Page 3 of Duke with a Debt (Wicked Dukes Society #2)
CHAPTER 3
H e had almost kissed Rosamund.
What the devil had he been thinking?
Stuart was still chastising himself for his own stupidity the day after Brandon’s ball as he stalked toward his sleeping brother, pitcher of water firmly in hand. Wesley was sprawled on one of the few remaining pieces of furniture in his barren library, booted feet crossed at the ankles, wearing clothing that was at least three days old, snoring loudly enough to wake the dead. The whole bloody room smelled of sour spirits, sweat, and dirty boots.
He hadn’t been thinking, and that was a problem. He needed to remain calculated and collected if he was to persuade Rosamund to marry him. She was balking at the notion—and far too much for his peace of mind. He couldn’t go about kissing her in gardens or performing any of the other acts that might have accompanied those kisses and about which he would absolutely not think just now on account of the snoring, drunken wastrel he was about to wake.
Stuart stopped before his brother, watching him for a moment. When Wesley slept, it was the only time he wasn’t reaping more debts he couldn’t pay or getting himself thoroughly soused or causing some other manner of mayhem. There was a dark bruise beneath his brother’s left eye and a split above his upper lip.
A drunken fight of some sort, no doubt.
Or perhaps Wesley had bedded another man’s wife, and the fellow hadn’t been impressed. Whatever had happened to him, his brother wasn’t dead, which was what Stuart often feared when Wesley disappeared for days at a time. He was alive and breathing and snoring on Stuart’s Grecian couch instead of lying in a ditch somewhere, a bullet or a blade in his back. But whilst the initial relief had been strong at being informed that Wesley had returned relatively unscathed and was presently inhabiting the library , as Fleetwood had so politely phrased the situation, all such comfort had gone. Fury was its omnipresent replacement.
Stuart lifted the pitcher over his brother’s head and tipped it. Liquid poured from the spout, sluicing over Wesley’s greasy blond hair. His brother came to life with a snort and a howl, spluttering on water.
“What the bloody hell, Stuart?” he demanded furiously, shaking like a soaked dog emerging from an unwanted bath.
Droplets sprayed all over the threadbare Axminster.
“Wake up,” he said without sympathy.
“Fuck you,” Wesley growled. “I am awake. And thoroughly goddamned sopping.”
“At least you’re alive,” he said, unmoved by his brother’s ire. “Where have you been these last few days?”
He could imagine, of course, but usually, reality was so much worse, and Stuart preferred to know what he was dealing with when it came to Wesley.
“I was having a run of good fortune, if you must know,” Wesley said, dashing more water from his eyes. “I won a thousand pounds.”
Whenever Wesley won, he neglected to take into consideration the many thousands of pounds he’d lost over the years in the name of securing that futile victory. It was the disease of the gambler, to forever be chasing that ever-elusive luck, the one hand of cards or roll of dice that would make his every sacrifice worthwhile.
Only, too often, that halcyon moment never arrived.
“You haven’t the funds to gamble,” he reminded his brother grimly.
And meanwhile, Stuart had depleted his coffers of what he had gleaned from the Wicked Dukes Society. Not that it signified. Nothing stopped Wesley from doing whatever the hell he wanted, regardless of how damaging it was to those around him.
“I’ve funds aplenty,” Wesley countered. “How do you think I won the thousand quid?”
“One of the few acquaintances you have remaining whom you haven’t yet beggared?” he guessed unkindly. “Or perhaps you’re selling yourself as a stud to unsuspecting widows.”
Wesley’s eyes narrowed, and he shot to his feet, a bit unsteady. “I’m not a whore, you pompous prick.”
Stuart shrugged. “You’ve already sold your soul. I was merely thinking of what could be left of value that you might pawn.”
Wesley’s lip curled as he swayed drunkenly to his right. “You haven’t an inkling of what it’s like, standing there, the Duke of Camden, so damned smug. Three years’ difference, and I would be in your shoes. An accident of birth has kept me from all that should be rightfully mine.”
