The Scandalous Love of a Duke

They carried a variety of items: linen, copper pans, silver, candles, coal scuttles…

One of the young maids jumped when she saw him and dropped an armful of linen. When she bent to pick it up, others began noticing his presence. It swept along the hall like a wave as they dropped into curtsies or bowed. He was invading their territory and making them feel uncomfortable – the arrogant duke.

Well he had not been arrogant abroad, he had laboured with his men in Egypt and he would go wherever he wished in his own home.

He carried on.

“Your Grace?” Finch appeared from a doorway a little ahead of John and bowed.

“Is Wareham somewhere, Finch?” John heard the maids and footmen shifting back into movement behind him.

“He is in his rooms I believe, Your Grace.”

“Then send for him. Have him come to his office. I shall wait there.”

“Your Grace,” Finch bowed again then disappeared.

The estate manager’s office was at the end of the hall, away from the main thoroughfare.

The door was shut and when John tried the handle, he discovered it locked.

“Does someone have the key?” he asked, looking back along the busy hall.

One of the footmen stopped and bowed. “Mr Wareham keeps it on his person, Your Grace, but there’s a copy of every key in Mrs East’s office. Shall I fetch it?”

“Please, do.”

The young footman bowed again and then rushed off to the housekeeper’s room. A moment later he was running back with the key.

John took it and thanked him, remembering that his grandfather had never said thank you to a soul. John felt the tug of war inside him pull. This was an instant of the old John, his mother’s child, but these instants were getting rarer. He had changed, and he was changing even more.

When John unlocked the door, he felt a cold shiver grip him.

This was another room brimful of ill memories. The whitewashed walls and flagstone floor made it feel cold despite the sun pouring through the windows on two sides, which looked out across the park.

Shelves full of ledgers lined the other walls, while the middle of the room was dominated by Wareham’s large oak desk.

John had spent numerous hours sitting at it as a child, learning the art of bookkeeping.

He crossed to the shelves and scanned the dates on the spines of the ledgers. Wareham began a new one each year and recorded every expenditure and income for the house and the tenancies in these books.

Finding the current year’s, John slid it off the shelf and carried it to the desk.

He sat and opened the broad record book.

Columns of transactions ran down each page, all totalled at the bottom.

His memories turned to his childhood, when he’d sat here beside Wareham scanning these books. The old Duke had schooled John to manage the estates from the age of thirteen. John had spent hours studying such things, to learn how to achieve profit, when to take risks and when to be prudent. Wareham had been the man who’d explained it all.

If Wareham is fleecing me, he’s fleeced the old man. What did that mean?

The old Duke had trusted Wareham implicitly; he was one of few the old man had. Wareham had been here years; like many of his grandfather’s staff. People who’d earned his trust had been kept. If Phillip had not raised this situation, John would never have considered doubting Wareham.

John’s index finger followed lines of figures on the first page. There was nothing abnormal listed, no unusual purchases or amounts.

Remembering the date of the loan Phillip had queried, John rose to find last year’s ledger.

He pulled it from the shelf and then, at the desk, began flicking through the pages, searching for the date.

There were no unexpected sums. Nothing was recorded which would suggest the reason for giving out a loan.

“Your Grace?”

John looked up.

Wareham was standing in the doorway, his fingers on the handle of the open door.

John smiled the smile he’d taught himself in London in the last few weeks, the one which screened out all other expression, his grandfather’s smile, and straightened but did not stand.

There was an insolent, angry glint in Wareham’s light blue-grey eyes. He did not defer. He neither bowed nor even nodded his head. It had been the same on John’s arrival.

The old man’s monster roared to life as John waited, imparting the cold condemning glare he had also learned from his grandfather. Silence stretched across the room while Wareham stared back.

“Your Grace.” Wareham finally allowed, nodding slightly and showing more defiance than deference.

The bastard. What is this?

