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“Are you certain, Your Grace?”
Anthony nodded with a gruff grunt and shoved his hands into the pockets of his official army breeches to stop the other man from seeing they had tightened into fists. The last thing he wanted was for the man to feel threatened, even if he was ready and rearing for a fight after all he had been through over the last few days.
Having been stuck on a supplies ship because it was the only one leaving port the day he had needed one, he had travelled the long way home, stopping at several ports before finally arriving in London.
It had been a long and arduous journey, and yet Anthony could think of nothing more than returning to the ship and heading back to Spain, back to his tent and his maps and his strategies, not sitting in this office or even a grand manor house and running an estate he had no desire to even lay eyes upon.
“Then why don’t you tell me my situation, Mr Patterson, because I am truly at a loss of how I came to be here,” Anthony admitted. He was one step away from beginning to tap his foot with impatience. The farce of having to come all this way just to turn down a dukedom angered him even more than the thought that everyone believed he ought to be excited about the damned thing.
“You are an officer in the Royal British Army and have worked your way up from foot soldier to high officer. Your father was a solicitor like myself and your mother … well …” the solicitor paused at the pointed, warning glare Anthony gave him. He gulped again and cleared his throat with a cough before continuing.
“You have two younger sisters who would benefit greatly from this opportunity. Have I missed anything, Your ... Anthony?”
“All you have said is correct,” Anthony responded even as he cringed at the words, because deep down, he was well aware just how true they were. Elizabeth and Emily were the only family he had left, the only family who truly mattered. Everything he had ever done, he had done for them, but how could he possibly give up all the hard work he had put into being the best the army had to offer?
“Your Grace?” Mr Patterson said sharply, clearing his throat awkwardly again before he added, “Anthony, did you hear me?”
This time Anthony cleared his own throat. He had been so invested in his thoughts, thinking of what he wanted versus what was best for his sisters that he hadn’t heard a word from the solicitor’s lips.
“Sorry, Mr Patterson, you were saying?”
“I was saying, My Lord, there are ways around these things,” Mr Patterson explained. “You may not be able to return to the frontlines, but as a duke, you are certain to be able to find other ways to help your country. As a duke you would be well connected …”
The solicitor’s meaning was clear. Anthony had heard plenty of the spies that roamed all areas of the globe, living in plain sight as commoners and noblemen alike, finding ways into the cracks of society to get vital information for king and country.
“It may be the best of both worlds, so to speak,” Mr Patterson added quickly, as though he saw the thoughtful yet undecided expression on Anthony’s face.
“If I were to reject this dukedom?” Anthony asked, almost losing himself in thought once more.
“Then it would not be offered a second time, My Lord,” Mr Patterson explained. “It would be lost forever though I do not know where it would end up. There were no further relatives to contact, and so it might well be liquidated, which would not be beneficial for all those who have lived beneath the duke. His servants would be jobless. The tenants of his land might well be thrown off …”
“Alright, alright,” Anthony insisted, removing his hand from his pocket to hold it up to stop the solicitor from talking. The longer he remained in the office, the more he realised there was no getting out of it, and the more he realised the solicitor was right.
Elizabeth and Emily shall make advantageous marriages if I am to become a duke,he thought grimly even though the idea was abhorrent to him.They shall never need for anything once I am gone.
Little did Anthony know that the estate of the Duke of Chatham was in ruins. Though the manor house in the country was a lavish and elegant place from outside, Mr Patterson had failed to announce on meeting that the late Duke of Chatham had been a vain and frivolous man leaving little to nothing in the coffers and debts piled up to Anthony’s ears.
Arriving at Keddleston Abbey, the home of the Duke of Chatham, some days after signing the paperwork and learning all he had set himself up for, was even harder when seeing the pure joy on the faces of his two younger siblings.
How they adored the place the moment they laid eyes upon it, chattering about how much fun they would have as the younger sisters of a duke, how they would have the finest gowns and go to the most elegant balls, how they would marry dukes and earls themselves and how they would never want for anything.
Little did they know that if their big brother didn’t figure something out fast, they would lose everything they had now and even more besides.
There were many options open to him, or so Mr Patterson assured him, though the most convenient was also the most loathesome. Mr Patterson, true to his profession, was a most diabolical man, and to keep his client happy and his own pockets lined, he had come up with a plan to see that Anthony and his sisters remained on their high pedestal.
“It would be a most advantageous match, Your Grace,” Mr Patterson insisted as the pair sat in what had quickly become Anthony’s study. The room was one of the three libraries in Keddleston Abbey.
It was the smallest and most modest of the libraries, and it suited Anthony well in order to block out the more lavish rooms in the house from his memory, blocking out all that he had taken on in the name of his family.
The entire place sickened him, as did the thought of how the previous duke had lived with no thought for anyone else or what might come afterwards. Only his sisters’ smiling faces got him through the endless, mind-numbing boredom of being duke.
“Is there nobody else?” Anthony asked the solicitor, looking over the letter in his hand once more that the man had brought with him from his office, a letter from Pierre Vigneault, the Comte St Clair that proffered his niece in matrimony.
“None quite so advantageous, Your Grace,” Mr Patterson insisted. “She comes from a very wealthy family, and from what I have heard, she is quite pretty.”
The solicitor at least had the decency to blush at his final comment.
“She is French,” Anthony pointed out grimly. “French women are known for their beauty.”Among less savoury things,he added silently.
