Page 633 of From Rakes to Riches

THE DIFFERENCE ONE DUKE MAKES

ELIZABETH ESSEX

1

LONDON, FEBRUARY 1816

Commander Marcus Beecham turned his face into the bitter wind on the River Thames, closed his eyes and thought of England. Of easy, soft living and lazy summer afternoons in the country, with picnics and long rides across the rolling hills. Witty conversations with charming girls who gazed at him with?—

No. That was impossible.

After more than a decade at sea, he doubted he could even hold a conversation with a girl, let alone charm her. He had no business setting so much as a foot in England.

And yet here he was, back in the damp land of his birth. His family had insisted, having written that he must resign his commission in the Royal Navy and abandon the career to which he had sacrificed ten long, hard years—and very nearly his life.

Marcus would just have to show his family that he was well now, if not entirely whole. That he was sound of mind and judgment, no matter his injuries. That he was as fully capable as any officer in the fleet—more so, for he knew the cost of battle better than most men.

He also knew his duty—which was the only reason he had been persuaded to leave his ship to return to the city he disliked with an intensity that rivaled his odium for his callous, authoritative older brother, Caius, Duke of Warwick.

A man might pick his battles, but he couldn’t pick his family. A sentimental homecoming, it would not be—but a short one, Marcus hoped. Caius could not want him to stay long in London, either.

Ahead, a figure hailed his captain’s gig from the Hungerford Stairs. Marcus recognized an older version of Hodge, his brother’s stern-faced secretary, extending his arthritic hand as if the stooped man would assist Marcus from the boat.

“Welcome home, Your Grace.”

The cold dread in his chest weighed him down like a cannonball in a canvas shroud. Marcus had to use his good arm to push himself to his feet in the boat. To meet the old man’s eyes. To make sure what he had heard was no mistake. “Your Grace?”

There had been no news in the letter that had reached him off Recife. No hint that he was no longer the spare. Nothing in the short, formal lines insisting upon his return that his brother, the heir—the bloody Duke of Warwick—had finally done the world a favor and been put to bed with a shovel. Or a bullet between his eyes.

“Indeed,Your Grace,” Hodge bowed his head in solemn confirmation.

The boat tipped beneath Marcus’s feet. Shock made his body heavy and his brain stupid.

“Dead?” Caius had always seemed invincible—a reckless force of nature who had inherited his dukedom young and learned early to aggressively insist upon having his way. “How?”

Caius was little more than a year older than Marcus—a man in the prime of his life. A man safe ashore, who mightbe expected to live a far less hazardous life than Marcus, or any of his Royal Navy brethren, certainly had. “Accident? Misadventure? Revenge?”

Caius had always done as he pleased—perhaps he had done as he pleased with someone else’s wife?

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, Your Grace.” Hodge still held out his hand to help Marcus ashore. As if he thought Marcus so frail that he needed an arthritic old man’s help on the water-slick steps.

There was nothing for it, of course. With one well-aimed shot across his bow, Marcus was being made to quite literally give up his ship.

And so, he would.

Because Commander Marcus Beecham knew his duty. He planted his sea boots ashore and became a duke.

Damned if it wasn’t one hell of an unexpected demotion.

The palatial townhouseon Grosvenor Street was as it had always been: stone-faced, curtained and immaculate, with not so much as a weed daring to poke through the clean-swept pavement.

Inside was the same—nothing out of place, everything as unchanged and preserved as if it had been under glass for ten long years.

His mother, whom he had not seen since he was a raw boy of ten and four, barely looked at him. “Oh, Marcus, there you are.”

As if he had come from the next room and not half a world away.

“Mother.”

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