Stuart couldn’t help but to think of another for whom three years had made a great difference. Rosamund could assume the role of an icy queen all she liked, but he had seen hints of vulnerability hiding just beneath her emotionless facade. She had been suffering in the wake of Wesley’s betrayal. It had left her reeling.
But that was often the way of the world. The victim was left to pay the price for the crime visited upon them, whilst the criminal could blithely carry on with life.
He held his brother’s bloodshot gaze. “I do know what it’s like to be the elder brother, forced to shoulder your debts and pay for your exploits and to soothe Mother’s fears whilst you’re gallivanting about London, whoring and gambling and Christ knows what else.”
“Ah, yes, our sainted mater.” Wesley stumbled to the sideboard, presumably searching for spirits when more was the last thing he needed. “How is the old bird today, hmm? Still hiding in her chamber like a frightened mouse?”
Their mother was not well, and she hadn’t been for years. His brother’s casual insults stung on her behalf. Stuart longed to stalk across the library to grasp Wesley by the back of his rumpled coat and shake the devil out of him before tossing him into the street.
Instead, he remained where he stood, flexing his fingers at his sides, forcing himself to maintain the pretense of a calm he was incapable of feeling. “Mother is as well as can be expected. She worries over you and wishes you would pay her a call.”
Wesley laughed bitterly. “She’s never given a damn about the spare. She only ever loved the heir.”
That wasn’t true. Their mother loved Wesley, and with a dedicated determination and unwillingness to see any of the villainy within him that sometimes made unwelcome surges of jealousy eat Stuart up inside.
“She loves you,” he continued, balling his hands into impotent fists. “It would do her spirits some good to see you.”
“It would do her spirits some good to get out of that fucking room,” Wesley returned snidely, swiping his arm through empty crystal glasses and sending them crashing to the floor. “Where the hell is the brandy?”
“Gone,” he said, pleased with himself for finally deciding to remove all sources of temptation from the town house. “You drank the last of it, and we haven’t money for more.”
“Then I reckon my thousand pounds will have to fetch me some. I’m ill. I need my medicine.”
Brandy was no panacea for Wesley. He’d been getting deeper into his cups every night. His dissipation was beginning to show on his face and around his middle.
“You drank too much,” he said curtly. “Again.”
“On the contrary. I didn’t drink enough , and that is why I feel like donkey shite.” His brother waved an arm in the air and stumbled into the half-empty bookshelves.
“You look worse than it,” he couldn’t help pointing out. “You need breakfast, some sleep, and a bath, Wesley.”
“Oh, do I? Thank you, wise brother duke, for telling me.” He leaned against the shelves, presumably to keep from toppling to his arse. “I’ll come to you for counsel on my life when you seek me out for advice on how to keep the woman you love from sucking your brother’s cock.”
The dull anger that had been growing within Stuart raged into a roaring blaze. It took every modicum of restraint he had to keep from leaping across the room like a wounded animal and throttling his brother.
“Do not speak of it,” he warned.
“Or what?” Wesley grinned. “You’ll stop paying my debts? You’ll toss me into the street? We both know you won’t.” He pushed away from the shelves, his face turning white as he did so. “Fucking hell, I think I’m going to retch.”
It would serve him right, but Stuart’s domestics were spread painfully thin. The maid would already have to clean up the broken glasses. He had no wish to ask her to clean up his brother’s vomit as well.
He closed the distance between himself and Wesley in a few hasty strides, thrusting the empty pitcher forward. “Use this. We can’t afford to replace the carpets.”
“How kind of you, brother,” Wesley said and then promptly held the pitcher to his face and emptied the contents of his stomach into it.
Feeling ill himself and anything but kind, Stuart turned and stalked from the library, content to know that his brother would at least be staying in this evening. He wouldn’t lose more money, and their mother could rest easily tonight with the knowledge that her second born was safe beneath the same roof.
