The Dissolute Duke

‘Unfortunately they are beginning to.’ Asher’s voice no longer held any measure of care.

‘What does Alderworth say?’

‘Nothing and that is the great problem. If he denied everything categorically and strode into society the same way he strode into Wellingham House, people might cease to believe Richard Allenby. But instead the man has disappeared to the country, leaving chaos behind him.’

‘Alderworth came here? To the town house?’ Lucinda frowned. There was something about him that was familiar, some part of him that she remembered from…before. ‘What did he want?’

‘Put bluntly, he wanted to be rid of any blame as far as your reputation was concerned. He made that point very plain.’ Asher put his paper down and watched her closely. ‘The man is a charlatan, but he is also clever. The slight whiff of an alliance with us might be profitable to him.’

‘Alliance?’ Lucinda’s mouth felt suddenly dry.

‘A ruined reputation requires measures that may be stringent and far from temporary.’

‘You mean a betrothal?’ Horror had Lucinda’s words whispered. Low. She had heard all the stories of the wicked Duke. Everybody had. He was a man who lived by his own rules and threw the caution most others followed to the wind.

As her heartbeat quickened, memory fought against haze and won. Dropping the teacup she was holding, she stood, liquid spilling across the pristine whiteness of an antique damask tablecloth, the brown stain widening through the embossed stitching even as she watched.

The naked form of Taylen Ellesmere came through the fog, unfolding from a rumpled bed, each long and graceful line etched in candlelight, the red wine in a decanter beside him almost gone. She knew the feel of his skin, undeniably, for they had been joined together pressed in lust, his velvet-green eyes close as he had leaned down and kissed her. No simple chaste kiss, either, but one with a smouldering and virtue-taking force.

Shock kept her still, as she looked directly at her oldest brother.

‘What is wrong? You look … ill.’ Real concern crossed his face.

‘I am remembering things and I th-th-think everything Richard Halsey is saying of m-me might indeed be tr-true.’

Her weakened legs folded beneath her just as Asher caught her, the hard arm of the chair slamming into her side.

‘You are saying you lay with Alderworth. Unmarried.’

‘He was naked in his bedchamber. He touched me everywhere. The door was locked and I could not leave. I tried to, but I could not. He took the key. He was not safe.’ A torrent of small truths, each one worse than the last.

‘My God.’ She had never heard the note in her brother’s voice that she did now, not once in all her many escapades and follies. His fractured tone brought tears to her eyes as she felt Emerald’s hand slip into her own and squeeze.

‘You will marry my sister as soon as I can procure a special licence and then you will disappear from England altogether, you swine.’

Asher Wellingham had already laid a good few punches across Tay’s face and Cristo Wellingham was still holding him down. Not the refined manners he had imagined them to have, after all, each blow given with a deliberate and clinical precision. His nose streamed with blood and he could barely see out of his left eye. The two front teeth at the bottom of his mouth were loosened.

‘If you kill me…a betrothal might be…difficult.’

Another blow caught him in the kidneys and, despite meaning not to, he winced.

‘You will tell Lucinda that it was completely your fault she was at Alderworth in the first place and that your heinous, iniquitous and pernicious sense of social virtue was lost years before you met her. In effect, you will say that she never had the chance of escaping such corruption.’

‘C-comprehensive.’

‘Very. But as long as you understand us we will allow you to at least take breath into another day whilst we try to mitigate all the wrong you have heaped upon our sister. She is distraught, as you can well imagine, and names you as the most loathsome of all men. A reprobate who took advantage of her when she was drunk.’

‘She told you that?’

‘And worse. But although she might hate you, she also knows that you are the only man who can restore her shattered name in society when you marry her. In that she is most adamant.’

‘A sterling quality in a bride.’ Even to his own ears his voice lacked the sting of irony he usually made an art form of.

‘Well, you can laugh, Alderworth, but if you believe we will let you anywhere near Lucinda after the ceremony is performed then you have another think coming. You have already done your damage. Now you will pay for it.’

