Page 3 of Courting Scandal With The Duke
What on earth was he thinking? They were all absolutely perfect wife material.
He rolled his shoulders and hid a wince at the pain from a bruised rib. His sparring partner had caught him a witty castor, as pugilists liked to say. It had been a good fight. At Jackson’s saloon, he was just another fellow who liked to box. No one there caredthat he was a duke.
It provided him with all the excitement he needed. That and his horses.
The last thing he needed was an exciting wife. His father had married a woman thetonhad admiringly called the Daring Duchess shortly after Xavier’s mother had died. Her recklessness had led his father to his death, leaving Xavier alone. A duke at twelve years old.
No, he certainly did not need that sort of woman in his life.
Oh, he had liked his stepmother well enough when he had first met her. He recalled thinking her pretty the first time Father introduced them. Father had gone to London on business and met her at a ball. Everyone who knew them said it had been love at first sight.
Xavier had liked her at first, and not only because his father said he should, but because his father said she was going to be his new mother.
He hadn’t realised he wanted a mother until then. He scarcely recalled his own mother. He and his father had been so close, he had never felt the need for anyone else.
As soon as he was old enough to ride a pony, he had accompanied Father on his tours of the estate, or out shooting for the table, or sailing in the bay. More often than not of an evening, he and Father had sat beside the fire, Father reading aloud from his newspaper. They had discussed things, man to man. Or so it had seemed to Xavier.
But he had noticed other boys’ mothers. How nice they were. Sort of gentle and sweet.
Sweet didn’t describe Lady Leticia. She hadn’t beeninterested in shooting, or newspapers, or, it seemed to Xavier, small boys. Those things weren’t fun.
She liked to ride fast. And because Xavier’s pony was too slow, she and Papa had stopped inviting him to go along. Papa said it was because Leticia was young and liked a bit of excitement. He said she made him feel young.
And besides, if he didn’t do what she wanted she would get very upset. Father didn’t like it when she cried.
Great-Uncle Tom, when he came to visit, muttered in his beard and said she was reckless and had addled Father’s brain. He used to say the moment Leticia saw him, she had decided to catch him.
As time went on, Father had spent more time in London, going to balls and parties. With her. And only came home in the summer, when they’d invited lots of guests, and because adults did things a lad of Xavier’s age wouldn’t be interested in, according to his stepmama, he was better off in the schoolroom with his governess or tutor.
Happier, she had assured his father.
Only he hadn’t been.
So, they had sent him away to school.
Xavier shoved thoughts of the days before his father died aside. The memories of how they’d gone off sailing without him that summer always churned up the anger he had tried to bury along with memoriesof his childhood.
No, he definitely did not want a wife like his stepmother.
He wanted a nice quiet female who would give his son, or sons, a warm and comforting upbringing.
Unlike his own.
To be certain, his Great-Uncle Thomas had done his best, but he’d been a bit of a martinet. As old-fashioned and irascible as they came.
His best friend, Julian Pettigrew, nudged him. ‘What the devil are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Yes, you are. You are glowering. I thought you wanted to meet a few of this Season’s debutantes, not scare them out of their dancing slippers.’
‘Nonsense. I am not glowering.’ At least not any more than usual.
‘You are. At everyone. At least one of those little misses fainted at the sight of that frown of yours.’
The Derbridge frown. His grandfather had been famous for it, so Uncle Thomas had said. Was it his fault that he had inherited his family’s well-known heavy brow and thick black eyebrows that drew naturally together over shockingly blue eyes and an equally prominent nose? Certainly, no one had ever accused him of being handsome.
‘If a frown is all it takes to make a girl faint, she is clearly not the woman for me.’ Though, since he had decided this was the year he would wed,oneof these delicate debutantes had to be the perfect woman.
