Page 5 of Duke of the Underworld (Regency Gods #2)

CHAPTER 5

“ O h, Persephone .”

Persephone was beginning, after three days since her betrothal became formal, to have an instinctual horror to hearing her name from her mother’s mouth, particularly when she said it in that tone.

The tone that said Persephone was a wonder who had saved the entire family single-handedly.

Which was true . Persephone had gone to try to get her family out from under the Dark Duke’s thumb.

But she’d thought more that she might…get a delay on her father’s repayment schedule. And then maybe she could have sought employment as…a governess?

There weren’t actually many employment opportunities for baron’s daughters. Marriage probably would have been her route of choice. But she’d been thinking more wealthy merchant with aristocratic aspirations than a duke .

But now Persephone had somehow found herself engaged to a duke. A duke!

She was going to be a duchess . It made her feel a bit like she was going to swoon, not that she’d ever done such a thing in her life.

Still. A duchess.

It boggled the mind.

“Oh, Persephone! ” her mother sighed again as she fingered a length of French lace that the modiste had promised was the very latest thing out of Paris. A week ago, purchasing a new dress had been the thing of dreams. And even if she’d gotten a new dress anytime soon, it would have been something built for practicality, not for beauty.

And now she was shopping for French lace.

Her mother was in heaven.

Persephone…wasn’t so confident.

“Mother,” she said quietly. “Let’s just finish shopping.”

“Of course, of course, Persephone, dear,” her mother twittered. “I simply can’t believe that my daughter is going to be a duchess . A duchess! Can you even believe it?” She directed this latter comment at a woman browsing nearby, who looked startled that a strange woman was speaking to her.

More than almost anything about this situation, she hated that her mother insisted on talking about Persephone’s nuptials at top volume everywhere they went. Everyone already knew, naturally; no force on earth traveled faster than the way gossip moved in the ton . Callers had practically been banging down the door to the Fieltons’ townhouse. She’d been left with no choice but to send them all away, as the house scarcely had any proper furniture left, let alone staff to see to the guests or find food to serve them. Her father’s debts wouldn’t be forgiven until the vows were made before man and God, and even then, the duke wouldn’t replace anything the baron had already lost. It would merely save him from sinking deeper and deeper into insolvency.

The only reason she could shop for this dress was because the duke had offered to purchase something for her to wear to the wedding. Her mother had considered the gesture sweet, but it had made some long-abused pride in Persephone cringe. He wasn’t being sweet . He’d known she hadn’t anything appropriate to wear.

Such would begin her new regime as a duchess. She would be wed in a dress given out of charity.

Or maybe she was looking for trouble.

Because there had to be a catch, didn’t there? ‘

“Yes, it’s quite unbelievable,” Persephone murmured to her mother.

She suffered through the ordeal of dress shopping with her mother—the absence of which was perhaps the only thing about poverty that Persephone hadn’t minded—with as much gravitas as she could muster. This, alas, was not much, as her mother pinched her cheeks with glee six separate times.

They didn’t even manage to order the dress, either. Nothing had proven up to her mother’s standards, which was astonishing, given her lack of coin to afford standards of any such kind.

By the time they returned back to their shabby house, Persephone wanted nothing more but to collapse face first onto her bed. They could sell the house out from around her supine form. She would not be budging, not for anything.

So, naturally, she found the Duke of Nighthall waiting for her.

“Couldn’t you send a letter?” she huffed before she could think better of it.

“ Persephone!” her mother scolded.

Ah, well, as it turned out, that was worse than the gasping adoration.

She forced her best approximation at a pleasant smile.

“How good to see you, Your Grace.” It sounded like she was fighting not to choke on the words. “What brings you here today?”

Throughout all this, her future husband kept the same expression of vague, detached amusement on his face. It was a mask, but she got the sense that she was meant to see it as such—was meant to know that this veneer of civility hid some darkness beneath.

She refused to be intimidated. Refused!

But it was hard not to be when here was a duke—a young, powerful, and yes, she could admit it, handsome duke. And he, by some insane twist of fate, was set to be her husband.

Even though she was the kind of woman who left guests waiting on the stoop because there was no staff to admit them.

