Page 46 of My Demanding Duke

"Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but the Dowager Duchess has arrived and requests an immediate audience."

Hugh shot Anna a look of mingled frustration and amusement.

"My mother’s timing is impeccable," he murmured, as he assisted her with fixing her rumpled dress. He smoothed his own hair, straightened his coat, and braced himself for Edwina’s arrival.

His mother appeared a few minutes later, her eyes wide as she took in the changes to the parlour room.

“Redecorating?” she queried, her eyes swiveling between the two.

“Just adding a few touches,” Anna answered, waving an airy arm around the room. “To make the place feel more homely.”

Edwina nodded her approval, her gaze taking in every new feminine addition to the room.

“Very good,” she smiled, as she took a seat on the sofa. “Start downstairs first, then tackle the upstairs rooms. There is a bedchamber just off the ducal suite which would be perfect as a nursery.”

Hugh stifled a smile as he watched Anna’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline. His mother was not known for great tact or diplomacy when it came to pushing her personal agenda.

“I believe that is my cue to leave,” Hugh decided, meeting Anna’s look of outrage with a sweet smile. “I know when my opinion is not required.”

“He’d have every room decorated with naval vessels if he had his way,” Edwina concurred to Anna, her expression one of vague horror. “Men; if it’s not ships, it’s carriages.”

“We are a simple species,” Hugh agreed solemnly. He humoured his mother only slightly, for the mention of nurseries had put the image of Anna increasing with his child into mind. He felt a sudden stab of primitive desire at the very idea, and could only conclude that men truly were of an antediluvian disposition as compared to the fairer sex.

Hugh gently excused himself to retire to his library but once outside the confines of the parlour room, he changed his mind on his destination. He called for his carriage to take him to Pickering Place and a half-hour later, he found himself seated in Daniel Shatter’s office.

It was a room he knew well. It was the room he had sat in a week after Jack’s funeral and learned that his brother owed a small fortune in gambling debts. Shatter had offered—rather magnanimously—to purchase all Jack’s vowels, if Hugh swore to repay them in time. With some interest, of course.

It had taken Hugh a year to repay the loan; a year of righting neglected estates, investing profits in merchant activity, and winning handsomely at the card tables.

Hugh had never asked why Shatter had offered to help him. Perhaps he had recognised Hugh’s tenancy to win. Perhaps he had calculated the benefit of having a duke in his debt. Perhaps he had guessed just how Jack’s life had ended, and had felt a modicum of pity for Hugh.

Hugh never asked and Shatter would never tell, and because of that a grudging respect of sorts had grown between the two men. Not friendship—Daniel Shatter did not keep friends—but an acknowledgment of sorts that they were equals.

“A drink, your Grace?” Shatter asked, gesturing to his well-stocked drinks cabinet.

“Not this evening,” Hugh declined, “I merely wished to enquire after our mutual friend. He has not appeared since we last spoke.”

Shatter shrugged his broad shoulders to indicate that he too knew nothing of Lord Mosely’s current whereabouts.

“I can’t tell you where Lord Mosley is, your Grace,” he finally answered with a sigh. “But I can tell you where he isn’t. He’s not in any gaming hells around the city, he’s not running up anymore debts. Perhaps he’s learned his lesson and returned home to lick his wounds?”

“Chance would be a fine thing,” Hugh prayed aloud, to which shatter raised two dark brows in amusement.

“Chance and I are on intimate terms, your Grace; you’ll forgive me if I don’t wager on Mosley having reformed.” Shatter replied dryly, before returning his gaze to the ledgers strewn across the table.

Presuming himself dismissed, Hugh departed for home, fully intending—despite Shatter’s cynicism—to send a footman to Whitby in search of Lord Mosley. Strangers things had happened than a lost cause reforming, he thought with a wry grin.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DESPITE MANY ATTEMPTSat cajoling Anna into pledging to bear her son twelve children, the only pound of flesh Edwina had managed to extract was a promise that they would attend Lord and Lady Hargreaves’ musicale that evening. Which is why Anna now found herself—at the interval of an excruciating set—standing on the veranda of the Hargreaves’ Belgravia mansion, taking the night air to steady her nerves.

Hugh—like most of the menfolk—had vanished the moment the Hargreaves’ three daughters began their shrill assault on the pianoforte. Ostensibly, he had slipped out for a quick cheroot, though given that he had not returned, Anna presumed he had gone all the way to the South Americas to fetch it.

In truth, she did not mind the reprieve from his all-consuming presence.

She had not meant to kiss him in the parlour. She had certainly not meant to let herself be pressed against the wainscoting like some hapless tavern wench. And though she had not meant for it to happen, she could not pretend she that had not enjoyed it.

A blush stained her cheeks and she was glad for the night air that cooled her feverish skin.

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