One

Three days after he inherited the title Duke of Tereford, James Cantrell set off to visit the ducal townhouse just off London’s Berkeley Square. He walked from his rooms, as the distance was short and the April day pleasant. He hoped to make this first encounter cordially brief and be off riding before the sunlight faded.

He had just entered the square when a shouted greeting turned his head. Henry Deeping was approaching, an unknown young man beside him.

“Have you met my friend Cantrell?” Henry asked his companion when they reached James. “Sorry—Tereford, I should say. He’s just become a duke. Stephan Kandler, meet the newest peer of the realm as well as the handsomest man in London.”

As they exchanged bows, James silently cursed whatever idiot had saddled him with that label. He’d inherited his powerful frame, black hair, and blue eyes from his father. It was nothing to do with him. “That’s nonsense,” he said.

“Yes, your grace.” Henry’s teasing tone had changed recently. It held the slightest trace of envy.

James had heard it from others since he’d come into his inheritance. His cronies were young men who shared his interest in sport, met while boxing or fencing, on the hunting field, or perhaps clipping a wafer at Manton’s shooting gallery, where Henry Deeping had an uncanny ability. They were generally not plump in the pocket. Some lived on allowances from their fathers and would inherit as James had; others would have a moderate income all their lives. All of them preferred vigorous activity to smoky gaming hells or drunken revels.

They’d been more or less equals. But now circumstances had pulled James away, into the peerage and wealth, and he was feeling the distance. One old man’s death, and his life was changed. Which was particularly hard with Henry. They’d known each since they were uneasy twelve-year-olds arriving at school.

“We’re headed over to Manton’s if you’d care to come,” Henry said. He sounded repentant.

“I can’t just now,” James replied. He didn’t want to mention that he was headed for Tereford House. It was just another measure of the distance from Henry. He saw that Henry noticed the vagueness of his reply.

“Another time perhaps,” said Henry’s companion in a Germanic accent.

James gave a noncommittal reply, wondering where Henry had met the fellow. His friend was considering the diplomatic corps as a means to make his way in the world. Perhaps this Kandler had something to do with that.

They separated. James walked across the square and into the narrow street containing Tereford House.

The massive stone building, of no particular architectural distinction, loomed over the cobbles. Its walls showed signs of neglect, and the windows on the upper floors were all shuttered. There was no funerary hatchment above the door. Owing to the eccentricities of his great uncle, the recently deceased sixth duke, James had never been inside. His every approach had been rebuffed.

He walked up to the door and plied the tarnished knocker. When that brought no response, he rapped on the door with the knob of his cane. He had sent word ahead, of course, and had expected a better reception than this. At last the door opened, and he strolled inside—to be immediately assailed by a wave of stale mustiness. The odor was heavy rather than sharp, but it insinuated itself into the nostrils like an unwanted guest. James suspected that it would swiftly permeate his clothes and hair. His dark brows drew together. The atmosphere in the dim entryway, with closed doors on each side and at the back next to a curving stair, was oppressive. It seemed almost threatening.

One older female servant stood before him. She dropped a curtsy. “Your grace,” she said, as if the phrase was unfamiliar.

“Where is the rest of the staff?” They really ought to have lined up to receive him. He had given them a time for his visit.

“There’s only me. Your grace.”

“What?”

“Keys is there.” She pointed to a small side table. A ring of old-fashioned keys lay on it.

James noticed a small portmanteau sitting at her feet.

She followed his eyes. “I’ll be going then. Your grace.” Before James could reply, she picked up the case and marched through the still open front door.

Her footsteps faded, leaving behind a dismal silence. The smell seemed to crowd closer, pressing on him. The light dimmed briefly as a carriage passed outside. James suppressed a desire to flee. He had a pleasant set of rooms in Hill Street where he had, for some years, been living a life that suited him quite well. He might own this house now, but that didn’t mean he had to live here. Or perhaps he did. A duke had duties. It occurred to him that the servant might have walked off with some valuable items. He shrugged. Her bag had been too small to contain much.