Still, she supposed it could have been worse. Her father could have answered the door.

“I thought,” the duke said politely in response to her less than genteel query, “that we might take a ride through the park.” He inclined his head behind him, where a neat little phaeton with a matched pair of horses ( of course he’d have the perfect conveyance, down to the twin mounts, Persephone thought wearily) waited.

Persephone very desperately wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him that she was too tired for any such excursion, but if he returned in three to six months, she might be ready by then.

She knew that wasn’t an acceptable answer even before her mother jabbed her so sharply between the shoulder blades that Persephone nearly fell on her face in front of the Dark Duke.

“It would be my pleasure,” she said, applauding herself for that passable bit of sincerity.

The duke didn’t seem convinced by this showing, but he didn’t argue, either.

“Splendid,” he said. Then he turned to the coachman of the hired hack that had brought them home. “Would you do her ladyship the courtesy of helping her unload her purchases?”

Right. Because the Lovells didn’t have any of their own servants to help. How mortifying.

“Of course, m’lord,” said the coachman at once, knowing that courtesy in this case translated to a nobleman’s coin . Indeed, the duke flipped the man a generous sum for such a neat little task.

Persephone aggressively pretended that she didn’t exist.

This neat little trick carried her through her mother gushing about the duke’s generosity, through being handed up into the carriage as her mother waved a handkerchief behind her as though Persephone were going off to war, not for a promenade, and through the ride to the park itself. The Duke of Nighthall was extraordinarily compliant in all this, letting silence hang not unpleasantly between them.

“There’s something I must discuss with you, Miss Lovell,” he said as they rounded the first turn on Rotten Row.

Drat. Well, all good things had to come to an end, she supposed.

“Yes, Your Grace?” she asked politely. Inside, however, she was a knot of nerves.

She’d been waiting for the thing that would reveal why he’d chosen her. It had to be something especially terrible. Did he have some sort of wretched disease? A passel of paramours he intended to keep in their marital home? Did he plan to dispatch her to the North Irish Sea, where she could live a lonely existence on an island somewhere, with only sheep for company?

Not that she’d let her worries grow fanciful, of course.

“I want to be honest and up front with you about my circumstances,” he went on. His tone was very serious. Perhaps her worries hadn’t been extreme enough.

“I appreciate that, Your Grace,” she said.

“I will admit,” he continued, “that I had a reason for asking for your hand—two reasons, actually.”

Two reasons? She might have been able to handle the wretched disease or the sheep, but now she might have to withstand the wretched disease and the sheep?

“I see,” she said levelly.

He took a steadying breath. “You see, my brother died several years ago.”

Oh, sweet Lord, he’d murdered his brother. He was a brother murderer. This was about fratricide.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, trying to sound like she did not suspect him a bit.

“Yes, he was in the army, and…well, France.”

Wait, what?

“He died…in the war?” she asked carefully.

“Indeed.” And, fortunately mistaking the source of her bafflement (which now seemed positively insane, even to her), he added, “It isn’t common that officers see battle, it’s true. But Norman was…honorable. Reckless, but honorable.”

“It must have been a dreadful loss,” she said, wondering what on earth this had to do with her. She wracked her mind for information about the Blackwood lineage. The current duke had inherited directly from his father, hadn’t he? Not from his brother.

“It was,” the duke confirmed, keeping his eyes on the road and his hands steady on the reins. “Particularly for his daughters. They are triplets, you see, and their mother died in childbirth. And now, they are my wards.”

Understanding hit Persephone like a wave. She nearly laughed with the relief of it, though she was pleased with herself for holding back the sound. It wasn’t the done thing to laugh at the story of a bunch of orphaned children.

“So you are looking for someone to…provide a woman’s influence to the children?” she asked.

A flicker of what looked like gratitude crossed his face, and she stifled another laugh. To think she’d been so worried—to think that he had been so worried about disclosing this that he’d led her to ever more dreadful fears!

“I am,” he said. “My sister, Daphne, has been by their sides since they’ve come into my home, but she is set to debut next year. I do not wish her to feel as though she will be leaving the girls untended if she seeks her own marriage.”

“I like children,” Persephone said.

