The Odious Duke Read online

  “Stuff!” his friend replied. “Know well as I do that I am the touch of spice in your epicurean life that brings you savour you get from no one else. Have known you too long, Theron, to be subservient! Not saying that you are not a remarkably impressive chap. But have seen you in two many undignified situations to be stupefied into state of admiring idiocy like the majority of your friends, staff and envious acquaintances!”

  “Your compliments do overwhelm me!” the Duke drawled. “At the same time, Harry, you are right! I would hate to lose you.”

  “Want another war,” Harry Sheraton sighed. “Do you good, Theron, rough it as you were doing ten years ago on the Peninsula. Ever forget the excitement of routing Frenchies after the Battle of Vittoria and then capturing King Joseph’s baggage train?”

  “No indeed,” the Duke laughed. “Wyndham’s Dragoons acquired from it the King’s lordly silver pot de chamber.”

  “Could never forget it! Christened ‘The Emperor’, we all then drank champagne out of it!”

  “When I then got through the medley of horses, mules, bullocks and donkeys, pet monkeys and parrots,” the Duke said, “I found the Tenth Huzzars had split open the treasure chests and the ground was littered with doubloons, dollars, watches, jewels and trinkets.”

  “So many females among the French camp followers that our troops then called it ‘a mobile brothel’,” Harry Sheraton said. “But Wellington’s booty was what counted, one hundred and fifty-one cannons, two million cartridges. Those were the days, my boy!”

  He raised his glass to the memory before he exclaimed,

  “God, but we are getting old! Next year 1825, will be ten years since the Battle of Waterloo!”

  “Yes indeed and that means, Harry, that I shall be three and thirty next month, as my uncle Adolphus pointed out to me a few days ago in no uncertain terms.”

  “I’ll wager that his Lordship came round with the Family Tree in his pocket,” Harry Sheraton said knowingly.

  “He did indeed,” His Grace replied. “He went through the whole genealogy of the Royds from the one who served under Ethelred the Unready to the Royd who cuckolded Henry VIII with one of his wives, I forget which one, and the Royd who beat Casanova to the bed of some Princess or other!”

  “Which led your Uncle Adolphus up to just the one demand,” Harry Sheraton mocked.

  “Exactly!” the Duke agreed. “That I should get married at once! Otherwise Cousin Jasper will inherit.”

  “Never been able to understand how Jasper comes into it,” Harry Sheraton remarked. “More yellow-livered outsider who I have ever met! Pardon, Theron, if plain speaking distresses you.”

  “It does nothing of the sort,” the Duke said, “and I said far worse to Jasper himself only three months ago when he approached me for the one hundredth time, or was it the one thousandth, for a ‘small loan’.”

  “The smallness being, of course, relative!”

  “You are right. This time it was for just fifteen thousand pounds. He thought he must be improving as the time before it had been for twenty thousand!”

  “What did you do?”

  “I gave him ten and told him that, if he ever came whining for more, I would personally kick him into the street, even though it would damage my Hessian boots.”

  “Heard he was gaming too high and only a question of time before he would be at you again!”

  “This is really the last time!” the Duke said firmly. “But he is a cheesemonger of the worst description and Uncle Adolphus is convinced that he is now borrowing on the possibility of stepping into my shoes.”

  “How happens he has any claim at all?” Harry Sheraton asked.

  “It is quite easy,” the Duke replied. “My grandfather had five sons. The eldest had one child, Sylvester, who was killed at the Battle of the Nile, the second son, my father, produced me, the third, Uncle Cornelius, who died last year, had eight daughters!”

  “Poor devil!” Harry Sheraton expostulated.

  “Then came George Frederick,” the Duke continued, “an extremely unpleasant man who died some years ago and had one son, our friend Jasper, and lastly Uncle Adolphus who has never married.”

  “So Jasper’s father as nauseating as he is?”

  “According to Uncle Adolphus, George Frederick was smuggled in to the family in a bedpan! Personally, I don’t believe a word of it, but he was very unlike the rest of his brothers. He had no sense of propriety, he was a mad gambler and had a partiality for the lowest type of strumpet!

