Confessions From an Arranged Marriage (19 page)

“But I didn't really do anything, did I? You already knew those names.” Blake shook his head at his own blindness. Far from doing anything useful, he'd merely managed to stumble through a very easy test.

“Had your time in Paris not been truncated, I have every faith you would have found new and valuable information for us.”

“If my wife had anything to say in the matter, I have no doubt of it.”

The duke looked interested. “A very clever young woman. I hope you are getting on well with her. I'd like to think you will be as content as I have been.”

“She certainly is clever.”

He couldn't talk about Minerva now. He'd scarcely seen her in the two days since she arrived at Vanderlin House. He knew he needed to resolve their quarrel and he wanted to find a way for them to live in harmony. But at the moment it was more than he could manage. There were too many other demands on his time and attention.

“She is young,” the duke said, “but my duchess was younger. Only seventeen when we wed and I was fifteen years older. I have never wanted another woman.”

“You never kept a mistress?”

“Not after I married. I hope you will not either. It's one reason I made you dismiss your bird of paradise. I've forgotten her name.”

“Desirée de Bonamour.”

“An improbable name.”

“Not the one she was born with.”

The duke actually chuckled. “My first love was an Italian girl called Guilietta Giglio. Juliet Lily in English. Charming girl. I was quite heartbroken to leave her behind.”

“In Rome when . . .”

“Yes. Something else I lost when my father died. But I forgot Guilietta quite quickly.”

“Did you forget the other thing? About being a Greek scholar?”

“Not entirely. I maintained a few interests that were mine as a man and not as Duke of Hampton. You must do the same.”

Blake saw evidence of his father's passion in the room: a battered bust of Homer, a graceful urn decorated in terra-cotta and black. There were symbols of classical learning all over the ducal residences. He'd taken them for granted and occasionally hated them.

“It won't be Greek I'm afraid. As you know, I could never even master the alphabet.”

“You are a fine horseman, one of the best so I am told. You should be proud of that.”

“I do know my horseflesh.” In fact his father had criticized him for extravagance in his stables. “Pity I don't have much notion of politics.”

“I believe Lady Blakeney could help you in that aspect of the Vanderlin affairs.”

She'd certainly like to, he thought dourly. “I thought that was what Gideon was for.”

“Gideon is a good man but he's a follower, not a leader. You must learn to decide for yourself. In the end you are the duke and responsible for the outcome of your decisions. It's one of the disadvantages of power.” His voice trailed off and he looked frailer than ever. “I've always had a great deal of power and I've tried to exercise it for good.”

Loath to cut off the most intimate conversation he'd ever had with his father, Blake knew he couldn't let it go on much longer. With profound sadness he stood up and dared to take the duke's hand. “I want you to know that I shall do my best for the family, and for the country too.”

“I believe you will, my son. You have a long life ahead of you and things change. Your goals in life will not be the same as mine, nor should they. Let me give you one more piece of advice. Remember this: in politics there are no final victories or final defeats. The next day things will be different and you must adapt to new conditions.” Another frail smile. “Rather like the hunting field.”

The duke's voice was fading. “I believe I shall rest now. I'm glad we've had this talk.”

“Yes, rest, father. I'll sit with you until my mother returns.”

The duke settled back into the pillows and closed his eyes. Within minutes his shallow breathing told Blake that he slept. He sat beside the bed, looking at the face that always appeared cold and immovable. Everything seemed different. Not only was his father old and weak, he was also human.

Blake felt a wave of regret that only now was he offered a glimpse of this side of him. Now that it was too late, he felt this was a man to whom he might have confided his secret. Instead, he'd always offered the most powerful reason for hiding it.

He reached for his earliest memories of his father and discovered what he had forgotten: approval and even a restrained affection. The valued heir, he'd been brought to the duke's study each day. He had a faint recollection of infant games. Things changed when he grew old enough to read and his tutors reported his lack of progress. Bafflement changed to anger as years passed. Instead of affection he received punishment for idleness: birching from his tutors and scoldings from his parents, far more terrifying because of the weight of his father's disappointment. His mother, who supported her husband in all things, regarded him with sorrowful despair. Her distant dignity, even when her children were small, had repelled any impulse to ask her for help. Only when Amanda was old enough to learn had he finally mastered the letters of the alphabet and their meanings.