John wished to make him do it over, but that would be churlish. It was far better to let it pass. Wareham must surely realise his days were numbered if he continued this. He must know John would not be lenient or soft. He ought to know the old man had drilled this detachment into John. Sentimentality had been thrashed out of him as a child, and Wareham had watched.

“Is there something I may help you with?” Wareham closed the door, his whole demeanour challenging John’s presence in the room.

John felt anger burn deep. He was entirely his grandfather’s monster now.

“Take a seat.” John deliberately indicated the chair on the far side, refusing to vacate Wareham’s. John owned this house, this office and the money passing through these ledgers – let Wareham remember that.

When Wareham sat, John held every muscle in his face steady. Thank God he’d learned how easily read he’d been in town and mastered that. Now he expressed only a mask of indifference.

“I would have thought, if Your Grace wished to view the ledgers, you would have asked me to bring them to you?” Wareham’s tone was tipped with steel.

You? It was an unforgivable insult not to use John’s title. You!

“Who owns the estates you manage, Wareham?” John felt as though a sandstorm had swept over him, his vision blurred and his skin prickled with anger.

“You do, Your Grace.”

Even when Wareham did use John’s title, he made it offensive.

“And please tell me then, Wareham, therefore, who owns this office and these ledgers?”

The man’s eyes momentarily showed a questioning thought, but then he stated, “Your Grace,” the challenge slipping from his voice.

“And pray, who employs you?”

“Your Grace.” There was darkness at the heart of Wareham’s eyes. A darkness which said this would not be the last of this conversation.

John smiled his grandfather’s vicious smile. “We have that straight then. Let us move on.”

John did not mention the loan after that minor mutiny. He did not wish to give Wareham any chance to cover his tracks.

“I have decided to review every aspect of my estate. I shall take these accounts now to help me do so and I wish to see all the supporting receipts and invoices. You may begin a new ledger.”

Wareham finally showed an element of emotion as his eyebrows lifted.

He’d clearly not anticipated John’s direct interference, and that meant, hopefully, the reason for the loan was still hidden somewhere in these books.

The older man’s icy gaze met John’s across the desk.

When John had sat here with him as a boy, the man had been brash, intolerant and rude. John had thought it a lack of patience for a youth. Now he presumed it was more. Wareham had never acted this way with his grandfather.

John did not move…

“Now, Your Grace?” The man finally understood.

“I am here, am I not Wareham, so now would be a good time.”

“But…”

“I shall begin reading these ledgers, while you find everything out.” Of course Wareham would wish for more time if he wanted to hide evidence.

He stood.

John looked down at the ledgers.

A few minutes later, Wareham set two thick leather pouches tied with string and stuffed with papers on the desk. “Your Grace.”

“Everything is here?” John asked, rising, ignoring the subtle insult in Wareham’s voice. “All I need to review these two years?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Any omissions I may assume errors on your part then?”

Wareham’s jaw set and a muscle flickered in his cheek. “Your Grace.”

“Call a footman to carry them up.” John could have shouted himself, but he did not, to remind Wareham of his place.

Another ten minutes and the ledgers and packets of receipts and papers were all secured in John’s personal safe, in his rooms.

Chapter Five

Katherine picked up the Bibles the children had been working with and set them aside. Then she turned towards the small altar in the chancel chapel where she’d led the Sunday school.

She was looking for something to do to pass the time while the congregation dispersed and she waited for Reverend Barker to drive her home. Her gaze caught on the open side door. John stood there watching her, his athletic silhouette framed in the arch of sunlight.

She had not forgiven him for kissing her, nor for forcing her to admit she had wished him to do it. Neither was a gentlemanly act. He had changed.

Ignoring him, she turned to the storage cupboard. She felt his presence so keenly she could sense him smiling behind her. She’d heard him singing amidst the congregation as she’d worked with the children. He had a beautiful voice. It rose above that of everyone else with perfect clarity.

How could a man who was now so steely hard and disgracefully arrogant still sing like an angel?

She pressed a palm against the slates to make them straight when they were already perfectly aligned.

