Page 40 of Corrupting his Duchess (A Duke’s Undoing #1)

“ I am a duke, same as you,” Matthew Egelton, Duke of Seaton, said calmly.

Though his father’s voice was even, something in it made Percy, the duke’s second son, pause where he was playing beneath his father’s desk. He stopped the prancing motion of the little wooden horse—which had been carved by his father’s own hands—to look up.

The duke was, as far as Percy was concerned, the strongest, bravest, kindest, most wonderful father in the world.

Percy didn’t really know any other dukes, but he assumed this meant that his father was the best duke in the world, too.

After all, the duke was teaching Adam, Percy’s older brother, everything he knew, and Adam was, per Percy, the second-best person in the world.

Right now, though, there was something stern, even cold, in Matthew’s expression.

Percy didn’t like it.

What he liked even less, however, was the bitter scoff from the man on the other side of the desk.

“You might be a duke,” drawled the stranger, “but you are hardly the same as me. I can trace my lineage back to the Norman Conquest. And you…weren’t you planning to try your hand at making your fortune in America before your inheritance?”

The man said America like someone else might say a latrine pit .

Percy didn’t understand. He’d heard that America was very big and full of horses. That seemed nice.

But even if the stranger’s tone hadn’t made it clear that he considered this the gravest insult, the tightening corners on Matthew’s mouth would have done so. Percy’s father was not prone to easy offense.

Percy felt his own frown begin to emerge.

“Even so, Your Grace,” Matthew said. His politeness sounded like it took effort. “We are, despite our origins, now part of the ton , and?—”

The other duke cut Percy’s father off with a scoff.

“I understand why you came to me, Seaton,” the man said, practically dripping self-importance. “The Lightholders are, after all, the most prominent family in England.”

Lightholder. Percy thought he had heard that name before.

He would ask his brother later; Adam knew everything there was to know.

For now, though, he listened quietly. He wasn’t sure if his father remembered he was down here, in the dark recesses beneath the massive ducal desk, and he didn’t want to be remembered and sent packing.

He didn’t like this other man and he didn’t want to leave his father alone to face him. Egeltons stuck together, that was what Father always said.

“But,” the other duke—the Duke of Lightholder, Percy gathered—said, “the reason we are prominent, you see, is that we do not associate with…interlopers.”

There was something about the way the Duke of Lightholder paused before the word that made Percy, even at six years old, perfectly aware that the man had meant something ruder.

Maybe even a naughty word, like the one that Adam had overheard from the village boys.

Their nurse had rinsed his mouth with soap for repeating it.

If it were up to Percy, he would make this awful duke eat the whole bar of soap. He deserved it.

There was a long, terrible pause. Percy almost hoped that his father would stand up and punch this bad man. Maybe this other duke was more prominent , whatever that really even meant, but Percy knew his father was stronger. And better.

But Matthew was also a fair man, and he was forever telling Adam and Percy to solve their spats with words, not fists. So Percy was not necessarily surprised when his father let out a slow breath and forced his fists to unclench.

“I see,” he said tightly. “Very well. Thank you for your time, Your Grace. I shall seek allyship elsewhere, when it comes to taking up my seat in Parliament.”

“I wouldn’t count on finding it,” the Duke of Lightholder said.

Percy had the strangest sense that the man wasn’t even trying to be mean, like when Adam told Percy he was too little for something.

Adam usually thought he was trying to help him, even if his way of going about it always made Percy want to kick his brother in the shins.

This duke sounded the same. Like he was just sharing bad news.

“The memories of aristocrats are long, Seaton,” the other duke said. “And we keep our ledgers in blood. Yours is simply not blue enough to rank.”

“I said,” Matthew repeated tightly, “thank you for your time.”

The Duke of Lightholder sighed, as if Percy’s father were being difficult.

“Very well,” he said. “Good day, Seaton.”

It was telling, Percy felt, that his father did not wish the other duke a good day in return.

There was a bit of shuffling that heralded the other duke’s departure, a solid click as the door to the study closed, a breath?—

Bam !

Percy’s father slammed his fist down on his desk, making Percy jump and knock his wooden horses over with a clatter. Matthew pushed his chair back swiftly and looked down at his son, his expression shocked before morphing into regret.

“Percy,” he sighed, moving back even more until there was enough room for his son to scramble out from under the desk. “Come here, lad.”

Percy felt he should protest. He wasn’t a baby any longer, after all. But when his father gestured for him to climb up on his knee, Percy scrambled to comply.

The duke placed a large hand on his son’s shoulder. It was heavy, that hand, but it didn’t feel like a burden. It felt like solidity, like the ground beneath his feet, like the family history that terrible duke claimed they lacked.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that, my boy,” his father said. He bent his head toward Percy’s. “And I’m sorry you saw me lose my temper.”

Percy didn’t care about that; instead, he got to the heart of the matter.

“I did not like that man,” he said flatly.

His father let out a startled chuckle.

“Cut to the heart of it then, eh, Percy?” He chucked Percy under the chin. Percy batted his hand away more because he knew he was supposed to than because he truly minded.

His father chuckled again at this, though there was a note of weariness to it.

“No, me neither,” his father agreed. “But I daresay the Duke of Lightholder would say the same about us.”

“He thinks we aren’t as good as him.” The words left a sour taste in Percy’s mouth.

“He does not,” his father said, nodding grimly.

“But he does not know the truth. None of us are better than another. I learned that lesson at my Da’s knee, and learned it even better when, by a fluke, I gained all of this.

” He waved a hand around his grand study.

“Remember that, Percy. Never think that anyone is worse than you just because they have less than you. Do you understand?”

“Of course, Papa,” Percy said.

In the back of his mind, though, he thought that there was another lesson to be learned today.

Percy and his family might not be any better than people who had less than they had.

But he was better than snobs like the Duke of Lightholder. His father, without question, was better than the kind of man who sneered at someone because they couldn’t trace their history back to William the Conqueror.

And Percy had learned the ton had long memories. Which meant that his memory would be longer.

Percy would remember the Duke of Lightholder.

He wouldn’t forget. And he wouldn’t forgive the slight against his family, either.