Awakening His Shy Duchess
highlight_author
Christine Merrill
highlight_reads
18.5K
highlight_chapters
21
Chapter One
‘It is probably for the best that the old Duke died. He was not a healthy man and suffered greatly. But for us it changes nothing.’
Her father was wrong. It changed everything. But Madeline Goddard offered him a vacant smile and nodded obediently. If she had learned anything in twenty years of being Mathew Goddard’s daughter, it was that nothing good came of rebellion.
He continued, ‘The way the marriage agreement is worded, you will be wedded to the Duke of Glenmoor before your twenty-first birthday and he will receive in dowry the land and stream that divides our properties. But the paper does not specify the name of the man, only his title.’
She nodded again, offering a moment of silent thanks that the person attached to the agreement was no longer a man still desperate for an heir at three and seventy. God rest the last Duke of Glenmoor, but if he’d wished to go through with the agreement he would have been smarter to marry her a year ago, when he’d had the strength and breath to do so. With an age difference as great as theirs, it had been unwise to wait until the last minute before she was of age and might legally refuse him. For a moment she let down her guard and shuddered at the thought of the narrow escape.
Without a word, her mother handed a shawl across the carriage to her, so she might disguise the reaction as a momentary chill.
‘The new Duke will be just as good as the old, I am sure,’ her father went on, oblivious to her disgust. ‘Inexperienced, of course. He was not expecting to inherit and is no closer than a second cousin to the old Duke. But the bloodlines are good. And, of course, the money and land have not changed.’
The new Duke was supposed to be twenty-nine. That, at least, did not fill her with horror. And if this talk of bloodlines made her think of mares and stallions? Then she was smart enough to keep those thoughts to herself.
‘The party tonight is being given in Glenmoor’s honour by the Duke of Fallon. It is an interesting connection between the two men. The widowed mother of Glenmoor married the father of the current Fallon and the two men were raised as brothers. Think of that. Two dukes in the same house.’
She imagined the families for a moment as a complicated diagram of intersecting lines, the two intended straight branches of family trees veering off in unexpected directions to land two powerful men in the same family. What were the probabilities of that? Probably better than they appeared. The best families in England seemed to know each other and intermarry to a degree that was almost incestuous.
Since her father was untitled, the probability of her meeting Glenmoor was much lower than that of Glenmoor knowing Fallon. But it was increased by the few acres of Goddard land that bordered the Glenmoor holdings. The odds of meeting both dukes, as she was likely to do tonight...
While she was distracting herself with probabilities there had been a dramatic pause in the narrative that seemed to need filling. Madeline’s mother supplied, ‘How interesting,’ and gave Maddie a gentle nudge with the toe of her slipper to remind her to contribute something.
She smiled at her father again and said, ‘Indeed.’
This seemed to content him, and he continued to regale them with the details of the connection, a comparison of the holdings of the two men and the fact that they would both be like family to her.
That was the point, after all. Her marriage was supposed to make unbreakable family connections that would raise the status of all Goddards. She would be a duchess and her parents would be welcome in the finest houses in England.
As her father droned on, Madeline steadied her breath to hide any signs of the panic that seemed to grow with each mile they travelled towards London. The whole plan was madness. She should not have been expected to marry an old man she had barely known, or to change fiancés as easily as changing shoes when the first one died. Surely the new Duke would not agree to an arrangement that his predecessor had made.
Her gaze fell on the handle of the carriage door, just beside her. One jerk downward and a little push, and she would be out of the door and away from here. But since she had no destination in mind, the odds for escape were not favourable. She was more likely to stumble and become tangled in the wheels. She would injure herself, or worse.
Her father would not let a little thing like her brush with death interfere with his plans. It was easier to imagine him dragging her into the Fallon ballroom, broken and muddy, than to picture a new life somewhere far away from here, where she could plan her own future.
Of course, daydreams had never been her forte. She had a better mind for numbers than fantasy. It was more relaxing to stare into space and try to calculate pi to the last decimal than to think about a future married to a man who might be even more controlling than her father. Or perhaps not. Perhaps there would be more freedom than she had in her current life.
Freedom.
She sighed at the word, which was as much a stranger to her as the Duke of Glenmoor.
Her father paused his one-sided conversation to give her a sharp look. ‘What is the matter with you, girl?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she said quickly. Nothing that mattered to her father, at least.
‘Good,’ he replied with a nod. ‘You must be at your best tonight. You are about to meet the man that will change all our lives.’
Evan Bellwether had known he would be Duke of Fallon from the first moment he had known anything at all. And with that knowledge had come certain assumptions. His father had always assured him that, once he had ascended to the Dukedom, his word would be law, and no one would dare to argue with it. It was annoying to find his stepbrother, Alex, who had a title of his own, had assumed the same thing.
