Alexander's expression didn't change, but something in his stillness became more pronounced. The very name Coleridge was enough to resurrect every slight, every insult, every carefully documented grievance that had been passed down through the generations like a particularly bitter heirloom.
"Let them be united," the duke continued, his words falling like stones into still water, "that quarrels may at last give way to peace."
Mr. Hedgley bent low over his parchment, quill poised to capture every syllable for posterity. The scratching sound it made seemed unnaturally loud in the hushed chamber.
Alexander's composure finally cracked. A sound escaped him; not quite a laugh, but certainly nothing approaching appropriate deathbed behavior. "Coleridge?" The word emerged like something particularly vile. "Why would you squander your last words upon that wretched brood?"
Those damned Coleridge brothers.The thought burned through his mind like acid. He could picture them perfectly—all four of them, strutting about town like peacocks, their new money practically reeking from their gaudy watch chains. The eldest, always trying to buy his way into White's. The second, who'd had the audacity to outbid him at Tattersall's. The twins, with their vulgar laughter and their counting-house manners, contaminating every respectable gathering they managed to infiltrate.
Cousin Margret gasped. Uncle Bartholomew dropped his watch. Great-Aunt Wilhelmina's expression suggested she was reconsidering the distribution of her own eventual estate.
"Your Grace!" Uncle Bartholomew sputtered. "Your grandfather is..."
"Dying, yes." Alexander's tone was desert-dry. "Which makes his sudden interest in our trade-soaked neighbours all the more bewildering."
The Duke's eyes flashed with something that might have been amusement or might have been fury—with him, one could never quite tell. "Mr. Hedgley," he commanded, ignoring his heir's irreverence with magnificent disdain, "record this exactly as I speak it."
The solicitor dipped his quill with the gravity of a man signing a treaty.
"My heir, and that is Alexander, since his father has died," the duke pronounced with devastating clarity, "shall take to wife Miss Coleridge within one year of my decease, or the Montclaire estate shall pass into trusteeship until such time as the condition is met."
The quill scratched across parchment like fate itself being written.
Alexander stood perfectly still, but inside, his mind reeled with horrified disbelief.Miss Coleridge.He searched his memory and came up startlingly empty. In all his years of carefully catalogued grievances against that family, he couldn't conjure a single image of their sister. The brothers dominated every social gathering like a plague of locusts in expensive tailcoats, but a sister?
She must exist; the old man wouldn't stake the estate on a phantom. But the fact that she'd never registered in his consciousness spoke volumes. Probably kept hidden away, he reasoned, too plain or too simple to parade about. Or worse—exactly like her brothers, all sharp elbows and sharper tongues, calculating the value of every introduction, every dance, every social connection like entries in a ledger.
"You cannot be serious," he said at last, his voice carefully modulated while his thoughts raged.A Coleridge bride. In my home. At my table. In my bed.The very idea made his skin crawl.
"When have I ever been otherwise?" The Duke's breath was coming harder now, each word a victory against his failing body. "The feud dies with me, Alexander. You will see to it."
"By binding myself to some insipid girl, bred in trade and stinking of ledgers and ambition?" The words came out sharper than intended. "No doubt she's been trained from the cradle to calculate dowries and settlements. Probably keeps accounts of eligible bachelors ranked by annual income."
"By doing your duty to this family." The Duke's voice gained strength through sheer force of will. "Miss Coleridge is of age, unwed, and of good reputation. That is all that need concern you."
Good reputation.Alexander nearly snorted. What constituted good reputation in the Coleridge household? The ability to tally accounts without using one's fingers? Not being caught sampling the merchandise? He pictured some creature raised in trade, with grasping hands and calculatingeyes, probably dressed in whatever gaudy fashion her brothers deemed expensive enough to broadcast their ill-gotten wealth.
"Swear it, Your Grace. Here, before witnesses. Swear it now."
The formal address from his grandfather's lips carried weight because it was a reminder that with or without the oath, Alexander would soon hold the title and all its responsibilities.
The two men regarded each other across the expanse of decades of carefully cultivated enmity.
Alexander's jaw clenched so tightly he could hear his teeth grind. Every fiber of his being revolted against the idea. The Coleridge men were everything he despised—coin-heavy merchants playing at being gentlemen, their very existence an insult to centuries of proper breeding. And now he was to take their sister...this Miss Coleridge, to wife? This unknown girl who was doubtless cut from the same coarse cloth?
He thought of their last encounter at the Jennings ball—the eldest Coleridge brother practically inventorying the silver, the younger ones laughing with the subtlety of street vendors. Miss Coleridge, wherever she'd been secreted away, was certainly no different. Probably worse, trained to be cunning where they were merely crude.
"Very well." He inclined his head with the minimum degree required for family respect. "It shall be done."
The words tasted of ashes and betrayal.
The Duke studied him with those penetrating eyes, as if he could read the rebellion already forming in his heir's mind. "You will treat her with the respect due to your duchess."
Respect.The thought was laughable. Respect for a Coleridge?
"Naturally, Grandfather. I shall treat Miss Coleridge exactly as she deserves."
Something that might have been concern flickered across the Duke's face. "Alexander!"
