Page 3 of A Duke Never Tells

CHAPTER TWO

JAMES CLAY

“That is a pile of dog shite.” James Clay, the new Duke of Earnhurst, nudged the dried-up lump with the toe of his well-polished Hessian boot.

“So it is.” Elliott Riniken sent the shite a glance that said he couldn’t fathom the excrement’s audacity at existing inside Earnhurst’s hallowed halls, then continued to the window. “No doubt missed in the confusion after your father’s death. As you can see,” he went on, gesturing at the view beyond the window, “the garden is unacceptable, as well.”

“Did he have a dog? He had a hound when I was little, but I don’t remember one since then.”

“He hasn’t owned one since I’ve known him, Your Grace. The garden, if you would?”

James sighed. “More likely fox shite, then. That window looks like it’s been open for six months, at least.”

“Alas, that would make sense, as it was approximately six months ago that Austin the butler resigned.”

“Does no one else know how to close a window, then? Footmen? Maids? I know there are people still employed here, because someone made me tea and hard-boiled eggs this morning.” Ignoring the garden discussion, James made his way out of the cluttered downstairs sitting room and back to the hallway beyond.

His father’s—and now his—man of business followed him. “It’s a very large house, Your Grace. In your father’s time, the Earnhurst Castle staff numbered thirty-seven.”

Running a hand through his hair, James resisted the urge to tug and see whether it had begun falling out from frustration and annoyance. Once it began, and if things continued as they had over the past three days, he would be bald by Sunday. “How many employees are here now?”

“Seven, Your Grace. I include myself, of course, though I’ve excluded your man as he doesn’t serve the house.”

“My man? Goodfrey? No, a valet doesn’t serve the house. I wouldn’t trust him to cook, at the least.”

“As I said.”

James could practically hear the whiskey in the drawing room calling to him, demanding to be drunk. “And I suppose next you’ll tell me that you notified me of the staff exodus some months ago, and I ignored you.”

“You replied to my missive.”

“Did I? What did I say, then? Do that.”

“I am a man who believes in gentlemanly behavior, Your Grace. I will not repeat what you wrote to me. Nor am I able physically to do as you suggested.”

Ah. That narrowed down what he’d said, at least. “Very well. You’ve made your point, Riniken. I’m a shite duke. We both knew that already. No more tours that include excremental metaphors, if you please.”

The man of business sketched a bow. “I shall do my utmost, though in our previous correspondence I can’t say you’ve responded to straightforward requests or questions, either.”

James sent him a sideways glare. “Why is it I haven’t sent you packing?”

“Because you haven’t the faintest idea where the problems at Earnhurst lie, nor do you know how to correct them.”

Riniken was right, of course, but that didn’t make the fellow’s continued presence, or his continued nagging, any more tolerable. “True enough. I suppose I’ll keep you about until you’ve caught me up, then, at which point I’ll sack you.”

“As you wish, Your Grace.” The man of business inclined his head. “While I await that blessed moment, I will supply you with a list of necessary and recommended repairs, staff shortages, missing silver- and crystalware and other valuables, broken furniture, the minimum number of horses it will be necessary to have in the stable to make the coach, curricle, and phaeton usable, the—”

“Stop.” A buzzing began in his ears as James jabbed a finger at Riniken and turned in the opposite direction. “You know what needs to be done here. You see to it, for God’s sake. I’m going to inspect the wine cellar.” More privacy down there, at least. And less to remind him of the damned mess he’d landed in. Good morning, you’re the Duke of Earnhurst now. And by the way, all the properties and all the finances are bloody bedlam. My condolences, and congratulations.

“It’s to be your home, Your Grace,” the man stated, folding his arms over his broad chest. Riniken was built like a bloody barrel of cement, all muscle and not an ounce of humor that James had ever been able to detect. “Not mine. And as I’ve informed you, I am here to see your wishes carried out. Not to make your decisions for you.”

