The Taming of the Duke

Page 23

The younger Crogan used a few words that Josie had never heard before. But she heard the word "hog" clear as a bell.
"Shut your trap," his brother advised. "You keep the woman happy by feeding her enough bacon, and she'll give you no trouble. You can do whatever you want in your spare time, and you'll never have to worry about whether your children are your own. What could be better?"
Finally, he started to walk off again, his boots scuffing in the dirt and by the sound of it young Crogan followed.
Josie stayed there, fixed to the oak as if she'd been molded to the bark. The last thing she heard as they rounded the curve was a final outburst from Crogan: "You beef-witted fool!"
Chapter 12
Of the Vulgarity of Greek Plays
Two weeks after his final drink Rafe was as dry as a bone, and the house felt like a rabbit hutch in April. Miss Pythian-Adams was expected in time for supper. The whole house resounded with the sound of pounding from the location of the theater. The ballroom was full of women sewing red velvet curtains. The great salon was full of spindly-legged chairs being re-covered and repaired. Never mind the fact that the duke felt more like the inhabitant of a tomb than a hutch.
"Everyone wishes to come to our performance," Griselda said, waving another acceptance at him. "I'm receiving letters from people whom I haven't invited. Although I can hardly attribute it to my status. Your Mr. Spenser is quite the talk of the day. Did you know that he is considered to have been the most brilliant man to have taken a degree at Cambridge in years?"
"Humph," Rafe said. He was having trouble drumming up enthusiasm, which had something to do with the incessant, pounding headache he was trying to learn to live with.
"Quite unusual," Griselda said, with unnecessary emphasis, to Rafe's mind.
"Will your friends draw lots to see who marries him?" Rafe drawled, trying to achieve a tone beyond utter disinterest.
"Absolutely not!
"Why not?" Rafe said, leaning his head against the back of the settee.
"You may be acting with the best of motives in welcoming your brother, but greater society will not be so unforgiving. He does have an awkward background."
At that moment the man himself strolled into the sitting room. In the crook of his arm was a red-haired urchin with a toothless grin.
Rafe looked at his brother blearily. To tell the truth, he felt worse sober than he had on the most terrible of mornings. For one thing, back when he could have a whiskey or two, he used to sleep at night. He never slept anymore. And he used to eat a decent first course or two. Now his stomach churned at the thought of food. Yesterday he'd managed to choke down a few bites of bread.
The only thing standing between him and a comfortable haze of brandy was the very baby waving a rattle at him. Well, that baby, and his brother. And the scorn that
Imogen would undoubtedly heap on his head. And perhaps at the very bottom of all that, the wish to show the world that he could do it.
In the meantime, he was pretending that everything was just fine. He sat at meals although he didn't eat, and he retired into his room at night to contemplate sleeping. He even carried on a conversation now and then.
"Where's her nanny?" he asked Gabe, making an attempt at discourse. Try as he might, he couldn't remember his niece's name at the moment.
"I released the woman from her employment," his brother replied. "She was incompetent and unkind."
"All right," Rafe said. And then he realized that perhaps further comment was called for. "What'd she do?"
"I found Mary crying again," Gabe said.
Rafe knew his brain was exceedingly slow these days, but there was something misguided about Gabe's household arrangements. "Then who," he said, painstakingly shaping the words between the hammerblows assaulting his brain, "is going to care for the child?"
"She still has a wet nurse," Gabe said. "And one of the upstairs housemaids is quite good with children."
"Oh." The very thought of a wet-nurse was distasteful and made Rafe's stomach reel, so he gave up on the conversation.
Brinkley opened the door with a crash that could have been heard in the next country. "Lady Ancilla Pythian-Adams," he announced. "And Miss Pythian-Adams."
Rafe lurched to his feet. Miss Pythian-Adams's mother, Lady Ancilla, had the air of being a woman who knew she was still beautitul and was, therefore, accepting middle age with amusement. You could tell with one glance that she took her own importance with a grain of salt and was conventional without being tedious.
Her daughter was altogether a different sort. Rafe remembered her quite clearly as a young woman who was not tedious—but certainly not conventional. It would be an extraordinarily foolish man who didn't look past Miss Pythian-Adams's delicate features and Cupid's bow mouth and realize that she was a true eccentric.
Of course, Griselda had rushed toward Lady Ancilla, so Rafe bowed to Miss Pythian-Adams. Luckily his head didn't topple to the floor and roll away.
Just then Imogen walked into the room. That was going to be a slightly tricky encounter: former fiancee meets widow. Miss Pythian-Adams was all very well in her own way, but there wasn't a woman in the ton who could hold a candle to Imogen. She had her hair piled on top of her head with just a few curls hanging down over her shoulders. Rafe wouldn't have known exactly how to describe what she was wearing—some sort of morning gown, but it looked different on her than on other women. His ward could wear a potato sack and make it look like a silk gown.
The women were curtsying to each other just as if they hadn't, once, shared a man called Draven Maitland, a man whom Imogen lured away, leaving Gillian Pythian-Adams without a husband.
Rafe felt sweat break out on his brow just watching them. How did people get through their days without drinking? And what was the point?
* * *
Gabriel Spenser had learned as a boy that there were many things in the world that he would want and that he could not have. Likely, every illegitimate child learned that lesson at his mother's knee. Thankfully, he had never longed for food; the old Holbrook duke, in his stubborn and unlikely affection for Gabriel's mother, had always provided for their material needs. But there were other things. From his earliest days he knew that the visits from the duke were events.
A messenger would arrive, announcing an impending visit, perhaps five days in advance. His mother's eyes would shine. Soon the house would be shining too. It was years before he understood the implications of his mother's preparation—the visits from the hairdresser, the new stockings, the flowers in her bedchamber.
He was six years old when Harry Hunks pointed out the obvious in the schoolyard. Gabe had promptly knocked Harry to the ground. He stood over him, knuckles stinging and his right knee bleeding, feeling rather triumphant because Harry had at least a stone's weight on him. Then Harry looked up at him through a rapidly swelling right eye, and said: "I don't care. Your mother's no better than a chipper. My da said so."
Gabe didn't know what a chipper was, but he could guess.
"My ma says that her own family won't have anything to do with her," Harry added. "You don't have a grandda."
Gabe pulled Harry to his feet and slugged him so hard that he knocked out one of Harry's front teeth.