A Gentleman Never Tells (32 page)

He set her on the ground, straightened his cuffs, adjusted his lapels, and picked her up again. “I’m doing this properly, by God,” he said, and carried her over the threshold and into the courtyard, where he placed her on the lichen-crusted edge of the fountain and tossed his hat on the ground.

“Welcome home, Lady Roland,” he said, and kissed her senseless.

Turn the page to read an excerpt from the next book in the trilogy

A Duke Never Yields

Coming from Berkley Sensation in February 2013!

London

February 1890

T
he Duke of Wallingford, as a rule, did not enjoy the sound of the human voice upon waking. Not that of his valet, nor his mistress—he never, ever spent the night with a woman—and certainly not the one that assailed his ears just now.

“Well, well,” said the Duke of Olympia, to the prostrate form of his eldest grandson. “For an instrument that has cut such a wide swathe of consternation, it appears remarkably harmless at present.”

Wallingford did not trouble to open his eyes. For one thing, he had a crashing headache, and the morning light already pierced his brain with sufficient strength, without his giving up the additional protection of his eyelids.

For another thing, he’d be damned if he gave the old man the satisfaction.

“Who the devil let you in?” Wallingford demanded instead.

“Your valet was kind enough to perform the office.”

“I shall sack him at once.”

Olympia’s footsteps clattered in reply along the wooden floor to the opposite end of the room, where he flung back the curtains on the last window. “There we are! A lovely day. Do examine the brilliant white of the winter sun this morning, Wallingford. Too extraordinary to be missed.”

Wallingford dropped an arm over his face. “Rot in hell, Grandfather.”

A sigh. “My dear boy, may I trouble you to consider a dressing robe? I am not accustomed to addressing the unadorned male member at such an early hour of the day. Or any hour of the day, as a matter of habit.”

Arthur Penhallow, Duke of Wallingford, twenty-nine years old and assuredly not a boy, flung his unoccupied arm in the direction of his dressing-room door. “If the sight offends, Grandfather, I recommend you to the wardrobe. The dressing gowns, I believe, are hanging along the right-hand side. I prefer the India cashmere, in wintertime.”

“I must decline your gracious invitation,” said Olympia, “and ring for your valet instead. Have you never considered a nightshirt?”

“When
I
am sixty-five, and without hope of tender feminine attention upon my withered person, I shall remember the hint.” This was not quite fair. Wallingford knew for a fact that his grandfather’s person, withered or not, currently enjoyed the tender feminine attention of Henrietta, Lady Pembroke herself, who did not choose her lovers for mere whimsy.

On the other hand, the opportunity was too tempting to pass up.

“And yet, Wallingford, your own person exhibits no evidence of feminine attention of any kind.” A delicate pause. “Quite the contrary, in fact.”

“Bugger off.”

“What a crude generation my children have spawned. Ah! Shelmerstone. You perceive His Grace stands in need of a dressing gown. In a manner of speaking, I hasten to add.”

Wallingford heard the door close behind his valet and the soft tread of the man’s feet across the thick Oriental rug toward the dressing room. “Shelmerstone,” he said, “once you have dressed and shaved me, you may collect your things and vacate your position. I am not to be disturbed before nine in the morning, and certainly not by so intolerable a character as His Grace, my grandfather.”

“Yes, sir,” said Shelmerstone, who was accustomed to being sacked several times a day, as a matter of course. “I have taken the liberty of putting out the gray superfine, sir, and your best beaver hat.”

“Why the devil? I ain’t contemplating church this morning.”

“I chose it, sir, as being more suitable for calling upon a lady, on a matter of such unprecedented delicacy.”

This caused Wallingford to sit up at last. “What lady?” he demanded, shading his eyes against the merciless abundance of light. Was it his imagination, or did everything smell of stale champagne this morning? “What . . .
delicacy
?” He said the word with a shudder of distaste.

“Madame de la Fontaine, of course.” Shelmerstone emerged from the wardrobe’s depths with a dressing gown of fawn brown cashmere and an air of irresistible moral authority, laced with cedar.

“See here.” Wallingford rose from his bed by the sheer force of habit and allowed Shelmerstone to fit his arms into the robe.

