Page 100 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

“I swear I told no one about modeling for Miss Bell,” St. Blaise said. “I like Miss Bell. This is twice now, you’ve accused me of doing something I didn’t do. Why must you always think the worst of me?”

“It’s easier that way, I suppose.” Leo sighed. “That was badly done and I apologize. But that doesn’t excuse the way you spoke of her.”

“Not my finest moment, I admit. I never touched her either, if that’s your real reason for wanting to shoot me. She did refuse to tup me, but fair enough, I’d refuse to tup me too, if I had any say in the matter. You know I said those things only to make you livid and win that game. Gambling debts make a demanding mistress.”

The sky was lightening. More birds stirred. It looked like Thomas Macey had nodded off too. Soon it would be too late for the duel, if this bloody surgeon didn’t hurry up. Why bother with laws to prevent duels when ineptitude and liquor were so much more effective?

“What happened, Tristan?” Leo asked. “The gambling, the women, selling your commission… I thought you liked the army. You were an excellent cavalry officer, they said.”

St. Blaise plucked a blade of grass and shredded it slowly. “There was a war on,” he said after a while. “Not that war was enjoyable, but we had each other, and we had the horses, and we had a reason to get up each day. Then they sent me back to London, and they pinned a medal on my chest, and gave me plumes for my helmet and more plumes for my horse and…” He sighed. “I’m the first to admit I look very fetching in plumes, but there doesn’t seem to be anypoint. That excitement of war—at the time, you hate it, but then you don’t know how to carry on without it.”

“So you make your own excitement.”

“Because if you don’t, there’s too much time to think. It’s nice to stop thinking. Just as you use your clothes and knickknacks to avoid thinking.” He paused. “No mystery what you’re avoiding thinking about. Or whom, rather.”

Leo did not bother to reply. The gun was pleasantly cool in his hands. Did guns become hot when they were fired? He couldn’t recall.

“It was Juno Bell for whom you made that little silver ring years ago, wasn’t it?” St. Blaise asked. “I knew something was afoot when I first heard you say her name. Then I met her at some salon, thought I’d find out more. Stroke of luck you showed up the day I modeled. There seemed to be something between you, but it looked messy. And here we are.”

“If you want excitement, I could find you a position as a spy. Seems you’d be good at it.”

“I’d certainly be very dashing,” he said. “What will you do about Miss Bell?”

Leo caressed the barrel of the gun. “I am engaged to someone else. It is the height of dishonor for a gentleman to end his engagement.”

“And you could never marry Miss Bell anyway.”

I can if I want to, Leo thought sulkily, stubbornly. Yet everyone said it. Even Juno said it.

“She doesn’t want to marry me, so it hardly matters anyway.”

“So—what? You’ll keep her as your mistress?”

Leo contemplated the damp toes of his boots and ignored the question. “Did you mind that Papa Duke never married your mother?” he asked instead.

St. Blaise sat up, his back against the other side of the tree. “We were his true family, not you and your siblings,” he said. “He lived with us, loved us, but he had this whole life we could never be part of.” He paused. “Was it he who taught you to shoot?”

“He left instructions that it be done. He assessed my performance on his next quarterly visit.”

“See, he taught me to shoot, to ride, to fish. Everything that mattered, he taught me. I thought the world of him and wanted to be just like him. But he was a duke above all else, and that was something I could never be. Every time I’d ask about his other life, his public life, it was always, ‘No need to worry about that, that’s for Leopold.’ No wonder I wanted to punch you.”

Leo snorted. “He visited me four times a year and spent every single visit boasting about you. How you ran faster, rode better, shot straighter. No wonder I wanted to punch you.”

Being a duke entitled Leo to a lot, but it had never entitled him to be loved. He realized that, at some point, he had learned not to ask for what would not be given.

The futility. The absurdity. All his life Leo had been jealous of St. Blaise, their father’s favorite, and all his life, St. Blaise had been jealous of him, their father’s heir. Each of them had only half a father; their mothers each had only half a husband. All because an English duke could not marry a French Catholic, and why not? Because that simply wasn’tdone.

“He split himself into pieces,” Leo said. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

“He shouldn’t have had to do that.” St. Blaise peered around the tree to grin at him. “I would have made a better duke than you.”

“Gambling, fighting, and whoring?”

“I wouldn’t do those things if I were the duke.” Leo sliced him a look. “Very well, I’d still do them, but in a much more ducal manner,” St. Blaise amended. “But as a duke, I’d have a purpose, wouldn’t I? Let’s swap. I’ll become the duke, and you can be a ragged artist starving in a garret with Miss Bell.”

Across the park came the sounds of wheels and hooves and the jingling of a harness. They both stood to watch a carriage emerge from the mist.

“The surgeon,” said St. Blaise. “You can still put a stop to this.”

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