Tay coughed once and then again, his breath difficult to catch. When the younger brother allowed him to drop heavily to the floor he felt the arm that had been hurt in the carriage accident crack against hard parquet, pain radiating up into the shoulder socket.

Ignominiously he began to shake and he swore. It had been a long time since he remembered doing that, his uncle’s face screwed up above him in the wrath of some perceived and tiny insult, the summer winds of Alderworth hot against the wounds that lashed his back. Bleeding, everywhere. No mercy in the beating.

Standing uncertainly and holding on to the edge of a chair, he raised himself before them. ‘Your sister’s memory is faulty. I did not touch her.’

‘She says exactly the opposite, and anybody who knows Lucinda knows, too, that straightforward honesty is one of her greatest strengths.’ The embossed ducal ring on Carisbrook’s finger caught the light as he moved forwards. ‘Frankly, given the number of your dubious guests who have not ceased gossiping since the accident about what went on at Alderworth, I find your whining and feeble excuses insulting. A man worth his salt would simply own up to his mistakes and take the punishment he deserves.’

From experience Tay knew when to stop baiting a man who would hit him until life was leached from truth. He nodded an end to the dispute and saw the answering relief on Asher Wellingham’s face.

‘We will pay you to leave a week after the wedding. A considerable sum that should see you well on your way to your next destination. After that, you will never again set foot anywhere near London or our family.’

‘Alderworth is almost bankrupt. Your father’s debts were numerous and you will not have enough equity to continue the repayments after the year’s end.’ Taris had taken up the reins now, from a sofa near the fireplace, his voice steady and quiet. ‘You have been trying to trade your way out of the conundrum, but your bills are becoming onerous and a lifestyle of indolence is hardly a profitable one. Accept our offer and you might keep your family inheritance for a few years yet. Decline and you will be in the debtors’ prison by Christmas.’

‘Will your sister know?’

‘Indeed. Lucinda wants it.’ Cristo stepped forwards, disdain in his eyes. ‘She wants you out of her life for ever.’

Marriage as a bribe to keep the Alderworth estate. Tay thought of its roofline under the Bedfordshire sky, the golden stone against the sun and hundreds of acres of fertile and green land at its feet. His father had forsaken the place, but he could not. Not even if the alternative meant selling his soul.

‘Very well.’ His voice was hoarse and he felt his honour breaking, but he swiped the feeling away as a quill was inked and a parchment made ready. He was the only Alderworth who could save four hundred years of history and Lucinda Wellingham hated his very guts.

Chapter Four

Lord Taylen Ellesmere, the sixth Duke of Alderworth, had the appearance of a man who had been in a particularly rough boxing match when Lucinda saw him for the first time at the top of the aisle in the small chapel in London’s Mayfair.

He did not turn to look at her, his profile granite-hard, his left wrist encased in a bandage and a large cut running along the whole side of his jaw. The muscles beneath the wound rippled with anger, a barely held wrath that was seen in the straightness of his posture and in the rigidity of his being. His hair was shorter, shaved almost to the skull, a single white, opaque scar snaking from the edge of his right ear to his crown. One eye was blackened.

Even Asher looked slightly taken aback by his appearance, but at this stage of the proceedings there was little anyone could do.

The die was cast after all. She would marry the Duke of Alderworth to redeem her place in society and he would marry her because her brothers had made him do so. She had sinned and this was the result. Love existed nowhere in the equation and the empty pews in the chapel reflected the fact. Her siblings and their wives sat on her side of the church, as well as some close friends, but on his side … there was nobody.

Lucinda speculated as to who might stand up as his witness, the question answered a moment later when Cristo moved across to him. Her youngest brother looked about as unhappy with the whole thing as Asher was, a duty performed out of necessity rather than respect.

Every other Wellingham wedding had been a joyous affair, celebrated with laughter and noise and elation. This one was sombre, quiet and dismal. She wondered how long the Duke of Alderworth would stay in London after the ceremony and just what words she might use to explain away his absence. Asher had said that he would remain in the capital for a week or more, so that appearances could be upheld. After that they would be glad to see the back of him.

