The Duke and His Duchess

The Duke and His Duchess Windham - 0.6 by Grace Burrowes

To couples who’ve hit rough patches, which is to say, all couples, eventually.

One

“You’re young and have all your teeth.” George, His Grace, the Duke of Moreland made this state of affairs sound as if Percival had committed a double hanging felony. “If you swive this wife to death, you can always get another.”

Lord Percival Windham’s brothers reacted to the duke’s observation predictably. Tony shot Percy a look of commiseration while Peter—more properly the Marquis of Pembroke—pushed back from the card table.

“I find myself ready to retire,” Peter announced. He rose and bowed to the duke. “Your Grace, pleasant dreams.”

Peter’s younger brothers merited a nod, one conveying more than a touch of sympathy. On this topic at least, the heir to a dukedom could delegate dealing with an irascible old peer to the spares.

“You two are sorry company for an old man,” His Grace spat. “Fetch me a footman that I might preserve myself from the tedium to be endured when you won’t allow me so much as a finger of decent libation.”

Tony and Percy each got a hand under one of His Grace’s elbows and boosted the duke to his feet. Tony pushed the chair away, and then—only then—His Grace shook off his sons’ hold. “Think of me as you’re getting drunk yet again.” He glowered at each son in turn. “And I meant what I said, Percival. Your lady wife has dropped four bull calves in little more than five years of marriage. In my day, a gentleman didn’t trouble his wife beyond the necessary, and certainly not when he could afford to take his rutting elsewhere. Her Grace would have agreed with me.”

Percival didn’t dignify that scold with a response, though Tony—brave man—murmured, “Good night, Papa,” as they handed the duke off to a stout, blank-faced footman.

When the door was closed and a thick silence had taken root, Percival went back to the table and started organizing the cards.

“He’s wrong, Perce.” Tony’s path took him to the decanter. “Her Grace would not agree. She’d say Esther’s duty was to provide as many sons as you and the good Lord saw fit to get on her. Her Grace was a terror when it came to the succession.”

In Percival’s hands, the queen of diamonds turned up first. “The old boy may have a point. Esther has done her duty to the succession.”

And at what cost? She fell into bed exhausted each evening, though never once had Percival heard her complain.

With decanter in hand, Tony took himself and a glass of brandy to the side of the game room where darts were played. A stout surface of Portuguese cork surrounded the scarred circular target, the pits and gashes growing fewer closer to the center.

“I would better prosecute a game of darts were I in my cups,” Tony muttered, taking aim. “You will not be the death of your wife, Perce. His Grace is mourning, is all, and not going about it very well.”

Percival kept his hands busy organizing the cards, all the pips going in the same direction, from highest to lowest, suit by suit. “He’s not only mourning, he’s dying. Can a man mourn his own incipient passing?”

Tony shot him a look. “You’re sounding ducal again. Incipient passing? I say it’s Peter we have to worry about most. His Grace has enough spleen left to live to be a hundred. He and Her Grace had a few cordial years there toward the end—largely as a function of your success populating the nursery, if you ask me.”

When Percival had the deck stacked in perfect order, he cut and shuffled, then shuffled again. The snap and riffle of the cards soothed him, putting him in mind of years spent soldiering—and shivering—in Canada. “How long has it been since Peter ventured outside?”

A dart went sailing toward the wall only to land several inches from the target. “Damn. He sits out on the terrace when the weather’s fair. Once a man turns forty, he’s entitled to a more sedentary schedule.”

Sedentary? In his youth, Peter had been a robust, blond giant. Heir to a dukedom, he’d been the biggest prize on the marriage mart in every sense. When he’d departed on his Grand Tour, half the ladies in London had gone into a decline. And now… Peter’s blond hair was going silver, his complexion suggested he abused arsenic when he never touched the stuff. Worst of all, Peter looked at his half-grown daughters like a man who’d reconciled himself to heartbreak.

Percival reorganized the cards, this time starting with hearts. “Maybe it’s Peter’s incipient death His Grace is mourning.”

“This is maudlin talk, Perce, and you’ve hardly touched a drop all night.” Tony fired a second dart toward the wall, only to have it bounce off the edge of the target. “Rotten, bloody luck.”

“Rotten, bloody aim. You need to focus, Anthony.”

And Percival might well need a mistress. The notion that his father could be right was loathsome.

“You need to get drunk and go swive your lady,” Anthony countered. “Moreland’s carping because Her Grace booted him out of her bedroom once I came along. He doesn’t want to see you and Esther come to the same sorry pass.”

The things Tony knew—and the things he let come flying out of his fool mouth. “Esther has given us an heir, a spare, and a pair of Tonys,” Percival observed. “Perhaps there’s been enough swiving in my marriage.”

A Tony. In Moreland family parlance, any son younger than the spare was a Tony, a hedge against bad luck, and a prudent course every titled family with sense followed. Some were blessed with an abundance of Tonys.

For the third dart, Tony set his drink aside, toed an invisible line on the oak parquet floor, and narrowed his gaze at the target. “You love your wife, Percival. You fell arse over teakettle for her the moment you laid eyes on her. You’d break Esther’s heart if you took your favors elsewhere, and I don’t give a hang what Polite Society, senile dukes, or their departed wives have to say on the matter.”

The dart flew true, hitting the bull’s-eye with a decisive thunk.

People tended to underestimate blond, amiable Tony, and Percival had a hunch Tony liked it that way. “Is Gladys carrying again?”

Tony pulled two darts from the cork and picked the third up from the floor. “One suspects she is.” His smile was bashful, pleased, and a trifle scared.

“Can’t one simply ask his wife? The girl is forthright to a fault, Anthony.” Something Percival adored about Gladys, especially when the rest of the family shied away from difficult truths like a royal court fleeing the plague.

“One cannot.” Tony put the darts on the mantel and set his half-full glass beside them. “One, as you well know, waits patiently for that happy day when one’s wife reposes her trust in one with news of an inchoate miracle, and then one prays incessantly for months, until said miracle is squalling in one’s nursery.”

In this, Tony was not the hail-fellow-well-met, he was wise.

The ace of hearts was missing, which wasn’t possible, because the damned thing had been present and accounted for moments ago. Percival began at the top of the deck, thumbing through card by card. “Canada was good training for marriage, wasn’t it? Hazards on every hand, hardship, boredom…”

God in heaven, was that what his marriage had become?

“I get a decent complement of howling at the moon, or at my lady wife, so I’m content,” Tony said. “Believe I’ll give the girl my regards while the night is yet young.”

With fatuous smile firmly in place, Tony saluted and took his leave.

While Percival hunted in vain for the damned ace of hearts.

* * *