  “Anyway, his wife, an innkeeper’s daughter, went to an early grave and Jasper was dragged up amongst women one would not trust with a dog let alone a child. At times I am almost sorry for him!”

  “To stay in your attic!” Harry Sheraton exclaimed. “Done more for your importunate relative than anyone could credit! What has he given you in return – a word of honour that he has broken too many times to enumerate and blackguarding you behind your back that has nearly got him into a dozen duels with your friends?”

  “There is no need for anyone to be in a miff over Jasper,” the Duke said, “but I think that Uncle Adolphus is right, Jasper must not under any circumstances inherit and therefore, Harry, I am to be married.”

  “Congratulations!” his friend crowed. “Announcement sudden, but not unexpected. Who is the bride? Do I know her?”

  “I have not decided on her as yet,” the Duke replied.

  “Not decided!” Harry Sheraton began incredulously and then burst out laughing. “You are roasting me!”

  “No indeed,” the Duke answered. “I have given full consideration to Uncle Adolphus’s impassioned pleas combined with those of my sister, Evelyn. She came with him and was even more insistent than my uncle that Jasper should cease his pretensions of being the Heir Presumptive. Apparently he insulted her at some Assembly or another! Anyway, she has compiled for me a list of eligibles for the position of my Duchess.”

  “Good God, Theron, not serious? Not contemplating marrying some chit for whom you have no affection whatsoever?”

  “That is of no consequence!” the Duke replied.

  “Doing it a bit brown!” Harry Sheraton retorted. “Not saying need go in for heartthrobs with an orchestra wailing under full moon or should throw dramatics like that wearisome chap, Byron, whose poems bore me to distraction, but must be some female with whom you have a slight – ”

  “There is no one,” the Duke interrupted. “As you well know, Harry, I have not paid much attention to unfledged girls.”

  “Suppose that is true,” Harry Sheraton agreed, “but you have stood up with a few for a dance at Almack’s. Must have encountered one or two staying in the houses you visited.”

  “If I did, I have no remembrance of them,” the Duke admitted, “and after all it is of little consequence. All I require is a well-bred wife who will provide me with an heir. She must have dignity, she must not cause any gossip. Otherwise, as long as we deal well in public, what happens in private is no one’s business.”

  “Suggesting your wife can go her own way, as you will go yours?”

  “Within reason,” the Duke replied. “And I am not likely to keep her incarcerated in the old Norman Tower at Selchester Castle or lock her into a chastity belt while I go roaming.

  “What is this paragon to look like? Decide that?” Harry Sheraton asked mockingly.

  “Yes indeed, she must be tall, fair, blue-eyed, with good features. Blondes look best in the family jewels. Duchesses must be tall and you know that those blue-eyed fair females are always somewhat insipid and not given to flights of emotion as much as the darker breed.”

  “Imagine with required qualifications clearly set out you are able to purchase one or half a dozen if you wish at the Partheon Bazaar!”

  “I am serious. I know exactly what I do require and I promise you, Harry, I shall find myself a wife who will play the part of my Duchess in exactly the manner I expect of her.”

  “What you are really saying to me,” Harr
y Sheraton said, “is that you know damn well the wretched girl will fall in love with you, twist her round your little finger and will then conform in every way to your desires, grateful for an occasional pat on the head as if a pet pug you had added to your household.”

  “That is not very funny, Harry,” the Duke rebuked him loftily.

  “May not be humorous but the truth,” Harry Sheraton retorted. “God above, Theron, you cannot go into your marriage in such cold-blooded manner. Surely there is somewhere a female with whom you can fancy yourself a trifle enamoured, some wench who makes your heart beat a little quicker or at least delights your eye.”

  The Duke did not speak and Harry Sheraton continued,

  “Anything is much better than this calculated demand for a foolish unsuspecting creature who will doubtless in a few years be grateful if you so much as nod in her direction.”

