Page 2 of A Game with the Rakish Duke
Suddenly, his grandmother swooned, clutching her chest in a most dramatic way. Lady Wickham gasped, springing out of her chair with such haste that it almost fell over, rushing to her side.
Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Are you feeling poorly, Grandmother?”
“I need my smelling salts,” the Dowager Duchess gasped, making a fluttering motion with her hand. “I am in the grip of a dizzy spell!” She gazed up at Lady Wickham. “I am so terribly sorry, Lady Wickham, but can we reschedule the house call? Until I am feeling better.” She smiled weakly.
Thomas felt a jolt of relief. Within minutes, Lady Wickham and her daughter were out the door. He looked at his grandmother. She was sitting straight now, a devilish glint in her eyes. The fainting spell had been a ruse to get rid of them. She often resorted to such tactics in times of extreme necessity.
“Before you say anything,” she said, in an imperious tone, “I had no idea what hideous bores they are, Thomas!”
Thomas sighed, sitting down. “Why must you insist on this, Grandmother? Why must you insist upon parading every young lady you encounter before me in such a way?”
“You know why,” his grandmother shot back, glaring at him. “You need to marry, my boy! You require a duchess.” She sighed irritably. “The duchy requires an heir. And you are getting older, my dear grandson. In a few years, you will bethirty.” She flung the word at him as if it were distasteful. “It is time.”
Thomas glared at her. “We have been over this a hundred times,” he growled, feeling the familiar irritation with her rise in his chest. “I do not wish to marry. Not today. Not next week. Notever.”
The Dowager Duchess sighed dramatically. “Butwhy, Thomas? I refuse to take you seriously on this subject. You just have not met the right young woman yet.”
“I willnevermeet the right young woman,” he interjected. He couldn’t help grinning. “My plans for beautiful, charming young women do not involvemarriage, Grandmother, but they never complain.”
The Dowager Duchess glared at him. “You are a handsome devil,” she scoffed. “I have no doubt you can charm honey from the bees.” She pursed her lips. “But you have sowed your wild oats for long enough! Your reputation as a rake precedes you now. It is my duty to repair it. Most respectable young ladies believe you will eat them up for breakfast!”
Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Well, if they like it that way…”
“Thomas!” The Dowager Duchess’s face was brick red. “You are being insolent. Do you know how hard it was for me to get Lady Wickham to agree to bring her daughter here? Even though you are a duke with great wealth and an ancestral estate almost as large as Buckingham Palace?”
Thomas sighed. “Lady Susannah is as boring and bland as butter.”
“Yes, but that is neither here nor there,” his grandmother said irritably, flicking a dismissive, ring-laden hand in the air. “She is the daughter of an earl. She comes from a respectable family. Ibelieve with the right guidance, to overcome her shortcomings in intellect and ignorance, she would make a fine duchess…”
“You do not really believe that,” Thomas shot back. “You were as irritated with her as I was. She prattled on about bonnets without drawing a single breath and believed reading would make her go blind.”
The Dowager Duchess sighed. “She is young and a bit ignorant, to be sure, but she can be trained…”
“No.” Thomas’s voice had turned implacable. His fists clenched into balls at his sides. “I will not train some silly young lady just to have a wife with the right lineage and connections. I do not evenwanta wife. How many times must I tell you? Enough is enough, Grandmother.”
They glared at each other. The air was so thick with tension that it could almost be cut through with a butter knife.
“Your late father said the same thing, you know,” she continued as if he hadn’t even spoken. “When he was your age, he told me he would never marry.”
“And perhaps you should have listened to him,” Thomas huffed, his heart flipping. “You forcedhiminto marriage, and look how that turned out!”
“Your father was in love with your mother,” his grandmother shot back, looking affronted. “He was head over heels in lovewith her. They had many good years together. No one knew what the future held, after all.”
“Perhaps you should have consulted a fortune teller, then,” Thomas said in a sour voice. “She ran away with a sea captain when I was only eight years old, Grandmother. She broke his heart. He never recovered from it.”
The Dowager Duchess looked pained. They rarely talked about theincident, as his grandmother termed it, from all those years ago. They rarely talked about his mother at all. It was as if he had been found behind the cabbage patch in the garden.
“Yes, well, that has no bearing onyouneeding to marry, my boy,” the Dowager Duchess argued in a huffy voice. “That will not happen to you. Lightning does not strike twice, you know.”
“How do you know?” Thomas glared at her. “How do you know it would not happen? You just admitted you do not have prophetic abilities. You cannot foresee the future.”
“Do not be ridiculous, Thomas…”
“Or even if my wife does not abandon me,” he continued in a tight voice, “the marriage may still be utterly miserable. In fact, I would wager itwouldbe utterly miserable. I have rarely seen a happy one.”
His grandmother blanched. “You are too harsh.”
“Am I?” His voice was steely. “I rather think I am realistic. I do not look at the world through a gilded lens, Grandmother.” He drew a deep breath. “I have not done so since I was eight years old.”