“There are times when ‘dislike’ isn’t a strong enough term to express my feelings for you, Mr. Riniken.”

Riniken nodded. “Your father was fond of me. But I’m not here to be your friend, Your Grace.”

“Thank God for that. And I’m well aware that my father would have preferred you were his son. I would have preferred it, as well.” Just the thought of not receiving all those letters he’d subsequently had to go to the bother of ignoring left him giddy.

“Your father never said any such thing in my presence. Despite your… stubbornness, he was quite fond of you, right to the end.”

“Yes, so fond that he arranged a marriage for me without asking my opinion or even querying whether I might have already found a chit with whom I wished to spend my life.”

The limping footsteps behind him paused for a heartbeat, then resumed. “Was there someone else you would have preferred?”

“That hardly matters, does it? Lady Margaret Pinwell. She sounds like a squinty, brainless grandmother.”

“According to her father, she would be nearly twenty now, Your Grace. And she spent her debut Season in full mourning for your father. Despite her absence from the funeral—which I can hardly fault considering you didn’t appear, either—she has done her duty. I find that admirable.”

James didn’t like the implication that he’d failed to do his duty while Lady Margaret had not. “You told her that she had to do so. I wore black for six months, myself. And gray for the six after that.”

“You prefer to wear black anyway, I believe.”

“Yes, but I detest gray.” James glanced over his shoulder at the older man. Not older by much; Elliott Riniken was one-and-forty now, while he would be thirty by the end of summer. But there was a great deal more than eleven years separating them.

Riniken had served with the former Duke of Earnhurst in India and other parts east and had even taken a bullet for Richard Clay. That obvious limp said that Riniken still carried a lead ball in one knee. Well, James had been shot at more than once himself, but no one called him a hero when the shooters were the husbands of several women he might or might not have been entertaining.

“While we don’t need to be friends, Your Grace, we do need to render Earnhurst Castle livable for you and your bride-to-be, and an appropriate setting for your wedding guests. Given that she and they will arrive here in six weeks, it would be helpful if you would make some decisions rather than pointing out where the fox shite lies.”

“I’m not finished pointing things out, though. In fact, at this very moment I’m going to point out the wine cellar, and then I’m going to go down there and inspect it. Closely. You go make your lists. I’ll use them to light my cigars.”

Riniken’s jaw clenched. “As you wish, Your Grace. I will be in your study. If you do find a spare moment in your exceedingly busy schedule of pointing out things and drinking, Timothy and Randall, your junior and senior footmen—your only footmen, actually—could use your advice in the morning room. They’ve been tasked with moving the furniture so the windows can be replaced. If you still wish to have them replaced.”

“Do I wish that?”

“Two of them are broken, and a third is leaking. You ordered replacement glass shortly after your arrival.”

“Ah. Was that one of those papers you made me sign before you would go away?”

He thought he heard a faint sigh. “Yes, Your Grace. In an effort to prevent further delays where actual physical damage is occurring, I asked that you make one decision.”

“Very well, then. Carry on.”

Over the last three days James had heard a great deal of sighing. Some of it was his own, because evidently his father had been serious when he’d declared six years ago—in a rather long letter—that henceforth the old duke would be a guest in his own home, and James would be responsible for all upkeep of the house, outbuildings, and grounds. It had smelled like another manipulation, an attempt to get him to return to Earnhurst and behave himself, so he’d ignored it as he had most of the other correspondence. At least he’d read that one, though. If he hadn’t, he might have thought he’d stopped at the wrong castle when he’d arrived at this wreck earlier in the week.

For the devil’s sake, Richard Clay had allowed the house to fall apart around him while he sent letters to London demanding that his only son and heir take responsibility. Yes, the old duke had been ill for some time—far more ill than James had realized—and yes, his staff had more than likely declined to bring the duke upsetting news like the music room roof collapsing, but as a result the present state of the house was ridiculous. Unforgivable. In addition to the disaster of the music room, the west wing roof leaking in at least five different upstairs rooms, the portrait hallway and indeed the rest of the mansion badly needing fresh paint both inside and outside, there was more that he’d as yet avoided discovering.