He walked over to the closed door on the right and turned the knob. The door opened a few inches and then hit some sort of obstacle. He pushed harder. It remained stuck. James had to put his shoulder to the panels and shove with the strength developed in Gentleman Jackson’s boxing saloon before it gave way, with a crash of some largish object falling inside. He forced his way through but managed only one step before he was brought up short, his jaw dropping. The chamber—a well-proportioned parlor with high ceilings and elaborate moldings—was stuffed to bursting with a mad jumble of objects. Furniture of varying eras teetered in haphazard stacks—sofas, chairs, tables, cabinets. Paintings and other ornaments were pushed into every available crevice. Folds and swathes of fabric that might have been draperies or bedclothes drooped over the mass, which towered far above his head. There was no room to move. “Good God!” The stale odor was much worse here, and a scurrying sound did not bode well.

James backed out hastily. He thought of the shuttered rooms on the upper floors. Were they all…? But perhaps only this one was a mare’s nest. He walked across the entryway and tried the door on the left. It concealed a larger room in the same wretched condition. His heart, which had not been precisely singing, sank. He’d assumed that his new position would require a good deal of tedious effort, but he hadn’t expected chaos.

The click of footsteps approached from outside. The front door was still open, and now a fashionably dressed young lady walked through it. She was accompanied by a maid and a footman. The latter started to shut the door behind them. “Don’t,” commanded James. The young servant shied like a nervous horse.

“What is that smell?” the lady inquired, putting a gloved hand to her nose.

“What are you doing here?” James asked the bane of his existence.

“You mentioned that you were going to look over the house today.”

“And in what way is this your concern?”

“I was so curious. There are all sorts of rumors about this place. No one has been inside for years.” She went over to one of the parlor doors and peered around it. “Oh!” She crossed to look into the other side. “Good heavens!”

“Indeed.”

“Well, this is going to be a great deal of work.” She smiled. “You won’t like that.”

“You have no idea what I…” James had to stop, because he knew that she had a very good idea.

“I know more about your affairs than you do,” she added.

It was nearly true. Once, it certainly had been. That admission took him back thirteen years to his first meeting with Cecelia Vainsmede. He’d been just fifteen, recently orphaned, and in the midst of a blazing row with his new trustee. Blazing on his side, at any rate. Nigel Vainsmede had been pained and evasive and clearly just wishing he’d go away. They’d fallen into one of their infuriating bouts of pushing in and fending off, insisting and eluding. James had understood by that time that his trustee might agree to a point simply to be rid of him, but he would never carry through with any action. Vainsmede would forget—willfully, it seemed to James. Insultingly.

And then a small blonde girl had marched into her father’s library and ordered them to stop at once. Even at nine years old, Cecilia had been a determined character with a glare far beyond her years. James had been surprised into silence. Vainsmede had actually looked grateful. And on that day they had established the routine that allowed them to function for the next ten years—speaking to each other only through Cecelia. James would approach her with, “Please tell your father.” And she would manage the matter, whatever it was. James didn’t have to plead, which he hated, and Nigel Vainsmede didn’t have to do anything at all, which was his main hope in life as far as James could tell.

James and Cecelia had worked together all through their youth. Cecelia was not a friend, and not family, but some indefinable other sort of close connection. And she did know a great deal about him. More than he knew about her. Although he had observed, along with the rest of the haut ton, that she had grown up to be a very pretty young lady. Today, in a walking dress of sprig muslin and a straw bonnet decorated with matching blue ribbons, she was lithely lovely. Her hair was less golden than it had been at nine but far better cut. She had the face of a renaissance Madonna except for the rather too lush lips. And her luminous blue eyes missed very little, as he had cause to know. Not that any of this was relevant at the moment. “Your father has not been my trustee for three years,” James pointed out.

“And you have done nothing much since then.”

He would have denied it, but what did it matter? Instead he said, “I never could understand why my father appointed your father as my trustee.”

“It was odd,” she agreed.

“They were just barely friends, I would say.”

“Hardly that,” she replied. “Papa was astonished when he heard.”

“As was I.” James remembered the bewildered outrage of his fifteen-year-old self when told that he would be under the thumb of a stranger until he reached the age of twenty-five. “And, begging your pardon, but your father is hardly a pattern card of wisdom.”

“No. He is indolent and self-centered. Almost as much as you are.”

“Why Miss Vainsmede!” He rarely called her that. They had dropped formalities and begun using first names when she was twelve. “I am not the least indolent.”

