When the Duke Falls
by
Ari Thatcher
Chapter One
Victor Levitt, Duke of Rettendon, stood at the sideboard, weighing the decanter in his palm, thumb pressed firm to the cut-glass stopper. Through the rippling surface of the brandy, the fire’s light fractured and pooled in gold and red, as if the room were suspended between a chilly now and some more vital, half-remembered yesterday. He poured, slow and measured, and the sound—rich, gurgling—broke the hush.
His mother sat in her usual seat, nearest the hearth. “Victor,” she said, without turning, her gaze fixed on the leaping embers, “I trust the journey from London wasn’t too taxing for you.”
He took his time replacing the stopper, wiping the beads of liquor from the rim with a flick of his thumb. “The horses found the roads a bit mucky past Chelmsford,” he answered. His tone was noncommittal, designed to slide off whatever verbal hook she’d baited for him.
“Roads are always a muddle in December. Yet you persist in traveling during the worst of the season.” She gave a genteel sigh. “I suppose the demands of Parliament must outweigh considerations of health and comfort for a duke.”
He carried the tumbler to the fireside but didn’t sit. His mother’s eyes tracked him with the precision of a woman with a scheme in mind. He allowed himself a sip, savoring the initial sting and then the slow, smoky warmth that followed. His fingers tapped against the glass, a private metronome.
“Did you want something, Mother?” He couldn’t keep the fatigue from his voice. The kind born not of travel, but of long acquaintance with the forms her interventions tended to take.
She smiled. It was a subtle thing, barely touching her mouth. More of an agreement with herself than a gift to her son. “Merely to welcome you home. Rettendon is never itself without you.” She folded her hands over the knob of her cane—a recent but already ceremonial addition. “The staff grows lazy in your absence.”
He let the comment pass. Their housekeeper, if anything, ran the hall like a military installation. But his mother had a horror of empty rooms, of echoes. When the subject of the dukedom’s future came up, as it always did, she found ways to circle it like a falcon waiting for an opening.
He tried to ignore the portraits lining the walls, the amassed faces of a dozen former dukes, unsmiling, stern. Their collective judgment felt as present as the clock on the mantel, ticking a slow, relentless march toward some unspoken family reckoning.
Victor set his glass down on the side table with more force than he’d intended. He recognized the opening gambit. It was always the same, a feint about his lack of engagement, quickly parlayed into his lack of an heir. He looked away, into the fire. “If this is about my cousin again, I assure you—”
She cut him off with a little wave. “Edward is a pleasant enough boy, but wholly unsuited to the title. You know it as well as I do.” The diamond on her left hand sparkled as she gestured. “You have a duty. To Rettendon. To your ancestors. Even to your own future, such as it is.”
He inhaled, slow and deliberate. “My future is not in question, Mother.”
“Isn’t it? You are forty, Victor. A duke without a duchess, without sons. The estate runs well enough, I grant you—but what does that matter if you leave it in the hands of a second cousin?And with such a promising figure as yours, you could have your pick of—”
He pivoted. “Let’s not pretend you care about my prospects on the Marriage Mart.”
She tilted her head as if amused. “Perhaps I do not, in the abstract. But your father’s line must go on.” The muscles in her face softened ever so slightly. “He would have wanted that.”
He didn’t flinch, but the words landed anyway. The specter of the late duke was the only thing that ever troubled his mother, and she deployed it with a tactician’s sense of timing. Victor picked up his glass. “If I may be blunt, I don’t intend to marry merely to satisfy some imagined debt to the dead.”
Her smile this time was almost fond, though the eyes above it gave nothing away. “I should hope not. But you might consider that the dead are not so easily rid of us. Not in this house.” She tapped the cane once against the wooden floor.
He allowed himself a huff of something like laughter. “Superstitious now, Mother? At your age?”
“Oh, I have always believed in ghosts.” She leaned forward, and the firelight caught the fine web of lines around her eyes, making her look momentarily, hauntingly vulnerable.
He set his drink aside. “Rest assured that nothing will befall Rettendon. I have the estate and the tenantry in hand. There is no need to invent crises.”
She considered this, then nodded. “You are a good steward. No one could deny it. But there is more to a house than ledgers and crop yields. You know that, I think, beneath all your protestations.” She stood with an ease that made her seem decades younger, and crossed to him, the cane now an afterthought.
He braced himself for an embrace, but she only rested a cool, dry hand on his sleeve. “You’ve been the duke for fifteenyears, my son. There is not much left for you but to build something that will outlast us both.”
She patted him and lowered her hand. “I trust you will do what’s right. You always do.”
He straightened, planting both hands behind his back in what he hoped was an attitude of polite dismissal. “Is there anything further, Mother?” The question came out flat, but the undertow of fatigue—of something more brittle—was impossible to suppress.
She made a show of consulting the clock on the mantel, as though surprised by the passage of time. “No, Victor. You have doubtless other matters to attend.”
He inclined his head, the gesture clipped. “I do.” He crossed the thick Aubusson carpet to the door, aware of her gaze tracking him with the precision of a surgeon’s knife. Each step away felt, perversely, more difficult, as though he were slogging through quicksand instead of the finely woven decadence of a French rug.