He had been taught to read by a five-year-old girl. With his little sister he could achieve the state of calm that brought sense out of the chaos of the symbols. By that time he had been written off as irredeemably stupid, the dolt who, by accident of birth, must inherit the leadership of a family famous for brilliance. Amanda had been helping him ever since. Except when he went to Eton.

That's where Huntley had come in, leading ultimately to disaster.

Suppose he'd told his father. Suppose he'd explained his inability to master the simple act of reading, instead of taking every measure to disguise it. He knew why he'd never been tempted. As long as he was perceived as lazy rather than brainless he had a chance to one day win his respect. Laziness could be cured; stupidity was forever.

He had one last chance. He would never have considered it without this afternoon's surprising exchange, but he was overcome with the urge to be honest with his father at the last. He formulated a confession in his head and waited. On his deathbed he did not believe the duke would reject him. He hoped for a final blessing before he took up his father's burden.

Half an hour passed and Blake felt at peace with his decision. He sat in the quiet room overlooking Vanderlin House's ample garden, insulated from the noise of London by thick walls and curtains. Only the ticking of the mantel clock competed with the gentle breathing of the dying man.

Then something altered.

He leaped up and ran to the door, calling into the passage for the doctor. He rushed back to the bedside and heard only the clock. Groping for his father's wrist he sought a pulse, in vain. He pulled his watch from his fob pocket and convulsively polished the gold back against his waistcoat. Setting it against his father's nostrils elicited not so much as a hint of mist.

He stood aside, without hope, as the doctor hurried in. The pricking behind his eyes gave way to unshed tears.

The doctor stood up. “Your Grace,” he said. “I regret to inform you that His Grace has passed away.”

Within minutes the room filled. His mother, kneeling at her husband's bedside, weeping, with Amanda beside her. Maria and Anne and their husbands. The senior servants. A royal equerry who had called on behalf of the king. His own wife standing at the back of the room wearing an expression of unwonted hesitation. Their eyes met and he meant to reach out to her. He wasn't even sure if his hand moved before he was interrupted by Gideon.

“We talked about various contingencies, but the final decision about the arrangements will be yours, Hampton.”

For a wild moment he thought his father hadn't died, after all. Then he realized the name was now his.

Chapter 18

W
aiting for the Duke of Hampton's funeral, Minerva felt her life slowed almost to a halt. In all her youth she would never have chosen to spend so much as half an hour in Shropshire over London, having been bored to tears in the country. But now she wished the duke was to be buried at Mandeville instead of Westminster Abbey. Vanderlin House felt like a luxurious prison.

The family had, after some discussion, agreed the king's offer of the Abbey was too great an honor to be declined. Minerva was not consulted. She wasn't consulted about anything much. The duchess was almost prostrate and kept mostly to her own rooms. Blake's sisters and their husbands were polite without being warm. Only the staff treated her with deference. They knew the way the wind blew and recognized that she was, in fact, now mistress of the house. If not for the oddity of being addressed as Your Grace by the countless servants, she would scarcely credit she was now a duchess.

She didn't feel like such a lofty personage and wondered if she ever would. Some attention and acknowledgement from the new master would have helped. But she saw little of her husband, and when she did he was never alone and constantly beset by people demanding opinions or decisions.

Minerva thought he looked pale and unhappy. He must surely be in a state of grief. And he had suddenly become a public figure as well, the head of the Vanderlins. Minerva would have gladly lent her assistance, but it was never demanded. With relations between them unresolved, she didn't know how to offer. The pall of grief in the house cast down even her buoyant spirits, especially since she found herself in the unusual position of not knowing what to do.

Beyond her initial condolences they'd spoken little. It was an extraordinary state of affairs that she, his wife, felt she had no right to intrude on his grief without a sign from him. But theirs was hardly an ordinary marriage.

Blake spent much of his time sequestered in the duke's study with either Gideon Louther or Lady Amanda. Left to her own devices, Minerva designated herself the task of dealing with the stream of visitors. The hatchment bearing the Vanderlin coat of arms was draped with crepe and hung at the entrance to the house. This sign of mourning would have deterred callers upon the demise of a lesser figure than the Duke of Hampton, but anyone important—and many who wished to appear so—ignored custom and paid respects to the passing of the duke.

