Page 73 of Better Than a Duke
“I know.” He jabbed his shovel into the earth again. “And you’ll get sent away to a boarding school as soon as Masquerade can manage it, and you’ll only see your father at holidays. And we’ll never see each other again.”
When her eyes started to look wet he clambered out of his hole and sat beside it, swiping his light hair out of his face. “Maybe we should just tell them everything. The Major and the Mongoose.”
“We can’t. Papa said having a family would make him happy. Masquerade knew it. She was very certain, and hehasbeen smiling and laughingsomuch more since we arrived in London and he started courting her.” One of the tears ran down her cheek. He hated that. Becks was funny and clever, and she didn’t deserve to be sent away from her papa.
“When does he see her next?”
“He invited her for breakfast tomorrow. I’m going to say I have a megrim and can’t join them. She makes me want to throw sticky, messy things at her. Like honey with bees in it.”
Edmund considered that for a moment. Becks was right that they were running out of time. She was also correct that he would much, much prefer to have Lord Hentrose as a father than the Duke of Trent. Trent’s head looked like a skull with a sheet pulled over it. “We know Masquerade’s mean,” he mused, squinting up at her. “What if you could get Butler or Bradley to spill something sticky on her? She would be mad and say horrid things, and the Major would see it.”
“I do like that.” Becks plunked herself down onto the dirt beside him. “If she says mean things to the staff, the Major won’t like that. He always says that a household can manage perfectly without a master or mistress, but it can’t function at all without its staff.”
“Would one of them do it?”
Sighing, she tossed a pebble into his hole. “I don’t think so. Butler and Bradley are both very proper. They’d be embarrassed to spill something on purpose. I would do it myself, but then Papa will think I don’t want him to marry anyone, and then he won’t fall in love with your mama, either.”
“Oh! I could come over in the morning and we could make a great deal of noise. We could be so annoying that Masquerade will run away and not want to marry your papa at all.”
“We might get in trouble, though.”
He shrugged. “This is for us, too. I want to be a Biscuits. I’ll risk being sent to bed without dinner for that.”
“I want us all to be Biscuits.” She grinned at him, wiping the tear off her face. “Let’s do it. You come calling at ten o’clock, saying I told you we were going to… read about London’s sewers. Since I will have a megrim, I won’t even be at breakfast. Then, even if Bradley or Butler won’t help us, we can still make noise and be insufferable.”
“I—” He stopped as he saw who’d walked into the garden. “It’s the Major and the Mongoose,” he muttered. “You have to start talking to him again, or he’ll just think you’re trying to punish him for something. He needs to pay attention to what evil things Masquerade is doing; not to you.”
“Oh, very well. The things I do for love.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“This is very kind of you, Your Grace,” Iris said, just as she’d rehearsed, and took the seat next to the Duke of Trent on the front-facing side of his gold-appointed, well-polished barouche, while Polly sat opposite her. For heaven’s sake, it was like riding on a jeweled crown, minus the pointy bits. “I know how busy you must be.”
“Ha. Not busy enough, these days,” he returned, and thumped his cane against the floor.
The barouche rolled into the street, heading toward Hyde Park. Afternoon in the park would be impossibly crowded, full of Mayfair residents promenading, riding, and driving about making certain to be seen in their finest daytime attire, trying to catch the eye of that certain someone, or of anyone at all. She’d never been fond of it. Today, the idea of everyone seeing her in the company of a man more than forty years her senior, a man publicly after his sixth wife to share his bed and wipe the drool from his mouth… Ugh. She would rather have been swimming in the Serpentine in a ball gown.
And yet, there she was. Smiling, being as polite and demureas she could manage. What did that say about her? Iris lowered her shoulders, lifting her chin. She knew what it said. It said that she was a woman of good birth, limited means, and a determination to provide the best life possible for her young son.
“I hear Elmond called on you earlier.” Trent sniffed as a pedestrian bowed at the barouche. “Lickspittle.”
“You have people spying on your own son?”
“I know where all my offspring and their offspring are, what they’re doing, what they’re saying, and to whom they’re saying it. He thinks you want me to get a son on you so you can claim the dukedom and pry it away from him.”
“I told him that was nonsense. You came to me. And you said you wanted to marry someone who’ll look after you and your best interests, whatever your sons’ wishes.”
He snorted. “So I did. Both my boys know they’re worthless. I blame their mothers; Mary, my first wife, was Yorkshire peasant stock, if you go back far enough. Face like a chicken, but her dowry—that was nothing to sneeze at. She made it possible for me to marry prettier girls, after she turned up her toes. You’re Midlands gentry born. Back at least three generations, on both sides. You have the look of it, too. Willowy, that blond hair and those green—or is it brown?—eyes. And you’ve already birthed a boy. I’d take a son off you. What do you think of that? If my first ones don’t behave, you’d be the mother of a duke. A good way to keep hold of what you’ll get by marrying me. If the brat likes you, that is. Mine hate me. It’s mutual.”
Trent continued talking, but Iris couldn’t hear it any longer. Her ears rang, clanging like someone shaking a hundred tinny bells all around her. She’d suspected from the beginning that he would want more children—more sons. And she’d set it aside because the rest of it would ensure Edmund’s future.
Now, though, she’d been with Beckett. She’d kissed him,been touched by him. He made her feel… alive. More so than she had in at least the last four years. Possibly ever. A man who didn’t need her for a purpose other than wanting to have a connection. Warmth. Friendship.
Now, though, the idea of being with Trent, of having someone so uncaring and self-absorbed and so much older than she was pawing all over her because he wanted leverage against his grown sons, made her feel ill. Dirty. As if because she’d realized that, he’d turned her into a prostitute. Money, shelter, in exchange for sex. He made it so obvious. So blatant. So… ugly.
“Nothing to say, eh?” he went on cheerfully. “No matter. You’ll come around to it. Your uncle told me what you wanted from him. If you think he’d lend you the blunt to purchase a boardinghouse, you don’t know him very well. And you’re right on the edge of being too old to be useful.” He shook his head. “The other chit I’m still looking into, you know, she’s seventeen. Lots of years to bear me sons, but she’s unproven. I could flip a coin, I suppose, but I dislike wagering with my own happiness.”
Opposite them Polly sat, her mouth hanging open. Perhaps they could make a run for it. She had no doubt that her maid would join her in fleeing. Running off, though—or punching him—wouldn’t solve anything. The Baverstocks would not be hosting the Silberns after the Season, or lending them any money. None of her other relations would lift a finger. Which left… this.
