A Second Chance With a Duke Read online

  "I have no qualms with living in town," she replied, head held high, "If there is nothing else that concerns me, Mr Davidson, then I will take my leave to begin packing."

  "There is nothing else," Mr Davidson confirmed, shuffling the pages in his hands restlessly. It was evident that the solicitor had found the last few minutes rather uncomfortable, for his lined face was red with embarrassment. With a polite smile to Davidson and a cool glance to her brother-in-law, Katherine quickly took her leave.

  There was an urgency to her steps as she made her way from the library toward the stairs; she wished to pack her belongings and be gone before Anthony found any way to impede her departure. She was certain that he would forbid her the use of Charles' carriage, or invent a caveat of some sort that might prevent her leaving and allow him time to attempt a seduction. The thought of him acting on his lecherous suggestion made her shudder with revulsion, and she quickly picked up her pace.

  Her progress, however, was suddenly impeded as Toby, reeking of alcohol, emerged from the drawing room into the hallway. His face was twisted into a mask of faux-concern and it was obvious that he had been waiting for her.

  "How did it go?" he asked, with narrowed eyes.

  "Well enough," Katherine replied, allowing the irritation that she felt to make its way into her tone. She knew that the only interest Toby felt was self interest, and that he cared only for how Charles' will might affect him.

  "Did he leave you Rose Cottage?" Toby continued, ignoring her obvious reticence to discuss what had taken place.

  "N-no," Katherine stammered, unable to lie, "He left me a residence in London."

  "London?"

  From the disdain in Toby's tone, one might have been forgiven for thinking that he had confused London with Mongolia. A contemptuous snort thusly followed, causing Katherine to bristle with annoyance. Who was he to scoff at a London home, when he had been forced to sell his own only last year?

  "It's out of the question that you would live in London," Toby continued, adopting a brotherly air, "I insist that you return to Harrington Hall with Mama and I, in the morning. It would not be proper for a female to live alone in the city. Tell me, did he leave you a generous jointure?"

  His insistence on her returning to Harrington Hall had little to do with concern for propriety and more to do with concern for his finances, Katherine deduced. She knew that her brother wished to have her under his roof so that he could plunder what little money Charles had left her, but she would not give him the opportunity.

  "Charles left me with enough to live comfortably," Katherine replied, evasively, "The actual amount is none of your concern, dear brother, nor is the matter of where I decide to live. As a widow, I may take up residence where I wish; I am not a green-girl, but a woman of almost thirty. Thank you for the offer of accommodation, but I am afraid that I must flatly refuse."

  Toby was visibly surprised by the force with which she delivered her speech, used as he was to meek acquiescence from his brow-beaten sister. His face—already slack from alcohol—dropped even further, and his pudgy lips parted into an "O" of shock. Toby recovered quickly however, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully as he tried to work out how best to proceed.

  "Think of Mama," he finally said, as he settled upon guilt as the best means of convincing her to bend to his will. "You saw just today how bad her attacks have become. When she learns that you wish to live alone in town, it might finish her off completely."

  A sarcastic retort tempted Katherine's tongue, but she bit down on it; though selfish, Toby and Lady Harrington were the only family that she had and it would do no good to burn her bridges to them completely.

  "Mama knows that I have done my duty to my family," Katherine replied, consciously echoing the words that Lady Harrington herself had used, nearly a decade before, when she had convinced Katherine that she must wed Charles for the sake of the family name. "I have served you well, Toby, but I shall serve you no further."

  With that, Katherine swept past her startled brother, toward the entrance hall. She took the runners two at a time in her haste to reach her bedchamber, and it was only when the door was shut firmly behind her, that she allowed the tears of grief and rage to flow.

  A decade worth of sorrow poured from her eyes and blindly she flung herself down upon the satin counterpane which covered her bed, racked by sobs of mourning. Oh, she was not grieving for the husband she had just buried, but rather for the years that had been taken away from her when she vowed to be his wife. Her hopes, her dreams, the boy that she had loved, all lost to Charles for the sake of a family name that her brother had still managed to ruin, despite her bodily sacrifice.

