The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

“What’s the point in being a duke if I don’t?” The query was out of his mouth before he could call it back—but he wouldn’t have, even if he could.


Stevens blinked in confusion and Robert shook his head. It was madness to give a man so much power and to have no expectations as to how he’d use it. He could crush Miss Pursling with one sentence. He might have crushed her with silence. But that would have been wrong.

“Your Grace,” Stevens finally said, “your concern does you justice.”

The man’s toad-eating did him none.

Robert met Stevens’s eyes. “No, it doesn’t. It’s called basic human decency, and I deserve no credit for doing what every man should.”

Stevens flinched again, and set his hand to his forehead—his sticky forehead, if the fingerprints he left were any guide.

“Now,” Robert said, standing, “if you’ll excuse me, I have other people I must speak with.”

He was aware of the man’s eyes boring into his back as he crossed the room. Robert made a note: This man bore watching.

Chapter Five

“LYDIA,” MINNIE SAID, DASHING DOWN THE CORRIDOR. “Lydia, wait! What are you doing?”

Lydia stopped in the corridor, her arms held straight at her sides, terminating in tight fists. “Going upstairs.” She didn’t turn around. “What does it look like?”

Minnie came abreast of her. “It’s not too late. Go back in there and apologize—Stevens will forgive you. I know he will.”

“Well, I won’t forgive him,” Lydia said. “He related the most vile rumor about you—that you were not legitimate. The cad, saying such things to me!”

Minnie took hold of her shoulders. “Lydia, listen to me. Go back. Apologize. Say you’re sorry. Say you were mistaken. Say you were drunk on punch, and I’m sure he’ll take you back.”

“Well, I won’t have him.” Lydia stamped her foot. “I won’t. I won’t have a man who could talk about my dearest friend that way. I won’t marry someone who could laugh about it and expect me to nod my head. I won’t do it.”

“You know what will happen when your father dies. Your brother gets the mill, and you…”

“I’ll have my portion.” Lydia raised her chin.

Scarcely enough to live on, Minnie knew. And having severed her relationship with Stevens in so uncivil a fashion, Lydia would be unlikely to find anyone else. Besides…

“What if next time, the rumor is about you?” Minnie persisted.

She didn’t have to say that it might be. Too many people knew Lydia’s secret. The doctor who had diagnosed her. Anyone who had seen her in Cornwall during those dreadful months. Lydia lived with the possibility of public ruination every bit as much as Minnie did.

“What does it matter who knows?” Lydia said, looking away. “Apparently, truth is no bar to rumor. After all, Stevens is spreading that vile rumor about you.”

Explaining the source of the rumor would raise questions—questions that Minnie couldn’t answer. Questions like, why was there no record of the birth of one Wilhelmina Pursling? What had her name once been, and why was it necessary to change it?

Minnie shook her head. “My parents were married. I can assure you of that.” That, and nothing more. “But Lydia, you must not be so neglectful of your future. Throwing away a fiancé, simply because he said one thing you did not like? Nobody is perfect.”

Lydia simply wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head. “How can you ask? How could I stay silent?”

“But he was…” She stumbled. “You said…”

Lydia had said Stevens would make her happy. She’d said it over and over, as if trying to believe it herself. It was the way Lydia was. She believed the best. She wished everyone happy. She could have found the bright side of a solar eclipse.

Lydia turned to Minnie now. “Sometimes,” she said slowly, “one is faced with choices. When something seems inevitable—when, for instance, marriage to a man would do my father good—when he’s a decent man who likes me… Well, it didn’t seem that I would find a better match. It makes sense.” She frowned fiercely. “It made sense.”

“So go back and apologize.”

Lydia’s features hardened. “After what he said about you? He told me I should have nothing more to do with you. I cannot believe this world is so cruel as to require me to sacrifice my dearest friend in order to make a good marriage.”

Oh, Lydia. Minnie’s heart hurt for her. Even with all that had happened to her friend, she still believed that.

“It might be that cruel,” Minnie whispered. And then, because she knew how cruel it could be, she added: “It is.”

“It is not.” Lydia unfolded her arms, but only long enough to put them around Minnie, to draw her close. “I won’t let it be.”

Minnie could almost let the warmth of that embrace fool her. Almost.