To her, it really was as simple as that. She did like children, and had long felt it was cosmically unjust that her parents had failed to provide her with a little sibling or four. She had made do by caring for her doll so aggressively that the thing had practically worn to bits. Then, when she was too old to be dragging a dolly hither and yon, she’d begun helping out at the village school near her family’s country estate. It was the kind of charitable project that barons’ daughters were encouraged to take on, but Persephone had never let slip that she did it not out of noblesse oblige but because she simply adored those little gap-toothed smiles.

Her betrothed was watching her carefully.

“They are only six years old,” he said. “They will need many years of love and care, and you shall be the closest thing they have to a mother.”

“They’ll need a lifetime of love and care,” she returned. “People don’t stop needing affection just because they come of age.”

“That…that is quite right,” he said softly, looking at her with an even more assessing look.

“I look forward to meeting them,” she said firmly, feeling very pleased with herself. The first marital conflict, resolved before they were even wed! How efficient of her.

Then she remembered that the duke had claimed two reasons for wanting to marry her.

“And the other reason?” she asked lightly.

Her betrothed, too, seemed far less concerned about this confession, which sparked hope in Persephone.

“Oh, and I’ll need an heir, of course,” he said, his tone almost absent as he drove the horses around a rut in the road.

Persephone’s stomach plummeted.

He was right to say of course , she knew. The continuation of family lines was the whole reason the marriage mart existed. Discussions of love and happiness were secondary, no matter what any bright-eyed debutantes might insist.

So yes. Of course he needed an heir.

So why was she struggling so hard to control her breath at the reference?

“My brother’s death complicated the matter,” he said. “He was my heir previously, with a courtesy title to go with it. This meant that there were death duties when we lost him; I don’t wish to reduce the loss of my brother to a financial matter, but such duties come dear. And while I have many cousins, they are all on my mother’s side.”

Right, which meant they would not be in line for the Nighthall dukedom. Persephone tried to think about the dry practicalities to push away the squirming low in her belly.

“This means that, as of this moment, my heir is a seventy-eight-year-old man that hasn’t left Bath in over thirty years,” the duke went on. “Apparently the fellow is hale enough—he credits the healing waters with his longevity—but you can see why I might wish to tend to the matter of an heir posthaste, particularly if I’m trying to avoid another round of death duties.”

“Quite right,” Persephone croaked.

Again, she was grateful when her future husband misinterpreted her meaning.

“It shan’t beggar us,” he said, his tone almost gentle. It was at odds with the heavy expression he seemed to perpetually wear. “You shan’t find yourself in your current dire straits again, Miss Lovell. I promise you that. But it would be preferable to avoid, all said.”

“I…appreciate that,” she said. And she did, she truly did.

But it was far from her primary concern.

She was a gently bred young lady. She knew little about the mechanics of begetting an heir. Oh, she’d seen animals, certainly enough. She’d been raised in the country, after all. But she somehow couldn’t imagine that people just…stood there and let the man climb atop, as she’d seen when bulls attempted to mount cows?

No, it was too undignified, so she banished it from her mind at once.

Which left her with little information.

She knew it happened in the marriage bed, and knew that if it happened outside the marriage bed, there was scandal and shame to be had.

But she certainly didn’t know enough to warrant this… reaction. This hot, strange feeling that wasn’t quite anxiety, and wasn’t quite dread.

It was like those feelings, but if they were sort of…good instead of bad.

This, she decided, was too much to handle after a day of shopping with her mother.

“Right,” she said brightly, trying to see normal under the duke’s too-observant gaze. “I understand. Is there anything else you want me to know?”

He had better not have anything else, she thought mutinously. There were three girls, plus an heir made four. Four children. That was so very many children.

She could handle that, of course, but not if there were any further issues dividing her attention. Or if she was alone on an island full of sheep. Sheep and dozens of children.

“No,” he said, and she half crumpled with relief. “Not except—” Now she was a crumple of despair. “—for completing the arrangements.”

Oh, arrangements. That wasn’t a new problem.

“Well, I haven’t gotten a dress yet, unfortunately, but with the banns being read, there should still be time?—”

He shook his head, cutting her off.

“There won’t be banns. I’ve procured a special license. We’re to be married in one week.”