Kasey Michaels - How to Tempt a Duke

“You do realize, Charlie, that I have no more idea of what I’m supposed to do, or say, to any of these people than I do about how to handle Nicole and Lydia? I’m only a soldier.”

“And as your troops looked to you to lead them, looked to you for strength and resolve and direction, believing you would take care of them, not betray them or put them in unnecessary danger, so do the laborers on your estate. Care for them, show kindness to them even as you lead them, and they will give you their loyalty.”

“You make it all sound so simple, Charlie. Even as we both know it isn’t all quite that easy.”

The footman he now knew as Billy handed him his gloves and riding crop, and he and Charlotte headed down the wide steps to where more servants held the reins of their mounts.

“I don’t see a mount for one of the grooms.”

Charlotte looked at him askance. “You believe we need a chaperone, Your Grace? It’s broad daylight, and we’re going to the sawmill. I doubt we could get into much mischief between here and there.”

“Never mind,” Rafe said tightly, feeling heat climbing the back of his neck. “Just go get on the damn horse.”

Charlotte waited until she’d been boosted into the sidesaddle and they had turned the horses down the drive before saying, “I’ve just thought of something that might help you during this first meeting with your tenants. Do you remember what we were taught as children to do if confronted by a wildly barking dog, Rafe?”

“Yes, I remember. Stand your ground, never show fear.” Rafe smiled. “So my people are to be compared with angry canines?”

She wrinkled her nose, looking rather adorable, not that he wanted to notice; he was still faintly angry with her about the way she’d teased him when he mentioned a chaperone. “I suppose that didn’t come out quite right, did it? But the advice is sound. Really, Rafe, you have to face it sooner or later. You’re the rightful Duke of Ashurst.”

“And I only climbed over three bodies to get here,” he said, privately shocked to hear himself say the words. Was that how he really felt? Like an interloper? A ghoul come to dance on the graves of his uncle and cousins?

They rode along in silence for a few minutes more before turning onto a rutted roadway lined by dense undergrowth and trees that began only a few yards from them on either side.

Rafe felt Charlotte’s gaze on him every few moments, until she finally said, “You know, there are no bodies, Rafe. They were never recovered. Emmaline held a memorial service in the estate chapel once all hope was gone, but there was…there was nothing to inter in the mausoleum. There are only brass plaques in front of where their resting places should be. Emmaline did her best.”

“The letter she had Phineas carry to me spoke of a new yacht, and a storm. I should have realized there was a possibility no bodies were ever found.”

“It was all an avoidable accident, I’m sad to tell you. The crew wished to turn about when the distant sky turned ominous, but either your cousins or your uncle overruled the captain. The single man to survive long enough to be plucked from the waters by a passing ship also mentioned large quantities of wine and a few women aboard. Not ladies, Rafe. Women. You’ll pardon my frankness, but George was always a loose screw. I can only wonder why the duke agreed to the excursion.”

“You probably have no further to look than the few loose women,” Rafe said as he thought about his uncle, who had always had an appetite for female flesh, the less respectable the better. An appetite he already knew his cousins had shared. “That had to be embarrassing for Emmaline to hear. And for you to have to tell me.”

Charlotte shrugged her shoulders, her air of unconcern clearly forced. She obviously was only telling him what she felt he needed to know. “I don’t think about it, not really. Or of them. They’re dead now, so what’s the point?”

“True enough. We’re probably lucky to have any information at all, good or bad. I didn’t know one of the crew survived.”

“Not a member of the crew, Rafe. One Mr. Hugh Hobart. It was he who wrote to Emmaline about the last moments before the yacht sank. According to Mr. Hobart, George and Harold were belowdecks with their…um, their companions, all of them quite seasick, when the rogue wave struck, overturning the vessel. Your uncle and Mr. Hobart were still on deck, keeping an anxious eye on the coastline as the yacht belatedly raced toward the port.”

“Good God. They must have been terrified. We encountered a Channel storm on our way here. Our ship was a captured Spanish galleon, a formidable thing, and it was tossed about like a cork. I can’t imagine what an angry Channel could do to a small yacht.”

“Hence your friend Fitz’s haste to disembark. Yes, I remember. The last thing Mr. Hobart wrote he remembers before he came to himself in the small boat they were towing is feeling the lurch of the yacht, and seeing the boom swing around to catch your uncle full in the chest and head, dealing him what was certainly a mortal blow. I’m sorry, Rafe.”

“Yes, so am I,” he said as Charlotte turned her mount onto the even narrower roadway he knew led to the lumber mill. Ashurst Hall was situated near enough the Sussex Weald to make forestry a lucrative part of the estate activities, seedlings planted wherever mature trees were harvested. Rafe could remember hearing his uncle lecture to George that to cut once is greedy and shortsighted, that a penny sown back in the earth for every pound that is reaped is the way to true wealth. The late duke was a hard man, but he’d been a fine steward of his lands.

“Mr. Hobart was invited to attend the memorial, but he was forced to decline, as he’d yet to recover from his own injuries. Emmaline truly wished to meet him, and learn more about her family’s last hours.”

“I suppose I should speak to the gentleman myself,” Rafe said, watching as men began running from seemingly everywhere to line up alongside the roadway. “He was, I’m assuming, a friend of George’s?”

“I don’t know, you’d have to ask him. I’d never heard the name until his letter arrived and Emmaline shared it with me. Emmaline was equally unaware of the man, but that meant nothing, as your cousins had a large acquaintance. Ah, and here is Mr. Cummings now,” she said as a horse and rider approached along the lane. “You don’t know him, as your uncle took him on after Mr. Willard left for Hampshire to spend his declining years with his grown daughter, so don’t worry that you don’t recognize him. Still, you will address him as John.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rafe said facetiously. “Here, now, I’ve just had a thought. Wouldn’t it simply be easier for me to turn him off and hire you to run both Ashurst Hall and the rest of my life?”

He thought he saw a quick flicker of something unreadable in Charlotte’s soft brown eyes. Anger? No. And not quite hurt, either. Something else. But what? Guilt? No, it couldn’t be.

“I’m only trying to help, Rafe,” she said quietly.

“Yes, Charlie, I know. Please forgive me,” he said, reaching out a hand to touch hers as they held the reins. “I’d be lost without you and I know it.”

Her smile didn’t seem to quite reach her lovely brown eyes. “Oh, you’ll not need me for long. I have every confidence in your ability to be a fine duke. Remember, Rafe, that some are born to greatness, some achieve greatness, and some—”

“And some have greatness thrust upon them. Yes, Charlie, I remember my Shakespeare, having studied it along with George and Harold while living here on sufferance. But I was not born to greatness, have achieved nothing remotely great, and I have had a title thrust upon me through no effort of my own.”