raised an icy eyebrow.

  “Well we can’t leave ‘im to starve in St. Giles’ your Grace,” Ted replied hesitantly, looking to Old Miley for direction; “It’s no place to leave an orphaned boy alone.”

  The Duke of Blackmore wanted to snap at the man that workhouse also wasn’t a place that one would abandon an orphan to – especially one which shared his blood – but as often happened when he was overwrought, he opted for the shorter sentence.

  “Bring me to him.”

  The Duke stood and waited for Ted to recover from his shock, before following the smaller, balding gentleman out of the office and to Blackmore’s carriage, which was waiting for him on Bond Street.

  The huge, black oak vehicle – with its liveried footmen and four bay geldings - drew a crowd from the tenement dwellings of Divinity Lane when the Duke and Ted arrived in St. Giles’, a half an hour later.

  “It’s the King,” one little boy said, his awe filled gaze following The Duke as he alighted the carriage, followed by Ted Burke, who looked rather small and insignificant beside him.

  “It’s not the King you dolt,” someone else jeered; “It’s The Duke of Blackmore – can’t you tell from the crest on the door?”

  A chorus of greetings, haphazard bowing and curtsying met the Duke, who waved impatiently at the crowd.

  “I need to speak with Cedric Hurst,” he said, and the crowd stepped backward, clearing a path for him to the door of number eighteen Divinity Lane. There was nothing divine about the accommodation arrangements; the house was three stories, with a sagging roof and a rickety wooden staircase that offered its climbers very little confidence in their safe passage.

  Cedric Hurst lived on the third floor, in a single room that acted as bedchamber, kitchen and privy. He was a small man who had spent most of his life at sea, until a storm off the coast of Cornwall cost him his right leg, well the bottom half of it anyway. His quarters were scrubbed clean as any ships deck, and he was suitably unimpressed by the arrival of a Duke.

  “Mother was an Irish lass,” Cedric said plainly, as he hobbled across the landing to the only other room on the third floor; “Nice woman, prone to bouts of melancholy but she looked after the lad well enough.”

 
; Michael nodded, wondering what “well enough” entailed in an area like St. Giles’, where simply bringing your child to adulthood alive was considered good parenting.

  “A fever took her very quickly,” Cedric continued, in quieter tones as they paused at the door; “There were no money for a grave so the pauper’s cart took her off – and I was going to have the poorhouse come fetch ‘im ‘till I read the letter from Mr. Wiley. He wrote her annually, and she saved every letter he sent, so I assumed there might be someone else with responsibility for the lad.”

  “Good thinking,” Michael said absently, waiting for the man to open the door so he could meet the young Sebastian. He had no idea what to expect – his younger brother Edward, who was fair and pale, looked nothing like him – so when the door was opened by a young boy of twelve, who could have passed for the Duke in his younger days, Michael felt as though he had been kicked in the gut.

  “What do you want?” the boy asked, glaring accusingly at Cedric Hurst and distrustfully at Blackmore and the nervous Ted Burke.

  “This ‘ere is the Duke of Blackmore,” Mr. Hurst replied, ignoring the young boys’ protests and pushing past him to the room beyond; “He said he’s your brother, and he’s going to look after you now yer ma is gone”

  “I ain’t got no brother.” Sebastian Black cast the Duke a look of disdain.

  “Oh but you do,” Michael replied calmly; “In fact you have two – you shall meet Edward when you arrive at Eton.”

  Before he had spoken, Michael had no idea what he would do with the shorter, younger version of himself, albeit a version that looked like a thief and a hooligan – but once he had finished his sentence he knew that sending Sebastian to Eton was the only course of action he should take.

  “I ain’t going to no school for toffs,” Sebastian said darkly, kicking the Duke in the shin and running towards the door.

  The wooden leg of Cedric Hurst halted his progress, sending young Sebastian Black sprawling to the floor.

  “Oh yes you are,” the older man said grimly; “You know how many orphaned street Arabs there are in London boy? Thousands. This here Duke is offering you an education and a chance to make something of yourself.”

  “I don’t want to make anything of myself,” the young boy protested from his position on the floor. It was only the tears glistening in his eyes that stopped Michael from giving his brother a sound hiding for his cowardly attack – he must remember that the poor boy was only recently bereaved.

  “Plenty of boys have gone to Eton and not made anything of themselves, let me assure you,” Michael said dryly, reaching down to lift the boy to his feet; “So please don’t worry if you have no future ambitions, you’ll meet plenty more of your kind in Eton. Come, let us away.”

  With a short word of thanks to Cedric Hurst and instructions to Ted Burke to inform Old Miley that all bills from the school should be paid in full, they were away. The drive from London to Windsor took up most of the day and dusk had fallen by the time the pair arrived at the prestigious boys’ school.

  “Doubtless the other boys will tease you for your accent and for being a bastard,” Michael said absently as they neared the top of the drive; “But I am sure that you are more adept at fighting than they, and far more skilled. If anyone gives you any trouble simply clock them in the eye – that’s what I did.”

  This was the only paternal advice that the Duke offered to young Sebastian as he entered a new world of structured education. After a twenty-minute wait outside the headmaster’s quarters – where Sebastian heard the old man protest about standards and lineage, before the clunk of a large bag of coins being thrown on the desk silenced him - he was brought to his new living quarters. The dormitory was in darkness due to the late hour, but once the servant who showed him to his new bed disappeared, the eyes of the eleven other boys opened.

