The Duke Diaries (3 page)

“Pardon me,” Verity said so quietly that both men turned to her. She picked up a nasty-looking pistol from her nightstand and pointed it at them. “Can you not both wait until tomorrow? You did say Prinny is waiting, James.”

“Why on earth do you have . . .” James said, stunned.

She paused for just the slightest second. So briefly, another man would have missed the precursor of a lie in the making.

“Perhaps Prinny keeps these in ladies’ chambers to ward off intruders,” she said in an overly lofty tone. “Exquisite, but lethal, no?”

The hue of Candover’s face became paler, the effects of the evening evident. “For the love of God, put that down.”

“No.”

Candover sighed, crossed the room and came to a stop near the door, which was as far away as the other man could get from Rory. “Verity, like it or not, you will marry the bastard. You will obey me.”

She lowered the pistol and jutted her chin forward. “Why ever would I start a bad habit like that? And you are a fine one to talk. Did you not just stand up your bride in front of half of London? You have far more important things to worry about than a spinster sister who has never had any intention of marrying—as you well know.”

A glimmer of sadness invaded Candover’s face, before he wiped it clean of any emotion. “Promise me you will depart for Boxwood today,” he replied quietly. “Promise me, Verity. And you will not leave Derbyshire until this is sorted out to my satisfaction.”

“I will go, brother,” she capitulated. “If only to avoid the storm and not add to your epic disaster.”

Candover eyed the two of them. “Verity, take the passage. Dress as fast as you possibly can and I shall arrange for a carriage. Amelia will stay to pack your affairs.” Then Candover looked at Rory as if he was nothing more than the eel he had suggested. “I suggest you follow me after I divert the servants. Over there”—he nodded to the newspaper he had tossed on the table when he’d entered in a rage—“you’ll find recommended reading before you join Prinny and the rest of us.”

Verity had gathered a few articles and disappeared through the concealed door.

Rory’s eye hurt like a thousand devils. He did not turn a hair. “Your power of control over a female is inspiring, Candover. I salute you.”

The premier duke narrowed his eyes. “I should have almost enjoyed witnessing how you fared with my sister. But I shall enjoy finishing you off even more . . . after you say your vows.”

The premier duke Rory had once considered a brother turned on his heel and departed with far less violence than he had arrived. His head throbbing like a thousand devils, Rory glanced at the newspaper on the table and retrieved it. He turned to “The Fashionable World,” the section read by the aristocracy who participated in social folly, but more importantly by the legion of lower classes who wished they could partake. His head swimming in devil’s brew, he fought the pain to scan the column, his chest tightening.

In a continuation of the regular obscene excesses of the Prince Regent and his royal entourage, not one of the party made an appearance at St. George’s much earlier this morning, with the exception of our Princess Caroline, darling little Princess Charlotte, and Her Grace, the young Duchess of March. His Majesty’s absence and that of the groom and groomsmen caused all four hundred guests to assume the worst. And indeed, this columnist has it on the very best authority, partially one’s own eyewitness account, that not only the august bridegroom, His Grace, the Duke of Candover, but also seven other dukes, one archbishop, and the Prince Regent himself were seen cavorting about all of London last eve on an outrageous regal rampage. Midnight duels, swimming amok with the swans in the Serpentine, a stream of scantily clad females in tow, lawn bowling in unmentionables, horse races in utter darkness, wild, uproarious boasting, and jesting and wagering abounded. Indeed, this author took it upon himself to retrieve and return to White’s Club their infamous betting book, which one of the royal entourage had the audacity to remove without even a by your leave. In this fashion we have learned that the Duke of Kress lost the entire fortune he so recently acquired with the title, although the winner’s name was illegible.

