A Duke's son to the rescue (Regency Romance) (Regency Tales Book 4) (4 page)

Davenport strolled into the dining room whistling to a tune that he’d heard someone sing during the festival. He was surprised to see his father sitting at the head of the table, his leonine head and grey beard giving him the look of an aging but powerful monarch.

“There’s been talk about you,” his father said.

“Talk about me?” Davenport was puzzled. He thought his behaviour generally above reproach; unlike other young men of his age and social status, he didn’t gamble to excess, or drink to the point of drunkenness, and he didn’t trifle with women. He was no saint, but he prided himself on being a gentleman. “What on earth would anyone say? I haven’t even left the grounds all day.”

“So I hear. You were seen in the company of the daughter of one of the gardeners,” the Duke said grimly. “What on earth were you thinking? There’s only one reason for a boy your age to spend time with a girl of her breeding and I thought better of you.”

Davenport flushed. “Sir, you wrong me! I have never insulted Charlotte with advances. She is a virtuous girl and if the truth were born, she has more grace and breeding in her bearing than any of the ladies I’ve met in the drawing rooms of the upper classes. Charlotte is gentle and kind and she is much abused by her father, who is a brute.”

“The manner in which a gardener in my employ disciplines his daughter is none of my affair nor yours. You are the son of a Duke and I expect you to conduct yourself in a fashion which brings credit to your family name. You will not converse with this girl ever again. You will, instead, remember yourself and the class in which you were born. You are young, but not too young to begin thinking of your future as the next Duke of Walsingham Hall. We have been invited to a dinner party at Uptrue Hall which will be attended by a number of suitable young women. You will join your mother and I and you will find a young woman to whom you will pay court. I will not allow a son of mine, the next Duke, to fall into vice and prodigal behaviour with someone of the lower classes. By the end of summer, you will be engaged. Am I quite clear?”

Davenport stared at his father. The Duke was a firm man, perhaps a rigid one, but he had never before exhibited such tyrannical behaviour. He wondered if this was what Charlotte had to deal with, on a more physical level, every day of her life.

“I had hoped to marry for love,” he said finally.

“Love!” The Duke showed his contempt. “People of our class do not marry for love. We marry for our name, our lands, our heritage. We marry to preserve our way of life. If we do not maintain our standards, all of England will suffer the consequences. There will be chaos.”

“People of our class have turned a blind eye to the very chaos that you speak of,” Davenport protested. “Maintaining our way of life means oppressing people like Charlotte because we allow men like her father to treat her basely!”

“You speak of things you know nothing about!”

The Duke got to his feet, an imposing figure in his elegant clothes, perfectly arranged cravat, and regal bearing. “I’ve told your valet to put out your evening clothes. Go upstairs and make yourself ready for tonight. I look forward to meeting the young woman who will bear the next heir to Walsingham Hall.”

It would never occur to Davenport to disobey his father. He was an obedient son in all ways, eager to please his parents. But his feelings for Charlotte, which had started out of appreciation for her company, were turning into something deeper. He was well aware of the differences in their social stations but Charlotte was unlike any other female of his acquaintance. He admired her fortitude; her life was a hard one, but she faced her trials with courage. She was knowledgeable about all the plants on Walsingham Hall; far from the licentiousness implied by his father, the time he had spent with Charlotte that day had been on the grounds, strolling from flower-bed to shrubbery to the maze, where she had been able to identify every plant. He had told her more about the legendary Duke who had been something of an amateur botanist, caring for his land so deeply that he had personally directed the planting, giving the estate grounds their present unique character. Charlotte had been impressed that someone as aristocratic as a duke could be so fascinated by plants that he would devote so much of his life to nurturing them.

There was no conversation in the ducal carriage as they rode to Uptrue Hall. The Duchess looked worriedly from her husband to her son. Davenport wondered what his father had told her, or whether he had bothered to tell her anything at all. This was the kind of marriage that the Duke expected his son to make, a marriage for the sake of an heir, the binding of two noble houses and two ancient names to continue the illustrious line. Davenport wanted more. What he wanted, he realised, with her torn dress and her bare feet, was the lovely, spirited Charlotte, who spoke to his soul.

