In Bed with the Duke(69)

Gregory blinked. ‘So that accounts for your freakish starts, does it? The notoriety of our ancestors? Combined with the frustration of being constricted and robbed of any real challenge?’ He paused, seeming to gather himself together. ‘Much as I hate to admit it, I think I can see what you mean. For something of the sort went through my mind when you issued your wager. How, I wondered, would I have fared on a battlefield, like the Fifth Duke? Or on a voyage of discovery, like the First? When, as you had so recently pointed out, I had never been permitted out of doors without a retinue of servants to smooth my path.’

Something jogged Prudence’s memory, too. Gregory confiding that he’d never climbed a tree as a boy. And then his clumsy attempt to do so. And then the look of utter triumph blazing from his face when he not only scaled it, but helped her up and over the wall, too.

She took a sip of her port as she mulled this over. She could see, she supposed, why he’d felt he had to prove himself, if he’d been so coddled and cosseted all his life. She could see how tempting it must have been to take up Hugo’s wager. She only had to think of the way he’d reacted to her own challenge to think of other ways to deal with the loss of their transport. He’d not only taken her up on it, but raised the stakes—the way he’d done with Hugo.

It was simply part of his nature to rise to any challenge. And master it.

It was part of what made her admire him so much.

Not that it excused him for allowing her to believe he was the kind of man she could marry, when he clearly wasn’t. Girls with an upbringing like hers didn’t marry dukes. She didn’t know how to move in the elevated circles to which he belonged. Why, she couldn’t even join in the kind of conversations he held over a dinner table. Let alone penetrate the mystery of why a room was called a morning room when people used it in the evenings.

Prudence must have made some kind of sound, expressing her turmoil, because he turned to look at her, a question in his eyes. She was just lifting her chin to stare him down when Lady Mixby startled everyone.

‘And of course you were already in low spirits,’ she observed. ‘With it being the anniversary of Millicent’s death.’

He whirled on her, a look of complete shock on his face. Quickly concealed. So quickly that Prudence was probably the only person in the room who noticed.

‘I recall it being close to Easter, you see...’ Lady Mixby was carrying on, blithely unaware of having provoked such a strong reaction in a man who was trying so hard not to show any. ‘I was bitterly disappointed at having to go into black gloves just when I was hoping to start enjoying all the pleasures of the season. I dare say that every time Easter comes round your mind gets jogged by little things that throw you right back to that terrible time. The daffodils coming into bloom, for instance. I can never see daffodils bobbing in the breeze but I think of that churchyard, and how sunny and cheerful it all looked in spite of the terrible tragedy you’d just suffered. To lose your wife so suddenly, and she so young... Well, you both were...’

She ground to a halt, finally noticing the grim way Gregory was staring at her.

‘Oh, dear me. I do beg your pardon. How tactless of me...’

‘Not at all,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Your remark was most perceptive. And your memory is perfectly correct. It was at Easter-tide when Millicent passed. The very date that Hugo came to me. A day I always wonder whether—’

The Duke of Halstead—Prudence must get used to calling him that, since she could never allow him to be anything more to her—stalked away from them all. Twitched the curtains aside and stared out of the window for a moment. Lowered his head. Raised it, took a deep breath, and turned round.

‘And so I decided,’ he said, raising his chin with a touch of defiance. ‘To find out, once and for all, whether I was worthy of the name Willingale, or whether I was merely a shadow of a man. An apparition created by the brilliance of my title blazing over a great mound of wealth. Hugo had offered me the perfect way to find out. Because, as he’s already pointed out, I could never seriously consider joining a regiment and fighting in a battle, nor sailing away to India on a merchantman—not with all the obligations I have. But I thought that perhaps my estates could do very well without me for just one week.’

Prudence recalled the things he’d told her about his wife and how she’d made him feel. And then she thought of Hugo blundering in, in the completely insensitive way that young men do, and challenging him when he had already been questioning himself.

Her heart went out to him. Beneath the pompous exterior he’d adopted since coming here and taking up his role as Duke was a man who was painfully aware of his own faults and failings. Even the way he had just spoken made him sound more like the Gregory she’d known before they’d come to Bramley Park and he’d turned into the self-contained Duke of Halstead.