Page 3 of Hazardous to a Duke’s Heart (Lords of Hazard #1)

W hen Jon first awakened the next morning, he couldn’t remember where he was. His bed felt softer than anything he’d slept in for a decade, and the heavy curtains kept the room so dim, he wasn’t even sure what time it was. But since he’d had his first dreamless sleep in years, he wasn’t complaining.

He sat up and looked about. Only then did he remember he was home. In Father’s bedchamber. Because he was now duke.

Right.

Running a hand through his hair, he left the bed and opened the curtains, shocked to see how high the sun was.

A scratching at a nearby door was all the warning he got before a man entered. Father’s valet, Gibbons, who was apparently Jon’s valet now.

Gibbons set down a tray holding a full coffee and tea service and a newspaper. “I wasn’t sure which you preferred to drink in the morning, Your Grace, so I brought both.”

“Coffee. Please.”

Gibbons set the tray on a little table by the window and poured a cup of coffee. “If The Times is not your first choice for reading material in the morning, I can offer you a selection of other papers. And do tell me if the coffee is to your liking. I wasn’t sure how strong to make it.”

Jon sipped some. “This is perfect, thank you, and The Times will be fine.” When Gibbons visibly relaxed, Jon realized the man was as out of sorts as he. The staff must be nervous about serving a duke whom they hadn’t seen in over a decade. “Did Kershaw tell you I’ll need new clothes? I can’t wear the ones from my youth forever.”

Gibbons nodded. “The tailor comes this afternoon at three to take your measurements. In the meantime, I have put a selection of your most suitable older attire in the closet. If you wish to try them on now, I can take them in as needed.”

“Excellent.” He rose from the bed and went to examine his old clothes. “Have I slept too long for breakfast?”

“Hardly. We’re still in the midst of the Season, so the ladies often don’t come down for breakfast until the afternoon.”

“Ah.” He’d forgotten how late everything was during the Season.

“Although, actually, your mother is waiting for you in the breakfast room.”

He chuckled. “That is hardly a surprise.”

After being shaved by Gibbons and getting dressed, he headed downstairs to find his mother drinking tea in the breakfast room. She rose to greet him with a kiss on the cheek. “I trust you slept well, son.”

“Any man would sleep well after a hot bath and the meal I had last night. Thank you for arranging those.”

“It’s the least a doting mother can do,” she said fondly.

“Of course. I’m just . . . not used to it is all.”

“How could you be?”

Waving him toward the breakfast sideboard, she returned to her seat and waited while he filled a plate and sat down across from her. As he began to eat—British sausages, how delicious!—his mother cleared her throat.

“What do you have planned for today?” she asked.

He bit into a flawless peach and wondered what Mother would think if she knew how many times he’d eaten around the spoiled parts of an apple in Bitche. “Apparently, a visit from the tailor.”

“Certainly. That is important. But do you think . . . that is, do you believe you might be rested enough to . . . er . . . look at some things in the study with me?”

He tried to imagine what that might be and failed. “Such as . . .”

“Oh, this and that. Matters having to do with the estate.”

After polishing off a slice of toast, he asked, “Urgent matters, I take it?”

“Somewhat urgent, yes.”

Just like that, he lost his appetite. “I see.” He set his plate aside. “We can do it now. Just have someone bring a pot of coffee to the study.” He would undoubtedly need it for this.

“Forgive me, Jon,” his mother said. “I know you would probably like to rest some more, but—”

“It’s fine, Mother, I swear.” He rose and offered her his arm.

“Thank you, son,” she murmured as she took it.

As they left the breakfast room, Chloe came running up to him. “Oh, good, you’re awake! I was so hoping I’d see you before Tory and I left.”

Tory? For “Victoria”? “Where are you going?” he asked.

“To the park,” said a voice from farther down the hall. “It’s such a lovely day for a walk.”

That could only be Miss Morris.

When Jon looked beyond Chloe, he saw a woman in black coming down the hall, and his breath halted. Petite and blue-eyed, with honeyed hair coiled into a simple coiffure, she had the perfect figure of a Helen of Troy, but the serene and otherworldly face of a saint. He felt a perverse desire to kneel on one knee and pledge his allegiance to her like a knight of old.