Megs fluffed up her feathers as Rosamund approached her, blinking silvery eyes that watched her progress. “Megs want pistache.”
“Of course you do, darling,” Rosamund crooned. “But first, you must behave.”
The African grey flapped her wings. “Megs behave, Megs behave.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard our Megs behave yet,” commented her friend Miranda from across the room.
“True.” Rosamund sighed and gave Megs a caress before reaching into the pouch where the parrot’s favorite treat was kept and extracting a pistachio. She offered it. “Here you are, my love. No saying anything naughty during Miranda’s visit, now.”
Megs gleefully accepted the pistachio, her beak working at it.
Rosamund turned back to where Lady Miranda Lenox awaited her by the tea tray that had just been delivered. “At least she will be preoccupied for a few moments so that we might be able to have our chat.”
And a much-needed chat it was.
She had a great deal to tell Miranda, and in truth, she was somewhat afraid to reveal all for fear of what her friend would say, particularly after her revelations to her dear friend Lottie, the widowed Countess of Grenfell, had been met with stern warnings. Understandably so. Lottie’s marriage had been a vastly unhappy one. But where Lottie had been in love with her husband, who had proven a wretched philanderer instead of an adoring spouse, Rosamund had no such feelings for Camden. If they were to enter a union, it would be a business arrangement, one that would prove beneficial to her in that she could gain what she wanted—children.
Rosamund seated herself. “Will you pour? You’re so much more graceful than I am. I’m forever spilling.”
It was true. Miranda was the epitome of grace and elegance. Which was ironic, because most of polite society had turned their backs to her and pretended as if she didn’t exist. Not Rosamund. But then, Rosamund wasn’t truly considered polite society.
“You are hardly clumsy, my dear,” Miranda said kindly.
Because Miranda was kind. Sweetly, wonderfully kind. But only to those she cared for, as Rosamund had learned. She was honored to find herself in that rarest of company.
“Show us your bubbies,” Megs called into the silence, followed by a whistle.
Mortification had Rosamund’s cheeks going hot. Fortunately, Lady Miranda was an old acquaintance, and she wouldn’t be chased off by the rapscallion parrot’s vulgar vocabulary. Rosamund cast a glower over her shoulder at her beloved African grey, who had become more like a part of her since the two of them had first bonded several years earlier.
“Megs,” she chastised sharply, nonetheless horrified. “No more pistachios for you for the rest of the day.”
Megs flapped her wings in affront, blinking. “Megs want pistache.”
“No,” she countered sternly, wagging a disapproving finger at the bird, who eyed her serenely from her perch. “Megs shan’t have a pistachio. Megs is a naughty bird.”
“Naughty bird, naughty bird,” Megs agreed. “Walk the plank.”
Miranda’s tinkling laughter spared Rosamund from further embarrassment. She turned back to the tea service awaiting them and her lovely friend’s unabashedly grinning countenance.
“You needn’t be put to the blush on my account,” Miranda reassured her. “I find her hilarious.”
“Her former owner was, you understand?—”
“A sea captain,” Miranda finished for her, chuckling. “So you’ve told me before, and I must say, I’m not surprised one whit. Her vocabulary is delightfully disreputable.”
“It is delightfully something ,” Rosamund muttered, casting another stern look in the direction of the African grey. “Not one word out of you, miss.”
Megs regarded her, blinking, and then fluffed her feathers as if to offer protest.
Shaking her head, Rosamund turned away. “Now you see why she cannot accompany me in polite circles. One word, and I’d be forever de trop in society. Not that I would particularly care much, but Mother would.”
And it was, in part, her devotion to her dear mother that guided Rosamund through her days. She couldn’t lie to herself; the more she had turned Camden’s offer over in her mind, the more she had come to think of how overjoyed Mother would be to see her settled at last, with the potential to have a family. Mother had lamented on many occasions that she feared leaving Rosamund alone in the world one day. It was yet another reason she was even considering Camden’s proposal when every modicum of reason she possessed told her she should not.
