Page 2 of To Defend a Damaged Duke (Regency Rossingley #2)

“IT’S HIGH TIME you married.”

Benedict Fitzsimmons, the fourteenth Duke of Ashington, regarded his ebullient youngest brother—by five years—over the edge of The Times . “Should this betrothal occur before I reach the end of this astute prediction for Saturday’s race at Epsom? Am I permitted to digest my poached kippers first?”

“Oh, all right. I suppose you may.” Francis grinned. “But eat up and eat well. I have a dreadful suspicion marriage to a lady of breeding will require courage and fortitude.”

“So do I,” Benedict agreed drily, adding his lack of both those attributes to his ever-expanding list of reasons never to marry.

One of which he kept private, being more pertinent than the rest. He turned a page.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll stick to my four-legged thoroughbreds.

At the very least, they will never expect me to endure a week in the country with their parents. ”

“It’s not me that wants you wed,” said Francis. “It’s Isabella. She has this crazy notion that if you marry, her father will look more favourably on allowing her to be betrothed to me.”

Benedict frowned. “I don’t follow.”

Lady Isabella Knightley and her swooping, dizzy mind were two handfuls of trouble by anyone’s standards.

Frankly, if Benedict were her father, he’d have offloaded her onto the nearest suitable bachelor—such as Francis, the youngest brother of a wealthy duke—as soon as she came of age.

Why her father, the Right Honourable Earl Ludham, insisted her older sisters were suitably wed first, holding off until an earl like himself or higher-ranking noble offered his hand, was unfathomable.

Mind you, not the cleverest of chaps, Benedict found much unfathomable these days.

“Nor do I.” Francis sounded glum. “And I’m tired of all this waiting.” Though he was usually even-tempered, his mouth formed a petulant moue. “Perhaps we could elope? Not to beat about the bush, but old Lord Ludham seems to have forgotten that young men in love have certain…urges.”

“Eloping won’t endear you to him,” rebuked Benedict mildly. “Many uncertainties prevail in this life—as this newspaper insists on reminding me—but I can assure you that isn’t one of them. And the less I hear about your urges at the breakfast table, the better my digestion.”

Francis heaved an enormous sigh, flopping back in his seat. “Don’t you ever feel like this, Benedict? As if the…the world is conspiring against you? It’s not as if I don’t have money. I’m not a gambler, a drunkard, or a rake. And she’s the only woman I’ll ever love! Whom I’ve ever loved.”

The last part came out as a wail of despair, and Benedict threw his brother a commiserative look.

Love . Never mind the emotion behind it; even the pitiful word had no place at the duke’s breakfast table.

Not love of the romantic sort with its hooks in his brother, anyhow.

Love for his brother, yes, Benedict had oodles of that.

For Isabella too. Almost rivalling the love lavished on his eighteen thoroughbreds.

“It’s quite clear he’s keeping you in reserve,” Benedict declared as if he knew the first thing about fatherhood, daughters, or, indeed, love.

“Isabella might be your childhood sweetheart, but she’s a diamond of the first water, and Lord Ludham is determined to find the best possible match.

Trust me, if Isabella showed the slightest inclination to be falling for undesirable competition, I’d wager he’d accept your offer at the drop of a hat. As things stand, he doesn’t need to.”

“She doesn’t want an undesirable or even a well-mannered, blameless earl! She wants me !”

A familiar hopeless tone re-entered his voice. From the library next door, the longcase clock chimed a solemn half hour. Pushing aside his breakfast, Benedict rose to his feet.

“The stables call,” he announced. “Care to join me?”

His brother shook his head. “Can’t, I’m afraid.

I’m meeting some chums later. We’re boxing at Jack’s, then heading out to that new club on the corner of St James.

Tuffy Bannister says its already quite the place to be seen.

Even Lyndon’s been spotted there, once or twice, losing at piquet.

Squire’s is the name. Have you heard speak of it? ”

Squire’s . Benedict frowned. That name had cropped up somewhere else recently. Ah, yes. Plastered in bold lettering above a new betting stand at Newmarket.

“Same chap also owns a brothel or two,” added Francis, “according to Tuffy.”

Another topic Benedict preferred to avoid at the breakfast table. “Sounds as if this Squire has his snoot in a few businesses. No wonder his club’s thriving if Lyndon’s a member.” He grimaced. “His coffers are being filled with Ashington money.”

“I’m surprised Lyndon has any left to squander.”

On that, Benedict agreed. Lord Lyndon Fitzsimmons was a thorn in anyone’s side, but the side he needled the most, by far, belonged to his twin brother (by three minutes), Benedict.

The duke didn’t often wish his pugnacious father back from the grave, but after having all but disinherited Benedict’s younger twin, their father had fallen in a dead heap a day later instead of facing Lyndon’s wrath.

Which was damned inconsiderate. Reluctantly inheriting the august title nine months ago, Benedict had also inherited the role of human punchbag; overnight, Lyndon had transferred his ire from his father to his brother.

“Funds miraculously appear from somewhere,” observed Francis. “We must pray he’s not up to something smoky. The fifteen hundred pounds you generously entrust him with per annum doesn’t extend that far.”

“No.” Benedict frowned again. He’d been doing that a lot since taking up his title, ensuring his reputation as serious, aloof, and reserved remained as intact as ever.

A useful, if somewhat lonely, shield for hiding his intellectual inadequacies, Francis and his delightful amour were amongst the very few able to penetrate it.

