Page 9 of A Duke to Undo her
“It was different for the Emerton sons,” insisted Madeline. “My father still lives and your family has always been large and loving enough to compensate for your parents’ loss. You hadConstance, Ophelia and Vera, and all your other relatives. They only had one another.”
“But what of the Dowager Duchess of Ashbourne?” Rose asked curiously. “She is still alive and even stays in London with her sons sometimes. I’ve seen her at concerts in the Argyll Rooms.”
Madeline nodded but looked knowingly at her friends, evidently having greater familiarity with the Emerton family history than either Josephine or Rose.
“Dowager Duchess Nerissa may be part of her sons’ lives now, but after her husband died so suddenly…she was a broken woman. I heard that she almost lost her mind with grief and had to be nursed around the clock by her sister for many years. Benedict Emerton was only nine years old when he effectively lost both parents.”
“Poor Mr. Emerton,” Rose cried out. “How hard for him!”
“How hard for both sons,” clarified Madeline. “Cassius Emerton had to become a man and take up his father’s responsibilities for the duchy and for his brother at sixteen years of age, with little preparation, no warning, and only lawyers and agents for support. He had no chance to be a boy at all.”
For a moment, Josephine understood the Duke of Ashbourne’s lack of patience with the mischievous sons of Lady Gordenford. At sixteen, he had been running an estate and raising a child rather than playing tricks with seltzer water. Then, her indignance returned.
“Well, brother or father, it is still past time that the duke loosened the apron strings,” Josephine said. “I don’t believe that Mr. Emerton will tolerate much more from his brother and I have no intention of staying away from the man I… I’m destined for. Cassius Emerton will have to accept that, whether he likes it or not.”
“Remember, Josephine, that your well-dressed Benedict is not just the Duke of Ashbourne’s brother but also his heir. The duke wants Benedict to be ready and prepared for the responsibilities of the Ashbourne estate in a way he himself was not. You can’t blame him for wishing Benedict to have a steady, dutiful kind of wife with a perfect reputation. Cassius Emerton is thinking of the duchy.”
“Oh, he’s only heir until Duke Cassius persuades some mousy and unassuming lady to marry him and produce sons, surely. I expect that’s his type. Such considerations need not be an issue for long in my marriage to Benedict Emerton.”
Madeline chuckled and shook her head at this careless confidence from Josephine.
“Really, Josephine, you ought to ask around more about a family you plan to marry into. There is so much you don’t know about them.”
“What do you mean?” inquired Josephine uneasily.
“Well, to begin with, the Duke of Ashbourne does not intend to marry. He actually wants Benedict to remain his heir and forBenedict’s sons to carry on the dukedom after them. Everyone knows it.”
“I thought all noblemen had to marry,” Rose puzzled innocently. “My aunt told me that some are confirmed bachelors who prefer the company of other men, but even they must marry against their inclination. She warned me off Lord Merling last year, if you remember, even though he wears the most divinely tailored clothing and always has fresh flowers in his buttonhole.”
“Oh yes,” Josephine recalled vaguely, not really wanting to be diverted from the subject of the Emerton brothers but also not wishing to slight Rose. “Lord Merling’s buttonholes are undoubtedly the finest in London.”
“Aunt Margaret said he would never put any woman above his friend Lord Perford and that I should find myself very unhappy if I married him,” Rose continued. "Father agreed and I’ve barely thought of him since so it can’t have been true love anyway. Maybe Cassius Emerton is like Lord Merling and Lord Perford?”
Madeline coughed, choking back her laughter at Rose’s incomplete understanding. More sensible and pragmatic, and therefore more often taken into the confidence of older ladies of the ton, her own outlook on the world and its denizens was better informed than Rose’s. Josephine lay somewhere between the two, with greater instinctive intelligence than Rose, but less interest in the practicalities of life than Madeline.
“No, I am quite sure that Cassius Emerton is not like Lord Merling, Rose,” Madeline told her friend with twinkling eyes. “Ihave heard that there are several widowed ladies of the ton who would laugh at this idea even harder than I.”
“What do you mean?” Rose replied, her sky-blue eyes puzzled while Josephine and Madeline shared a glance of mutual comprehension.
“I believe Madeline means that the Duke of Ashbourne likes women well enough but is not looking for a wife and never intends to,” Josephine translated with a rather unhappy smile. “Well, it all seems very unfair to Benedict, I must say. I imagine he has never asked to be heir to the duchy.”
“None of us chooses our families, Josephine, do we?” Madeline returned pointedly. “It’s just how things are. In my view, the Emerton family are all far too complicated and you really would be best served by simply finding a simpler man to fall in love with.”
“Will someone help me twist the swing around?” Melinda called out. “It’s hard to twist it up to the top by myself and I want to spin.”
“You talk as though it’s only like buying a new horse or dog and picking one over another when someone else points out a quirk in its bloodline,” complained Josephine to Madeline, laughing, before she jumped up and called over to Melinda. “I’ll come and help!”
“It’s exactly like that,” Madeline insisted, following Josephine over to the swing and leaning against the tree with folded arms.“Is Benedict Emerton really so special? Could you honestly not find five other equally amiable and handsome gentlemen at any major ball or while walking at busy times in Hyde Park?”
Josephine thought this over silently while she twisted the swing for Melinda. She did like Mr. Emerton for his personality too. It was not quite as straightforward as Madeline thought.
“But if Josephine was destined to marry Benedict Emerton then everyone would be miserable if she chose someone else,” said starry-eyed Rose, having trailed after her friends. “You can’t ignore fate, Madeline, surely. We can’t choose who we fall in love with.”
“Maybe we can’t choose exactly, but we do have some degree of control,” Madeline disagreed. “We should certainly stay away from people and situations that do us no good. You are a darling, Rose, but I do worry for your future with such beliefs.”
As her friends spoke, Josephine released the swing, smiling at Melinda’s breathless laughter as she spun around and around.
“You could probably pick five similar random gentlemen out in the park for me, Madeline,” she answered at last. “But I would doubtless find that they were too messy, clumsy or sweaty. Most men are.”
