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“I prefer Mama—so much more elegant.” She chanced only a glancing look at Marcus, as if she were afraid to look at her own child. As if she couldn’t bear the sight of him.
Ten years away and he had become a hardened man—two minutes back in her presence and he was already as surly and uncomfortable in his own skin as the adolescent boy he had been when he left.
More so.
The ache where his left arm used to be wasn’t helping his mood.
Marcus took a deep breath and resolved to be himself. “Well, Mama, I reckon what prompted you to send for me was that Caius has died.”
“Don’t say died.” The teacup in her hand trembled ever so slightly. “I prefer passed away.”
“I prefer no double speak.” His decade of service had given him a taste for simplicity and the character for honesty. “When did Caius die, and how?”
“Months ago. It’s taken you forever to get here.” The dowager duchess frowned into her teacup, as if she were put out at him for not being more conveniently located than the coast of Brazil. “You’re so awfully out of fashion with that ill-kempt beard and antiquated clubbed hair.”
No mention of what else about him that was more permanently altered.
Marcus worked to keep the slow match of his temper dampened. “Fashion doesn’t matter at sea, Mama.”
“Well, now that you’re finally here, you can see to such things. Hodge is secretary.” She waved her wrist in the vague direction of the library, where the man was presumably to be found.
“We’ve met. He informed me of Caius’s untimely demise.”
“Ah.” The duchess resumed staring into her teacup. “He can sort you out and do…anything you might need done for you.”
As if his missing arm made him incapable of doing anything for himself. “I can still write a bank draft, if that’s your worry.”
Her teacup shook enough to splash hot pekoe into the saucer. “We’ll have to make an effort right away,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard him, “if we’re to have any luck a’tall before the Season is in full swing.”
“Any luck at what?” His mind was already busy toting up a long list of questions for his poor secretary—Caius had never been an attentive, dutiful sort of fellow to begin with, but if the estates had been left to their own devices for months, there was doubtless much work to be done. “Are you done in? Did Caius bankrupt the estate before going toes up?”
“Marcus!” His mother’s tone was affronted, but she finally turned to face him and meet his eyes. “Any luck at doing what I failed to do for your dear brother—finding you a respectable wife.”
2
Marcus vowed to have thing to do with such an ill-conceived plan.
He sensibly abandoned London, making all sail directly for Warwickshire—though the bumpy carriage ride across winter rutted roads made him long for the easier, well-known discomforts of the sea. But once there, he settled quietly into the ducal seat of Warwick Court, and set his mind to learning his newfound ducal duties—tillage and crop rotation and the need for outrageously expensive new lead on the castle roof.
It was all as baffling as boxhauling a frigate had once been.
But like boxhauling and tacking and wearing ship, he would learn—he would wage farm and estate maintenance with the same energy and decision with which he had hitherto waged war.
What he was not prepared to do was clash with country society’s mamas, who waged a battle as direct and brutal as Admiral Nelson ever had—the invitations for country card parties, musical evenings, and balls began to arrive withthe relentless regularity of mortar rounds from a shore bombardment.
Every morning, Hodge suggested one or another of the amusements, and every morning, Marcus would refuse. But as little as he liked it, he was a man too used to duty to shirk from responsibility, even in such aggrieved circumstances.
He silently cursed his fate and chose a winter ball at nearby Oakley Hall as the lesser of all the evils on offer, on the presumption that he might know one or two people from his youth, and that he could not be required to dance.
He would go and let them stare and arrive on their own at the conclusion that, despite being a duke, the current Duke of Warwick wasn’t marriage material.
Yet after only a few minutes of standing awkwardly by the side of Oakley Hall’s dance floor, Marcus regretted his decision.
Life was too damn precious and too damn short to spend another strangled breath—the spacious ballroom was somehow as sweltering as the horse latitudes even in February—making idiotic idle conversation.
And by conversation, he meant gossip. He did not care to hear who was sleeping with whom—especially ashewas bloody well not sleeping with anyone at the moment.
But people—and by people, he meant the wide-eyed, stammering young things the local mamas kept foisting upon him—could not seem to speak of anything more substantive. That was if they could bring themselves to speak at all. Most of them just stood there, quivering in their virginal white muslin as if they feared his empty sleeve might jump out and grab them.