How absurd. He was in no condition to be anyone’s knight. And he doubted he ever would be.

Still, he couldn’t stop staring. She was not what he’d expected. “Jon,” Chloe said before his mother could perform the introductions, “may I present my governess and friend, Miss Victoria Morris? Tory, this is my brother, Jonathan Leighton, the Duke of Falconridge.”

The pride in his sister’s voice shook him. He didn’t feel like a duke at all.

Miss Morris didn’t seem to notice, for she curtsied with admirable poise. “Your Grace.”

“Please,” he said, offering his hand to her, “don’t stand on ceremony with me. Your father was my closest companion for years. I feel as if I know you already.”

When pain glinted in her eyes, he regretted the mention of her father, for whom she was clearly in mourning. He was about to question why Chloe wasn’t in mourning for their half brothers when he remembered that sisters didn’t have to mourn as long as parents and children.

Miss Morris let him press her ungloved hand, which was firm, with nails that appeared oddly ragged for such a lovely woman. “Then we’re even,” she said tranquilly, “since your sister has sung your praises for years.”

“And do I come up to snuff in the flesh?” he asked.

The frank question seemed to startle her. Then a smile crept over her face that banished the serenity of her countenance in a flash. “It’s a bit early to tell, isn’t it? Appearances are deceiving. You might take snuff, for example, and that would be a great disappointment.”

Ah, she wasn’t a saint after all, but an impish fairy hiding her wings. “I do not take snuff, but I have other annoying habits. Like preferring coffee to tea. The French make very good coffee, but good tea was hard to come by.”

“Preferring coffee to tea is indeed an annoying habit,” she answered, “but I’m sure we can break you of it.”

“You can try,” he said. “That does seem like an office suitable to a governess.”

“Depends on the governess,” she quipped.

“Depends on the office, too,” Chloe said petulantly. “You cannot steal my governess to teach you to like tea again.”

“I can if I’m paying her salary,” he countered in a teasing tone. When his mother and sister looked horrified by the implication of his paying Miss Morris to do anything for him personally, he groaned. “I meant . . . I did not mean . . . Forgive me, ladies, it’s been some years since I was in polite company.”

“Apparently, you do need a governess to teach you,” Miss Morris shot back with a faint smile. “But I’m afraid I already have a paying post, Your Grace, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to abandon your mother and sister in the midst of Chloe’s second Season.”

Instantly, that smoothed over everything. And now he understood why Mother had hired her for Chloe. Like Morris, she was adept at maneuvering in delicate situations. “Of course not,” he said. “I spoke out of turn.”

“You most certainly did,” his mother said, then turned to the two young ladies. “Victoria, why don’t you and Chloe go on your walk? That will give me time to catch up with my son.”

“I’ll see you both at dinner,” Jon added to soften his mother’s dismissal of the pair.

“You’d better,” Chloe said stoutly, and headed down the hall as Miss Morris followed on her heels. He couldn’t help watching them go. It turned out Miss Morris was just as interesting from the back as from the front. Her shawl kept slipping off her shoulders to reveal a swanlike neck he wouldn’t mind exploring.

With a scowl, he shook off that unwise thought. A gentleman did not lust after a woman in his employ, especially the beloved daughter of the one man whose life he had already ruined.

“Come, son,” Mother murmured, “let’s go into the study where we can be private. There are things we should discuss.”

God help him. “I honestly did not mean to imply earlier that Miss Morris—”

“I know.” She slid her hand in the crook of his elbow. “Unless you’ve changed dramatically, you’re nothing like your brothers.”

He stiffened. “Speaking of my brothers, they weren’t too cruel to you and Chloe, were they? After I learned of Father’s death, I worried they might be.”

“It wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle. I might not have held the purse strings, but your father made sure in his will that my position in the household was unassailable. Mostly, your brothers went about their business, and Chloe and I went about ours.”

“And . . . er . . . Alban and Aubrey didn’t try to take advantage of Miss Morris, did they?”