Even the queen’s jewels were spotted on one duke as he paraded down Rotten Row. Yes, my fellow countrymen, it appears the English monarchy has learned nothing from our French neighbor’s lessons concerning aristocratic overindulgence. As the loyal scribe of the Fashionable column for two decades, you have it on my honor that all this occurred and worse. I can no longer remain silent on these reoccurring grievous, licentious activities, and so shall be the first plain-speaking, brave soul to utter these treasonous words: I no longer support or condone a monarchy such as this.

Lord above
. . . Rory crumpled the paper in his hand. The same hand that had been holding Lady Verity Fitzroy’s quite possibly through the dawn hours. And all the sordid, bloody, dangerous, soul-shattering events in his past came roaring back into his head with a vengeance.

Chapter 2

S
o this was banishment.

For the first time in her life Verity had not even one hint of family or friends in sight here in Derbyshire. And not one thing to do. The official mistress of the family by default, she had not one dinner menu to approve, not one social occasion to plan or accept, and she had completed the annual inventory for Boxwood in record time.

It was ridiculous.

Her brother had never been an ogre in the past. How could he blame her for sleeping her way to disaster and then send her away? Everyone in the family knew she slumbered like a hibernating bear. And had not James slept like a
drunken ox
through his own wedding?

Well, she refused to feel sorry for herself. It never brought happiness nor changed the past.

She should know
.

Verity glanced nearby toward her brother’s favorite horse, which she had ridden to this corner, who was deliriously munching on the forbidden grass of the garden. James would be furious.

Using the tattered end of one of her ancient bonnet’s faded scarlet ribbons, she swatted at a tiny insect navigating her forearm. She sighed with frustration. Even her very best friend and cousin in Derbyshire, the widowed Esme, Countess of March, was gone. Gone to the Continent to pursue her one passion and great talent: art.

Which meant that for the first time in her life, aside from the thirty-seven silent, or mostly silent, servants, Verity was finally granted the one thing she had always sought: peace.

The only problem was that like most other long-cherished wishes, once tasted (and she had tasted far too much quiet for five long days), the appeal flagged. About the only good thing to say about tranquility and privacy was that she could write to her heart’s content anywhere she pleased, unlike her prior crowded life.

But for the first time ever she had nothing to write.

Verity glanced down at her newest diary open on the garden table under the three-hundred-year-old oak tree, bordering the woods beyond the estate’s most distant lower gardens. She wondered how many scandals the tree had shaded with its massive branches. Certainly not as many as Boxwood’s infamous maze or the pine tree of so long ago.

The woods and surrounding moors beckoned with the fast tattoo of woodpeckers competing with the lovely song of the pied flycatchers and redstarts. The shadow of a sparrow hawk in flight, his cream-colored legs hidden in formal gray and white striped down tail feathers, preceded a crescendo of alarm calls from robins and thrushes hidden in the dense woodland.

Verity closed her eyes as silence descended, and a few long moments later the skittering of a bank mole or wood mouse intruded.

Lord, she was sure to go mad in the beauty of this solitary confinement.

Beneath her fingers, two dozen pages written through and through fluttered in the slight summer breeze. She had written them during the journey northward and had made a point to read them every day, as the scene in her guest bedchambers at the Prince Regent’s Carleton House the eve before her brother’s wedding still seemed surreal in her mind. Had she really spent hours in the same bed as Rory? Of course, only she would achieve what she had longed for in her youth and then sleep through the entire event.

Rory
. . . Lord, he had been as magnificent as always that morning—undaunted by the cruel trick fate had played, willing to accept the consequences with a cool head and unflappable wit, and always magnetizing in a fashion that only increased her long-simmering yearning for the impossible with him.

Love . . .

Only once—during a hot summer long ago when she had been seventeen—had her sensibilities been displaced. She pushed the thought to the corner of her mind she rarely visited.

And now, Rory was even more exquisitely handsome than in her days of youth. It had been painfully difficult to meet his gaze and remain unflustered in that chamber. Only her unwavering certainty that she could never wed someone who would never love her as she did him sustained her.