Her brother had breathed this through a clenched jaw as if even a day in the company of her soon-to-be husband would be one too many.

Lucinda swallowed away dry fear. This was the worst mistake she had ever made, but the consequences of her own stupidity had brought her to such a pass, her whole family entwined in the deceit. She wanted to throw down the bouquet of white roses interlaced with fragrant gardenias and peel off the ivory gown that had been quickly fashioned by one of London’s up-and-coming modistes. The veil helped, however, a layer of lace between her and the world, sheltering confusion. A week ago she would not have been able to walk or to stand for such long periods, but today the utter alarm of everything allowed her to keep any pain at bay.

Posy Tompkins stood to one side of her, her face drawn. Her friend had been nothing short of horrified about the consequences of their ill-thought-out visit to Alderworth and had been attentive and apologetic ever since. She claimed she had managed to avoid the worst of the excesses by locking herself in her room.

‘Are you sure you want to go through with this, Luce?’ she whispered. ‘We could disappear to Europe together otherwise. I have more than enough money for us both. We could go to Rome or Paris to my relatives.’

‘And be for ever outcast?’

‘It might be better than …’ She stopped, but Lucinda knew exactly what she was about to say.

It might be better than being married to a man who looked for all the world as if he was going to his own funeral. With an effort she lifted her chin. It was not as if she was happy about anything, either, although some quiet part of her buried deep held its breath as green eyes raked across her own, the red streak in one of them bright with fury.

‘This is 1831, Luce, not the Middle Ages. If you truly do not wish to do this, you only have to say. No one can drag a reluctant bride to the altar even if the alternative is enormous scandal.’

‘I do not think your words are helping, Posy.’

‘Then let me call it off. I can say that it was completely my fault I took you to Alderworth in the first place and procured the dress and …’

But the minister had begun to speak in his low, calm voice and Lucinda knew that to simply walk out on her last chance of salvation would be to cut herself off from a family that meant the world to her.

She had brought this upon herself, after all, and she just could not think of another more viable solution. A marriage ceremony. A week of pretence. And then freedom. Lord, she would follow the straight and narrow from now on and, if God in all his wisdom allowed her the strength to get through these next hours, she would promise in return an eternal devotion to His Good Works.

When Tay took a quick look at his bride-to-be he saw that under her veil her hair was plaited in a crown encircled by pale rosebuds. Today she seemed smaller, slighter, less certain. The lies she had spun about them, he supposed, come home to roost in front of the altar, no true basis for any such betrothal. He was glad of the lace that covered her head because he did not wish to see her deceitful eyes until he had to. The gown surprised him, though. He had thought she might balk at making any effort whatsoever, but the dress fitted her perfectly, spilling in a froth of whiteness about her feet. A dainty silver bracelet adorned her left wrist, four small gold stars hanging from it.

A continual whispered dialogue with the bridesmaid began to get on his nerves and he was glad when the minister, dressed in flowing dark clothes, called the place to order.

Everybody looked tense. The bride. The brothers. Even the minister as he held his hand up to the organist and called for quiet.

‘Marriage is a state that is not to be entered into lightly, or with false promise. Are you happy to continue, Lady Lucinda?’

Tay bit down on chagrin. Of course she would be. His title was one factor and her ruin was another. He wished the man might skip through to the final troths and then all of this would be over.

But he did not. Rather he waited until the bride before him nodded her head without any enthusiasm whatsoever. ‘Then we are here today to join this man and this woman in the state of Holy Matrimony …’

For ever and for ever. It was all Tay could think as he gave his replies, though his parents had never let such pledges inhibit them in their quest for the hedonistic. For the first time in his life he partly understood them and some of his disillusionment lifted.

But it was too late for such understanding now, with his years seemingly destined to run along the same chaotic and uncontrolled pathway as those that he had sworn he would never follow. He was his father’s son, after all, and this was a universally ordained celestial punishment for what he had become. The thought calmed him; fate moving in ways which allowed no redemption and if it had not been this particular sticky end that he had met, then undoubtedly it would have been another.

