Page 72 of Better Than a Duke
“I… don’t think you take my meaning, Mrs. Silbern. Spread your legs for him; he’s a randy old man who’s rutted his way through four additional wives after my dear mother. But if you think the product of your whoring has even the slightest chance of being more than a jest for good people to titter about behind their hands, you’re even stupider than I thought.”
That was damned well enough of that. More than enough. Beckett gripped the door handle.
“Francis Howard, the Marquis of Elmond,” Iris snapped. “You do realize that every ounce of power you think you wield doesn’t even belong to you, do you not? Elmond is your father’s second title. He’s lending it to you, I assume to puff you up so your pompous ridiculousness has the appearance of weight behind it. You have nothing that doesn’t actually belong to the Duke of Trent.”
“I will not—”
“Shut up. You have the expectation of importance, the desperate wish that your father won’t find someone to replace you. Your response to my search for comfort and safety is to bellow and stomp and loudly declare that you will have other people do things to make me regret my attempt not to be treated as an unwelcome object of reluctant charity.”
“You… You shrew. I will not be spoken to this way.”
“You seem to be standing here still while I am speaking to you this way, so I must disagree. I had no ambitions whatsoever to intrude into your family. But now that you’ve demonstrated to me what a sniveling, bullying worm you are, I may just changemy mind. You may leave now, Lord Elmond. Or you may stand there with your nose flared like a bull and snort at me. I don’t care which it is, though I do have an appointment elsewhere this morning.”
Heavy steps pounded toward the door. Beckett quickly moved into the small study opposite the morning room and ducked behind that door. As Elmond passed he leaned out again, catching sight of the back of a beet-red ear and clenched fists. A heartbeat later the front door opened and shut again, followed by a goose honking for its coach at once, damn everyone’s eyes.
“You’ll notice I didnotpunch him,” Iris commented from the hallway.
For a moment Beckett felt like a child who’d just lost a game of hide-and-go-seek. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped out of hiding. “In all fairness, I fully intended to punch him on your behalf. You, however, rendered him utterly impotent with a paragraph. I felt unneeded.”
Her hazel gaze, browner in the subdued lighting of the house, met his. “I’m not having a conversation with you until we settle a few things.”
His chest tightened a little. If this was the moment she meant to declare that their odd friendship had to end, he wasn’t ready for it. “You sound like Rebecca. Except that she still isn’t making any sounds at all. Not to me directly, at least.”
“Ah. Is it still about Delilah? Edmund’s reluctantly accepted that it’s too late to alter anything. Has Becks not?”
Her voice remained tight, her fingers stiff and her chin high. Not finished with fighting yet, then. He couldn’t blame her; facing off against a future duke wasn’t a pleasant experience. “I’m not certain what it is now. I’m attempting not to force Rebecca to become fond of Pauline, or even to like her, before my daughter is ready to do so. But neither am I prepared to have my futuredecided by a nine-year-old who likes the world as it is and is more concerned over losing Edmund’s friendship at the end of the Season than she is over the entire length of her future.”
“Then you are engaged.”
“No. Not yet. I am still attempting to be wiser and more patient this time.” And he happened to like things as they were, himself. Especially now. But an affair with his neighbor wouldn’t gain him an heir, or a reputation for anything but dallying—and he’d never been one of those sorts of men. Until now, apparently.
She took a breath. “I fully support being wiser. Which is why we need to stop. I like chatting with you, laughing with you, and… being with you. But all we’re doing is putting off the inevitable.” Her shoulders lowered. “There. Now. Are you here for Becks, then? She and Edmund are in the garden.”
He frowned, taking hold of her wrist and pulling her to a stop as she started to turn away. “You are correct, of course. But I do enjoy chatting with you and sharing my thoughts with you, and having someone about who understands what my life is like. Our children are friends. We are friends, whether we should be or not.”
One of the downstairs maids hurried by, hunching her shoulders as if she could cover her ears with them. “We do seem to be,” Iris admitted, narrowing one eye. “But we should not have had that one particular conversation. Nor should we have it again.”
Damn, but he’d enjoyed that conversation. “I agree,” he said reluctantly. They were both arranging for their futures, after all. “We should not repeat that conversation.” He took a step closer, taking her other hand, leaning down to brush her ear with his mouth. “As long as you’re talking about the sex, and not about the actual conversations out in the garden. I enjoy those.”
He felt her shiver beneath his fingers. “I enjoy those, as well, Beckett. I may have need of more of them. I’m going driving with Trent this afternoon.”
“Damn.” The curse slipped out before he could close his mouth over it, and he grinned at her annoyed expression. “I’d intended to ask you and Edmund to join us in viewing the Tower Menagerie this afternoon. Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“I believe I’ll be free tomorrow afternoon. Edmund would like that. He’s been dying to see an African lion with his own eyes.”
“Good. I’ve been feeling outnumbered.”
When she smiled at him he had to physically hold himself back from kissing her. Less-enthusiastic conversing, as they seemed to be terming it, was not going to be easy. Evidently he had two women in his life that he couldn’t resist—and neither one was Pauline Grenedy.
“I don’t know, Eddie,” Becks said, dumping a pail of dirt into the bed of flowers and scattering it with one foot. “I’ve been not talking to him for days, and he just keeps asking why I’m still annoyed with him. Not talking is very difficult for me, you know, but I’m afraid I’ll say something about how much I don’t like Lady Pauline. We need him to fall in love with your mama so he thinks he’s doing it on his own. And he needs to be withsomeone.”
“Write him a note,” Edmund suggested, taking the bucket back and scooping more dirt into it. He could stand upright in his hole now and be unseen from just a few feet away. In fact, he was going to need to borrow the gardener’s ladder before he dug any deeper, or when he jumped in he wouldn’t be able to climb out. “Tell him he owes us another day out because of Delilah, and that my mother needs to be included because it was her horse that got taken.”
“I’m trying not to be too obvious. And I don’t want him to think I’m just… I don’t know, being a baby. The—”
“Do not ruin your shoes, Lady Becks,” Brubbie called from the shady bench halfway across the garden.
“I’m being careful,” Becks called back. “But what if he proposes to Masquerade the next time he sees her, Eddie? You’ll end up in a duke’s house with stepbrothers who have children older than you, and they’ll all spend their time pointing at you and laughing because you’re not Old Moldy’s actual son and they’re worried you’ll want two shillings of their fortune.”
