Robert smiled a half smile. “Indeed—”
A sound above stairs made him drop his gloves and sent him flying up the stairs two at a time, with Creighton at his heels. He arrived on the first floor to be greeted by the duke with a squirming, crying bundle in his arms.
“It’s a girl!” he exclaimed, tears on his cheeks. “A baby girl. She’s so beautiful, look.” He held the bundle out and Robert got his first look at his baby sister. Her little face was scrunched up and red and her little mouth was open, squalling fit to burst, little fists waving about. Her fingers were perfect. In fact, everything about her was perfect. Robert’s heart, which had been worried in spite of his outward seeming calm, gave a little leap of joy. He allowed himself to smile and looked up at his jubilant sire. “How is Mama?”
“Well—tired but well. I’m so proud of her.” The duke wiped tears off his face with his cuff, clutching the baby close. Robert passed into the bedchamber where his mother lay banked against pillows, her blonde hair confined in a plait.
“Robert.” She reached out a hand toward him, and he came to her bedside, taking her hand in a sustaining clasp. The duke followed, still clutching the squalling infant.
“How are you, Mama?” Robert scanned her face to satisfy himself that all was well. One heard so many horror stories of women’s labor. But to his relief she seemed, as his father had said, tired but well. She smiled at him.
“Well, Robert. What do you think of her?” Her eyes strayed to the duke, with a warm light in them, a look she reserved only for him. Robert felt like an intruder between them. “A girl at last, Costin. I think I shall call her Ava.”
“My dearest Jocelyn,” said the duke fondly, leaning forward to deposit their daughter back into her arms. “I couldn’t be happier. Ava it is.” He kissed her cheek and then her lips. Feeling decidedlyde trop, Robert backed out and left his parents to it, going up to the next floor to inform his brothers they had a baby sister at last. He wondered how the boys would take the news, but he for one, was pleased. She was a dear little thing, and it would be his privilege to guard and protect her.
*
London, 7th of February 1818
Madeleine Kinsella adjustedher mask and entered the ballroom, her sky-blue domino billowing over the full skirts of her old-fashioned ball gown in rose pink brocade. Her powdered wig and the patch beside her mouth completed an ensemble that would have been the envy of Marie Antionette, before she lost her head. It was the first time she had ventured out of her house in Clarges Street since the Duke of Troubridge delivered the news that their “arrangement” was ending. He had been generous, she had to give him that. He had extended the rent on the house until the middle of the year, including the servants’ wages, and made a present of the carriage and two horses that drew it. And of course she got to keep all the clothes, jewels, and knick-knackshe had given her over the years. You couldn’t accuse him of being stingy.
On the contrary, he had been exceedingly generous and kind. Which resulted in her suffering a greater degree of heartbreak over the severing of their relationship than was wise for a lady in her profession. She had wept and been inconsolable for two months. But it was time she moved on. She needed to find another protector, as unpalatable as the notion was. But first, before she did, she needed a palate cleanser, a man to rid her of her deep-seated hankering for the duke.
Thus, here she was at this masked ball in search of such a man. She moved farther into the room, skirting the dance floor where couples twirled to the tune of a waltz, dominos flying. The candles glinted off the chandelier’s cut-glass teardrops, and the room was filled with the murmur of conversation over the music.
She found a position with a good view of the room, near an alcove that offered privacy if required, and waited, plying her fan lazily against the growing heat in the room and the overpowering smell of pomade, perfume, and human sweat. Behind her mask, she tracked various gentlemen around the room, looking for a suitable quarry.
She was surprised by a soft voice in her ear, “all alone, Princess?” Startled, she turned to gaze upward into blue eyes dancing with wicked delight behind a black mask, a sensuous mouth curved in a charming smile and a thatch of blonde hair cut in a fashionable Brutus. The man was tall, well-made, broad through the shoulders, and lacking any signs of a paunch. Beneath his black domino he wore unrelieved black evening dress, a stark contrast to the whiteness of his neckcloth. A diamond glinted among the snowy folds and a gold signet ring upon his finger, with the coronet of a peer, told her that she was looking at a perfect specimen.
She smiled. “Not anymore, it would seem.”