She hid a smile. “Only if you count various forms of sport. Which I do not. I have thought about the trusteeship, however. From what I’ve learned of your father—I did not know him of course—I think he preferred to be in charge.”

A crack of laughter escaped James. “Preferred! An extreme understatement. He had the soul of an autocrat and the temper of a frustrated tyrant.”

She frowned at him. “Yes. Well. Having heard something of that, I came to the conclusion that your father chose mine because he was confident Papa would do nothing in particular.”

“What?”

“I think that your father disliked the idea of not being…present to oversee your upbringing, and he couldn’t bear the idea of anyone doing anything about that.”

James frowned as he worked through this convoluted sentence.

“And so he chose my father because he was confident Papa wouldn’t…bestir himself and try to make changes in the arrangements.”

Surprise kept him silent for a long moment. “You know, that is the best theory I have heard. It might even be right.”

“You needn’t sound so astonished,” Cecelia replied. “I often have quite good ideas.”

“What a crack-brained notion!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My father’s, not yours.” James shook his head. “You think he drove me nearly to distraction just to fend off change?”

“If he had lived…” she began.

“Oh, that would have been far worse. A never-ending battle of wills.”

“You don’t know that. I was often annoyed with my father when I was younger, but we get along well now.”

“Because he lets you be as scandalous as you please, Cecilia.”

“Oh, nonsense.”

James raised one dark brow.

“I wish I could learn to do that,” exclaimed his pretty visitor. “You are said to have the most killing sneer in the ton, you know.”

He was not going to tell her that he had spent much of a summer before the mirror when he was sixteen perfecting the gesture.

“And it was not scandalous for me to attend one ball without a chaperone. I was surrounded by friends and acquaintances. What could happen to me in such a crowd?” She shook her head. “At any rate, I am quite on the shelf at twenty-two. So it doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t be stupid.” James knew, from the laments of young gentlemen acquaintances, that Cecelia had refused several offers. She was anything but “on the shelf.”

“I am never stupid,” she replied coldly.

He was about to make an acid retort when he recalled that Cecelia was a positive glutton for work. She’d also learned a great deal about estate management and business as her father pushed tasks off on her, his only offspring. She’d come to manage much of Vainsmede’s affairs as well as the trust. Indeed, she’d taken to it as James never had. He thought of the challenge confronting him. Could he cajole her into taking some of it on?

She’d gone to open the door at the rear of the entryway. “There is just barely room to edge along the hall here,” she said. “Why would anyone keep all these newspapers? There must be years of them. Do you suppose the whole house is like this?”

“I have a sinking feeling that it may be worse. The sole servant ran off as if she was conscious of her failure.”

“One servant couldn’t care for such a large house even if it hadn’t been…”

“A rubbish collection? I think Uncle Percival must have actually been mad. People called him eccentric, but this is…” James peered down the cluttered hallway. “No wonder he refused all my visits.”

“Did you try to visit him?” Cecelia asked.

“Of course.”

“Huh.”

“Is that so surprising?” asked James.

“Well, yes, because you don’t care for anyone but yourself.”

“Don’t start up this old refrain.”

“It’s the truth.”

“More a matter of opinion and definition,” James replied.

She waved this aside. “You will have to do better now that you are the head of your family.”

“A meaningless label. I shall have to bring some order.” He grimaced at the stacks of newspapers. “But no more than that.”

“A great deal more,” said Cecelia. “You have a duty…”

“As Uncle Percival did?” James gestured at their surroundings.

“His failure is all the more reason for you to shoulder your responsibilities.”

“I don’t think so.”

Cecelia put her hands on her hips, just as she had done at nine years old. “Under our system the bulk of the money and all of the property in the great families passes to one man, in this case you. You are obliged to manage it for good of the whole.” She suddenly looked doubtful. “If there is any money.”

“There is,” he replied. This had been a continual sore point during the years of the trust. And after, in fact. His father had not left a fortune. “Quite a bit of it, seemingly. I had a visit from a rather sour banker. Uncle Percival was a miser as well as a…” James gestured at the mess. “A connoisseur of detritus. But if you think I will tolerate the whining of indigent relatives, you are deluded.” He had made do when he was far from wealthy. Others could follow suit.

“You must take care of your people.”

She was interrupted by a rustle of newsprint. “I daresay there are rats,” James said.