Verity stared down at the ink-spattered pages in her lap. She wished for her other diaries, the ones she kept by her side always. But she had been rendered a complete nodcock in the aftermath of that morning from hell. And Amelia, for the first time in memory, had neglected to pack Verity’s most prized possessions in the hasty departure from London. Ill ease filled her as she continued staring at the words on the page. But Amelia was certain to carry them on her person when she traveled north in one of the Fitzroy barouches with the rest of their affairs shortly.

She was sure.

Then again, considering all that had happened that awful night, Amelia was very likely not her cool, calm, collected self at the moment. A frisson of dread snaked up her spine just thinking of Amelia. Verity had not one but two disasters in the making and yet was too far away from everyone involved to try and set things to rights.

Out of the corner of her eye she spied her horse’s head shoot up and swing about. She followed its gaze to find a rider in the distance—headed in their direction. Her heart leapt.

She knew it was he by the tilt of his head, glancing toward the wood.

She had prepared herself for the onslaught he might spew forth. He would act the role of his life to charm and pretend he truly wanted her for a wife. And if there was anyone who could play a role to perfection, it was Rory Lennox.

She should know. Had she not secretly witnessed or heard his rakehelly powers of persuasion toward the fairer and more easily duped sex? And they fell in hordes for him time and time again. Nine times out of ten, all it took was a mere handful of words toward a suitably jaded and very willing female, although never a lady who had anything to lose by a liaison. Rory had refined the technique to its purest, most captivating essence: “Darling, I’ve tried and tried to fight my desire—but I can no longer stay silent. For weeks I’ve dreamed of you. I’ve only dallied with the notion of love once in my life, but I fear . . . fear greatly for my soul . . . that that is about to change.”

Following a searing kiss, usually behind a tree during someone’s ball, his prey stood not a chance, given his outrageous pursuit coupled with his famously handsome face and unparalleled good fortune.

According to Verity’s last calculation, Rory Lennox, former Earl of Rutledge, and current Duke of Abshire, had fallen in lust twenty-six times the last three years since he returned from Wellington’s war machine, still churning ever onward without him.

In Verity’s well-worn dictionary there were six lines describing a rake, beginning with
libertine
and ending with
seducer
. She would have advised the editors to save space by offering up her own definition: Rake, noun. Rory Lennox.

M
ost dukes are born into the title. Few earn it. Rory Lennox was of the latter group. But he was not proud of it—for good reason. But after last week’s debacle at Carleton House, he was through with any further attempts at escaping the hell of his own mind. And since he was giving free rein to horror, facing the ghosts lurking in that crook of Derbyshire from whence he spent his boyhood seemed like the next step on his trail to purgatory.

Now he would be saddled with a wife, Lord help
her
—the one thing he’d sworn never to have—to whom he would have to feign concern for the rest of his life. He had no bloody use for a wife and absolutely no interest in overseeing her welfare until the end of his days and beyond.

And his sodding titles? The earldom would go to a fine third cousin with a preponderance of male progeny at last review. The duchy would die with him. One Abshire was enough.

Rory dismounted a considerable distance from the lady in question—a female he had occasionally seen at the numerous fashionable events in Town the last three seasons, but as he had steered clear of all Fitzroys, he had never spoken more than three sentences to Lady Verity Fitzroy since his return from war. He vaguely remembered he had nicknamed her Lady V during those days she followed without trepidation her brother, Sussex and him when she had been on the cusp of womanhood.

There were only two reasons he was here: he always corrected his mistakes, and she was an innocent and the sister of the man he had once betrayed. If there was one trait Rory had learned too late, it was loyalty. His years on the march with Wellington had drummed it into his once untrustworthy soul.

The mossy green carpet on the edge of the wood sank under his footsteps. The soft murmur of a stream nearby provided the backdrop for birdsong lilting from the dark canopy of trees as he approached. She was seated, and hastily closed a book in her lap.