And the state of the house was only part of the mess. His old Grace had neglected to pay his staff for at least six months because one of his London bankers had absconded for parts unknown with the necessary funds and some additional cash after falsifying and nearly setting fire to the books, he’d tangled them so badly. As a result, three-quarters of the servants had fled, most of them taking items from the house as compensation for missing wages.

None of that should have been his fault, at least not as far as James was concerned, but he’d been saddled with the consequences of it all. While he could admit that he might have—should have—left London earlier to take the reins at Earnhurst after his father’s death, firstly, he’d been in full and then half mourning for the past year, and secondly, he hadn’t wanted to. His best memory of the place was his last one, when he’d been sent off to Cambridge at age fourteen and had declined ever to return.

But he wasn’t just the Marquis of Duffy any longer, and he couldn’t keep pretending that nothing had changed. He was the Duke of Earnhurst now, and on the tail end of finally being able to put off his mourning clothes had come the realization that he was to marry in six weeks. At Earnhurst Castle.

If he’d paid more attention to Riniken’s annoying notes that had arrived at Clay House in London at least twice weekly over the past six years, he might at least have chosen to wed in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral instead, but his father had written about the marriage agreement and his desire for his son to marry at Earnhurst, and those two things had turned out to be his last damned wishes.

So, there he was, in the middle of a giant rickety house with broken and leaking windows, peeling paint, missing odds and ends up to and including furniture, holes in the roof, a dearth of servants, a nearly empty stable, a dead garden, and a man of business who clearly detested him as much as he loathed Riniken.

Ignoring the cook’s gasp as he walked past the kitchen, James picked up a candle and continued on through the far-left door, down the stairs past the cold room to the stone-lined wine cellar. The racks and racks of wine and other spirits had been beckoning him since his arrival, making this the only place in the house he’d actually wanted to go. Dust carpeted everything from the floor to the bottles, and when the candle’s flame touched a cobweb hanging above the doorframe, the strands crackled and burned away like orange webbed fireworks.

James stopped to take it all in. He’d been in the cellar before, mostly to hide from nannies and tutors, or when he stole a cigar from his father’s study and made himself sick trying to smoke it. Now, at least, he could enjoy the spoils without vomiting up his accounts.

As he reached the first rack, he selected a bottle at random and slid it free. Dust obscured the label, and he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket to clean it off. A French wine, red, of course, since that had been his father’s preference, and one that had been bottled forty-one years ago—twelve years before he’d been born. “Well. You have some potential,” he muttered, finding a corkscrew on a nearby table.

The three glasses beside the corkscrew were opaque with dust, and after he removed the cork, he wiped the mouth of the bottle with his handkerchief. Then, ignoring the time-wasting tradition of letting the wine breathe before pouring it, he tipped it up and took a long drink. “Oh, that’s… heaven.” He took another swallow.

His former Grace should be ashamed of himself for keeping such a fine vintage hidden away in the dark. On the other hand, at least nothing in the wine cellar was broken or leaking. Given the state of the house, that was rather commendable. “Well done, wine cellar,” he praised, dropping into a dusty chair, putting his feet up on the table, and tilting back the bottle again.

As he drank, he noted that the maze of racks around him had a good many empty spaces where wine should have been waiting for him. Nor did the dusty sommelier’s ledger make note of their absence. Angry former employees, he assumed—or the former sommelier, himself—had taken their wages in wine, then, since under his father’s care the missing bottles would have been replaced with additional selections.

Seeing to the wine collection was a responsibility he didn’t mind. He stood again, wiping off the labels of the bottles within reach, because he was the only one he trusted to do so without disturbing them. There were some who said he might have made a fine sommelier. In fact, he imagined he would have been quite happy to be the duke of the wine cellar, and nothing else. That, he could manage with a smile.

