“Speaking of other people who allegedly wound up in the drink, but remain among us,” the dukesaid to Bolt, “I must say I did wonder at the inclusion of Miss Mariana Wylde among the guests, given the rigorous interview process.”
There was a sudden, wary silence and a swift glance exchanged between Bolt and Hardy.
Captain Hardy apparently lost the mute coin toss, so he spoke.
“My wife and Mrs. Durand are kind people possessed of excellent judgment,” Hardy began evenly, “and Miss Wylde was in immediate need of shelter when she came to us as she felt her life was in peril in her own home. They could not find it in their hearts to refuse her. We have so far found her to be a fine and amiable guest. You have my word of honor that our wives and everyone who lives here exercise the utmost care in protecting the privacy of our guests. And should Miss Wylde somehow manage to instigate a duel in the parlor, she’ll be promptly evicted.”
Hardy’s word of honor was worth gold.
But the duke was a little skeptical on one point. “Has anyone ever been evicted?”
“I was,” Captain Hardy said.
“...before we were married,” Captain Hardy expounded, faced with Valkirk’s incredulous silence and single arched brow.
“It’s a long story,” Hardy finally muttered.
The silence stretched.
“Wives,” the duke said, finally. Thoroughly, sardonically amused.
Both Lucien and Captain Hardy offered careful smiles.
As a blockade captain, Hardy had run notorious smugglers to ground. He and his men had set fire to all the boats in a village known to have abetted criminals. He was as ruthless and rigidly disciplined a man as Valkirk had ever met.
And he’d gone and married himself an Achilles’ heel.
Valkirk had been the son of a farmer and was a twenty-year-old soldier when he’d wed the youngest daughter of a viscount who’d been over-blessed with five of them. And while it was generally considered that Valkirk, then James Duncan Blackmore, had married well above his station, she was much later congratulated on her foresight to marry a man clearly destined for greatness. Perhaps she’d known. James hadn’t known. He’d only known that when one began life at the base of a mountain, the only option was to conquer the bloody hell out of the mountain. The safest view, the best air, were at the very top.
And so that’s what he’d done.
He knew a sort of steely, immutable pride that his grandchildren, and all who came after, would be safe from harm or struggle or the sort of upheaval and poverty he’d known as a child. He’d made certain of it. From up there, as a sort of lookout, he could keep all of them safe.
It was why, in large part, the presence of Mariana Wylde, of all people, set his teeth on edge. She, and the young men who congregated in the dressing rooms of opera singers, and those that milledabout them, were shallow and volatile and reckless, an affront to his life’s work, destined for bad ends and, like people who were drowning, they pulled others in with them. She was pretty, he supposed, in an ordinary way. It was hard to imagine a man shooting anyone over her. Reputations like hers rubbed off on others like newsprint.
“The on dit is thatyoumight be looking for a new one,” Lucien said.
“A new wife?” Delacorte perked up.
“There’s always on dit,” Valkirk said, taking pains to sound bored. “This is nothing new.”
There was a short silence.
“But theacceptanceof invitations to dine... that’s alittlenew?” Lucien suggested slyly.
Hardy stared a warning at Lucien.
But Valkirk just shot Lucien a balefully amused glance. “I forgot that at least one of you was a member of White’s.”
Men liked to complain the women were gossips, but men, in his experience, were almost worse. Though he’d found listening to it at White’s had been useful more than once.
Lucien gave a low whistle. “Titled mamas must be all but shot-putting their daughters at you.”
Valkirk handed his empty brandy glass to Hardy, who had gestured questioningly with the decanter in his direction. “It’s really more of an underfoot type of thing. And an every-time-I-turn-around type of thing. And an ‘oh my goodness, I didn’t know you intended to visit theNational Gallery today, Your Grace, have you met my daughter, Prudence?’ type of thing.”
He wasn’t unsympathetic. The mating games of the aristocracy were ridiculous on the surface and serious as a guillotine beneath.
He was a mere generation removed from peasants. He wanted a legacy that would withstand the test of centuries, an edifice of extraordinary wealth and power that could not be broken or breached, built from powerful ancient names entwined and intermarried. So if he married again, he’d marry damn well.
