The Dissolute Duke(23)

Posy did not look at her, but at Alderworth, an expression that Lucinda recognised on her face. The same look she had seen in their earlier days when together they would stage outlandish tragedies for the family to watch, the curtains in the downstairs salon of Falder fashioned into a theatre. She was baiting Alderworth for some reason and Lucinda could do nothing at all to stop it.

‘Posy is exaggerating and I hardly think that will happen, your Grace—’ she began, but Taylen interrupted her.

‘Are you a physician now, too?’ The tone in his voice was furious.

‘No.’

‘Then you should heed a warning from a man who is obviously qualified to give it.’

‘And never race along the gullies and cliffs at Falder? Never clear another fence in my life?’

‘If that is what it takes to be safe from any danger, then yes.’

Posy’s laughter brought an end to the bickering. ‘Asher has used the same arguments as you do so many times, your Grace, but to no avail.’ Posy raised her eyebrows as Lucinda frowned at her and smiled congenially at Alderworth.

Amazing, Lucinda thought. Posy had never approved of any of her suitors. Not one. It was the creases in Taylen Ellesmere’s cheeks, she supposed, and the way the light played upon his eyes—a man who was no one’s lackey. The only white he wore was in his cravat and it showed up the tan of his skin. She could suddenly imagine him far from London in the back country wilds of Georgia, traipsing across swollen rivers and steep craggy mountains. Any information she had ever read on goldfields described them as hard and dangerous places, spawning hard and dangerous men.

‘My brothers have this idea that I need to be looked after all the time. I find it easier to simply get on with my life in the way that I wish to and allow them to do the same.’

‘In other words, you do not tell them of the danger you are placing yourself in.’

‘Exactly, and I would appreciate your discretion in the matter, too, your Grace.’

‘Then I hope you will at least have the sense to walk your horse home.’ He tipped his hat. ‘Miss Tompkins, it was my pleasure.’

Then he was gone, cutting across the park on a path Lucinda seldom used, body rising and falling with each movement of his horse in an effortless display of skill.

‘Alderworth rides well, Luce.’

Anger seeped into her reply. ‘Why would that be important to me, Posy? If it was left to everyone else, I should be in my drawing room at home, pursuing the gentle arts of needlework or playing music.’

Or lying in bed on my back, trying to produce an Ellesmere heir.

She bit down on chagrin.

‘What the hell are you doing here, Alderworth?’

‘White’s is my club too, Wellingham, and I want a chat with you.’

Cristo Wellingham did not assent, but neither did he get up and leave. Rather he sat with his drink in hand and waited until Tay had taken the chair opposite.

‘Your sister is recklessly galloping in Hyde Park when, according to a Miss Posy Tompkins, her doctor has expressly discouraged such behaviour.’

The other took a large swallow of his brandy before putting it down. ‘And now you want to stop her?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, good luck with that. Asher’s response was to take her horses away for a month, but she only hired other more dangerous ones. Taris endeavoured to send a man with her every time she used the stables, but she gave him the slip more times than not. I took her to Graveson where she rode along the beaches until she got bored with them. A number of approaches, you see, and none of them worked well or for long because she is as stubborn as a mule and twice as difficult.’

‘A true Wellingham, then?’

Cristo tipped back his head and laughed. ‘If you were not such a bastard, Alderworth, I might even like you. What is in it for you, anyway, this sudden and touching concern for my sister?’

‘I do not wish to be a widower.’

Again Cristo laughed. ‘You have not as yet been a husband and, if my family has its way, you never will be.’

Ignoring the criticism, Tay went straight to the heart of the matter. ‘What else interests her?’

Cristo leant forwards, a frown on his face. ‘She enjoys archery. No danger and a quiet walk to the target. She is also inclined to drawing. But be warned that if you play false with her emotions this time, Alderworth, there won’t be any second chances.’

‘Word has it that you got one with your wife.’

‘Word has it you were in gaol in the Americas for taking the life of another.’

‘Gold makes bad men greedy and rumour is always overstated.’

