Page 41 of Dukes for Dessert

Laurie sprang to his feet. “But it’s a bloody falsehood. My cock stood like a soldier at attention from the moment they started on me. More than that. I had Mrs. Lane, had her several times right there on the floor. She was most willing, squealed quite fetchingly. Then I went to my mistress and had her several times that night. Not only am I not impotent, gentlemen, I am most healthily robust.”

David rose in one smooth motion and faced the triumphant Earl of Devonport, while the solicitors looked away, painfully embarrassed. Sinclair sat like a stone, but his eyes glittered with resolve.

“I am glad you said that,” David stated to Laurie in a quiet voice. “It allows you a choice. You can either agree with this testimony as it stands and proceed with an annulment, or I and Mr. McBride can be witnesses for Sophie that you are an adulterer many times over, and she needs a divorce from you.”

Laurie’s chin came up. “I’ll not let you bully me into telling lies. This isn’t school anymore, Devilish David. The divorce proceedings I began will go forward. Count on that.”

“No, they won’t.” David had hoped he’d taste triumph at this moment, but only revulsion filled his mouth. “You have no more witnesses. The gentlemen you bribed to make false statements against Miss Tierney have withdrawn them. They admitted they were liars and that you paid and coerced them to claim they’d had relations with your wife. They never did, and they have signed sworn statements saying the same. Lady Devonport is spotless and innocent, and you will proclaim that to the world, Lackwit. What you have done to her, your duplicitous scheme to ruin your own wife in a loathsome fashion, is all over London, and I doubt that after this, any house will receive you.”

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Laurie’s mouth had dropped open once more, and his face was mottled red and white.

“You’d ruin me?” he demanded of David. “You heard this, did you not, gentlemen?” He appealed to his solicitors. “Those women are damned liars—likely in Fleming’s pay. You’d take the word of courtesans over that of a gentleman?”

By the solicitors’ expressions, they would.

Sinclair, at David’s behest, had made certain the solicitors would take the depositions Mrs. Whitaker and her protégé, Mrs. Lane, gave as legal testimony. The ladies had played their parts well, swearing up and down that Laurie was as impotent as a castrated bullock. David would send Mrs. Lane a lavish gift for putting up with Laurie’s despicable attentions, and Mrs. Whitaker one for orchestrating their part of the scheme.

“I want to be tested again,” Laurie snarled. “With ladies of my choosing.”

“Do,” David said. He knew plenty of courtesans, as did Mrs. Whitaker, who would make certain whoever Laurie chose would also claim him impotent.

Laurie recoiled. “Kilmorgan is behind this, I know it. He wants to impugn my character, to ruin me.”

“The Duke of Kilmorgan had nothing to do with any of this,” David said. He spoke the truth. Mrs. Whitaker, who had assisted David and Hart so much in the past, had done the favor because Eleanor asked her, not Hart. Mrs. Whitaker had much respect for El.

David looked into Laurie’s eyes to read fear there. Laurie was losing ground, and he knew it.

“You’ve impugned your own character, ruined yourself,” David said quietly. “The scandal-loving newspapers are already printing your perfidy now. I’d leave for the Continent soon, Limp-Prick. After you annul your marriage with Miss Tierney.”

Laurie scowled at David, the petulant boy he’d once been shining through. He glanced at the solicitors and Sinclair, but those gentlemen sat silently, offering no help.

David lifted a pen from Sinclair’s desk and shoved it at Laurie. “Mr. McBride has drawn up everything you need to begin proceedings for an annulment. Sign it.”

“How dare you?” Laurie blustered. “You can’t threaten me. This is a farce, and you a bloody scoundrel. You are Hart’s arse-licking toady—what is his game? You fu—”

Laurie choked off the word as David caught the lapel of his coat, pressing the tip of the pen hard to Laurie’s cheek. “How dare you make Miss Tierney’s life a living hell? What you owe her you can never, ever repay. Now sign the bloody papers or this pen goes down your throat.”

Laurie drew a breath to argue, but what he saw in David’s eyes defeated him. He’d always been a coward, full of bravado and bullying, wilting whenever challenged in truth.

“Damn you.” Laurie jerked himself from David’s grip. “Damn you all.”

He snatched the pen from David’s hand and thrust it into the inkwell Sinclair held out to him.

“I’ll ruin you, Fleming,” he vowed. “I’ll smear so much dirt on you, you’ll never be able to stand for Parliament again.”

“An empty threat,” David said, his easy drawl emerging. “I’m a bit tired of it all, as a matter of fact. I plan to return home, make a go at farming.”

Laurie glared fury at him. But he turned to the desk, and with a few strokes of the pen, started Sophie on her path to freedom.

Sophie had never been to Hertfordshire, in spite of the county lying so near London. She knew of Hatfield, where Good Queen Bess had grown up, but she’d never traveled to look at that queen’s historic house. Being the countess hadn’t allowed her much time for herself.

David Fleming’s estate lay in the north of the county, near its border with Bedfordshire. The train took Sophie and Uncle Lucas to the village of Clopdon—from there the stationmaster directed them two miles north to the house called Moreland Park.

As it was a fine day, and they had brought only one valise with their combined belongings, Uncle Lucas suggested they walk.

None at the station had questioned their intent to visit Moreland Park. The gardens were open for viewing, provided one paid a shilling to the gatekeeper, and on a certain day each month, the house could be toured as well.

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