“Lady Fitzroy.” He bowed perfunctorily. “Delighted to find you here.”

“Do be serious,” she replied, not meeting his eye.

“Lady V”—he pasted his most serene expression on his face—“how fare you?”

“The same as you, I presume, Your Grace. Mildly embarrassed, and wondering how long my brother will insist I endure my own company.” She indicated the wood-slatted bench in front of her and he seated himself.

He had to laugh. Thank God she had not forsaken her youthful tendencies to make free with her sentiments. Her chin rose a notch and she finally allowed her brown eyes to wander to his. He noticed that flecks of amber sparked from the centers. The hint of a blush crested her cheeks, as her dark eyes challenged him. The Fitzroy strong features were in full evidence.

“It won’t be for long,” he murmured. “Indeed, since I’m here, I’d say the incarceration is over. Look, I shall see to the vicar and—”

“No.”

“No?” He paused. “No to what?”

“I will not give you the great honor of my hand. That is why you’re here, is it not?”

He examined his fingernails. “Look, we can do this the hard way—”

“Or the easy way?” she interrupted. “You could be a tad more original. Clichés disappoint me. And this is the very first time you’ve had to offer yourself on the altar of eternal wedded bliss, is it not? Not that it will be the last if you continue to be such a nodcock in your bumbling selection of sleeping quarters.”

Nodcock?
Bumbling?
He felt a rare smile tease the corners of his mouth. “Spare the niceties, Lady V. Do tell me what you really think.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Thank God she was no coward. But had she always been quite so outspoken? As far as he could remember, the last time they had exchanged more than five words strung together before finding himself in her bedchamber was when he had lived here fourteen years ago—before he had taken what he had thought would be permanent leave of this hellish corner.

She finally shook her head with a mock look of disappointment. “If you are going to offer, one could hope you would give it a bit more thought and effort. I am James’s favorite sister, after all.”

“I thought that was Patience or Perseverance.”

She tilted her sharp chin up. “There is no Patience or Perseverance in the Fitzroy family.”

“Don’t I know it,” he retorted with a grin.

“
Hope
used to be his favorite,” she said.

He gave her a questioning glance.

“Until she made the unpardonable mistake of making James’s fiancée look like a fool.”

“But she is a fool.”

“There, you see? Why is my brother the only one who could not glimpse beyond her infuriating beauty?”

“Because he’s a man,” Rory said with an owlish expression pasted onto his face.

“Exactly!”

He bit back a laugh. He liked her. She had a lovely, open countenance when she smiled.

She narrowed her eyes. “You do that very well.”

“Pardon me?” He made sure to keep a look of cool indifference on his face.

“That way of yours when you speak to ladies.”

He was taken aback. “What way?”

She paused to reflect, her eyes staring at the uppermost branches of the trees. “Of agreeing with us. Gentlemen are not expected to ever agree with us. Especially concerning your own sex. I probably shouldn’t have pointed any of this out for the sole reason that you will now employ it consciously to dupe a whole new legion of females.”

“You look lovely, by the by, Lady V,” he murmured. “What is that
fetching
thing on your head?”

“Oh, and your knack for changing the topic is top notch too. That ‘thing’ is a straw bonnet. Entirely uninteresting to you I am sure.”

“There you are wrong, my dear V. It’s simply fascinating. Is it from the Georgian or Pleistocene era?”

She refused to be swayed from the topic. “Shall we not have a go at the matter at hand? You know, the one where you are supposed to woo me and wed me in short order to save my soul or more importantly so I will not become the pariah of Derbyshire?”

“You said it, not I.”

“Well, you should know the only reason I’m willing to discuss this is to keep my dear brother out of the graveyard. Your war years are too much of an advantage and James would be the worse for the wear should he meet you.” She shook her head. “And I hate to arrange flowers. I would feel compelled to lay wilting bouquets on his headstone every week for the next seventy years, given the longevity of most Fitzroys.”