Page 5 of The Duke of Ruin
"None of those," Lord Greene said, waving a dismissive hand, as though Liv's concerns were irrelevant. "I have promised you to England's most eligible bachelor: The Duke of Everleigh."
Oh goodness, no.
Liv felt the acrid taste of bile, rising in her throat; anyone but him. The Duke of Everleigh had haunted her dreams since their meeting at Lady Jersey's. Olive, under the guise of paying a social call, had extracted from her neighbour, the elderly Lady Engleman, who lived in nearby Blatchbridge, exactly what had happened with the Duke's previous wife.
Her name had been Catherine Keyford, the daughter of the Cornish Lord Keyford and she had been two and twenty years of age when Everleigh had married her and made her a Duchess.
"She'd never even had a season," Lady Engleman had whispered, sharing the scandal as she poured Liv a cup of tea. "Is it any wonder the girl behaved as she did?"
"Oh?" Liv had sipped her tea innocently, hoping that Lady Engleman would continue with her tale.
"She took a lover," the old matron whispered, though because of her hearing the whisper was delivered at the same level as a shout. The young maid who hovered by the door, began to giggle, but quickly stopped at Liv's glare. Not that she blamed the girl from laughing, but she did not want Lady Engleman's attention diverted by scolding a servant.
"She told Everleigh that she was leaving him for this chap, and the Duke called the young man out," Lady Engleman had continued, oblivious to the fact that both Olive and the maid were hanging on her every word. "He shot him dead, with one bullet between the eyes, or so the story goes. And then he returned to his estate in Cornwall, and the next thing we heard the poor Duchess was dead."
"How?" Liv gasped, wondering how the callow Everleigh had disposed of his wife. Was it in a fit of passionate rage? Or did he plan it coolly and meticulously?
"The official word was that she fell down the stairs," the older woman coughed discreetly, to indicate that she hadn't bought intothatstory. "But everyone knew it was him. His own mother ran off on her marriage to his father, when he was but a boy. To have his wife attempt to do the same must have driven him insane with rage."
Liv sipped her tea again, as she digested this tit-bit of gossip. She couldn't picture the Duke as a young boy, and felt no sympathy for him whatsoever. Plenty of people's mothers abandoned them, it didn't give them carte blanche to murder their wives! She had left Lady Engleman's feeling faintly perturbed that she had exchanged any words with the villainous Duke, and now,this very morning she found she was betrothed to him!
"Oh goodness, Papa," she groaned, allowing her head to fall into her hands in despair. "What have you done? Do you not know what they said he did to his last wife?"
"All balderdash," Lord Greene waved her concerns away with his hand, as though brushing away a bothersome fly, though he did look rather uncomfortable that she had brought up the alleged murder. "He seemed most keen to make you his wife – he even had a special license written up in anticipation that I would consent."
"Consent?"
A laugh so bitter it shocked the pair of them, ripped from Liv's throat.
"You consented to nothing," she whispered, her hands gripping the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles turned white. "You gambled me away as surely as you gambled away the paintings, the horses, and the furniture-- and I can never forgive you for that."
She pushed her chair away from the table, and stood up, running an agitated hand through her thick red curls.
"W-where are you going?" her father stuttered nervously, "He'll be here before noon."
"I am going to pay my last respects to my Mother," Liv replied, not looking him in the eye. "For when I leave this house today, you may rest assured that I will never return."
With that, Liv left the room, slamming the door behind her, so hard that it nearly came off its hinges.
A dirt path, surrounded on either side by wild hedgerows laden with summer blooms led to the small, squat church where her mother lay buried, not five minutes away. Liv passed by the headstones of many more deceased Greenes as she picked her way through the cemetery, for her father's family had been seated in Frome for centuries and her ancestors had all lived and died here.
"Oh mother," Liv sighed, as she reached the small, granite headstone which bore her mother's name. "I wish you were here."
Every day Liv wished that her mother was still alive, for Lila Greene had been a formidable woman and only person who had been able to rein in her father's wild impulses. If she was still here, Liv had no doubt, that this marriage to Everleigh would not be happening. She would be safe, perhaps married to a staid country solicitor, and not panicking at the thought that she had been sold to a Duke with a predication for murder.
"It seems I am between a rock and a hard place Mama," she whispered aloud, as she hunkered down to clear the few dandelions that had boldly grown since her last visit.
The very idea of marrying the Duke of Everleigh sent shivers down her spine; but the thought of remaining at the mercy of her father's gambling addiction was even worse.
What Liv longed for, more than anything, was freedom. She wanted to be the master of her own destiny, not some small, insignificant woman, at the mercy of men's whims and desires. With a final, fond pat of the grass, which was now free of weeds, she stood and squared her shoulders.
Life had seemed intent of late, of throwing chaos and destruction her way, and Liv had quickly come to realise that the only way to survive, was to face that chaos head on.
She would master the disreputable Duke, she thought grimly, she would tame this man who appeared to think her life an amusing plaything, and she would make him rue the day he decided he wanted to marry her.
"Good God, man, are you nervous?"
Henry Lavelle, Viscount Somerset glanced at his old friend the Duke of Everleigh with wonder. They were standing at the front door of Rosewick Cottage, Lord Greene's home, which in the usual English way was not a cottage at all, but rather an impressive Manor House. Three stories high, and built of soft, butter-yellow Bath stone, it was a rather impressive old pile.