  “My dear Harry, I am, as I have already told you, nearly three and thirty and I have never been enamoured of any woman I could marry and I see no possibility of my ever becoming so. As you know well, I have had affairs de coeur, but they have always been with married women who were well up to snuff. I cannot imagine anything that will bore me more than the chattering of an unsophisticated chit only just out of the schoolroom!” |

  The Duke sighed wearily at the thought before he continued,

  “But for the sake of the family, because I have to produce an heir, then I shall marry someone who will fit in well with the pattern of what I require in the woman who bears my name.”

  “What about Penelope?” Harry Sheraton asked him.

  There was a moment’s silence before the Duke exclaimed,

  “Fancy you remembering Penelope!”

  “You were in love with her. Remember what you felt then?”

  “Of course I do. I remember too how swiftly Penelope, so sweet and maidenly, jilted a poor youth without any handle to his name and whose expectations were remote, when Lord Hornblotton, already a Peer of the Realm, asked if he could pay his addresses to her!”

  There was almost a sharp bitterness in the Duke’s voice and Harry Sheraton, looking at him sharply, said,

  “Are you telling me, Theron, that after all these years you are still wearing the willow for that title-seeking woman you met your first year in the Regiment?”

  The Duke shook his head.

  “You are trying hard to make me a romantic, Harry, but it will not stick. No indeed, I have seen Penelope since she married. I met her, let me see now, two or three years ago, she had run to fat and it was difficult to recognise the thin ethereal girl who had once captured my fancy. I do believe Penelope has five children by now, maybe more!”

  “You loved her!”

  “I was infatuated as any raw youth is likely to be infatuated the first time he puts on Regimental tunic and knows that his appearance makes him appear a hero in the eyes of some green girl. But I am grateful to Penelope! She taught me a very important lesson.”

  “What lesson?”

  “That women, whoever they may be, will always go to the highest bidder!” the Duke replied. “For the ‘Fashionable Impure’ it is, of course, entirely a question of money and for the social chicks it is the highest title that matters. Penelope showed me that a Baronet will beat a Knight, a Viscount will beat a Baron and a Marquis an Earl. But at the very top of the hierarchy, Harry, there is a Duke! A Duke is ace-high and therefore unbeatable.”

  “Suppose by that you are telling me none of those fair-haired, blue-eyed nitwits to whom you condescend will refuse you?”

  “Of course not! That was the lesson Penelope taught me. It is not a question of whom a girl loves but what her suitor can offer.

  “And that is where, Harry, I can now take the trick every time. I am a Duke and that rank makes me automatically the real favourite in the matrimonial stakes. I must pass the post ahead of all other competitors!”

  “Curse it, you are too plausible!” Harry Sheraton remarked, “And too puffed up with your consequence. I only wish that just one of those social butterflies would turn you down flat. Do you world of good!”

  “Your wish is very unlikely to be granted,” the Duke sneered.

  “I know it,” his friend said with a groan. “Not only a Duke, Theron, you also have damned handsome phiz, a fine figure of a man. Excellent sportsman, grant you that, a Corinthian, a Non-pareil and so disgustingly wealthy. I don’t believe that you know yourself what you are worth. No, Theron, first past the Winning Post. Hope it brings you happiness!”

  “It will,” the Duke answered, “for the simple reason that I am not expecting to find happiness of any sort in marriage. I shall be gratified, of course, if my wife has some slight affection for me, but my enjoyment will still rest, you may be sure, with those delightful creatures that one can purchase so easily and who each can bring us a fleeting, if brittle amusement, however jaded we think we are with their charms!”

  “If we intend to inspect the new batch just arrived from France, let us set about it,” Harry Sheraton said. “Promise you, Theron, you have depressed me! I cannot bear to think about your plans for the future. Given me a disgust for the whole idea of matrimony!”

  “Poor Harry,” the Duke commiserated. “You are romantic, that is what you are. I am practical, severely and sensibly practical. I know just what I want, I shall get it, and my life will proceed on my own carefully calculated lines, which you must admit yourself makes for comfort if for nothing else!”

  “Still determined to go on with this crazed idea?” Harry Sheraton asked him in a serious tone.