Olympia, impeccable as ever in sleek morning tweeds and riding boots, squared his arms behind his back and cast his grandson his most withering smile. Wallingford had loathed that look since childhood: Like an ill wind, it blew no good. “My dear boy, there’s no use pretending ignorance. The entire town knows of last night’s charming little farce. I don’t suppose you’d consider
belting
that robe? At my age, one’s digestion is so easily upset.”

Wallingford lashed his robe into modesty with vigorous jerks of his arms. “There was no
farce
, Grandfather. The Duke of Wallingford does not condescend to
farces
.”

“Shelmerstone,” said the Duke of Olympia, his bright blue eyes not leaving Wallingford’s face for an instant, “may I beg your indulgence for a moment of private conversation with my grandson?”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Shelmerstone set down the shaving soap and departed the room without a sound.

Wallingford attempted a smile. “I’m to be scolded, am I?”

His grandfather turned back to the window, fingered aside the curtain, and gazed out into the forest of white pediments that was Belgrave Square. The light fell across his features, softening the lines, until he might have been taken for a man twenty years younger were it not for the shining silver of his hair. “I don’t object to your taking the woman to bed,” he said, in the preternaturally calm voice he reserved for his most predatory moments. “French husbands are tolerant of such things, and as a diplomat, Monsieur de la Fontaine must be aware of the advantages of the liaison. It is why such a man marries an alluring woman.”

Wallingford shrugged. “He has been all that is accommodating.”

“Yes, of course. And in return, one expects that you would demonstrate a certain degree of respect. A
modicum
”—here Olympia’s voice began to intensify, signaling the approach of the attack—“a
modicum
of good breeding, which would prevent your indulging that wayward prick of yours with another diversion, whilst you remained the acknowledged lover of Cecile de la Fontaine.” He turned to Wallingford, eyes ablaze. “Under her own roof, no less, and at her own party. How else to humiliate her so thoroughly?”

“I never made Cecile any promises.” Wallingford’s insides were turning rapidly to stone, defending him against onslaught. Of course he had been wrong; he’d known it even as he was committing the very act—up against the wall of the de la Fontaines’ elegant conservatory, quite efficient, quite pleasant, if rather oppressively drenched with the scent of Cecile’s prize orchids—and to quit the lady in question (what the devil was her name, anyway?) with so little ceremony had represented the height of stupidity. Every lady, even one willing to take an uprighter with her hostess’s own lover against her hostess’s own conservatory wall, required a little ceremony.

But who would have expected her to confront him so publicly, and so half-nakedly, and with such quantities of fine French champagne flung at his head? His hair was still sticky with it.

“No, of course you did not. I’d have expected nothing else,” said Olympia, in a voice laden with scorn. “But there’s a promise implicit in taking such a woman to bed, a respectable woman, a woman of position. Indeed, a woman of any sort, though I should hardly expect you to possess the chivalry to go so far as that.”

No one wielded scorn so brutally as the Duke of Olympia. Wallingford felt it pound against the hard stone of his innards in a familiar rhythm, searching for weakness. He added a few buttresses for support against the assault and hardened them into granite. When he had finished, and felt sufficiently confident of the results, he idled his way to the carved wooden bedpost and leaned against it, arms crossed. “A bit of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it, Grandfather?”

“I don’t deny I’ve taken many women to bed,” said Olympia, “and, on the whole, a far more interesting lot than
you
have troubled yourself to assemble, but I have always had the decency to finish with one lover before taking another.”

“Except your wife.”

The words snapped and spun in the pale morning light. Wallingford regretted them instantly.

Against Olympia’s hand, where it fisted atop his waistcoat, a gold watch chain caught the sun with a sudden glitter. “In the future,” he said evenly, “you will avoid any mention of Her Grace in vulgar context. Do you understand me?”

“Of course.”

“I have often wondered,” Olympia went on, relaxing his fist, “whether a wife might not have civilized you, or at least contrived to soften your worst instincts.”

“I am perfectly civilized. I am a perfectly good duke. My estates are in excellent order, my tenants prosperous . . .” He sounded like a schoolboy, Wallingford realized angrily, desperate for some crumb of approval.

“Yes, for which I give you full credit,” Olympia said. “Your father, that scapegrace, was not capable of so much. I often wonder at my daughter’s lack of sense in marrying him. A duke, to be sure, and a handsome one, but . . .” He shrugged his shoulders expressively.

“I beg you to remember that the scapegrace in question was my father.”

Olympia lifted the watch and flipped open the case. “You have an abundance of natural qualities, Wallingford. It grieves me to see so much promise go to waste.”

