Page 4 of Duke of Eccess (Seven Dukes of Sin #4)

“My leg is fine, thank you,” Octavius grumbled as he moved to Sylvester to hand him a glass. “It doesn’t hurt as much as my purse anyway. That woman crossing the road and getting in my way cost me the deed to my vineyard in France. A small one, mind you, but excellent for private stock.”

“A woman?” asked Enveigh.

Octavius resumed his seat upon the sofa.

At the memory of the petite, mysterious woman he’d assumed was a harlot, his stomach gave a different sort of thrum, warming with a sense of joy and pleasure.

She’d had such a pretty face…slender, with high cheekbones, elegant and slightly pointed in shape thanks to her angular jawline and narrow chin.

She’d had full lips, large, expressive eyes framed by black arched brows, and a Cupid’s bow that begged to be kissed.

But she hadn’t hesitated to speak sharp words that had struck him straight in the heart. You race through the streets like a man running from what? Ghosts? Memories? Or are you so bored in your rich, dull life you cannot stand still for a moment?

No one had spoken such truth to him in years. Perhaps ever.

Even her slap had hurt less than her words.

And she’d been right. Achilles, his beautiful thoroughbred, had fallen. He could have killed the woman, himself, his steed, and burned down half of London with those damned fireworks shooting straight through the windows. Empty houses or not, fire spread quickly… and it would have been his fault.

Dread tore at Octavius’s insides. He couldn’t simply stop—what, give up the only things that made him feel alive? The moment he slowed down, the ghosts would swallow him whole, dragging him back into the voices, the torture, the agony of his past.

“Yes, a woman. She caused Achilles to fall, buried our friend beneath him, then ran away,” explained Sylvester.

“How is Achilles?” Octavius asked, momentarily forgetting his throbbing head. The thoroughbred had been his favorite companion for years.

“Your head groom said he suffered no injuries,” Sylvester answered, “though you showed more concern for that horse than your own ankle.”

“What about that woman?” asked Archibald. “A woman alone at night in Clerkenwell… A harlot, then?”

Sophie made herself comfortable at Octavius’s desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and began drawing. “What is a harlot?”

Oh, hell.

Sylvester stood and walked over to her, peering over her shoulder.

Octavius rubbed his cheek as the echo of that woman’s slap stung his skin. “Nothing, dearest. Gentlemen, please do remember you’re in the presence of children. Where is Miss Hammond, anyway?”

James, studying Octavius’s father’s dueling pistol displayed on the wall, shrugged. Margaret came to stand over Sophie and began helping her draw something.

“The slap that woman gave me and her indignation at the suggestion that she was…as you say, tells me she was not one,” said Octavius, sipping his cognac.

“And yet respectable ladies don’t venture outside after dark,” Irevrence observed, picking at the carving in his glass with his thumb.

“Perhaps she was about to become a harlot,” Enveigh said. “I’m certain I would have helped you determine that, had I been graced with the honor of an invitation.”

Irevrence scoffed. “You’re simply jealous, as always.”

Enveigh threw him a glare. “I would have been a better companion for the race. You don’t care about anything.”

“Whether I cared or not wouldn’t have made a difference.” Irevrence rolled his eyes.

“Yes, it would have. I would have caught her.”

Irevrence chuckled and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Yet it mattered to Octavius. Something about the woman haunted him. Perhaps her gray eyes the color of a silver sky at his most despised time of year: the weeks preceding Christmas.

“Very creative, Sophie,” Sylvester said, patting her head while she drew with ink and the paintbrush. “Those rabbits are all quite…well endowed.”

“Well endowed?” Octavius craned his neck to see her drawing and let out a deep sigh. He was such a failure. Her sweet rabbits possessed pieces of anatomy that an eight-year-old girl most certainly was not supposed to know about.

Sophie kept singing the “Frère Jacques” tune in French, except instead of the innocent “are you sleeping,” it was “ va au diable, va au diable ,” or “go to the devil.”

Octavius groaned. The current governess was under their thumbs, not the other way round.

A loud bang sounded from behind the door and a woman shrieked.

The door was flung open and revealed Miss Hammond, her cheeks red, her neat black dress bearing burns near the hem.

Her white cap sat askew and bore ink spots.

Her left eye twitched as she looked at the children with suppressed fury.

She was supposed to be strict and authoritative to keep them under control, but she was already the sixth governess they’d dismissed this year alone.