“Try? Yes. Fortunately, the young woman is very good with hatpins, and after a couple got ‘accidentally’ stuck in their derrieres, they stopped.”

That roused every protective instinct in him. “She shouldn’t have had to stoop to such tactics. Their behavior is . . . was abominable.”

“I quite agree. Thankfully, since I pay her salary out of my widow’s portion, there was naught they could do to punish her for her reaction.”

“Ah, but now that I’m duke, you needn’t use your widow’s portion.”

“I can afford it,” she said blandly as they entered the study, and she closed the door behind him. “Besides, then no one could question that her loyalties lie firmly with Chloe if anyone ever found out who paid whom.”

“Right.” But it bothered him that he might not be allowed to do anything to help Miss Morris. Her father had given him a very specific mission, and he meant to follow it to the letter. He must find her a husband somehow.

While taking on an entire dukedom. That sobered him. How ironic that he’d be doing what his own father would surely have thought him incapable of.

Only too well did Jon remember overhearing the discussion between his parents about his proposed banishment from England.

“How can you send him on a grand tour?” his mother had asked his father. “It’s not safe. Napoleon is still causing trouble on the Continent, isn’t he? I don’t want Jon hurt.”

“My sources tell me the war is over. Besides, what else can I do? Would you rather I buy him a commission?”

“And risk him getting killed in battle in India somewhere? Indeed not.”

“Then this is my only choice, my dear. I caught him in bed with an actress last week, for God’s sake! Then there was that woman whose husband found them together and tried to shoot him. Not to mention, the prank he played on the mayor’s son that nearly got him thrown in gaol. I had to pay the irate fellow off to get him to back down. Bad enough Jon got into trouble at Eton for smuggling spirits into his dormitory—I won’t have him running wild in London, too.”

“But sending him away—”

“He’ll be fine. You indulge him too much. Going on a grand tour will civilize the boy, show him the world, teach him a gentleman’s discipline and reserve. When he returns, he’ll be ready to settle down to a useful profession, the way a duke’s third son should.”

“What if he runs wild abroad, too, my love, and we’re not there to protect him?”

“I’ve taken care of that. With much difficulty, I persuaded my friend, Dr. Morris, to go with him as tutor. Morris is a good man, who led many a grand tour before his marriage. He’ll be a proper bear leader to our son, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble. And it’s only for two years, after all.”

Their conversation had always caused Jon pain whenever he thought of it. It meant Morris hadn’t wanted to be his tutor, hadn’t wanted to leave his family—he’d had to be talked into it. His father had been so worried about Jon’s scapegrace ways that he’d preferred to send him off on what Jon could now see had been a foolhardy journey than keep him at home.

And what had Jon done? Behaved as recklessly as always. Only he’d dragged Morris into trouble, too. That was precisely why Jon shouldn’t be lusting after the man’s daughter.

His mother walked over to the brandy decanter that had sat on that one console table for as long as Jon could remember. She opened the decanter. “Would you like some?”

“No.”

That seemed to startle her. “Why not?”

“It’s French, isn’t it?” He gave her a thin smile as he settled into his old spot on the sofa in front of the desk, out of force of habit. “I know it’s a small and petty revenge against my captors to refuse to drink their liquor, but I do need my little enjoyments.”

“Yet you drink coffee now, a habit you learned in France.”

“The French don’t produce coffee. Well, they do in Martinique, but I hardly need worry that Englishmen are importing coffee from Martinique.”

“My, my, you do know your French beverages.” She poured a glass of brandy and took a rather large sip.

That caught him off guard. “When did you start drinking spirits?”

“After your brothers died.” Staring down into the glass, she added, “I figured someone should drink it up. Your brothers bought a great deal from a smuggler, and I didn’t want to just . . . throw it away.”

“Right. Because you can afford to pay for a governess for Chloe out of your widow’s portion, but you can’t afford to throw away illegal brandy you wouldn’t drink normally.”

“Oh, all right, I like it, do you hear?” She took another sip with a defiant look in her green eyes. “It’s very warming at the end of the day. And you weren’t here, and your father was gone and so were your brothers and . . .”