“We cannot displease your mother,” Miranda agreed, expertly pouring tea for the two of them. “You know how much I adore your maman .”
Rosamund smiled, accepting the cup that her friend had prepared exactly to her liking. “She returns your regard, of course. I do think you’re one of her favorites in our little coterie, along with Lottie and Hyacinth.”
“How wonderful to hear.” Miranda sipped delicately from her own teacup. “Ah, perfection. It’s so dreary outside, and I’ve been to the school all morning, which is utterly exhausting, even if it is rewarding. It was either tea or a nap, and I do so hate waking from naps. My mind always feels as if it’s filled with fog when I rise. I’m quite bilious and disagreeable.”
It was almost impossible to believe Miranda was anything other than her vivacious, charming self, but Rosamund knew she herself was a veritable bear in the mornings. Particularly when she needed to wake earlier than was her custom. Or when Megs decided to squawk her to waking, which was vexingly more often these days.
“How is your school coming along?” she asked her friend, genuinely curious.
“Quite well, thank you for asking, and despite all Ammondale’s determination to destroy it—and me.”
The Earl of Ammondale had, until several months ago, been Miranda’s husband. Their divorce had not just been acrimonious, it had been the cause of endless society scandal and gossip. Miranda had abandoned the courtesy title, Countess of Ammondale, in favor of her maiden name and styling, Lady Miranda Lenox.
After making Miranda miserable, Ammondale had sought a divorce when she had flaunted an affair with another man. The truth of the matter was that Miranda hadn’t been unfaithful to her husband, whilst he had been nothing but the opposite to her. Miranda’s affair had been an elaborate ruse conducted with a close friend, the Marquess of Waring. It was a guarded secret, one that Miranda had only shared with her inner circle and one that Rosamund would loyally defend. The divorce laws did not favor women, and her friend had done what was necessary to gain her freedom from an intolerable union.
It pained Rosamund to hear that the earl was continuing to cause problems for Miranda.
Rosamund frowned. “What has he been about now, the villain?”
“Walk the plank,” Megs chirped.
“Oh, Megs, if only I had you to defend me,” Miranda said with a small, sad smile.
“You do have Megs, and you have me as well.” She settled her tea on the tray before her. “I am wealthy enough to do him some harm, you realize.”
“Of course you are, my dear, and I do thank you for offering. But you know I would never ask you to join me in the fray. Nor would I seek to stoop to his levels. It has been punishment enough that you’ve been frowned upon for maintaining the friendship of a fallen woman.”
The mere words—and the public disgrace Miranda yet faced—were enough to set Rosamund’s teeth on edge. “You are not a fallen woman. You are true and good and wonderful. What is wrong with this society of ours? A faithful woman must feign faithlessness to escape a lecherous scoundrel because she needs more reason than mere adultery to obtain a divorce, whilst he requires only one.”
“It is the law of the land, and we must follow it. I knew that when I married Ammondale.” Miranda paused, her gaze drifting to a point over Rosamund’s shoulder. “But I didn’t have many choices then. Marriage to an earl seemed preferable to looming penury for myself and my sisters.”
“Do you regret marrying Ammondale?” Rosamund asked softly, not wanting to pry and yet needing to know the answer.
For two of her dearest friends had experienced vastly unhappy marriages. And she was mad enough to be contemplating consigning herself to the same.
“Many times, I have,” Miranda confided, her tone thoughtful. “Other times, I’ve been certain that I never would have been able to save myself or my sisters, that I wouldn’t have been able to fund the school and pursue my own aspirations without having married him. I’m thankful it is over—that is all I can say for certain.”
Rosamund took a deep breath, preparing herself to confess all, then exhaled slowly. “What would you say if I were to tell you that I was considering a marriage of convenience?”
Miranda’s dark brows rose. “I would say I need more information. Are you truly considering marriage, dearest? And to whom?”
