Page 88 of Better Than a Duke
Reaching over, the duke slapped his eldest son across the side of the head. “I know you personally attempted to discourage her, Francis. Don’t think you can sneak anything past me. I don’t think she gives a damn about this contest, if she even believesthere is one. She wants a home for her brat. In exchange for that, she’s evidently willing to wed an old carcass like me. Wife number six, she’ll be. Puts me even with Henry the Eighth.”
“You do realize that making more sons on her won’t remove me from my prime position,” his son said, rubbing his cheek and leaning in the other direction.
“I’m aware, you ungrateful, inching lolpoop.” Let them think he’d given up on replacing the thick-headed, pompous muttonheads. Yes, yes, he was old and they had solicitors, and they, unfortunately, would manage to outlive him. In the meantime, he had his own solicitors, none of whom flinched at the unsavory, and all of whom had a great deal more imagination than one might expect of such dull drapes. All he needed to do was produce papers that said his first and second marriages hadn’t been valid, and Francis, Henry, and their loathsome offspring all became untitled bastards. And then he’d start over. New sons. Sons who respected him and his wisdom. Sons who had more spleen than spite. And she would give them to him, that spitfire. The trouble he’d already gone to in order to snare her interest, inventing a contest and laying out bait for her to follow—it had been masterful, if he said so himself. It had also been necessary; a man, even a duke, who’d buried five wives and who wasn’t swimming in blunt like Lord Hentrose, needed to provide some sort of enticement.
“I do wish you would just die and let us get on with things,” Francis whined, “instead of making a stir and fathering more sons for me to wrangle. And the Silbern boy will get nothing from me.”
“Ipromised her and her brat a stipend. What you do after I’m dead, well, I don’t give a damn. Before that, I suppose I’ll have some fun. And her in my bed as often as I want her.” He licked his lower lip. Just thinking about her made him feel like a randy young buck again.
“You’re an embarrassment.”
“I’m whatever I want to be, whether you like it or not. That’s the privilege of being a duke.”
“Be assured, then, that the moment you turn up your toes, they will both be out of Howard House on their mutual backsides. I guarantee it.”
Trent snorted. “Good for you. It’s only taken fifty years, but evidently you’ve begun to grow a backbone.” Whipping a hand out again, this time he smacked his son on the back of the head. “Don’t ever forget who heads this family, Francis. Me. Not you.” He grinned. “I reckon I’ve been patient long enough with Iris Silbern, as amusing as it’s been to watch her realize what she’s been pulled into. This party will be the perfect place to make certain she won’t be trying to wiggle out from under a marriage. Or me.”
Elmond picked up his invitation again. “I’ll attend as well, then, as a potential witness to your genius if nothing else. I do prefer it, though, when you simply hire them. Marrying one just makes them think they have a voice in things.”
“I do it mainly to annoy you, Francis. Don’t forget that.”
“Yes, yes.” The marquis stood, walked for the morning room door, then stopped and turned around. “I can’t stop you, but I can make her life as miserable as you’ve made mine.”
“That’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?”
“Come along, Mr. Fredericks,” Edmund called over his shoulder as he and Iris guided Aunt Margaret’s chair up the street to Raines House, her uncle leading the way. “You’re to join us, as well.”
“I follow with bated breath; nothing could stop me, except perhaps death.”
“Only ‘perhaps’?” Edmund laughed.
“He needed it for the iambic pentameter,” Iris commented, and heard Mr. Fredericks chuckle.
“I can’t believe we’re attending a fete where a governess anda tutor are invited in the same manner as the son of an earl and his lady wife,” Aunt Margaret commented. “I actually hesitated to accept. If you hadn’t informed me that the Duke of Trent would also be in attendance, well, your uncle and I would be at Lady Marsall’s fete tonight.”
“Almost every night already had another event planned,” Edmund said, practically skipping as he pushed his half of the chair. “This was the dullest night for weeks.”
“Well, I won’t be telling Lady Marsall any such thing. She’s a countess. And has a tongue sharper than an axe.”
Iris looked up. Directly in front of Beckett’s door, Trent’s big black coach with its red coat of arms squatted, managing to look ominous even empty. Iris shook herself. She knew what she needed to do. What had pride and hope ever gotten her, other than raised eyebrows and noses in the air?
As Butler opened the front door and requested their invitations, which made Edmund squeal and clap his hands, she took a moment to look at her son. He had a lean, slender build like his father, her blond hair and hazel eyes, and a face that looked solemn until the moment he smiled. Then, his entire being seemed to light up from the inside, and it became impossible not to join in his joy.
If one of the Howards ever attempted to stomp out that sensitive center, they would rue the day. This was all for him. And if she’d been wishing for weeks that she hadn’t allowed herself to be so blunt and so angry when she’d arrived back in London, if she’d wished that she’d been some sort of paragon of polite behavior and just the sort of lady a marquis, say, might want helping to raise his daughter, well, that was all it was. Wishing.
“Good evening.” Lord Hentrose walked up the hallway from the direction of the drawing room as they all crowded into thedoorway. “Thank you so much for agreeing to attend my spectacular, if swiftly planned, dinner party.”
“We are neighbors, after all,” Uncle Harold said, shaking hands with the marquis.
“And the two young ones are practically attached at the hip,” Aunt Margaret added, bobbing up and down in her chair in an obvious bid to get them moving again.
“Watch your feet,” Iris said, as she and Butler and Bradley and Edmund hefted the chair up over the threshold.
“Your color is much improved, Lady Margaret,” Beckett noted, taking her aunt’s hand and bending over it. “I believe you will have defeated that chair within the week.”
“Ha! A chair is no match for me,” Margaret agreed, pointing down the hallway.
“Allow me, if you would, Mrs. Silbern, Master Edmund.” Bradley motioned Iris and her son aside and stepped behind the chair.