That paradise couldn’t last, however. He was supposed to get himself leg shackled in six weeks. Perhaps Lady Margaret Pinwell had some experience with managing a household, and she could see to all the bits and bobs while he lived in the wine cellar. Her father’s estate, Brundon Hall, was small compared to Earnhurst, however, and with her mother still living it was more likely that Lady Margaret had less experience managing a house than he did, even if her name did make her sound like an old, wig-wearing crone.

Him, married. God, what a thought. Of course, he’d realized in the back of his mind that he would have to don the wedding shackles eventually because just as eventually he would inherit the Earnhurst title—unless his father had for once done as he’d threatened and disowned him. That hadn’t happened, though, and eventually he had become duke somewhere in his twenty-eighth year, and now in his twenty-ninth he’d realized his father had finally found a way to drag him home, even if the old man had had to die to do it.

Removing his blue jacket so he wouldn’t ruin the sleeves, he continued with his work, taking time here and there, of course, to sample the stock. When his handkerchief turned black, he pulled off his cravat to use that, despite the fact that it would give Goodfrey an apoplexy over the damage to his wardrobe. If he could stay clear of Riniken long enough to drown out the urge to punch the man, he would have at least accomplished something.

“Your Grace?” The voice echoed down from the doorway. “Are you down here?”

“No,” he muttered, then cleared his throat. “I am. Go away.”

“I… that is, Randall and I, have removed the decorations from the tabletops in the morning room and put the sofa and side table into the center of the room. Mr. Riniken mentioned perhaps painting the room while we have everything shifted, but I’ve not been asked to remove the paintings from the walls or move the remainder of the furniture, and we have no paint. Do I—”

Ah, yes, the task Riniken had invented to force him to do something for the benefit of the house. Pitiful. “Yes, I can see I’m badly needed. I’ll be up in a moment,” James interrupted, finishing off the nearly empty bottle he held and then placing it on the table along with the other two he’d emptied during his cellar improvement tour. Good vintages, all three of them. He would be certain to make note of it.

He stood up, steadying himself a little with his fingertips against the tabletop, then had to wipe those off on his discarded cravat. A dirty business, being a duke.

Back upstairs he made his way to the morning room at the front of the house. The curtains had been removed, and the furniture moved away from the broken windows. With the additional light now allowed into the room, the anemic yellow tint the once light green walls had taken on looked rather like vomit. Pushing the bottom of one of the myriad paintings aside, he could clearly see its remaining outline in darker paint behind the canvas. “God, yes, paint this room,” he stated.

“Very good, Your Grace,” the younger of the two footmen said, bowing. “Where should we put the paintings? And the furniture?”

If giving furniture advice to servants would be the sum total of his responsibilities, he felt fairly well qualified, almost to the point of being insulted. “Put the rest of the furniture in the middle of the room. Stack it if you need to,” he said, demonstrating by picking up an end table and setting it upside down on the green and yellow couch. “The paintings can go into the formal dining room for now.”

“There’s no need for you to carry anything, Your Grace.” The other footman, who looked at least twice as old as Methuselah, dragged the chair from the small writing table a foot sideways, then leaned over the back of it, panting.

“Yes, but then I’d have to stand here and watch you do it.” James lifted a painting from the wall and handed it to the old footman. “Here. Dining room. And be gentle with dear Great-Grandmama Agatha. She had bad knees.”

“I recall, Your Grace.”

Now that he looked again, the old footman did look familiar. He’d seemed ancient fifteen years ago, too, the last time James had lived beneath Earnhurst’s roof. Hell, Randall had probably fetched old great-grandmama Agatha tea in her day. A knock sounded at the front door as James removed another pair of paintings, these of a dog and a horse. He didn’t know the dog’s name, though he probably had as a child. Horse paintings had been a favorite, however, and he happened to know this giant bay stallion was his great-grandfather’s—Bucephalus, named after Alexander the Great’s horse.