“You should join us,” Francis suggested, perhaps witnessing the frown more frequently than he’d like.

In a manner which would horrify the very proper Lord Ludham, Francis crammed a triangle of toast into his mouth, then carried on, spraying crumbs across the table.

“At Squire’s. Give yourself an afternoon off from all of this. ”

He indicated the ever-increasing pile of correspondence that inheriting a large dukedom entailed.

It cast a long shadow over the breakfast table.

Knowing one would someday become the duke was a different beast from taking up the title when one least expected it.

Before the old duke’s sudden demise, Ashington menfolk had prided themselves on longevity; Benedict had hoped to tread a path of wilful obscurity for at least another decade.

“All of this,” he remarked, “won’t miraculously have disappeared on my return.” Some mornings, Benedict swore it would swallow him whole; a hundred years from now they’d find his body entombed within a pyramid of damned confusing foolscap. “And anyhow, I don’t gamble.”

“So what? Nor do half the folk in there. Even Rossingley is a member; he doesn’t gamble either. Plenty of your White’s crowd have joined. Decent scran, excellent port, and uncivilised conversation. Comfortable armchairs, too—and warm fires.”

Benedict smiled indulgently, turning to where a footmen held his coat for him. “Comfortable armchairs? You sound older than I.”

“I’m simply trying to entice you out of the house once in a while. How will you ever marry if you don’t?”

“I’m leaving now! Look! Heading straight through the front door!”

Francis threw a hand up dismissively. “Only to visit the bloody stables!”

*

BENEDICT WAS RATHER fond of the bloody stables.

In fact, as he pulled up in his black-liveried phaeton, he’d go so far as to boast (to no one except himself, being far from a boastful sort) that they were the finest in all of London.

Eighteen thoroughbreds raced under his ducal colours, the most successful of whom poked his long snowy muzzle over the door of his capacious stall to see what all the fuss was about.

Though retired now, after an undefeated career including six St Leger wins, Nimbus’s successes continued unabated; last year alone, he’d made Benedict eighteen thousand pounds from stud fees.

Benedict petted him awhile, largely ignored as the daily routines of the stables clattered on around him.

Now and then, he pitched in and helped; more than once, he’d been caught in rolled-up sleeves, shovelling shit.

No one ever asked him difficult questions while he was shovelling shit.

Some wealthy stud owners turned their visits into a spectacle, parading themselves around, demanding attention.

Benedict visited so often that if he behaved in such a fashion there would be no time left for his grooms to attend to anything else.

Dressed in the Ashington silks, he’d take his dear Nimbus out for a canter later. Remind him of the good old days.

With a final kiss, a whispered reassurance that he was still Benedict’s favourite sugar plum fairy, and an instruction to the stable boy to saddle Nimbus up, Benedict moved on to the next stall.

Ten wooden boxes lined this side of the sandy courtyard with another ten facing, some doors hanging open, others closed.

Casting his gaze around the peaceable, orderly scene, Benedict breathed in the sour tang of manure mixed with perspiration, festering away under the dusty, sweet scent of hay.

Rich, dense smells, combined with the earthy musk of a recent rainfall, wrapped around him like freedom itself.

A sturdy, solitary oak rose from the middle of the yard, sheltering a water pump around which one of Benedict’s newer acquisitions, Ganymede, was being slowly walked, his head hanging low.

He’d purchased the thoroughbred at Tattersall’s six months earlier from a baronet unable to meet his debts.

He’d come a respectable second at Newmarket last month, ahead of a fine field, so the groom’s troubled countenance perturbed him.

“He’s sluggish today, Your Grace.” Alfred ran his expert hand down the horse’s sleek mahogany withers. “Like he’s eaten something that’s disagreed with him.”

Benedict pressed two fingertips under the animal’s jaw, feeling the strong pulse. “Is he excessively warm?”

The groom shook his head. “Nah. He’s had a couple of runny shits, but it’s back to normal now.” He jerked his chin. “Her ladyship over there up the corner was similar last week. After she lost at Heath.”

Benedict turned to see an unfamiliar stable boy brushing down Cleopatra, his demanding chestnut mare. Surprisingly, for such a temperamental beast, she indulged him.

“New lad,” explained the groom. “Knows what he’s doin’.” With a glance up at the leaden sky, he added, “Thought she was just sulking. But mebbe it’s the changeable weather.”

“Perhaps.” Benedict fondled the soft crest between Ganymede’s flattened ears. Possibly, the skin felt a little hotter than usual. “Keep me abreast of matters.”

The horse softly pawed the ground. From a liquid brown eye, Benedict’s own image reflected back at him. Tall, dark, forbidding. Diffident. But nothing seemed amiss.

“Check over his teeth and hooves,” he said, “and encourage him to drink plenty. He’s in the four thirty at Epsom a week Wednesday. Tipped to place.”

With yet another niggling anxiety to add to his roster, Benedict walked on alone.

Francis accompanied him occasionally. Though a decent horseman and kind master, when his brother swung his foot into the stirrups, it was merely for the purpose of suitable transport from A to B .

Whereas Benedict would ride all day long in circles just for the hell of it.

His thoroughbreds were his best friends, his equals, a means of escape.

He rode swiftly, respecting every inch of the muscle, raw power, and sweat between his thighs.

With the heart and dedication of a carefree lover.

And God knew those were in very short supply.