Page 7 of Ne'er Duke Well
“Yes,” Selina said. “I am living at Rowland House with the duke and duchess.”
“Excellent,” Peter said. “I’ll call on you there.”
And then he clapped a hand to the back of Lu’s head and said, “Try a curtsy this time, Lu.”
Lu’s mouth pinched, and she held out imaginary skirts and swept Selina a rather magnificent curtsy that almost reached the depths of her previous bow.
“You know,” said Selina, “I quite like you as well.”
Chapter 3
… Have you any new interest in politics after spending the last eighteen months with His Majesty’s Army, Will? You might be interested to know that the new Duke of Stanhope (Peter Kent, I’m sure you remember him) delivered as his maiden speech perhaps the most devastating opprobrium against slavery ever heard in the House of Lords. I am well pleased by his ascension to the peerage.
—from His Grace Nicholas Ravenscroft, Duke of Rowland, to his brother, Lord William Ravenscroft, His Majesty’s Army, Seventh Division
“Tell me again,” said Mohan Tagore, “why we are walking to Rowland House.”
Peter made himself slow down to keep pace with his barrister’s shorter strides. Then he realized he’d been whistling a Carnival song he hadn’t thought of in years and he made himself stop that too.
“It’s a fine day,” he said. “Use your legs, Tagore. I have it on good authority that an unused muscle atrophies. I worry for you.”
“Are you saying that if I were to gag you for a month or so, yourtonguewould atrophy? Because if so—”
“God forbid,” Peter said. “I assure you, while you might not regret the loss of that particular organ, there are a number of ladies of my acquaintance who might disagree.”
Tagore choked briefly on air. “I am going to pretend I did not hear that and ask you again why we are walking to Rowland House.”
Peter took a moment to meditate on the question. He’d considered taking the Stanhope carriage to Tagore’s office, picking up Tagore, and then having them conveyed together to Rowland’s door. But it seemed too absurd—to ride barely a dozen streets to Tagore’s office, then back again as far to Rowland House—when they could walk. The sky was painfully blue, a color that made him think of Louisiana with the mixture of love and nostalgia and loss that he’d felt ever since he’d arrived in England with the Earl of Clermont two years prior.
He wanted to look at the sky. He wanted to talk to Tagore before they got into Rowland House and everything became all caution and pleading-without-seeming-to-plead.
“Or perhaps,” Tagore said, apparently tired of waiting for Peter to answer, “you might tell me why we are meeting at Rowland House at all.”
“I want to talk to Rowland about the next six weeks. I want to see if he has any ideas as to how we might make the lord chancellor more amenable to our petition.”
In six weeks, Peter’s petition for guardianship of Freddie and Lu would come before Lord Eldon, the chancellor of the HighCourt. And unless something changed quite drastically in that span of time, Peter was going to lose.
“Eldon is a problem,” Tagore agreed. “But I meant, rather—why Rowland House? You are a member of Rowland’s club, are you not?”
Peter was. He was fairly certain Rowland had exerted no small amount of pressure to encourage the manager of Brooks’s to extend a sponsorship to him, because he’d been offered membership nearly a year before his ducal elevation. Rowland was brilliant at those sorts of things—easing the way, making the track smooth. Peter had never had the talent for it. Nor the inclination, even, until he’d moved to England.
“I wanted you to talk to Rowland as well,” he said easily. “You’ll be at the Court of Chancery with me, and Rowland will not. I’m hopeful he’ll have some suggestions.”
Tagore drummed his fingers against his thigh. “It’s a challenge. Lord Eldon moves in entirely different political circles than Rowland, for all that Rowland is a duke. Rowland’s a Whig, a reformer, and Eldon is the most entrenched of the Tories.”
“I know it. I’m hopeful that we might be able to think of another approach. Not direct political pressure, but… something.”
“Rowland isn’t in the habit of bribery. Nor Eldon, for that matter.”
“No bribes,” Peter said. Not that he would be opposed to bribery, if it would get him Freddie and Lu, but he’d already talked the matter over with Tagore and decided it wasn’t practicable. But he was damned if he was going to let his brother and sister go without a fight.
He had lost a sibling, back in New Orleans, when they had both been children.
He would not let it happen again, not for all the dukedom or for all the world. There had to be something they could do. There had to be another way.
And he wanted to talk to Selina Ravenscroft.
That, as much as he couldn’t say it aloud to his barrister, was the reason they were going to Rowland House. At Brooks’s, Selina wouldn’t be there. At a ball, he couldn’t lay his cards on the table in front of her and watch her clever, busy mind puzzle away at the problem.
