Page 73 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

St. Blaise spread his palms. “Wasn’t me.”

“Give me one good reason why I should believe that,” Leo said and turned for the door.

“Because it was Thomas Macey,” St. Blaise called after him.

“Thomas Macey is a smug, immature numbskull with a history of deplorable tailoring and worse decisions, but he would not harm his own sister thus.”

“In White’s. He shoved his friend and yelled that his sister would be your duchess and his friend had better watch his mouth as he was under your protection.”

Damn. Too late Leo recalled his hasty promise to help the lad with the problem of his secret, inappropriate marriage, a promise Macey had apparently taken to heart.

He turned back. “Macey said that?”

“Everyone heard and so he doubled down, said you and his sister were engaged. Then Renshaw said it wasn’t so, but everyone knows the man’s memory is shaky, so they went looking for you to confirm, and you’d scarpered, and then Miss Macey developed a prolonged headache, and when no one could find you for days, well, it all got very exciting after that.”

Sainted stitches. If only these people had ahobby.

“Ask Macey, he’ll tell you,” St. Blaise went on.

“I intend to. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll have scarpered too.”

“Clearly he doesn’t know what’s good for him. He’s in the next room.”

* * *

Steppinginto the next room was like stepping into another house, this one pleasant and wholesome. A pretty young lady was playing a sonata on the pianoforte for Thomas Macey, who lolled tipsily in a chair. He bolted upright when Leo sat beside him. The lady stopped playing but Leo waved at her to continue; if she knew who he was, she gave no sign.

Leo said nothing. Macey said nothing. But Leo said nothing better and harder, and Macey launched into a stream of chatter as fervently as if Leo were holding his feet over a fire. His friend had seen him with his wife, he gabbled, and asked awkward questions, and he’d tried todistracthis friend, and it slipped out that his sister would be a duchess, and he hadn’tmeantto lie, but everything got out of control, and now he’d made amessand he needed Leo’shelpso verymuch.

With a wave of Leo’s hand, the painful confession whimpered to a halt. “Where’s your lady now?”

“Right there.”

The lady at the pianoforte looked up and met Macey’s eyes. An intimate smile passed between them.

“You brought herhere?”

“It’s not fair to her.” Macey slumped back down. “She knew the risk, marrying the grandson of an earl, and she never asks for anything. We thought it might be diverting, see inside a duke’s house. She plays beautifully, doesn’t she?”

Leo thought her music was rather ordinary, but Macey was clearly besotted. “Why did you marry her, if you’re so worried about it?”

The younger man’s face screwed up, as if trying to explain a complex mathematical theorem. “She’s so thoughtful, so… When I’m with her, I feel right. Usually, I feel like I’m pretending. One goes through the motions—school, society, trying to impress the other fellows—but it’s not real, is it? With her, I feel real. Sometimes I think it wouldn’t be so bad if my father disowned me. I’m only the younger son; he won’t care. But she deserves better than some outcast for a husband.”

“Real,” Leo repeated to himself. The boy was not such a fool after all; nothing felt real to Leo now.

He shook off the feeling and resolutely shifted his thoughts onto Macey’s dilemma. Society depended on stability, so it insisted upon rules. Those who wanted society to stay the same had to enforce those rules. Those who wanted society to change had to break those rules. And pay the price.

And here were young Macey and his wife, who had found each other against the odds, who had decided to throw their lots in together, despite all the excellent reasons why they should not.

Suddenly, he could not bear it, to let a rigid society and an angry father tear these young fools apart.

“When you married her, were you already twenty-one?” he asked.

“I was twenty.”

“A minor. Your father could simply petition the courts to annul the marriage on the grounds that you wed without your guardian’s permission.”

“He can do that? That’s exactly what he’d do. She’d be completely ruined. No, I shan’t allow it.”

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