Page 25 of Denying the Duke (Lords and Ladies in Love 3)

They had been back in London for two days when the duchess knocked on the study door and requested time to speak with Alex. He gladly pushed aside the correspondence he’d been working on. Until he saw the determined set of her jaw.

His head pounded and his eyes burned from fatigue. He’d awoken halfway through the night in a sweat, his heart racing, and his stomach roiling. Images of battered dead soldiers, their twisted bodies blankly staring at the sky, had still held him in their grip when he’d jumped from his bed as if possessed by snakes. He was in no mood for her antics.

Once his mother sat, he settled back in his seat and regarded her. They’d had only a few conversations since his return. Not that they’d ever had a great deal to say to each other. “What can I assist you with, madam?”

The duchess shifted in her seat and stiffened her back. “You needn’t look so fierce. I am, after all, your mother.”

“Yes. One tends to forget that.”

“You act as though I am your enemy.” She glowered at him, a much more familiar countenance than her manner toward him since he’d returned. “I don’t understand your attitude, Your Grace.”

“Mother. Please. I’ve been Alexander to you all my life. Why has my name changed?”

She looked genuinely confused, which saddened him. “Your name has changed. You are now Bedford.”

“That is the problem. It seems to me you believe all the men in your family are interchangeable. Whoever holds the blasted title—or is heir to it—is worthy of your attention.”

Mother narrowed her eyes. “It is not appropriate for a duke to swear.”

Shaking his head, he stood and walked to the window, clasping his hands behind his back. “One thing confuses me.”

“And what is that?”

Alex turned and leaned against the window frame, crossing his arms. “I understand you never had much use for your second son. Merely the ‘spare.’ What I don’t understand is your lack of grief at the loss of Cyrus.”

“It is not good manners to grieve in public,” she quickly answered. “Are you suggesting I held no love for my son?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “I have no idea what I am suggesting. I have failed to understand you most of my life.”

Whatever she had intended to speak with him on must have been important since she passed commenting on his words. “What I wish to address is the necessity for you to secure an heir as quickly as possible.”

Alex’s eyebrows rose as he returned to his seat. “Indeed?” Now it appeared he was to be pushed from both sides of the aisle. “Anyone in particular you had in mind?” He refused to play her game.

“As a matter of fact, I do. Lady Patience is a lovely woman, and we all thought she would make a perfect duchess—”

“For my brother.”

His mother hesitated. One did not interrupt the duchess. “Yes. Well, he was to be the duke, but now that duty falls to you. You must move forward and make sure the dukedom is secure for the future.”

He tapped the ledger on his desk with his pen. “I intend to secure the future of the dukedom. In my own time. With my own choice for a wife.”

She leaned forward. “Do not be stubborn, Your Grace. We all know you had a tendre for Lady Patience. I imagine what I am suggesting meets with great approval on your part.”

“Mother, that was four years ago. I was a young man and Lady Patience just out of the schoolroom. You, Father, and her parents decided she would make an excellent bride for my brother. As you noted many times in my life, I am not my brother.”

“But you are the duke!” Mother’s face flushed and she almost lost her well-honed restraint. Something Alex had never witnessed.

“I apologize to you for that, but I had no control over the circumstances that thrust me into the role. Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.” He pulled the pile of correspondence toward him in a rather rude dismissal. He would not continue this conversation when it was a question he wrestled with himself.

Once the door closed behind his mother, he pushed back from the desk and strode to the window, restlessness he was not used to swamping him. He stared out as the pale sun highlighted small buds of flowers trying desperately to announce spring.

There was certainly no denying the attraction that still raged between him and Patience when they were together. He wanted her, more than any woman he’d ever known. He’d been half aroused since he first laid eyes on her after learning she was not his brother’s widow. But did he want her for a wife?

Or, better yet, would she want him for a husband, once she realized what a changed man he was? The young Alex who had foolishly dreamed of things beyond his reach was now an embittered former soldier with blood on his hands, wrestling with demons.

In his frustration, he mused whether it would be better to be done with it all, grab Patience, and head for Gretna Green. He could think of one very good reason not to dash off to find her now and propose. Her father and his mother, two people he had no use for, were on a campaign to force his hand. What no one had taken into consideration, as far as he knew, was what Patience had to say about it. Perhaps he should discuss it with her, not their parents.

Unable to concentrate any longer on the correspondence on his desk, he moved to the desk, stacked the pile of letters and invitations into some semblance of order, and left his study. He strode from the house and walked the two blocks to Wilton’s townhouse. The door opened the minute his foot hit the bottom stair. He took the steps two at a time and burst into the entrance hall.