  “What do we have here then?”

  The voice that spoke was cruel and cold, remarkably so for a twelve-year-old. Sebastian kept his mouth shut and began to change into the night-rail that the headmaster had provided – the Duke having promised to send a trunk of clothes the next day.

  “Did you not hear me?” the boy in the bed opposite Sebastian spoke again, this time rising from his bed and coming to stand before him. Sebastian was momentarily nervous, despite having led a gang of reprobate youths in St. Giles against far tougher opponents. The very vowels the boy spoke with dripped with money and privilege. The light of the moon peering in the window as he approached illuminated his adversary’s face, and Sebastian could see he had the cruel sneer and high colouring of the aristocracy.

  “I ‘eard you.”

  Sebastian let a silence gather as the whole room registered his accent. The air was thick with tension as eleven boys realised that their new room-mate was an impostor. A poor, East End impostor.

  “Good God man,” his opponent spoke again in disgust, and Sebastian felt the tips of his ears burn with shame; “What gutter did that accent spawn from?”

  He could have lied. He could have named a more gentrified parish than that of St. Giles’, but pride wouldn’t allow him.

  “The Seven Dials, you pompous prig,” Sebastian replied with a guttural growl before swiftly headbutting his tormentor in the face. The ominous crack of shattered cartilage stilled the air in the dormitory.

  “My nose, you’ve broken my nose!”

  The shrill cries of Alfred Von Huntington, heir to the Baronage of Bristow and Sebastian’s nemesis for the next five years, woke several of the school’s masters. Not an hour after becoming an Etonian, Sebastian found himself being dragged back to the headmaster’s private quarters by the scruff of his neck.

  “Another miscreant?” the headmaster Mr. Purcell, a balding man approaching his sixtieth year, snarled as Sebastian was deposited roughly before him. Another boy his own age stood before the headmasters’ desk, his face petulant; he was obviously the other miscreant.

  “Caught brawling in the first-year dormitory Sir,” the Latin school-master said wearily; “Looks like he broke Von Huntington’s nose.”

  Mr. Purcell’s considerable jowls quivered with anger as he took in the unruly pair of students before him.

  “Outside!” he roared and chased the pair outside of the school building and into the gravel courtyard.

  “You are both to stay here,” the headmaster threatened; “In this exact spot and think on what you have done. When I think that you are suitably repentant then I shall let you back in.”

  The headmaster turned on his heel and marched back to his living quarters, leaving the two young boys shivering outside in dark September night, their night-rails providing little protection from the cold.

  “What did you do?”; once a suitable amount of time had passed, and the spectre of Headmaster Purcell had faded, the other boy turned to Sebastian curiously.

  “I broke the nose of a boy called Von Huntington,” Sebastian replied with bored tones – was that not exactly what the Duke had instructed him to do?

  “Oh good sport,” Sebastian’s companion looked pleased; “Can’t stand the little weasel.”

  “What did you do?” Sebastian asked surveying his companion. They were of a similar age, though the boy had nearly a foot on Sebastian.

  “I got caught pilfering in the kitchens,” came the irritated reply; “I’m a growing lad and the slop they call supper here wouldn’t fill a street Arab’s belly. And now I’m to stand outside in the cold all night as punishment for needing nourishment. It’s a ridiculous way to treat a Marquess.”

  Sebastian raised his eyebrows – he had never met a Marquess.

  “It’s supposed to build character, mind you,” the Marquess added hesitantly, sensing that perhaps he had sounded rather pompous.

  “What’s character building about standing in the cold?” Sebastian asked scornfully; “Where’d you say the kitchen was?”

  “I didn’t,” the Marquess replied; “And they’ll have the doors and windows bolted shut, now t
hey know there’s a thief about.”

  “I don’t think they’re prepared for a proper London thief though,” Sebastian said with a smirk. He may not have learned to conjugate Latin verbs, or recite French poetry during his schooling on the streets of St. Giles’, but if there was one thing Sebastian Black could do it was break in somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.

  And so the next morning Sebastian and his new friend Gabriel Livingstone, Marquess of Sutherland were found, not in the courtyard where the headmaster had left them, but in the kitchens, their bellies full of stolen cakes. The incident earned both boys a sound whipping which cemented a friendship that would last throughout their time at Eton, and transcended the vast class divide in their formative years.

  Sebastian quickly assimilated to the rules and structure of the school day – he was a quick study and with a small amount of effort was soon top of his class in everything bar Latin. His accent lost its harsh East End notes and he soon spoke with the clipped, bored tones of the aristocracy. On the outside the handsome, dark haired, blue eyed boy looked just the same as his fellow classmates, but they never ceased to remind him that he was different. Taunts of “Pauper” and “Bastard” followed him through his five years of schooling, and while his tormentors were met with a bloody nose or lip, Sebastian never managed to punch away his sense of not belonging. This feeling followed him back to St. Giles’ – where at his instance he spent the summer lodging with Cedric Hurst and not at Blackmore House. The grimy back-alleys and laneways of the Holy Land had always been his home, but now he felt out of place here too. His clothes were clean and new, he had grown several inches taller than his peers due to his stable diet, and he spoke – as he was often reminded – like a toff. All throughout his teenage years Sebastian fought valiantly against the doubt and uncertainty that was growing within him, until:

  “China?”

  Gabriel Livingstone raised his eyebrows thoroughly shocked by his best friends’ plans.