  He rose to his feet as he spoke and stood looking at the Duke at the end of the table. There was no one who could appear more elegant, more at ease than His Grace as he leant back against a high-backed armchair, a glass of port in his hand.

  “As a matter of fact,” the Duke said with a twist of his lips, “it is quite an adventure!”

  “Humbugging yourself!” Harry Sheraton snapped. “Know perfectly well that this is a travesty of what marriage was intended to be. Can only prophesy, Theron, that if you are not careful it will prove disastrous.”

  “Romantic and now turned into prophet of doom,” the Duke jeered. “Despite your warnings and curse it you are as gloomy as a Good Friday sermon! I leave London tomorrow. I shall visit first the Upminsters in Bedfordshire. My sister assures me that they have a most commendable, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter who was greatly admired at Almack’s.”

  “You have met her?” Harry Sheraton asked.

  “I have a sort of vague remembrance at the back of my mind that I did,” the Duke answered. “But you know, Harry, that the moment I speak to one of these girls I can see only one expression on their face.”

  “What is that?” Harry Sheraton asked as if he could not help it.

  “An expression of greed and a glint in their eyes as they think how attractive they will look in their coronets and a Peeress’s robes. When they speak to me I can almost see them murmuring to themselves beneath their breath ‘the Selchester Diamonds’!”

  “God, what a cynic!”

  “And when I return them to their Mama’s side,” the Duke went on, “I see the smirk on her face! Oh, the Dowagers try to appear nonchalant and unmoved that their little chicken has been fluffing her feathers in front of my Ducal eyes, but they have a smile like a Cheshire cat who has been at the cream. I know the one thing they want is to lap me up!”

  “You make me sick,” Harry Sheraton commented,

  The Duke, laughing, exclaimed,

  “Forgive me, Harry, but to tease you is irresistible. We are the same age, but I swear that you still believe in dragons and Knights in Armour setting out to rescue a frail virgin with whom he will fall immoderately in love. My dear fellow, that is not life!”

  “If life is what you have been describing to me,” Harry Sheraton said firmly, “all I can tell you, I will thank God on my knees every night that I am a commoner!”

  The Duke laughed again.

&nbs
p; “Over-brewing the ale, Harry! You are related to half the aristocracy on your mother’s side and you are pretty warm in the pocket! You are a catch too, my boy! Not one of the giggling creatures lining the walls at Almack’s would refuse your addresses. In fact, if I am not mistaken, they would snatch at an opportunity of accepting you.”

  “For God’s sake, shut up!” Harry Sheraton cried. “Making me blue-devilled, Theron! If we don’t cheer ourselves up with those little ‘bits of muslin’ from across Channel, I swear I shall run myself through with my own sword.”

  “Poor Harry!” the Duke declared. “I really have upset you! Let’s repair to the Haymarket. There is nothing like the sport of spotting a new Venus with whom to grace one’s bed and sweep away the dismals!”

  The Duke rose and the two men moved to the dining room door. As they reached it, Harry Sheraton gave a sudden cry.

  “Heavens, Theron, you said you were leaving tomorrow. Forgotten the date?”

  “The date?” the Duke queried.

  “Eighteenth. It is now all arranged for Bombardier Hawkins to meet Farrington’s Jed Blake!”

  “Good God, so we did!” the Duke shouted. “I had forgotten!”

  “Both wagered couple of monkeys on the result. Could not miss watching our man making mincemeat of Farrington’s!”

  “I should think not,” he agreed. “I will leave the following day!”

  “In other words,” Harry Sheraton said, determined to have the last word, “a boxer takes precedence over a prospective bride!”

  “But naturally,” the Duke drawled.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Duke’s plans, owing he thought afterwards to Harry Sheraton’s gloomy predictions, went awry from the very beginning.

  Having seen Bombardier Hawkins pummel Lord Farrington’s man into a bloody pulp, he spent a very convivial evening with his friends, who had also backed the Bombardier, celebrating what was to them a highly lucrative and satisfying victory.

  Lord Farrington had for a long time greatly irritated the members of White’s by his boastful assertions that he and he alone was capable of picking out an unknown bruiser and putting him into a mill in which he would be a winner.