Octavius took another gulp of his cognac.

Margaret, James, and Sophie froze as they looked at her. Behind the beleaguered governess, Octavius saw a system of strings and pulleys with an inkwell swinging above the door.

“Margaret,” he hissed. That was what the little blonde she-devil liked to do—use her incredible ability to perform complex calculations to create elaborate pranking systems.

Margaret’s cheeks flushed crimson but she pushed her shoulders back, straightening her neck and tilting her head in the most dignified position. “I’m delighted to report that the experiment I conducted was successful.”

Sylvester chuckled. “I’d say so.”

“What was the goal of the experiment?” asked Archibald.

The girl beamed. “To calculate the exact angle needed for the inkwell to tip, and the timing required between the door opening and the ink falling.”

“A young lady should not devise pranks,” the governess said, her face growing redder.

James somehow had managed to obtain a glass of cognac and leaned towards Sophie, whispering, “Say the words again—the ones that made Miss Hammond drop the tea tray yesterday. Let’s see if she jumps again!”

Octavius watched James mimic his cognac-tasting with a mixture of horror and shame, though the cognac never actually touched the boy’s lips.

The boy was learning his worst habits, not his best. Octavius had pulled him out of school when his parents died and didn’t want to send him back until he was better behaved.

He’d been given the responsibility to care for these children, and he was making a terrible mess of it.

If only he knew how to be something other than what his own father had molded him to be.

If only he knew how to stop the same cycle he was passing on to innocent James.

Sophie straightened her back and said very loudly, “ Nom d’une pipe! ”

Bloody hell!

Heaven help him. Certainly not words an eight-year-old future lady of the ton should know.

Irevrence snorted. “Sophie, dearest, may I adopt you?”

Sophie grinned more broadly as desperation had Octavius’s stomach in knots. “Sylvester, not helpful!”

These three creatures were so small, so fragile, yet they made him feel utterly helpless. He’d never known happiness as a child. He hadn’t known much happiness as an adult, either—but he’d rather die than bring misery to them. So there was only one thing he could do to protect them.

Remove himself from them.

Miss Hammond gasped with such indignation that her cheeks grew even more crimson. “I—I never taught you that, Sophie! How do you know these foul words?”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “That’s nothing. I heard that French lady call his grace a—what was it? ‘A magnificent beast with the appetite of ten men’ last week.”

Miss Hammond gasped more loudly. “Margaret! Such language is absolutely?—”

But Sophie interrupted her enthusiastically. “ Taisez-vous et jetez-moi sur le lit! ”

Shut your mouth and throw me on the bed…

The governess suppressed another shocked gasp, but it was clear she was completely helpless to stop them.

No one could.

Octavius groaned internally. That was his doing, and he saw himself in every single one of them.

The mistress he kept, the cognac he drank, the liberty Margaret and her experiments were allowed—all of that was his fault.

The children misbehaved because they saw him drink.

They cursed because they’d heard his French mistress.

They applied mathematics to pranks, twisting even his attempts to encourage their education into tools for chaos.

He knew they craved attention because their parents were gone and he couldn’t give them the parental warmth they needed.

Octavius was no fool, but he had no answers, either.

He’d been raised by a monster who had chased his mother away, taking his baby sister with her, and he didn’t know how to be anything else.

Still, Octavius could do something. He snatched the cognac from James’s hand and hurled the glass into the fireplace. The crash of breaking glass and the hiss of flames as a brief burst of fire erupted did nothing to calm him.

Sophie giggled as she tucked a stray lock of honey-blond hair, so like his own, behind her ear. These children were his blood, his responsibility, and despite his inadequacies, they were his delight.

He couldn’t bear to see them like this. He needed to escape.

“Miss Hammond,” Octavius growled, barely managing to tamp down the anger and fear battling within him whilst maintaining a social mask.

“These children clearly need more structured activities to occupy their minds and expend their energy. Perhaps educational pursuits that challenge them, or physical exercise in the garden. Idle hands lead to mischief.”

He couldn’t remain idle, either, if he wanted to escape the darkness that pursued him.

Just as the mysterious woman had said last night, he was running from ghosts.

Therefore he’d do what he did best: sink so deeply into London’s pleasures that no shame, guilt, or fear could reach him. Consequences be damned.

“Enveigh, Irevrence, let’s go. Elysium awaits.”