Page 51 of How to Ruin a Duke
“One has tried, Mama.As you say, he’s a duke.I will sing his praises up one carriageway and down another, but the poor fellow is as dull as last year’s bonnet trimmings when in the company of females.”And that, very likely, was precisely as Emory intended.
Mama rose on a rustle of velvet.“So it’s only in the company of you fellows that he ever cuts loose.A mother does wonder.I don’t begrudge either of my boys the occasional lark, but if half of what’s in the dratted book is true, then there’s a side to Emory I would never have guessed at.I’ll meet you out front in twenty minutes.”
She patted Jeremiah’s cheek and glided away.
He waited until she’d quit the room before he rifled her outgoing correspondence.Every letter was to a male relative or acquaintance of longstanding—three of Jeremiah’s uncles, a cousin of Mama’s, the bereaved spouse of one of Mama’s late friends.Each letter was a single sheet and folded such that no writing was visible on the outside.
Her Grace was up to something.Had Jeremiah more time, he would have broken the seal on one of the letters, read the contents, then resealed the epistle using his own ring.He loved his mother dearly, but he knew better than to trust her.
Time to share a meal tête-à-tête with an uncle or two.Jeremiah replaced the letters in the same order Mama had organized them and went down to the front door to await his penance.He used the time to ponder what he could say to Miss Faraday about his brother that would be honest and cast the duke in a positive light.
“Emory takes the welfare of family seriously,” Jeremiah murmured, tapping his top hat onto his head.“He takes everything seriously, including silly little books intended only to entertain and poke fun.”
But then, when a book went into five printings, perhaps the book, and its author, should be taken seriously.
Chapter Three
“The only good duke is a married duke, and even that kind is prone to wandering.”
FromHow to Ruin a Dukeby Anonymous
Thaddeus strolled along at Lady Edith’s side, while he mentally wrestled with facts in contradiction.
She had quit a lucrative post of her own volition and had done so without first securing another position.Why behave so rashly?Why, with a character from Her Grace of Emory in hand, hadn’t Lady Edith found another post of comparable status?
Why reside in this frankly shabby neighborhood if she was the author of the most popular novel sinceWaverly?On the stoops and porches, Thaddeus saw only an occasional pot of struggling heartsease, most of which looked as if a cat had slept curled atop the flowers and weeds.A single crossing sweeper shuffled along the street, doing a desultory job of collecting horse droppings, and a small grubby boy sat cross-legged beneath a street lamp.
Why hadn’t Lady Edith applied for support to the present holder of her late father’s title?Every man who came into a lofty station did so knowing that dependents and responsibilities went hand-in-glove with his privileges.
Why should Lady Edith have toaskfor support from the head of her own family?
“Who holds your father’s earldom now?”Thaddeus asked as Lady Edith stopped at a side lane.
“A second cousin,” she said.“We’d never met prior to Papa’s death.You want to know why I’m not kept in a rural hovel like any other poor relation.The answer to that is none of your concern but simple enough: Papa left his heir an enormous pile of debt, a barely habitable country estate, and the bad will of all our neighbors.His lordship had nothing to offer me but the post of housekeeper without pay, and for my brother, perhaps a similarly uncompensated post as undergardener.Working for your mother, I was able to at least save back most of my wages.”
“You have a brother?”Had she kept that a secret?Thaddeus took an interest in his employees and should have known this about his mother’s companion.
“I do, and I live on this lane, so we’ve reached our destination.”
Lady Edith wasn’t looking anywhere in particular.Not at any one of the humble doorways on the narrow lane, not at Thaddeus’s face, and certainly not at the sack of food he held in his left hand.
“I’ll walk you to your door.Where is your brother now?”
“This isn’t necessary, Your Grace.I know how to find my own dwelling.”
“What you do not know is how to set aside your pride.If I wanted to find out where you live, I’d simply ask the crossing sweeper and then verify his information with that filthy boy trying to look idle and harmless beneath the street lamp while he doubtless dreams of ill-gotten coin.Tell me more about your brother.”
Thaddeus refrained from adding,I might have work for him.In the first place, a brother who allowed his sister to come to such a pass as this might be unemployable, and in the second, facts not in contradiction still weighed against Lady Edith’s protestations of innocence.
She knew the ducal family’s dirty linen.She used language effectively.She grasped how polite society loved to gossip.She desperately needed funds.Very few people fit all of those descriptors.An army of servants might also know family lore, but those servants were either illiterate or not literary.Half of polite society had a gift for tattle, but not a one of them would willingly engage in labor for coin.
Lady Edith led Thaddeus to the fourth door on the left side of the lane.The street ended in a cul-de-sac, with a crumbling, lichen-encrusted fountain in the center of the circle.Once upon a time, this would have been a quaint, tidy address, a place prosperous shopkeepers moved to when their children grew old enough to take over the family business.
Now, these houses were teetering on the edge of neglect.A few had boarded up windows, a sure sign somebody was trying to reduce taxes at the cost of their eyesight.Brick walkways had heaved and buckled under decades of English weather, and a large brindle dog of indeterminant pedigree napped on the sunny side of the decrepit fountain.
“You are not to feed this steak to that wretched canine,” Thaddeus said, passing over the sack.“This food is not charity, but rather, a token of appreciation for your insights regarding the mystery before me.I would never have thought to consider Antigone or Mama, or a co-author.You were about to tell me of your brother.”
“I was about to wish you good day, and good luck finding the author of your misfortune.My thanks for the food.”She tried to hold the sack and open her reticule at the same time.