  After a few minutes of indulgent sorrow, Katherine felt her body still, as her juddering sobs came to an end. Her tears had expunged her sorrow, leaving her with a renewed sense of purpose; she may have lost ten years of her life to Charles, but every day that would follow this belonged to her, and her alone.

  She stood up from the bed and began to pace the room, idly making a note of the things that she wished to take with her. A knock at the door interrupted her mental inventory taking, and she frowned with annoyance as she called out for her visitor to enter.

  "Begging your pardon, my lady," Mary, her long-serving housekeeper, said as she entered, "But I just wished to check on you. His lordship and his Mama are locked into the drawing room, the new Lord Atwood is locked in the library, and no one had seen sight nor sound of you in quite some time."

  Mary's words were delivered with a soft Cornish accent, and her equally soft eyes showed concern for her mistress. Mary had been employed by Katherine's mother, many moons ago, and had then followed the late Lady Harrington's daughter to Atwood Manor. The housekeeper had been the closest thing to family for Katherine during her long years at the manor, and their relationship went far beyond that of mistress and servant.

  "Forgive me, Mary," Katherine said, ushering the older woman inside and gesturing for her to close the door, "I needed a few minutes alone to gather myself before I spoke with anyone. It appears that we will not be headed to Rose Cottage after all, but rather to London."

  Mary listened, horrified, as Katherine recanted the tale of Charles' last humiliating blow, and gasped as Katherine revealed just whose house it was she had inherited.

  "The dirty blighter," Mary muttered ominously, as Katherine's tale came to an end, before she caught herself and apologised for her profanity.

  "No need to say sorry," Katherine replied with a laugh, "I can assure you that I was uttering similar oaths myself."

  "Well, at least in London you can put the past behind you," Mary continued, "Tell me, my lady, when do we leave?"

  Katherine was touched by the housekeeper's loyalty, but felt the need to point out that a move to London might be bothersome for Mary, what with a decrease in the number of staff under her command.

  "Of course there'll be less staff," Mary said with a sniff, "For it's a smaller house, which means less work. You don't honestly expect me to stay here and run a house FOR that man, do you?"

  Katherine took the housekeeper's hand and squeezed it, hoping to express the gratitude which filled her, which she could not put into words for fear she would be rendered a blubbering mess.

  "I'll have one of the chamber maids come up and help you pack your things," Mary said, her voice rather husky as though she too was holding back tears. "I'll have Mr Stockton ready a carriage and five for the morning and tell him not to breathe a word to anyone. We shall set off after breakfast..."

  Mary trailed off, as though there were more that she wished to say.

  "What is it?" Katherine asked, familiar enough with the housekeeper to know when she was holding something back.

  "La!" Mary gave a groan of annoyance at her own transparency, "I did not want to tell you tonight, with everything else that is going on, but you'll hear the news soon enough."

  "What news?" Katherine probed, for despite her admission that she was hiding something, Mary
still seemed reluctant to speak.

  "I heard it from Mr Davidson's driver, who was taking a cup of tea in the kitchens," Mary began, " That the Duke of Elsmore was killed only yesterday in a carriage accident."

  Katherine gasped; Michael's father was dead? For the first time in years, she allowed herself to picture the boy she had once loved with all her heart, and she was filled with grief for her old friend's loss.

  "That's not all," Mary continued, now casting a worried look at Katherine, "His Grace's eldest was in the same carriage; it was thought that he would live, but he passed away only this morning."

  If Katherine had been surprised before, she was now paralysed with shock. If Elsmore and his son, Philip, who had held the courtesy title Marquess of Snowdon, were both gone, then it could mean only one thing...

  "Word has been sent to the new duke," Mary confirmed, her lined face creased even further with worry for Katherine, "It is thought that he will resign his commission and return to England at once."

