Page 4 of Denying a Rakish Duke
Vanessa was reminded of their earlier conversation.
“Surely, he would not do such a thing. Mama would never allow him to do such a thing, even if I am never married. I would not allow myself to become a burden to them, certainly not to my mother—” Her voice trailed off, her gaze unfocused at a random point in the room. It was no secret that her uncle had been ready to be rid of all of them from the moment that he had stepped up into his brother’s role.
Tobias had a son, and he did not know the first thing to do with daughters. He did not wish to pay for them to be out in the marriage market, and he certainly made no qualms about expressing how expensive all of their things were. Papa never would have turned her away even if she spent all of the rest of her days unmarried … but Uncle Tobias? Would he turn her away if he decided that she was a lost cause?
“He would not … would he?”
ChapterThree
“Get up at once!”
The sound of a cane banging against the wide door frame leading into Joseph Atkin’s personal bedchamber was not enough of a disruption alone to cause him to wake. However, the combination of her loud resonance, the door thundering open, and her cane tapping out a crude alarm against the very walls of his darkened chamber was enough to jolt him awake.
“It is nearly noon, Your Grace, and you shall awake at once!” The woman’s uneven gait made for punctuated footsteps as she clicked her cane to compensate for the injured leg on her left side. She used her cane to thrust open the heavy drapes, and warm sunlight burst forth into the chamber. The nude woman at his side jostled him angrily, twisting further into his side and further under the covers that had previously only been pulled halfway up their torsos.
“I shall rise when I see fit to do so, you vile woman.” Joseph’s voice was groggy with disuse and thick with sleep. He did not appear at all bothered by the apparently random invasion. He made no effort to cover up, nor did he seem overly concerned with covering up the woman that was so clearly mortified by his side.
“Spare me your pleasantries, Your Grace; you have engagements to attend to,” the old woman said with a sigh as if she expected nothing less from her grandson. She was not in the slightest bit bothered by his appearance and came to stand at the foot of his bed. Her arms crossed over her chest.
“I have registered for no engagements, nor have I any desire to interact with thetonor any of its insipid mothers and daughters this year, so I will thank you to see your way out of my chamber. I am quite busy.” Joseph flung an arm up and over his eyes to block out the sunlight and pulled his mistress closer to his bare torso.
He thought that, perhaps, on the off chance that his grandmother would actually choose to leave the chamber with them inside of it, he might be able to have another few precious moments of sleep. He was not certain at what time he fell asleep last night, but he could have sworn that a bird had been starting to chirp on the outside of his window. “Leave, or I shall have you removed.”
Margot’s heart was thundering wildly; she was in a right state of shock over being forced awake in this fashion. Joseph could feel her heartbeat against his ribs, and it itched. If he awoke any further, he was going to be forced to rise and find tea and breakfast. His mistress kept looking to him for instructions on how she ought to navigate the situation at hand, but he was too tired to give her any.
“I did not ask you if you registered; I have taken the liberty of arranging a very productive calendar for your upcoming evenings, so you will have to bid your harlot farewell with haste. I swear your chamber reeks worse than the yards before the servants muck out the pig’s stalls.” The Dowager Duchess started to move about the chamber, swatting at a pile of discarded clothing on the floor that looked to belong to the woman in the bed. She cleared her throat to indicate that the woman ought to dress swiftly in those clothes now within reach of her and exit the chamber quickly.
“You have no idea what a pig enclosure smells like, Grandmother,” Joseph sighed. She was not going to allow him to have his way; that much was obvious.
“Up, at once!” she demanded, her cane knocking against the carved wood of his bedpost. “I have had enough of your dragging our family’s legacy through the mud; your antics over the past months have been humiliating enough for an entire lifetime, and it is time for you to take a wife.” She turned her gaze to the woman in the bed. “Aproperlady at that!”
“Do not take your ire with me out on Margot, Grandmother.” He sighed as his head fell back heavily against the pillows. “We have already had this conversation, have we not?”
“Well, it is evident to me that you did not take our conversation seriously if this is how you are still choosing to spend your evenings! How do you propose to appeal to any lady of respectable breeding if you spend all of your nights with all kinds of women?” For the first time since bursting into the chamber, she turned her attention to the woman in the bed. “Certainly, you did not think that you were the only one, did you?”
Margot said nothing which was for the best. Joseph was starting to get annoyed.
“I have already agreed to take a wife, Grandmother, but that hardly means that I must discontinue my activities. Our agreement was that I attend the balls, not any of your other social engagements or teas. I will spend my remaining time in whatever manner I please.” Joseph paused to look at Margot fondly; he smiled warmly and pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear.
“Any wife that I take shall, of course, have to be accommodating and understanding that my evenings will be my own outside of whatever husbandly duties I shall choose to bestow upon her. After all, these ladies are only looking for comfort and security. I doubt it shall bother them much.”
Margot smiled prettily up at him, and then Joseph nodded toward her slip still on the floor. She nodded and slowly started to slip out of the bed while Joseph brazenly stood and stretched from the other side, keeping the attention of his grandmother on himself. The woman clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“Have you no shame, Boy?” She frowned as she spoke. “Honestly, I ought to spank you with this cane for being so filthy.” She turned her back to her grandson so that he could dress in peace. He had rather hoped that she might be uncomfortable enough with the situation so that she would choose to leave the chamber entirely. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Margot slipped out of the chamber door with the remainder of her clothes bundled up in her arms.
Honestly, he did not see why the Dowager thought that any wife he might choose to have would have an issue with him having a mistress. If he were to use his own parents as an example of what marriage should look like, then he and his wife would live on separate Estates until they came together to create an heir and then resume living their wholly separate lives. It worked well enough for them, and it would suit his present lifestyle perfectly.
Yet still, she protested. Marriages were arrangements of convenience in his opinion, and affection rarely, if ever, tied into things like that. He would secure himself a match that was pretty enough to blend well with his own handsome features, and then they would decide in which of his properties they were going to each reside in. He would visit at arranged times and on holidays. He had hardly even known his parents, so he did not see the issue.
“I have a sense of a great many things,” Joseph said as he finished with the buttons on his trousers. He wanted to leave his Grandmother's company quickly and did not want to wait for his valet to come and assist him. “For example, I have a sense of how all of the conversations that you wish for me to participate in this evening are all going to be so similar, I am going to wish that I could have stayed home.” He pulled his clothes on while he spoke but did not put much effort into the way that they fit.
“Perhaps it would be for the best if you could appear in my stead. Speak on my behalf, send them my regards, and thenyoucan have the same mind-numbing conversations about the weather or the latest trends in dresses … I cannot sit there and listen to gossip about things that I do not care at all about, Grandmother. It is cruel of you to even suggest it!”
The Dowager scoffed. “And you think of yourself so highly that you will delight them with your mediocre wit? Just because they speak down to you as if pandering to a child, it does not mean that is all that they are capable of! Perhaps the reasons that you find the fine ladies of thetonso underwhelming is because you, in fact, are such a disappointing lout yourself.”
“Ah, now who is speaking pleasantries?” Joseph turned, catching his grandmother’s permanent frown threatening to turn upward at his remark.
The Dowager Duchess of Willow placed both of her hands on the circular crystal head of her cane and leaned her weight forward into it. “I have gathered a great many eligible ladies for you to entertain this evening. I have gone to great expense to arrange this ball, and I will have you on your very best behavior. You shall converse, you shall dance, and for Heaven’s sake, you shall be the charming young man that I raised you to be. I am not certain just when it was that you forgot how to be pleasant, but see to it that you have regained that skill before this evening, or I shall be quite cross with you.”