“I beg your pardon,” drawled Wallingford. “Am I keeping you from an appointment? Do not stand on ceremony, I implore you.”

“I will come to the point. I understand Mr. Burke has laid a certain proposal before you.”

Wallingford rolled his eyes and left his post at the bed to sprawl in an armchair. “What, his mad scheme to retire to Italy for a year of monastic reflection?”

“You cannot imagine yourself capable of such restraint?”

Wallingford leaned his head against the forest green damask and laughed. “Oh, come, Grandfather. Why should I? What use would it be? I have never understood this religion of self-sacrifice among the Burkes of the world.”

“Do you not? Have you never contemplated the peculiar difficulties of his life?”

“His life as your bastard son, do you mean?” Wallingford said.

Again, the silence echoed about the room; again, Wallingford wished his words back. Phineas Burke was an excellent fellow, after all: a bit tall and ginger haired and taciturn for some, but a genuine scientific genius, an inventor of the highest order, building electric batteries and horseless carriages and whatnot the way other men tinkered with watches. A colossus, really. Moreover, he had none of your tempers and thin-skinned resentments, your vain strivings and artificial manners, so common in well-bred bastards. Burke simply went about his business and did not give a damn, and as a result he was received everywhere. In his heart, Wallingford counted Burke as his closest friend, though of course one could never publicly admit such a thing of one’s natural uncle.

Really, Burke was so steadfast and clever, so stalwart in any crisis, Wallingford could almost forgive him for being the apple of Olympia’s eye.

“You see,” Olympia said softly, “I know how it is. You’ve always been a duke, or else in daily expectation of a dukedom. You have been blessed with a handsome face and a sturdy figure. You take these things for granted. You think that you have
earned
all this around you”—his arm, at a wave, took in the splendid furnishings, the army of servants moving soundlessly behind the walls, the rarefied pavement of Belgrave Square outside the windows—“instead of having it dropped in your lap like an overripe peach. You think you deserve to enjoy sexual congress with some mere acquaintance, against the wall of your own mistress’s conservatory, simply because you can. Simply because you are His Grace, the Duke of Wallingford.”

“I recognize my good fortune. I see no reason not to enjoy its fruits.”

“Its
fruits
? This woman, this lady of good family, with a mind and soul of her own—she is reduced to a mere vegetable, in your calculus?”

Wallingford turned his attention to the sleek cashmere sleeve of his dressing gown, searching for a piece of lint at which he might brush, laconically, to show his disinterest. But Shelmerstone was far too efficient a valet to allow any flaws to disturb the impeccable line of the ducal sleeve, and Wallingford was reduced to brushing phantom lint into the dustless air. “I seem to recall,” he said, “that the lady in question was enjoying herself.”

“Really?” Olympia’s voice was cold. “I rather doubt you would have noticed either way. In any case, I’ve decided that all this nonsense has gone far enough. You are nine-and-twenty, and a duke. With regret, I must demand you
not
to accept this proposal of Burke’s, however edifying, and turn your attention instead to marriage.”

Wallingford looked up, certain he’d misheard the old man. “
Marriage?
” he asked, as he might say the word
castration
. “Did you say
marriage
?”

“I did.”

“Are you
mad
?”

Olympia spread his hands. “Surely you recognize the necessity.”

“Not at all. We still have Penhallow, who would make an extraordinarily decorative duke, should I have the misfortune to choke on a chicken bone at dinner this evening.”

“Your brother has no interest in your title.”

Like a pitcher turned upside down, Wallingford found his patience had run abruptly out. He rose from the chair in a bolt of movement. “Have we come to the point at last? Is
this
why you came to see me this morning? I am to be a stud? My ability to breed another duke constitutes the sum total of my usefulness to you, does it?”

“My dear boy,” Olympia said, “has the entire conduct of your adult life ever suggested your usefulness for anything else?”

Wallingford turned to the tray of coffee and poured himself a cup. No cream, no sugar. He wanted the drink as black as his mood.
Marriage
, indeed. “I have many talents, Grandfather, if you ever bothered to count them.”

Olympia waved that away. “Don’t be a child, Wallingford. In any case, you need not concern yourself with the tiresome matter of choosing a wife. I’ve done all the work for you. I have, in my deep and abiding regard for you, found you the perfect bride already.”