This Duke is Mine (41 page)

“Anything, my boy, anything! I know I’m asking for a sacrifice. As I said, we can admit amongst ourselves that little Dora is not the beauty of the bunch.”

“The day I marry her, you sign the entire estate over to me—Ryburn House and its lands, this townhouse, the island in Scotland.”

The duke’s mouth fell open.
“What?”

“The entire estate,” James repeated. “I will pay you an allowance, and no one need know except for the solicitors. But I will
not
be responsible for you and your foolish schemes. I will never again take responsibility for any debts you might incur—nor for any theft. The next time around, you’re going to prison.”

“That’s absurd,” his father spluttered. “I couldn’t—you couldn’t possibly—no!”

“Then make your good-byes to Staffordshire,” James said, rising to his feet for the last time. “You might want to pay a special visit to my mother’s grave, if you’re so certain she would have been distressed at the sale of the house, let alone the cemetery itself.”

His father opened his mouth, but James raised a hand.

“If I let you keep the estate, you’ll fling Daisy’s inheritance after that which you’ve already lost. There’ll be no estate within two years, and I will have betrayed my closest friend for no reason.”

“Your closest friend, eh?” His father was instantly diverted into another train of thought. “I’ve never had a woman as a friend, but Dora looks like a man, of course—”

“Father!”

The duke harrumphed. “Can’t say I like the way you’ve taken to interrupting me. I suppose if I agree to this ridiculous scheme of yours, I’ll have nothing to expect but humiliation.”

It was an implicit concession.

“You see,” his father said, a smile spreading across his face now that the conversation was over. “It all came well. Your mother always said that, you know. All’s well that ends well.”

James couldn’t stop himself from asking one more thing, though God knows, he already knew the answer. “Don’t you care in the least about what you’re doing to me—and to Daisy?”

A hint of red crept up his father’s cheeks again. “The girl couldn’t do better than to marry you!”

“Daisy is going to marry me believing that I’m in love with her, and I’m not. She deserves to be wooed and genuinely adored by her husband.”

“Love and marriage shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath,” his father said dismissively. But his eyes slid away from James’s.

“And you’ve done the same to me. To your son. Love and marriage may not come together all that often, but I have no chance at all. What’s more, I am beginning my marriage with a lie that will destroy it if Daisy ever finds out. Do you realize that? If Daisy learned that I had betrayed her in such a callused way . . . not only the marriage, but our friendship, will be over.”

“If you really think she’ll fly into a temper, you’d better get an heir on her in the first few months,” his father said with the air of someone offering practical advice. “A woman scorned, and all that. If she’s disgruntled enough, I suppose she might run off with another man. But if you already had an heir—and a spare, if you can—you could let her go.”

“My wife will
never
run off with another man.” The words growled out of his chest from a place he didn’t even know existed.

His father heaved himself out of his chair. “You as much as called me a fool; well, I’ll do the same for you. No man in his right mind thinks that marriage is a matter of billing and cooing. Your mother and I were married for the right reasons, to do with family obligations and financial negotiations. We did what was necessary to have you, and left it there. Your mother couldn’t face the effort needed for a spare, but we didn’t waste any tears over it. You were always a healthy boy.” Then he added, “Barring that time you almost went blind, of course. We would have tried for another, if worse came to worst.”

James pushed himself to his feet.

“Neither of us raised you to have such rubbishing romantic views,” the duke tossed over his shoulder and left the room.

Having reached nineteen years of age, James had thought he understood his place in life. He’d learned the most important lessons: how to ride a horse, hold his liquor, and defend himself in a duel.

No one had ever taught him—and he had never imagined—how to betray the one person whom you truly cared for in life. The only person who has truly cared for you, other than his mother, and she’d been dead for years. How to break that person’s heart, whether it happened tomorrow, or in five years, or ten years in the future . . .

Because Daisy would learn the truth someday. He felt it with a bone-deep certainty. Somehow, she would learn that he had deliberately set out to make her marry him, that he had pretended to fall in love . . . and she would never forgive him.

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About the Author

ELOISA JAMES is the author of twenty award-winning romances. She’s also a professor of English literature, teaching in New York City, where she lives with her family. With two jobs, two cats, two children, and only one husband, she spends most of her time making lists of things to do—letters from readers are a great escape! Connect with Eloisa on her Facebook page (
www.facebook.com/EloisaJamesFans
), through her website (
www.eloisajames.com
), or through e-mail at
[email protected]
.

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