“Are you hiding, Katherine?”

Her heart thumped. “Working, John.”

His boot heels rang on the glazed medieval tiles and she spun about when she heard him get too close.

He was two feet away, his pale eyes gleaming yet unfathomable. “I was waiting to speak with you, your parents have left. I thought… You are not hiding from me, are you?”

“No,” she breathed, knowing she coloured.

His gaze swept across her face clearly assessing her as she had not been able to assess him because his features were set like marble.

“There is no need for you to fear me, Katherine.”

She lifted her chin. “I am not afraid of you, John.” I am afraid of myself.

“I would never hurt you.”

Her chin lifted another notch. She hurt for him anyway. She had ached for him for seven years. Hiding was the only way to escape more pain.

He did not move, his pale gaze holding hers as though he could hear the words she did not speak.

“I have thought about you since the funeral.” His voice whispered, bouncing off the cold bare stone. “I know I said sorry to you yesterday, Katherine, but I really do not think I am. I wanted to kiss you, too. Why should either of us feel regret?”

She dragged a deep breath into her lungs. “John, do not do this.” She stepped back and collided with the shelves.

He caught her arm to stop her fall, but did not let go.

“Do what? Admit I am attracted to you. I am, as you are to me.” His head was bowing before he’d even finished speaking.

Their lips touched.

It was different from yesterday, it was gentle, hesitant and reassuring, and without conscious thought her hands slid over his shoulders, one settling behind his neck, half holding his mouth to hers.

When his lips opened and his tongue slid across the seam of hers, she could not help but part hers and kiss him back as he was kissing her.

Their tongues weaved an intricate dance and she felt her body press against his, as the shelves dug into her back.

His hand supported her, slipping to the first curve of her lower back and her shoulder, but then his kiss became more ardent and his tongue pressed deep into her mouth.

“Katherine!”

They flew apart and she knew she must be crimson. The back of her hand pressed to her mouth, wondering how swollen her lips must look and then her palms pressed to her hot cheeks before trying to tuck wisps of her hair back beneath her bonnet.

Reverend Barker’s long, confident footsteps could be heard as he walked briskly up the aisle.

Her hands ran quickly over her gown, smoothing out creases which were not there. She felt dishevelled but it was not an outward turmoil, it was an inward one.

She looked at John. He did not look contrite at all.

Oh John, what are you trying to do to me?

She turned her back on him, presuming he would leave by the side door, and walked into the aisle. Her hands were shaking. She clasped them together.

She felt as though she’d played with fire and been burned. She was left charred and smouldering.

The suddenness of their separation had left John feeling bereft. All his senses were smarting at her loss as his gaze followed her departure.

The Reverend approached. John could see him through the ornate grid separating off the little chapel and his stomach clenched in a sharp spasm.

The vicar no longer wore his robes. He had changed somewhere and come back for her.

“Katherine!” The man’s voice echoed about the church.

Not, Miss Spencer.

John felt icy cold. The reverend was around the same age as himself. John’s grandfather had helped appoint him three years ago. John walked into the church as Katherine had done, a moment before she met the reverend in the aisle.

“Richard, I’m here.”

When John entered the square of four arches beneath the church tower, he felt like a cockerel in a pit, bitter hatred running into his blood. He wished to fight this man whose name she used. Had John walked in on a tryst they had planned?

He forced a smile. “I enjoyed your sermon, Reverend. I was just offering to take Miss Spencer home.”

She looked back, appearing to have not known he’d followed.

She gave him an uncertain look. “Thank you, Your Grace, but Reverend Barker usually drives me home.”

Ah, so she had not been hiding. She had been waiting for the vicar. She was embarrassed, blushing again, and John could feel the awareness running between Katherine and the reverend. But moments ago she had been kissing him.

“Forgive me, I thought Your Grace had gone.” The vicar gave John a deferential bow but John could see the man was prickling. There was a stand-off here. Two men interested in one woman.