The knocking came again. “God’s sake,” he muttered, tucking the horse under his arm and tromping out of the morning room. Six servants, a man of business, and his personal valet he had here, and of them, no one capable of manning the bloody front door. “What?” he asked, yanking it open and stepping into the doorway.

Two young women stood before him, and for a moment he thought he must have agreed to hold a soiree there and then forgotten about it. In his shirtsleeves and with his cravat missing he definitely wasn’t dressed for one, but these women were.

No, he corrected himself, one of them was. The taller one wore a purple gown more suited for a grand ball than a… whatever this was. Christ, she practically sparkled in the sunlight. The shorter one sported a plain, pale yellow walking dress which looked much more appropriate for the setting. At least her gown didn’t make his eyes water. The young lady herself, black hair stuffed beneath a straw hat and eyes the color of a Dorset summer sky, didn’t hurt his eyesight, either. “Hello,” he said, grinning at her.

“Avert your eyes from my companion at once,” the purple one demanded, lowering the tip of her matching parasol nearly into his foot.

“You’re not so horrible, either,” James conceded, “even if you’re garbed like a peacock.”

“Good heavens! Is that how you typically greet someone arriv ing at the front door of such a grand estate? I am Lady Sophronia Frumple, and I will not be insulted by a butler who can’t even be bothered to wear his coat.”

Ah, so he was the butler, now. The day continued to deteriorate. “I’m in the middle of something very important,” James retorted, fairly certain he wasn’t hallucinating them, at least. They were both pretty, to be sure, but if this had been a dream, they would also have been naked. Especially the black-haired, yellow one, though now she seemed to be the purple one’s companion, blast it all. “What do you want? And did you say your name was Frumple? I wouldn’t name a dog Frumple. Or Sophronia.”

“Well.”

“A well? There’s one by the stable. Help yourself.” He started to shut the door.

The yellow, petite one stuck her foot in the way, and for a fleeting, memorable moment he glimpsed her ankle. “If you please,” she stated in an accent that said she had at least some education, “as she said, my employer is Lady Sophronia, daughter of the Earl of Hollister. My lady has been visiting all the grand country houses on her way to London. She wishes to see Earnhurst Castle, and we were told at the local inn that the estate is open.”

Sightseers. Lifting his gaze from her hem, James shifted the portrait of Bucephalus beneath his arm. Was this going to be part of his life now, as well? Strangers coming to look at his possessions and judge their merit? Or, because he happened to be shy a bit of his proper clothing, to assume that the new Duke of Earnhurst was actually the house’s butler?

“May we come in?” the purple lady pressed, tapping her parasol again. She was going to break the silly thing if she wasn’t careful. It struck him as odd that he wasn’t already acquainted with an attractive daughter of the peerage, because he was fairly certain he’d at least danced with every single damned one of them. This Frumple, Lady Sophronia, though, was wearing clothes that seemed somewhat… out of touch, as if they were her mother’s things. At the least the frills and rich coloring of that gown and matching bonnet overshadowed her to a ridiculous degree. He’d told her she looked like a peacock, and that description fit. Her more petite companion with her yellow plumage, then, was a tit. A couple of birds, lighting on his doorstep.

James squared his shoulders. They were birds, he was a butler, and he happened to know a broad-chested, extremely annoying rooster presently nesting in his study and making lists, endless lists, of things James was meant to decide and see accomplished. “A tour, eh? Why not?” he said, stepping aside. “Come in. I’ll show you to the duke.”

The women exchanged a glance. “The Duke of Earnhurst is in residence? We thought him still in London,” Lady Sophronia Frumple the daughter of the Earl of Hollister said, one purple-gloved hand going to her pretty purple-lace-covered chest.

“No, he’s here. Arrived three days ago. Adores guests. Follow me.”