‘I am a grown man and I do not want to get married. You can’t make me.’ They were in the library of Fallon Hall, just down the corridor from the ballroom. And, as usual, Alex had his nose stuck in a book, defiantly ignoring the fact that he was the guest of honour at tonight’s festivities and minutes away from meeting the woman that should be his bride.
‘Don’t blame me,’ Evan said to the back of his head. ‘It was your predecessor that made the agreement.’
Alex snapped the book shut in irritation and turned to look at him. ‘And cousin Theodore is not here, because he is dead. Since you are the one taking his side, you might as well have his share of the blame.’
‘If the paper says the Duke of Glenmoor agreed to it, then you are honour bound, as Glenmoor, to follow through.’ And as he had learned at his father’s knee, bonds of honour were stronger than steel.
But though Alex was an honourable man, he had been raised to be untitled and self-interested. ‘I could also make a settlement on the family of the girl for backing out,’ he suggested, looking longingly at his book before setting it aside.
‘You could,’ Evan agreed in a doubtful tone. ‘It is not exactly going back on your word. But you’re the last Duke...’
‘I will be doing that, then.’ Alex’s face split in a relieved smile as he interrupted. ‘How much do you think it will take to buy my way out of this mess? I do not have a blank cheque with me, but surely an IOU will be enough to send the Goddards back to wherever it is that they came from.’
‘Norfolk.’ Evan sighed. It was clear that though his stepbrother understood his power in principle, he had yet to learn the smartest way to use it. ‘Have you considered your cousin’s reason for making the arrangement?’
‘I assume the old goat wanted an heir to keep the title from falling to me,’ he said with an answering sigh. ‘We both knew it was a fate worse than death. And yet here we are, him dead and me...?’ He frowned at the ducal signet ring on his hand as if it was somehow at fault for the current situation.
‘That was one reason, but there is another. Those Goddards you want to send packing will be returning to a small property that adjoins the Glenmoor estate. If you marry the daughter, she comes with a dowry. You stand to gain several acres of land that adjoins your property, and a small fortune that is kept in trust for the girl until the time of her marriage. The terms of the transaction are in your favour.’
‘Transaction?’ the other man said with a bark of laughter. ‘That is what you call yoking myself to a total stranger for a lifetime?’
‘That is what I call it, because that is what it is,’ Evan replied, trying to manage a smile in return. ‘Perhaps, as a poor schoolteacher, you thought you might be marrying for love. But you are a duke now.’
‘I was not a poor schoolteacher. I was a don at Oxford.’
‘And now you are one of the most powerful men in England,’ Evan said, hoping that the truth would finally sink in. ‘As such, your life is no longer your own. Since it is in the best interest of your estate to marry this...’ he glanced down at the paper that lay on the desk between them ‘...Madeline Goddard, you should do so.’
‘In your opinion,’ Alex added, giving him the sort of dry disapproving look that Evan had dreaded from his professors at university.
Then he remembered his age and his title, straightened his spine and proclaimed the truth. ‘As someone who was raised to take on the responsibilities of a peerage, I can tell you there is no place for romance in marriage. You must only think of your need for an heir and what advantages a link to the girl’s family might gain you. When the lights are out, one woman is very much like another. This one, at least, comes with land that you need.’
‘Don’t I have enough land?’ Alex said with a tired sigh.
‘More is better. And I have ridden the stretch in question, just as you should have. It has a very nice stream on it that your southern tenants are using to water their livestock. Until now you have had to pay an annual fee to Goddard for access. But that will change with the marriage.’
‘Then I will buy the land without taking the girl,’ Alex said, giving him the look again. ‘If he is willing to give it to me now, then the right combination of time and price is likely to achieve the same ends without need for a marriage.’
Evan gave a growl of frustration. ‘That is one solution. But it does not take into account the written agreement and the girl’s feelings on the matter.’
Alex laughed. ‘I suspect her feelings are much like mine. Unless she is a simpleton, the thought of marrying a total stranger terrifies her.’
‘A strange duke, you mean,’ Evan reminded him.
Alex laughed again. ‘I rather like the idea of being a strange duke. But I was thinking more of my elderly cousin, who was her first intended. The idea that he would take a young wife at his age is even more revolting than the idea that she can be bartered away again to the next man in line. If Goddard would treat his daughter in such a mercenary fashion, I want no relation to him, no matter how fine his land is.’
Evan sighed. ‘If you are convinced, then there is little more I can say on the matter. But the girl and her family will be here at the ball tonight and they are expecting to meet you.’
‘When they do, I will speak to the girl to assure her that I have no intention of forcing a marriage upon her,’ Alex said with a finality that sounded unpersuadable. ‘Now, go and greet your guests. I will join them shortly and do as I have promised with as little scandal as possible. Then we can go back to our lives and forget this ever happened.’