The house steward and butler, whose decades of service gave them greater knowledge than she, decided which visitors could be turned away and which had to be accommodated. Dressed in deepest black—she had one mourning gown made for the death of an uncle two years earlier—she took possession of one of the drawing rooms to receive peers and bishops, cabinet ministers and Members of Parliament. She became adept at deflecting suggestions that they should see her mother-in-law or her husband.

The latter was much in demand. These men of gravity, who'd had nothing in common with the sporting Lord Blakeney, were desperate to cultivate the acquaintance of the new Duke of Hampton, his captive parliamentary seats, and his powers of patronage. Minerva confined her remarks to polite commonplaces, but mentally she took notes.

Dinner after the funeral was eaten almost in silence. The service and interment in the medieval aisles of Westminster Abbey seemed to have squeezed the last drop of animation from the bereaved. The duchess remained in her rooms and the late duke's children seemed weighed down by their grief. Blake occupied the ornate thronelike seat that had been his father's.

The first dinner after the duke's death, he'd hesitated to sit there. “You are duke now and must take your father's place,” the duchess had insisted, leading him to the head of the table. He'd started to argue, as though reluctant to accept the seat and all that it symbolized, then acceded. Minerva had quietly taken a place at the side of the table, again refusing to put herself forward until Blake invited it. His accusation that she was some kind of power-mad harpy still rankled. Yes, she wanted the power her new position could give her, but to do good, not as an end in itself. She was determined not to give Blake reason to repeat that particular charge.

Blake? She didn't even know how to address her husband. He was now “Duke,” “Your Grace,” or “Hampton.” The other members of the family already addressed him by his new title. They called her “Duchess.”

Tonight he looked ashen with fatigue, a shadow of his physically exuberant self. But that wasn't the only change. Minerva observed him at the head of the table, his evening clothes of unrelieved black emphasizing his fair coloring. There was a distance, a hauteur in his demeanor, as though he were slipping into his new role. As he courteously offered soup to his sister Anne on his right, she recalled the first time she'd dined at this table, seated in the place of honor now occupied by Lady Kildarren. She could not have imagined then that her carefree, careless fiancé could be so utterly transformed by assuming his position.

A pang of longing for a few happy days in Paris pierced her heart. They'd been too short and ended badly. In their transformed circumstances she wondered how to regain that brief accord.

Rather than spend another silent evening downstairs with her sisters-in-law, she retired to her room after dinner and paced for over an hour, fiddling with her hairbrushes, trying to read yet unable to concentrate. The next day, she decided, she would begin to make her place in this new world. She'd never asked to be a duchess, but that was what she was and she wasn't going to sit around another day in a state of limbo. And if her husband wouldn't break the ice between them, she would make the first move.

She was half asleep when the mattress moved and arms gathered her in and turned her around.

“Ssh,” he said, claiming her lips and holding her against him. His hands caressed her back and thighs and bottom through the thin cambric of her nightgown and she felt his erection pressing against her belly.

“Blake,” she murmured, the word soundless beneath his plundering mouth. He kissed her long and deep, demanding her silent cooperation. She gave it gladly, meeting his tongue stroke for stroke, pushing into his embrace, kneading his buttocks and pulling him closer.

She was hot and aroused and beyond thinking what the arrival of her husband in her bed meant. All that mattered was he wanted something and she wanted to give it.

It was quick and not particularly pretty. He wrestled up the skirt of her nightgown and checked her for readiness with a quick swipe of his fingers. Then he entered her without ceremony, pressing her down into the mattress and settling into a strong steady rhythm. She wasn't excited the way she'd been before, but neither did it hurt. His member slid smoothly inside her and she felt an agreeable fullness. After a few minutes it might have developed into a more powerful sensation, but instead his thrusts came faster, his breathing accelerated and, with a cry that sounded like agony, he stiffened and all his weight collapsed on her. She felt the hot gush inside her and a different damp heat on her chest, where his face lay.

Her husband was weeping.

She stroked his arms and shoulders and his damp, silken hair, rained kisses on any bit of him her lips could reach, and murmured something stupid. For once in her life Minerva felt less than her years. What words of consolation could she offer, who'd never known a moment's grief? With mind and body she tried to project comfort and perhaps her efforts succeeded. After a while he slipped off her, but held her close, his arms about her middle and one rough heavy leg over her own limbs. His breathing told her he slept. She kissed his mouth again and settled into slumber.

When she awoke she was alone.