Page 74 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

Leo hesitated then added, “It’s a way out for you. Dissolve the marriage, pay her off, and then carry on as if it never happened.”

Macey bounded to his feet. The music stopped. “A disgusting notion! Till death do us part, I said, and that is what I meant. How dare you think I’d ever treat her like that!”

Leo smiled. “Well said. There’s hope for you yet. Sit down.”

Deflated, Macey plonked himself back down.

“First, you must marry her again, legally,” Leo said.

“Elope? Then everyone would know.”

“Special license, then.”

“Ha! As if the archbishop would give me the time of day.”

Leo nodded. “I’ll write to him, see if I can squeeze a special license out of him. Perhaps I could find you a posting abroad somewhere. No one need know of her family if you do not tell them.”

“You’d do that? Thank you, a thousand times thank you.” He twisted his hands together. “And I do apologize, for starting that other game, about baiting you to anger. I tried to put a stop to it, but these things take on a life of their own. The prize money is nearing one thousand pounds, and I don’t know what to do.”

Leo found he no longer cared. “You’re not the first person to make sport at my expense.”

“It’s that you’re always socalm.” Macey had apparently developed a taste for confession. “Jane said—that’s Jane, my wife—that the traits that vex us in others are either traits we dislike in ourselves, or traits we wish we had. I suppose I wish I could be like you, so unflappable, and I suppose I wished to see what might make you lose control. But nothing does.”

Leo wiped a hand over his face and laughed.

“Forgive me, Dammerton, what is so droll?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

* * *

Within a couple of hours,the guests were ejected, the servants were soothed, Leo’s body was bathed, and his smooth face tingled from the ruthless scraping of a very sharp blade. Clean pantaloons, clean stockings, and a clean shirt billowing over his head, and Leo felt almost himself again. Almost.

“And which waistcoat today, Your Grace?” his valet asked.

The huge wardrobe gaped open, full of brightly colored silken treasures, like a magical cave in a fairy tale.

And there, on the wardrobe door, a scar. Erika had thrown a hairbrush.

You have no passion,she had yelled, during one of their fights, near the end, when he was trying to impress upon her why her behavior must change, the damage she was doing to his family name.So boring, all this silk and china and crystal. You used to befun.

No passion?

Juno might disagree. She had ruthlessly torn him open, until so much wild passion flooded out of him, he almost drowned in it.

That was the wild passion that had him lurking on street corners in Vienna, longing for a glimpse of her. A wild passion he channeled into the bright colors and textures of his collection and his clothes.

Yes, he and Erika had hadfun, at first, endless wild soirees and adventurous bedsport. But as his interest in artisans grew, his interest in drinking waned. He changed, but Erika did not. She detested his sobriety; he detested her hedonism. He begged her to change; she refused. And as Leo trudged behind his father’s coffin in the softly swirling snow, he had made the decision he had long known was necessary, for the sake of his title, his heirs, and the family name.

One did the right thing. One did what had to be done.

He had gone to Erika’s room, at midday, when she was still in bed.

“Every morning for years they bring me tea and every morning I do not drink it,” Erika had said, smiling. “I think this is the peculiar English sense of humor.”

Leo climbed onto the bed beside her and took her hand. “This cannot continue. I warned you.”

“Are you finally sending me away? I enjoy life in London.”

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