‘As greedy as you were when you hived off with the Wellingham booty after despoiling our sister?’ The quiet of Cristo Wellingham’s words belied the fury inside each one.

‘You know as well as I that I have paid every pound of it back and Lucinda was an innocent when I left her, no matter what she remembers.’

‘Edmund Coleridge may have changed that, of course.’

Tay’s fist came down on the table. ‘If I hear even the slightest of whispers from him saying anything of the sort, then he will be a dead man.’

‘I will tell him when I see him next. He is a personal friend of mine.’

‘You do just that.’

Swallowing the last of his brandy, Taylen stood, the peers of the realm of England watching him over their tipples. The Alderworth ducal title sat squarely on him, but he had never felt that he belonged here, the stuffy manners and pretensions of these men so far from his own road in life.

He wanted to get back to Alderworth and he wanted to take his wife with him. The face of Edmund Coleridge rose into his consciousness and he stalked from the room.

Coleridge was kissing Lucinda’s hand when Tay met her next at an afternoon soirée at the house of Daniel and Camille Beauchamp.

His wife had not frequented the pathways of Hyde Park that morning to take her exercise. He had been waiting, after all, but as the minutes had turned to hours he knew she would not come.

He was therefore both relieved to find her here and furious to see who she was with, for the man was virtually making love to her with his lips and she was allowing it. Her compliancy had him grating his teeth together. Hard.

‘Duchess.’

She frowned and he was pleased to see worry in her eyes. ‘Duke.’

Coleridge made no attempt at all to distance himself from her side and Taylen looked at him pointedly as his wife began to speak.

‘Cristo said you might want to talk to me.’ The statement left Tay speechless. ‘He said you had a proposition you would like me to know. Something about spending my days in the parlour with my embroidery or being coddled in the garden painting flowers?’

‘Your youngest brother has a sense of humour.’

‘You went to see him after our meeting in the park? You went to tell him about my galloping when I so expressly asked you not to?’

Coleridge was taking in every word between them with interest and Tay had had enough. ‘Would you excuse us?’ Without waiting for a reply he shepherded his wife to an end of the room sheltered from the notice of others by a narrow alcove.

‘I did not expect you to be so … underhanded,’ Lucinda said as they stopped, her eyes shimmering with anger. Taylen changed tack altogether.

‘I told your brother I did not fancy living alone for the rest of my life if anything were to happen to you. Did he tell you that as well?’

She shook her head.

‘Edmund Coleridge wants you in his bed.’

‘A fact that makes him little different from you then, your Grace.’

He ignored her criticism completely. ‘Yet knowing that, you still allow him to court you openly?’

‘He is a friend. I allow him friendship.’

‘Your brother thinks he would like to be very much more.’

‘It sounds like you had a long discussion about me. Pity I was not there to set wrongs to right, but then my siblings have always been more than quick to make judgements about the suitability of my various beaux.’

‘Various?’

‘Indeed. You didn’t expect me to be pining for the company of a husband who did not think to remember that he had a wife for three long years until the necessity for a legitimate heir brought him back?’

The four small stars on her bracelet sparked gold as her hands underlined her words.

‘The newspaper cutting you spoke of, the one in the paper from Georgia. It was not as it was reported. Since marrying you I have always respected my vows and I have not … cheated.’ He finished each word with a sharp honesty. The muscles in his jaw rippled with the effort.

Damn, Taylen thought, what the hell had made him confess that to his estranged wife here in a crowded room in the middle of a public soirée?

He was known for his waywardness and his belief in free speech and action, flamboyant and untempered by the conventions attached to society life. He had lived his whole life in the pursuit of the hedonistic and the liberal, escaping the dreadfulness of his childhood with fine wine and finer women.

Until he had married!

Then something had happened that he could not explain. His libido, long since more than active, had simply dried up and he found it difficult to touch a woman without thinking of his parents’ licentiousness. Six lovers had trooped through his younger life on his mother’s side and many, many more than that on his father’s. And they had left their mark.