“I am.” She took a moment, anticipating her friend’s reaction and dreading it. “And it is to the Duke of Camden.”
“The Duke of Camden?” Miranda’s voice was loud, shocked. Almost shrill.
Rosamund winced. “Yes.”
“ Lord Wesley Gilden’s elder brother, the Duke of Camden? The brother of the betrothed who treated you so shabbily that he ought to have been horse-whipped for his sins?”
“The same,” she confirmed.
Miranda slumped back in her seat in a most unladylike and undignified pose, proof of her shock. “Rosamund.”
“Gormless shite,” Megs added suddenly, punctuating her words with a whistle.
“Is Megs referring to you or to the Duke of Camden?” Miranda asked carefully.
She sighed. “To Camden, I’m afraid. She seems to say it whenever he’s about or mentioned.”
“I cannot say I disagree with our feathered friend,” Miranda said. “Rosamund, darling, whatever can you be thinking? First, Camden’s reputation is positively dreadful. From the gossip I’ve heard, he’s the worst sort of rake and rogue.”
He hadn’t seemed particularly rakish or roguish on their recent meetings. But then, no one knew better than Rosamund how easily someone could mask their true personality and intentions. Wesley had taught her that all too well with his betrayal.
“I suppose it wouldn’t matter to me, his reputation,” she said hesitantly. “Nor how he conducts himself with others. As I said, it would be a marriage of convenience.”
“Whose convenience?” Miranda countered shrewdly. “Yours or his? Because I can assure you that marriages with scoundrels are wholly inconvenient for the wife, whilst the husband can do whatever he likes and still be accepted. What if you were to become unhappy in this union of yours? I would hate for you to end as I have, existing on the periphery of polite society, shunned by most.”
Her heart gave a pang at the raw emotion in her friend’s voice. “I know it has been so very difficult for you, the divorce.”
“It is an albatross I gratefully bear. I would have done anything to escape Ammondale. But enough about me. Why would you willingly take on such a burden?”
Here was a subject that was a delicate one indeed, particularly when having a discussion with a woman who hadn’t any children of her own. But to omit it felt more and more like a deception.
“I am thirty years old, Miranda,” she said gently. “This may well be my last chance to have a family of my own, which I have always dearly longed for. After what happened with Lord Wesley, I didn’t dare trust another suitor, knowing my fortune was all every man would be after. But these circumstances are quite unique, and Camden’s candor gives me a certain leverage that is appealing.”
Her friend’s face softened. “I understand that desire all too well, my dear. But you are lovely and witty, and you would make a wonderful wife to any man—one worthy of you. You could find someone other than the Duke of Camden for such a purpose, I have no doubt.”
“It is not just the lure of a family that calls to me, I must confess.” Rosamund paused, taking a deep breath and exhaling before continuing. “It’s also revenge.”
It felt petty to admit. Petty to say it aloud. And yet, it was the truth.
And then, somehow, it felt…powerful. It felt tantalizing. She thought of what Camden had asked that night in the moonlit gardens. Do you deny that the thought of holding the purse strings where my brother is concerned is not appealing?
“Now, that is indeed a potent lure,” Miranda said, solemn understanding ringing in her voice.
She searched her friend’s gaze, seeking absolution. “Would it be perfectly dreadful of me to do it, Miranda? Would I be the most foolish woman in all the world? Camden spoke of a marriage contract. I wouldn’t accept a union without making certain I’m well protected. I think it possible I could have everything I’ve ever wanted, without compromising my freedom or my fortune.”
“I think, my dear,” Miranda said with judicious care, “that you must do what feels best. Seize what you want from life, for you only live it once. It’s a lesson I learned during my miserable marriage. And make that bastard pay too.”
“Pretty bird,” Megs added from her perch. “Megs want pistache.”
Miranda laughed at the interjection, and Rosamund joined her, a lightness falling over her that had been missing these last few years. It would seem she had her decision.
She was going to seize what she wanted.