“Do you think to frighten me? You never could.”

This was true. And he had really tried a few times in his youth.

“I am consumed by morbid curiosity,” Cecelia added as she slipped down the hall. James followed. Her attendants came straggling after, the maid looking uneasy at the thought of rodents.

They found other rooms as jumbled as the first two. Indeed, the muddle seemed to worsen toward the rear of the house. “Is that a spinning wheel?” Cecelia exclaimed at one point. “Why would a duke want such a thing?”

“It appears he was unable to resist acquiring any object that he came across,” replied James.

“But where would he come across a spinning wheel?”

“In a tenant’s cottage?”

“Do you suppose he bought it from them?”

“I have no idea.” James pushed aside a hanging swag of cloth. Dust billowed out and set them all coughing. He stifled a curse.

At last they came into what might have been a library. James thought he could see bookshelves behind the piles of refuse. There was a desk, he realized, with a chair pulled up to it. He hadn’t noticed at first because it was buried under mountains of documents. At one side sat a large wicker basket brimming with correspondence.

Cecelia picked up a sheaf of pages from the desk, glanced over it, and set it down again. She rummaged in the basket. “These are all letters,” she said.

“Wonderful.”

“May I?”

James gestured his permission, and she opened one from the top. “Oh, this is bad. Your cousin Elvira needs help.”

“I have no knowledge of a cousin Elvira.”

“Oh, I suppose she must have been your Uncle Percival’s cousin. She sounds rather desperate.”

“Well, that is the point of a begging letter, is it not? The effect is diminished if one doesn’t sound desperate.”

“Yes, but James…”

“My God, do you suppose they’re all like that?” The basket was as long as his arm and nearly as deep. It was mounded with correspondence.

Cecelia dug deeper. “They all seem to be personal letters. Just thrown in here. I suppose they go back for months.”

“Years,” James guessed. Dust lay over them, as it did everything here.

“You must read them.”

“I don’t think so. For once I approve of Uncle Percival’s methods. I would say throw them in the fire, if lighting a fire in this place wasn’t an act of madness.”

“Have you no family feeling?”

“None. You read them, if you’re so interested.”

She shuffled through the upper layer. “Here’s one from your grandmother.”

“Which one?”

“Lady Wilton.”

“Oh no.”

Cecelia opened the sheet and read. “She seems to have misplaced an earl.”

“What?”

“A long lost heir has gone missing.”

“Who? No, never mind. I don’t care.” The enormity of the task facing him descended on James, looming like the piles of objects leaning over his head. He looked up. One wrong move, and all that would fall about his ears. He wanted none of it.

A flicker of movement diverted him. A rat had emerged from a crevice between a gilded chair leg and a hideous outsized vase. The creature stared at him, insolent, seeming to know that it was well out of reach. “Wonderful,” murmured James.

Cecelia looked up. “What?”

He started to point out the animal, to make her jump, then bit back the words as an idea recurred. He, and her father, had taken advantage of her energetic capabilities over the years. He knew it. He was fairly certain she knew it. Her father had probably never noticed. But Cecelia hadn’t minded. She’d said once that the things she’d learned and done had given her a more interesting life than most young ladies were allowed. Might his current plight not intrigue her? So instead of mentioning the rodent, he offered his most charming smile. “Perhaps you would like to have that basket,” he suggested. “It must be full of compelling stories.”

Her blue eyes glinted as if she understood exactly what he was up to. “No, James. This mare’s nest is all yours. I think, actually, that you deserve it.”

“How can you say so?”

“It is like those old Greek stories, where the thing one tries hardest to avoid fatefully descends.”

“Thing?” said James, gazing at the looming piles of things.

“You loathe organizational tasks. And this one is monumental.”

“You have always been the most annoying girl,” said James.

“Oh, I shall enjoy watching you dig out.” Cecelia turned away. “My curiosity is satisfied. I’ll be on my way.”

“It isn’t like you to avoid work.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Your work. And as you’ve pointed out our…collaboration ended three years ago. We will call this visit a final farewell to those days.”

She edged her way out, leaving James in his wreck of an inheritance. He was conscious of a sharp pang of regret. He put it down to resentment over her refusal to help him.

The Duke Who Loved Me

On sale August 2021