The Dark Duke

The duchess fanned herself. “She is no flighty, silly creature given to overwrought emotions. She is a good, quiet, dutiful young woman who will keep her virtue for her husband.”

“Does this mean I can expect a parade of eligible young men through Barroughby Hall?”

“Don’t be impudent.”

“She seemed quite friendly to Reverend Mc-Kenna,” he noted.

“Are you trying to be amusing?” the duchess demanded. “Lady Hester has more sense than to ally herself to a country curate, even if he does come from a well-to-do family. They made their money in trade.”

“Oh, well, then, obviously he’s out of consideration. What about Sir Douglas Sackville-Cooper? He’s been a widower for years.”

“Lord Edgar Pimblett’s daughter and that man?”

“It would be a decent match for her.”

His stepmother looked at him with something resembling respect. “You might be right, Adrian. She’s rather old and certainly plain. She might be willing to settle for him.”

Adrian reflected that he should have known that if his stepmother approved an idea, he would find it a bad one upon further consideration. The idea of Hester Pimblett and Sir Douglas now struck him as ludicrous, even if he couldn’t say why. All he could be sure of was that he had had quite enough of this conversation, and more than enough of his stepmother for one day. “If you will excuse me, I’m going upstairs. My leg is aching like the devil.” He bowed and strode toward the door.

“Don’t use such vulgar terms in my presence, if you please, Adrian,” the duchess replied tartly. “And I don’t excuse you.”

But the duke had already gone out the door.

Chapter Four (#ulink_967ea543-3960-5551-a9ff-868da7126f07)

Hester led the way along the walk to the rose garden, feeling not unlike the Pied Piper as Reverend Mc-Kenna and Damaris, Sir Douglas and Canon Smeech followed. Reverend McKenna caught up to her quickly, matching her pace. Damaris soon joined them, walking on the other side of Hester.

“Well, isn’t he just the most wicked man!” Damaris exclaimed quietly, with an anxious glance over her shoulder as if she expected to see the Dark Duke pursuing her like Hades after Persephone. “Papa says he’s simply a spirited young man—spirited! I can believe everything I’ve heard, and more.”

That Adrian Fitzwalter had a streak of devilment in him was all too obvious, Hester thought as she recalled his words this morning. He must have been awake when she entered his bedroom, a humiliating realization. And yet, if he was as evil as the duchess and everyone except Sir Douglas seemed to believe, he wouldn’t have continued to feign sleep. He would have done something horrible, like leap from the bed and kiss her.

Moving his full lips, which curled with such secretive, knowing smiles, over hers. Slowly. Seductively. Pressing his hard, muscular body against hers. Embracing her with a fierce and wild passion, perhaps even picking her up and carrying her to the bed—

“Oh, dear, have we been walking too fast?” damris asked. “You seem all out of breath, Lady Hester.”

“No, no, I’m fine”, she replied, trying to compose herself. She had never known she possessed such a vivid imagination!

“We should be charitable,” Reverend McKenna offered meekly, although his tone seemed to imply this would not be an easy task. He gave the lovely damris a sidelong glance and Hester was sure she heard him sigh.

“He is very handsome,” Hester said.

“Handsome in a sly, nasty way!” Damaris said. “And, my dear, I have it on the very best authority that he doesn’t confine his unsavory activities to London. The butcher’s girl told my maid that she actually saw him leaving that house on Stamford Street when he visited here once before.”

Hester knew to which house Damaris was referring with that knowing, condemning tone. Even Bar-roughby had a brothel. “She was quite sure it was the duke?” Hester inquired, finding it hard to believe that a man of the duke’s attributes would have to pay for services of that sort.

“Well,” Damaris equivocated, “she did see only his back—but the man was the right height, and very well dressed, and when he said good-night she recognized his voice.”

Hester didn’t respond, and Reverend McKenna only stared at the ground.

“Why has he come here again?” Damaris demanded. “He and the duchess have no liking for each other.”

“He was hurt,” Hester replied.

“How?”

“A duel, or so I understand,” she said.

“Oh, dear!” Damaris responded, her eyes widening. “No wonder the duchess dislikes him! And to think Papa—” She paused and colored, then continued. “It’s illtego to duel!”

“I daresay many things the duke is alleged to have done are illegal,” Hester noted.

“Are you going to stay here?”

Hester paused and looked at Damaris. “Why should I not?”

“Because of his reputation, my dear!” Damaris said. “No woman is said to be safe around him!”

Hester began walking again. “No beautiful woman, perhaps,” she replied, hoping Damaris would take the hint. “I think I shall not tempt him.”

“Nevertheless, it might be wise to advise the duchess to suggest he leave,” Reverend McKenna said with unusual boldness.

Hester could easily envision what the duchess’s reaction would be to Hamish McKenna’s advice, clergyman or not, so she said, “I believe he shall soon grow bored and go back to London, so let us not cause more dissention in the family.”

“But still—!” Reverend McKenna began.

“Oh, let’s not talk about such a disagreeable subject!” Damaris ordered with a very pretty pout.

Reverend McKenna fell silent.

The young people turned down the footpath to the rose garden, leaving the older men to follow some distance behind. From the snatches of conversation Hester could overhear, they were discussing the duke’s financial situation, as best as people could who had no real knowledge.

If only Sir Douglas could be a little more aware of the danger! He was naive if he thought the duke would see Damaris only as an object of matrimony, not seduction, yet it was obvious listening to him speak of the estate with Canon Smeech that the knight considered only the title and wealth that would belong to the wife of the Duke of Barroughby. The taint of scandals and gossip clearly meant nothing.

Hester thought Damaris’s denunciation sincere enough, yet she didn’t doubt that Adrian Fitzwalter possessed enough persuasive abilities to make the most virtuous woman’s honor falter, if he cared to exert himself, which he might very well do for the beautiful Damaris. Add to that his good looks and muscular body—well, a woman might be tempted to overlook many things in the face of such attributes.

This did not bode well for Damaris, or Reverend McKenna, either, Hester thought, as she saw the young man glance at the beauty again. It didn’t take a lot of perception to see that he was completely smitten with her, and extremely worried about the presence of the duke.

Poor man! Hester feared his romance was doomed to failure, for even supposing Damaris’s father did not succeed in his plans concerning the Duke of Barroughby, Hester was sure Sir Douglas would set about searching for an equally advantageous marriage for her.

Hester repressed a sigh of her own. Her parents had no such ambitions for her. After Helena had made a match with a rich manufacturer’s son, and Henrietta with a clergyman who had a wealthy lord for a patron, they seemed to feel they had reached the end of their responsibilities. After all, Hester was no prize—or so their attitude seemed to suggest.

The reflection stung her as it always did, for she knew it did not have to be so. She had a lively and intelligent mind; if she could but have been taught more, she would at least have been able to find solace in learning. Instead, she was reduced to being little more than an elite companion for a difficult old woman, who complained about everything except her dear son, Elliot.

Could it be possible for one son to be such a paragon of virtue and the other apparently the very devil in human form?

If Adrian Fitzwalter was a devil, Hester thought him a perceptive one. No one else seemed to feel as she did about Canon Smeech, whom she had disliked from the moment she had met him, when he had looked at her with such condescending pity. She had listened to him condemn the duke with nearly as much venom as the duchess, only to see him smile at the duke as much as he dared while the duchess was present. Still, the duke shouldn’t have been so rude to the man’s face. The canon did represent the Church of England, after all.

Perhaps the duke’s animosity to a clergyman wasn’t so surprising, if one considered that the duke seemed to sin with such regularity and relish.