The vicar sent Katherine a conciliatory and questioning smile. He obviously did not trust a duke near his prim Sunday-school teacher.

John laughed internally but it was a bitter sound which rung in his head. He felt a desperate need to cling to Katherine, to keep her for himself. He felt so much better in her presence – human.

He’d watched her during the service, moving about beyond the metal screen speaking with the children, sitting beside them and whispering to them.

He’d forgotten Wareham, the account books and the tenants he’d yet to meet. He’d forgotten the two halves of his whole. He was one person in her presence, a man who could feel warmth. He was only John.

Setting a false smile – all the old Duke’s grandson – John met the vicar’s gaze. “I saw Miss Spencer’s parents leave, I had not realised you had an arrangement.” His eyebrows lifted. Was the vicar her beau? Was Katherine inclined towards him?

“If you’ll excuse us then, Your Grace?” The vicar dismissed John and looked at Katherine. “Are you ready?”

She nodded.

John seethed, nobody routed him. Katherine was his and he was going to damn well have her. This bloody nothing of a vicar would have to step aside.

“Your Grace.” She turned to him and dropped a deep curtsy as though he was a stranger and they had not been kissing but moments ago.

I want you.

If she was playing games, well he’d learnt them from the she-wolves abroad, he knew how to play.

“Katherine,” he stated, in a deep warm pitch, reminding her they were not strangers.

She blushed intensely, but John had let her vicar know he was not the only one who had permission to call her by her given name. But then she had never actually given John permission, he had assumed the right based on their childhood friendship.

He turned to the vicar. “Reverend Barker.”

Then he left.

~

It had been three days since John had felt Katherine’s kiss slip into complete abandon in the chancel chapel. Since then his mind had been full of her.

Oh but that was a lie, his mind had been full of her since the funeral, only now it was becoming even more of an obsession.

His whole body ached with need for her and at night she occupied his dreams.

It irritated him immensely whenever he thought of her with her Godly priest.

She had kissed John back in the church and admitted she had wanted him to kiss her in the road. She could not therefore wish for a pious bloody vicar. John strode on along Maidstone’s pavement and shoved his thoughts of Kate aside. He had a job to do. He’d scoured the accounts and found nothing unusual, so now he was resorting to asking Pembroke Place’s suppliers about Wareham’s business practices.

He’d also visited tenants over the last two days and asked them if they’d had any problems with the management of their tenancies. No one had complained.

As John walked, he received bows and curtsies in acknowledgement. He nodded at the people noting his presence, though his now habitual lack of patience was wearing thin. He knew why his grandfather had never walked anywhere. John set his jaw and kept going. But then his gaze alighted on one person he was pleased to see.

Warmth and light suddenly swept into the cold, arid darkness inside him.

Katherine! He shouted her name, though not aloud.

She was on the far side of the street, standing outside a hat shop, looking in through the window. She held a pile of parcels.

A primal hunger roared inside him.

Her profile was perfect and dainty, with her round-tipped nose, and her rose-coloured lips were slightly parted. He imagined her in a black silhouette portrait, as they’d cut images in Naples. He crossed the cobbled street, now entirely ignoring other passers-by.

“Katherine.” He took the last step and touched her elbow.

She started and spun around, her eyes wide. “Y-your Grace.”

“It seems I surprise you every time,” he whispered.

She was blushing again.

“I-I’m sorry.”

He looked to where she had been looking and saw a pretty bonnet dressed with ornamental cherries and a cerise-pink ribbon. Mary thought the mode for fruit on a bonnet absurd. Katherine obviously did not.

“Your Grace?” he queried. “If the vicar is Richard, Katherine, I think I might remain, John, privately? We have known each other years!” Her wide turquoise-blue eyes stared back, but she said nothing. “What is going on between the two of you anyway?” The question had been rattling about in John’s head for days.

“N-nothing, I…” She did not continue.

“Nothing? He drives you home every Sunday? Have you an agreement with him?”

“An agreement?” Her eyes kept glancing beyond him, into the shop.

