Chapter One
The seventh Duke of Montclaire was dying magnificently.
It was, Alexander thought with the sort of detached appreciation one might reserve for a particularly dramatic opera, exactly the sort of death scene his grandfather would orchestrate. The massive bedchamber had been transformed into a theater of finality—heavy curtains drawn against the cheerful spring sunshine, fire burning low in the grate, the air thick with that peculiar stillness that preceded momentous occasions.
The duke himself lay propped against a fortress of pillows, his face bearing the waxy sheen of a man whose business with this world was drawing to its inevitable close. Yet his eyes, those infamous grey eyes that had made lesser men quake in parliamentary sessions, still glittered with their characteristic command.
Alexander stood at a precise distance from the bed, neither too close to suggest unseemly emotion nor too far to imply disrespect. At two and thirty, he had mastered the art of appearing precisely as engaged as any situation required and not one degree more. His morning coat was impeccable black, his cravat a study in architectural precision, his expression carefully neutral.
Around him, the family had assembled like a flock of well-dressed carrion birds. Cousin Margret clutched her handkerchief with anticipatory grief. Uncle Bartholomew consulted his pocket watch with the dedication of a man who believed punctuality might somehow postpone the inevitable. Great-Aunt Wilhelmina sat straight in the corner, her disapproval of death's timing evident in every line of her ancient face.
Mr. Hedgley, the family solicitor, hovered near the writing desk, his implements of legal documentation arranged with military precision. He had the look of a man who had witnessed many deathbed proclamations and found them all equally uncomfortable.
The duke's breathing rattled like dice in a cup; appropriate, Alexander supposed, given how much of the family fortune Uncle Charles had once gambled away.
"Come closer, all of you," the duke commanded, his voice thin as parchment but still capable of commanding obedience. "What I have to say concerns every Montclaire living and those yet unborn."
The assembled relatives shuffled forward with the reluctance of students approaching a particularly stern headmaster.
The duke's gaze swept over them all before settling on Alexander with uncomfortable intensity. "Too long," he began, each word requiring visible effort, "have Montclaire and Coleridge lived at daggers drawn."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
Alexander's expression didn't change, but something in his stillness became more pronounced. The very name Coleridge was enough to resurrect every slight, every insult, every carefully documented grievance that had been passed down through the generations like a particularly bitter heirloom.
"Let them be united," the duke continued, his words falling like stones into still water, "that quarrels may at last give way to peace."
Mr. Hedgley bent low over his parchment, quill poised to capture every syllable for posterity. The scratching sound it made seemed unnaturally loud in the hushed chamber.
Alexander's composure finally cracked. A sound escaped him; not quite a laugh, but certainly nothing approaching appropriate deathbed behavior. "Coleridge?" The word emerged like something particularly vile. "Why would you squander your last words upon that wretched brood?"
Those damned Coleridge brothers.The thought burned through his mind like acid. He could picture them perfectly—all four of them, strutting about town like peacocks, their new money practically reeking from their gaudy watch chains. The eldest, always trying to buy his way into White's. The second, who'd had the audacity to outbid him at Tattersall's. The twins, with their vulgar laughter and their counting-house manners, contaminating every respectable gathering they managed to infiltrate.
Cousin Margret gasped. Uncle Bartholomew dropped his watch. Great-Aunt Wilhelmina's expression suggested she was reconsidering the distribution of her own eventual estate.
"Your Grace!" Uncle Bartholomew sputtered. "Your grandfather is..."
"Dying, yes." Alexander's tone was desert-dry. "Which makes his sudden interest in our trade-soaked neighbours all the more bewildering."
The Duke's eyes flashed with something that might have been amusement or might have been fury—with him, one could never quite tell. "Mr. Hedgley," he commanded, ignoring his heir's irreverence with magnificent disdain, "record this exactly as I speak it."
The solicitor dipped his quill with the gravity of a man signing a treaty.
"My heir, and that is Alexander, since his father has died," the duke pronounced with devastating clarity, "shall take to wife Miss Coleridge within one year of my decease, or the Montclaireestate shall pass into trusteeship until such time as the condition is met."
The quill scratched across parchment like fate itself being written.
Alexander stood perfectly still, but inside, his mind reeled with horrified disbelief.Miss Coleridge.He searched his memory and came up startlingly empty. In all his years of carefully catalogued grievances against that family, he couldn't conjure a single image of their sister. The brothers dominated every social gathering like a plague of locusts in expensive tailcoats, but a sister?
She must exist; the old man wouldn't stake the estate on a phantom. But the fact that she'd never registered in his consciousness spoke volumes. Probably kept hidden away, he reasoned, too plain or too simple to parade about. Or worse—exactly like her brothers, all sharp elbows and sharper tongues, calculating the value of every introduction, every dance, every social connection like entries in a ledger.
"You cannot be serious," he said at last, his voice carefully modulated while his thoughts raged.A Coleridge bride. In my home. At my table. In my bed.The very idea made his skin crawl.
"When have I ever been otherwise?" The Duke's breath was coming harder now, each word a victory against his failing body. "The feud dies with me, Alexander. You will see to it."
"By binding myself to some insipid girl, bred in trade and stinking of ledgers and ambition?" The words came out sharper than intended. "No doubt she's been trained from the cradle to calculate dowries and settlements. Probably keeps accounts of eligible bachelors ranked by annual income."
"By doing your duty to this family." The Duke's voice gained strength through sheer force of will. "Miss Coleridge is of age,unwed, and of good reputation. That is all that need concern you."