‘Will you, Taylen Andrew Templeton Ellesmere, take Lucinda Alice Wellingham as your lawfully wedded wife …?’

The words shook him from his reverie. Her middle name was Alice and it suited her. Soft. Pale. Otherworldly.

‘I will.’

Resignation tempered his pledge.

When Lucinda Wellingham gave the troth her tone was shaken, a thin voice in a house of God that held no message of joy within it.

And finally it was over.

Because it was expected he turned to face her and lifted the veil slowly. The church had been a place of refuge for him as a child and he still believed in the sanctity of religion despite everything he had become. The woman who stood there, however, was different from the laughing brave one in his bedchamber in Alderworth. This girl had dark rings beneath her lashes and eczema on her cheeks. Her eyes were flat blue orbs with no sparkle at all and the bump on her head from the accident was still visible. Exhaustion wove paleness into her skin.

As hurt as he was. A shared damage.

He felt his hand move to touch the wound and stopped himself. Theirs was a marriage in name only and the Wellinghams had been insistent that he understood this was for public consumption. A week or two at the most and then they wanted him gone. Her brothers had said that was her wish, too, his bride who, after uttering only lies, would not carry out even the pretence of a union once her ruin was minimised.

A travesty. A perversion. A shameful parody of something that should have been finer. Lord, the notion that survival justified the use of immoral means to achieve the required end was rubbing off on him in a melancholic and peculiar discontent. ‘He who neglects what is done for what ought to be done effects his ruin …’ Machiavelli. The memory took him back to the night she had burst uninvited into his room, her colour high and the red dress low across her breasts.

Tay wished Lucinda Wellingham would take his hand again and hold it as she had at Alderworth, her fingers entwined into the worth of him as if she knew things that nobody else had ever discovered. He shook his head hard at such nonsense and she chose that moment to look at him directly, pale blue searingly condemnatory, the lies between them settling into an uncrossable distance.

‘It cannot be easy to be the bride of ruin.’ His words made her flinch, but he did not take them back. He wished that amongst those gathered there had been one person who might have welcomed his company. But there wasn’t. All the wives of the Wellinghams had drawn Lucinda into their bosom, their eyes slicing across his like sharp knives—a rancorous truce, the white flag of surrender raised across his spilled blood and bruising. If he had by chance dropped dead due to some unforeseen and dreadful ailment he thought a party might have ensued, this veil of pretence transformed into a celebration of death.

He had never felt so unwelcome anywhere.

The shake of Taylen Ellesmere’s head made Lucinda turn away, the tears she felt smarting at the back of her burning eyes threatening to fall. He did not look contrite or penitent or even slightly apologetic. He looked implacable and indifferent, this man who had disgraced her through fine red wine and a callous disregard for innocence, and was now making no effort whatsoever to assuage such poor behaviour.

The Bride of Ruin, indeed. Her husband now. Judas. Shylock. Marcus Brutus.

Lucinda could not even bear the thought that he might reach out and touch her.

She had been destroyed and she could remember none of it. She had been deflowered by a master with only the slightest jolt of memory remaining. Her brothers stood around her, a wall of masculine prickliness, sheltering her from the canker this betrothal had spawned, her sisters-in-law stalwart in the next ring of protection.

Alderworth had not apologised to them. Rather he had laughed in the face of their accusations and sworn free will was a liberty that all were entitled to.

Free will to take an innocent beneath him and to ravish her under the influence of strong wine; free will to take her to his bed and to say nothing to obliterate the raging gossip that swirled around the circles of society.

Lucinda Wellingham, the harlot. Lucinda Wellingham, intrinsically flawed.

Like the spoilt centre of a fruit, she thought, and was glad Posy Tompkins had also pushed in beside her because at least her friend’s perception of the nuptials was laced with some sense of excitement.

‘You will be free now, Luce. A married woman has so many more liberties.’