When it was clear she was about to dissolve into tears again, he jumped up to put his arm about her. “It’s fine, Mother. Drink whatever you please. I am in no position to dictate what you do, believe me.”

“Good.” Setting the glass down, she took a long breath, apparently to calm herself, then walked over to the desk. “Because that’s not what I wished to discuss.” She pulled out a stack of papers and plopped them on top of the desk with an air of belligerence. “I haven’t tackled any of this since Aubrey and Alban—”

She caught her breath. “There are things that must be handled by ‘the duke,’ and since you were gone, there was no one to handle them. So, I think it best that we take care of some of the most urgent as soon as possible.”

“Of course.”

That seemed to mollify her somewhat. “And you have to go through the official process for gaining your title.”

“Certainly.”

“You needn’t do any of it right away, you understand,” she said as it seemed to register that he wasn’t resisting her. “I know you need time to rest and adjust to the household and—”

“Mother,” he said sharply. “I’m ready and willing to do these things. I’m beyond happy to be here with you and Chloe. Nor am I the same reckless youth I was. I promise I won’t run wild or get into trouble.”

If she remembered saying she feared he’d “run wild” abroad, she didn’t show it.

He fought to soften his accusatory tone. “Nor will I spend my evenings in fleshpots or gamble the family fortune away. I intend to live a quiet life managing the dukedom and enjoying my family.” And fulfilling his obligation to Morris and figuring out who’d betrayed him and his friends. Those took precedence as far as he was concerned.

Mother released a long breath. “Hearing you say that cheers me considerably. I was worried that after everything you probably endured. . . Well, it doesn’t matter. We shall take things slowly.”

“Slowly, yes.” Except for his other two priorities. “Although I would like to know how well you think Alban managed the properties.”

She sighed. “I can’t be sure. He never let me near the books, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have known what to do with them if he had. After he died, your father’s land steward tried to talk to me about the rents, but I was afraid to delve into it too much, not wanting to mess things up.”

“So you did nothing,” he said blandly.

Her gaze shot to him. “Our solicitor said not to worry about it, that they had already put someone in charge of all that.”

Jon stifled a curse. Now he had to make sure their solicitor was trustworthy. “I’ll take care of it, Mother.”

She nodded, still appearing nervous. “We should discuss one more matter: Victoria. Chloe doesn’t need a governess anymore, of course. But I fear if I ask Victoria to be Chloe’s companion, which is what Chloe wants, the young ladies will spend all their time in public making sly remarks about the gentlemen, instead of ensuring that Chloe dances with some of them. Then Chloe will never find a husband, even though she’s got suitors fighting each other to court her.”

“If that’s true, why would she prefer to chat with Miss Morris instead?”

She sighed. “Growing up around Alban and Aubrey has made your sister cynical about gentlemen. Victoria’s determination never to marry doesn’t help.”

Another shock. “Why on earth would a woman as beautiful as Miss Morris decide never to marry?”

When the word “beautiful” made his mother shoot him a sharp look, he stifled a groan. He must start watching his words. This wasn’t Bitche, after all, where the only words that would get you into trouble were “Napoleon is an arse” and “I demand to be released immediately.” His friend Heathbrook had tried them both. It had gained the earl nothing but harsh punishments for the former and laughter for the latter.

“You will have to ask her that question,” Mother said. “Lord knows I have no idea. She’s rather reticent about her reasons.”

As well she should be. For a woman of her station to choose not to marry was foolish. Her father had family connections that would enable her to move, if not in the very center of Society, then on the outskirts. Morris had been the cousin of a viscount, for pity’s sake. His daughter ought to be able to find, at the very least, a gentleman for a husband.

Jon had no idea how small was the bequest Morris had left to his late wife, but surely that would pass on to his daughter and be enough to provide her with—

He broke into a smile as he realized how to help Miss Morris while also aiding his sister in her debut. “Don’t worry, Mother,” he said, one of his burdens lifting. “I’ll handle Miss Morris. I have the perfect solution to your dilemma.”