“Are you promised to him?”

She turned a deeper pink. “No.”

He suddenly remembered she was holding parcels and took them from her.

Where was her groom or maid? Phillip’s family were not high society but nor were they low. Her father was the local squire.

“Who is with you?” The question probably sounded impertinent. He was still angry over the bloody vicar.

“My mother is in the shop.” She looked embarrassed. She had not been embarrassed with her vicar. John wished she’d feel as comfortable with him.

He glanced through the shop window and saw her mother and her younger sister, sifting through a drawer of ribbons. Why was she not in the shop with them?

“You are not shopping?” She flushed bright red, but said nothing. It was obvious she was not. “Where is your groom?” That was who should be carrying her parcels.

“He is in the livery stable—”

“Leaving you playing maid.” John turned back, looking for his own man and waved him forwards. “There’s no need for you to stand here looking to all and sundry like a pack mule, Katherine, I’ll have my groom take these to yours.”

Her fingers hovered at her waist as though she wished to take the parcels back, but he would not allow it.

“Katherine, is something wrong?”

Her eyes widened. “No.”

“And you and the vicar?” he pressed again.

“Please, Your Grace, John, do not…”

Her lack of an answer said there was something. Yet if there was something, why had she let him kiss her, and kissed him back. Her company gave John peace, and peace was a much-vaunted thing in his current life, he was not willing to relinquish it.

“Do not what, Kate?”

Her mother chose that moment to leave the shop, and his question was answered only by a ringing bell. “Your Grace.”

John had never liked Phillip’s mother.

“Your Grace.” Nor his youngest sister.

John’s innards hardened to stone at their fawning pitch. They were money-grabbing, scheming females; he’d never had the same sense from Katherine.

“Katherine, you should have called us.” Her mother, and then her sister, rose from their curtsies.

Conveniently, John’s groom arrived and, ignoring the women, John passed off the parcels. “Take these to the Spencers’ groom at the livery.”

John’s groom bowed and then turned away, but Mrs Spencer stopped him. “There is another here.”

John felt a rush of irritation again. She was taking his assistance for granted, as if it was her given right to have his help. It was not. But then this is what came of showing any preference when you were a duke. He had once favoured her son.

“Your Grace, you will not have met Jennifer since she was young.”

His eyes turned to the youngest sister. Like John’s siblings, Jenny was much younger.

“Your Grace,” Jenny stated again, offering her hand as though he would want to take it.

He accepted it – only because she was Katherine’s and Phillip’s little sister – held it for a moment and then let go.

“Are you in town for long, Your Grace?” the girl asked as if she knew him.

“We were just on our way to the inn for refreshments if you would care to join us?” Mrs Spencer added.

He did not care. Had it been Katherine alone however… But she remained mute, and when he glanced at her she was staring at the pavement, her face largely hidden by the broad rim of her bonnet.

“I’m busy, I’m afraid.”

“That is a shame, Your Grace, but you must come to Jenny’s party. It is her coming-out ball, here, at the assembly rooms. It is two weeks today. You will attend, Your Grace? Shall I send an invitation?”

“Mama, John is still in mourning,” Katherine whispered. She had used his given name.

“I had not forgotten.” The woman thrust at Katherine. “It will do no harm if he does not dance.”

Anger struck him again over Mrs Spencer’s presumption. He did not appreciate being told what he may do.

“Phillip will be there of course.”

Phillip could go hang, but John would attend for Katherine. It would give him a chance to have another hour or so in her company.

“I shall come. Send the invitation. But now I must be getting on.” He bowed slightly to Katherine’s mother. “Mrs Spencer.”

She curtsied.

“Miss Jennifer.” He nodded again as the girl dropped another deep curtsy, trying to please.

Then he looked at Katherine. “Katherine.” She curtsied, but he caught her hand before she dropped too deep and lifted it to his lips. His kiss pressed onto the same pair of kid leather gloves she had worn at the funeral and in the road the other day.