‘I doubt another invitation will ever land upon my mantel, Posy.’

‘Then we shall hold our own soirées, brilliant cultured gatherings that shall be the talk of the town.’

‘Like courtesans?’ Lucinda could not take the sting of it from her words for, all of a sudden, the whole world seemed meaningless and hollow. Posy had no notion of the signed agreements designating the boundaries of this marriage. She had not told her.

‘Taylen Ellesmere is titled and handsome. There will be many a woman who might envy you such a husband. Believe me, be thankful he was not old and grey with no teeth and bad breath.’

Despite everything Lucinda smiled. Trust Posy to see the bright side of it all. Taking her friend’s hand, she held her fingers in a tight grip and turned away from the worry of her family. The promises had been given and the deed was done. The only way on from here was upwards and Lucinda swore that when she was finally free of all this she would never allow her life to be mired again in such a shambolic wreck of betrayal.

‘The wedding breakfast has been set up, Lucy. Asher asked if you would come now so that we can get this … finished with.’ Beatrice spoke softly so that no one would overhear. The Wellinghams could manipulate to avoid disaster, but they wanted no others to understand that they did so. The twenty or so outside guests who had strong ties with the family beamed at her from one corner of the room of Falder House.

They had been invited to make this farce seem … legitimate. With the knowledge of what might happen next her brothers had at least given her back her shattered name. But after this she would only garner pity; the bride who was left summarily by a husband who had never loved her.

Threading through the room, Beatrice, Taris and Asher led the assembly along to the blue salon. If she had wondered before at the control her brothers liked to wield, she understood now the very essence of it. The tables were dressed lavishly, the settings of the finest bone china and sterling silver. French wine had been brought up from the cellar. No shortcuts to encourage gossip. No small errors that might make the invited guests wonder. Nay, beneath the polite banter another reality lingered, stronger and unmistakable, but only if your name was Wellingham.

Taylen Ellesmere was sat next to her, his nearness making her shake, though when his leaf-green eyes brushed her own she felt … dizzy and disorientated.

Some worry leaked through her anger, a quiet emotion in a room full of tension. Bruising lay beneath his one blackened eye and there was a cut upon his bottom lip that she had not noticed before. Despite it all his beauty shone through, no slight comeliness, either, but a full-on barrage of masculine grace.

Unnerved, she shifted the lengthy veil which had pulled in beneath her, the lace of the Carisbrook’s heirloom fragile in the play of sunshine from the window. She felt as though the breath had been knocked out of her lungs by one hefty punch of misgiving, but another truth also lingered.

Her husband was not all evil. There was a goodness in him that no one had discovered as yet.

She knew this as certainly as night followed the day, even though on his left hand beside his marriage band other rings glinted in the light—perhaps reminders of love from other women he had once admired before he had been made to marry her by her brothers? His name was always linked to paramours, after all. Was there one who he might have wished was standing here now in her stead?

Her cheeks itched with the eczema she always got when misgiving consumed her and the idea that her good name might be salvaged by such a course of action suddenly seemed foolish and ill advised. She wished she did not feel so shamefully heated by his presence at her side, the indifference she sought so far away from this undeniable awareness of him.

‘The carriage accident hurt us both? I have been told how very lucky I was in not being killed by it, for with only a small movement things could have been so very much worse and I may never have walked again or even spoken and according to Doctor Cameron there might have—’

He stopped her by raising one hand. ‘Are you nervous?’

For the first time she could ever remember in her whole entire life, Lucinda blushed. She felt the slow crawl of blood fusing her cheeks and held her hand up to the heat.

‘Why would you say that?’

‘Because you confided in me once that you talk too much when you worry.’

Her mouth dropped open.

Such a private honesty and one that she had never let another soul be privy to. She seldom shared her secrets, keeping them close to her heart instead, safe from derision or discussion. When and why had she told him such a thing? Perhaps the wine had made her speak? The exasperating fact of her lack of memory was both tiring and worrying.

‘Surely you remember. It was just before I kissed you.’