  Silence fell between the two women, as Katherine allowed the enormity of Mary's news to sink in. Michael, the boy who had held her heart for so long, would soon return to English soil after a decade spent fighting in Wellington's army.

  For a moment, Katherine allowed a long forgotten emotion to take hold of her; hope. Perhaps they would meet again and things would be as they were, she thought, longing to see her friend and feel his warm embrace. The image of Michael with his arms wrapped around her, holding her close, filled her with an aching need so strong it was almost painful.

  Stop that, she chided herself, as the practical part of her took hold. There would be no loving embraces from Michael. In fact, she would be lucky if he did not give her the direct cut should their paths cross—though she knew that she would deserve it if he did.

  A decade ago, Michael had left for the peninsula promising to return in a year to marry Katherine, the girl he had loved since childhood. She in turn had promised to wait faithfully for him, had promised to love him always...

  And not three months after he left, you wed another, Katherine reminded herself with a wry smile. True, the circumstances of her marriage to Charles were hardly of her own making and her acceptance of his proposal had been coercively extracted from her, but Michael did not know that. Nor would he ever learn that her betrayal against him had stemmed from her family's betrayal of her, for what was the point. She had said yes to Charles, despite her promises to Michael, and nothing could erase that fact.

  To imagine that any man—let alone a duke—would willingly fall back into the arms of a woman he believed to be fickle and perfidious was laughable. It was even more comical when one added Katherine's advanced age and barren womb into the mix.

  Michael would return, marry some green-girl, fresh out of the schoolroom, and immediately set about making the heirs his title required. It was the natural order of things and it would be foolish to hope otherwise.

  Luckily, Katherine was quite adept at quashing hope—having had much practice during the course of her marriage—and she simply shrugged in reply to Mary's worried look.

  "I will pray for the souls of His Grace and Lord Snowdon this evening," she said simply, "And for the safe return of the new duke. Now, we'd best get to work Mary, if we are to be gone by the morrow."

  With a tight smile to the housekeeper, Katherine set to work; there was much to be done and ruminating over the past would not help. Thankfully, forgetting her worries was easy once she became absorbed in the task of packing.

  There was little she could thank Charles for, she thought wryly as she filled her portmanteau, but if nothing else, he had thought her how to bury all her feelings, until she felt nothing at all.

  Chapter Two

  Six Months Later...

  Michael James Anthony Carville, Seventh Duke of Elsmore, tried valiantly to keep his eyes open as he sat upon the hard wood benches of the House of Lords. Parliament had resumed just that week and determined to do right by the title he had unexpectedly inherited, Michael had been attending each daily session with his unwilling companion, Lord Deverell.

  "Wake up, Jack," Michael said drolly, as he elbowed his snoozing friend in the ribs, "It's over."

  "What, already?"

  Michael ignored his friend's tone of sarcasm, concentrating instead on his backside, which ached after two hours of sitting on hard wood.

  "Would it kill them to provide a cushion or two?" Jack grumbled, a pained look upon his face as he rubbed his own posterior.

  "If our country wishes us to suffer, then suffer we shall and without complaint," Michael replied to his friend with an army saying, a saying had carried a heavier meaning in the field of battle than it did in the plush House of Lords. An uneasy feeling stole over him, as he imagined what his old comrades were enduring whilst he was grousing about a sore behind, and he was immediately filled with shame. Since his return to England, discomfiture at the trappings of his new position had been a constant companion. He had never imagined himself inheriting his brother's title, nor had he ever wanted to. The fact that he was now one of the wealthiest men in England did not bring him any happiness, only guilt and a sense of unease.

  Why him, when Philip had been the perfect man to hold the title? Why him, when the men that he had fought alongside were still battling against Napoleon's forces?

  "Lud, man," Jack gently chided, "Either you were deeply moved by Lord Helestine's missive on taxation, or you have drifted away on me again."