Chapter One
London, 7th of March 1818
“Itell you,I have no choice,” said Robert Layne, 7th Duke of Troubridge morosely. “It’s an heiress or be hounded to death by debtors.” He raised his whisky, catching a flash of his neatly groomed, curly brown hair and brooding, grey-blue eyes reflected in the glass, and downed it in one swallow. His tall frame was sprawled in a comfortable chair in Boodle’s with his cronies. The four men sat in a half circle drawn cozily up to the fire, enjoying a post-dinner drink. But even the warm and familiar surroundings of his favorite club couldn’t dispel the twinge of unease in his gut at the prospect of seeking a wife for purely mercenary reasons. It went severely against the grain and left him feeling empty and depressed, an unaccustomed emotion for one of his temperament. It was making him irritable.
“An heiress ain’t so bad, Rob,” said Jerome DeVere, the Marquess of Ravenshaw, one elegantly booted foot crossed over his knee. “Provided she’s pretty of course!” Ravenshaw added with a rakish smile.
That is easy for him to say. He doesn’t have to marry the damned chit, whoever she proves to be.
As always, the marquess’s attire was immaculate. His black hair was sleek as a groomed horse, and his devastatingly handsome face was perfectly shaved.
“Pretty isn’t going to be a criterion,” Robert said gloomily. He was looking for something beyond skin-deep beauty and would be lucky to find someone who didn’t repulse him utterly, as he was particular in his tastes.Am I too particular?A pang in his chest reminded him of what he did want, a wife he could love with his whole heart.The perfect woman I have never met. And never will now...
“Marrying for love’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” remarked Emrys Fitzgerald, Viscount Ashford, with a rueful grimace, finishing his glass of red wine and refilling it. He was the only one of the four of them who was married. Robert was surprised by the comment; to his knowledge Ashford’s marriage was a happy one. He and his wife Caroline had three children, the eldest of which was eight or thereabouts. Robert made a mental note to follow up on this hint of marital discord. Ashford’s match had been the gold standard in his mind for a love match—outside of his parents of course. It was disturbing to think things might not be as smooth sailing as they had always appeared to be.
By contrast with Ravenshaw, Ashford was disheveled, his brown hair was too long to be fashionable, his jaw sported a faint stubble. His clothes were loose fitting with a stain on his waistcoat, and his boots were in sore need of a shine. In short, he looked like something the cat had dragged in, which was nothing unusual. He’d never been a good-looking man, and he was now slipping into comfortable middle age, with a slight paunch developing round his middle.
“Well, they won’t haul you off to the fleet. You’re a bloody duke!” said Deodonatus Kininmounth, the Earl of Pendrell. Inspecting his own glass and finding it empty, he reached for the decanter on the table and absently refilled Robert’s glass while he was at it. Pendrell was the biggest of the four men, with shoulders like an ox and a muscular physique that topped outat over six foot three. He was built on similar lines to Robert’s brother Hereward, although Pendrell was taller. Combined with his height and bulk, his hawkish features made him somewhat intimidating. And to add to his striking appearance, his head was covered in a shock of bright red hair, and his skin was freckled from long hours in the sun on some dig or other. The man was obsessed with antiquities and not known for his social address. He became quite tongue-tied in the presence of females.
Robert waved a hand dismissively. “No, but I’m damned sick of not being able to pay my debts and trying to balance the books. My esteemed papa was not a good steward, I am sorry to say, and I’m paying the price for it now. Whichever way I try it, there are more outgoings than incomings.” He sighed. “The estate has been abused for too long. It requires significant investment to begin showing a profit again, and I can’t raise the ready because everything is bloody entailed.” He ran a hand through his hair, disturbing his valet’s neat handiwork, and unconsciously created an artistically disheveled look worthy of Byron.
“I’ve tried to get my mother and brothers to practice some economy to no avail, and with three sisters to provide for as well as the boys...” He scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed.God I’m tired.“I’m resigned to my fate, but I don’t have to like it!”
Robert had always envisioned that when he did marry he would do so for love, the kind of passionate, life-long love and devotion his parents had enjoyed. He had searched for ten years for the deep-soul connection among the debutantes of thetonthat he was convinced was possible, but it was to no avail. He now realized with a sinking heart that he would have to choose a lady based first and foremost on the size of her fortune. The chance of him finding the love of his life among the ranks of thisyear’s crop of heiresses was reduced to a very small, if not non-existent, percentage indeed.
“To make it worse, Mama and Ava will arrive soon for Ava’s come out, and the expense doesn’t bear thinking of,” he added with a frustrated sigh.