  Michael had always believed that there were two people on earth who truly understood him, and of those two people, only Jack remained. He had been a steadfast friend since their first day together at Eton, and even a decade of intermittent contact had not changed that. When Michael had docked at Dover, on that miserable October day, Jack had been there to greet him and they had fallen into easy conversation, as though it had been ten minutes since they had last met and not ten years. If, during the course of their conversations, Michael's mind drifted back to the fields of Salamanca or Talavera, his friend understood that it was not aloofness that made him quiet, but despair.

  "I have never known a man to be fluent in bureaucratese," Michael joked in reference to Lord Helestine's speech, which had been a masterpiece in pointless verbosity and jargon.

  "Well, it's only your first week in the House," Jack replied, a grin stretching across his handsome face, "There's plenty of wind-bags for you to meet yet, all fluent in Governmentese, Officialese and any other language of officialdom that you can think of. What say you to a quick snifter of something to bolster our spirits for the afternoon?"

  Drinking whilst the sun still shone was another aspect of aristocratic life that still did not sit well with Michael, though when he and Jack reached White's—their club of choice—he saw that it sat rather well with other titled gentlemen.

  "Appleby is foxed," Jack noted, as they took a seat at the club's famous Bow window.

  Michael glanced over in the direction of Jack's gaze and saw a cluster of young men, all well into their cups, gathered around one particularly loud and obnoxious chap of about twenty. The men were howling with laughter at some anecdote that Appleby was recanting, their faces all red from the exertion of drinking. The sight of the half dozen healthy and hearty young men wasting an afternoon on louche behaviour aroused annoyance in Michael. Didn't they know that at that very moment, there were men their age, and younger, risking their lives for their country whilst they spilled brandy down their silk waistcoats?

  "Oh, to be so young and foolish," Jack said gently, as though reading Michael's thoughts, "The older I get, the more I realise that youth is wasted on the young."

  "Not all young men waste their time," Michael replied darkly, as he signalled for a liveried footman to fetch them some drinks, "Just some."

  "True," Jack smiled across at him, "Perhaps you should propose a bill obliging all young men of the ton to immediately join up after Oxford, thus saving a generation from misspending their summer years."
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  Michael snorted before offering his friend an apologetic glance; he must seem an awful bore to the light-spirited marquess. Not to mention that Lord Deverell had probably spent his first years out of Oxford carousing like the gentlemen before them. Michael was in no position to judge anyone, his ten years in the army had not been inspired by patriotic duty, but rather a dull melancholic notion that there was nothing left for him in England to which he could return.

  "Lud. I have grown cantankerous in my old age," Michael conceded, forcing himself to ignore the cries and whistles of the boisterous young bucks and focus instead on his friend.

  "You're not quite as bad as Colonel Matthew's," Jack answered, referring to the old Colonel who daily took up residence in the Queen Anne chair in the corner of the club and shouted obscenities at anyone unfortunate enough to wake him by mistake, "And watch who you're calling old; as your senior by a month, I take umbrage with that notion."

  "Do you recall when we believed that being one-and-thirty was akin to having one foot in the grave?" Michael questioned and Jack winced comically.

  "La! I thought anyone who had passed thirty was old and insipid," he agreed, flashing a bright smile, "Now that I have passed it myself, I feel thirty is rather youthful. Tell me, have you seen Shufflebotham of late? Now, there's a man who is running to fat in his later years."

  Jack launched into a monologue on poor Shufflebotham, who had always been rather generously proportioned, even at Eton, before continuing to speak of other mutual acquaintances he had run in to since his return to town. Michael allowed his mind to wander slightly as his friend spoke, nodding and laughing in the appropriate places, so that Jack would not suspect his thoughts were elsewhere.

  It was soothing, to sit in a warm room sipping brandy whilst the words of a friend washed over him, but still a sense of guilt pervaded. He had spoken with other men who had bought out of their commissions, and knew that what he felt was not unusual. It was difficult, after the horrors of war, to settle back into the mundane, gentle flow of days. It was even more difficult to forget the men left behind.