His father would never understand such a sentiment. Davenport realised for the first time how much his father was shackled by the conventions of his time and his class. For the Duke, the wealthy and wellborn kept to themselves, and there was no mingling between the classes. Certainly nothing intimate would be shared between an aristocrat and a commoner.

The Duke would be appalled by the mere suggestion of such a thing. Tonight, he expected his son to attend a social event, peruse the assembly of eligible young women as if he were choosing from the titles of his father’s library, and begin the selection process that would lead to a future duchess for Walsingham Hall. He was to make his choice based on the woman’s surname, her title, her parentage, her family’s lands, the dowry she would bring to her nuptials, and her abilities to dance, conduct witty repartee, and flirt with innocence rather than intent. She must be blameless, with no whisper of scandal attaching itself to her reputation. She must be wealthy, but also beautiful if at all possible; her family must be above scandal as well. The rules of social engagement were not written anywhere, but everyone who belonged to the upper classes knew them implicitly, and who either obeyed them or suffered the consequences.

Unless, Davenport thought cynically, the family was so powerful, so rich, and so above convention that its members could misbehave with impunity. There were social faux pas which could not be tolerated, of course, and young women before their marriages were expected to be pure and innocent, but as long as its members behaved discreetly after marriage, social convention accepted the double standard which enforced its rules. But if Davenport married a woman beneath his social station, he would be guilty of a social gaffe worse than adultery, gambling debts, or a duel. The boundaries were fiercely guarded. To the Duke, his son’s interest in a gardener’s daughter was a reminder that the boundaries must be guarded at all costs, even if that meant his son’s unhappiness.

Davenport stood in the grand hall of Uptrue Hall, an elegant estate strikingly similar to his own. The walls were lined with the painted portraits of the family’s ancestral heritage: the lords and ladies who had fought with the Duke of Battington, and sided with the Tudors; who’d supported Charles I and then, when he was beheaded, shifted their loyalty to his son through the years of exile. Davenport supposed that the history of England could be recited by the inhabitants of the hall, their frames capturing them forever as a tribute to their class and station.

Why did he feel so out of place? These were his kind of people, his father would have said. Indeed, had often said. Why did his thoughts continually return to the image of a lovely girl with a faded dress and worn-out boots whose smile was richer than an inheritance of jewels and titles and ermine? What was it about Charlotte that had captivated him? Why had she stayed in his mind since childhood when she’d been an earnest little girl with a knowledge of plants? Belladonna. He found himself smiling.

A young lady of marriageable age, with a respected title and no doubt a generous dowry, caught his smile and assumed it was for her. Emboldened by what she took as an invitation, she approached him. “La, Lord Davenport, here you are, standing alone, all by yourself, when there are so many here who would enjoy your company.”

“I beg your pardon—” he stopped himself. Even the apology, merely a social courtesy in this case, conjured the thought of Charlotte. “I am blue-devilled tonight and not fit company for anyone.”

“I cannot believe it,” she exclaimed, tapping his arm lightly with her fan. “You simply need someone to cheer you.”

She was handsome. She was, in the fashion of the day, charming. His father would approve of her as the next duchess of Walsingham Hall. He could not see himself loving her, or any of those like her. She was not Charlotte. It was that simple, and yet that complex. His heart was destined for a gardener’s daughter and that was how matters stood. Did he have the courage to follow the direction of his heart? Would he defy his father, flout convention, and marry her?

If he married her, it would be an end to tailored suits, intricate cravats, elaborately-styled Hessian boots and the trappings of his class. His father would disinherit him. That much, he knew. There was no challenging the Duke’s sense of order. Marriage was for preservation, not passion. And if he were disinherited, where should they live, how should they feed themselves?

Davenport smiled at her. She was very handsome; it was not her fault that her beauty was something that would only appeal to a looking-glass. He wanted more than beauty; Charlotte had beauty and more. She had spirit. “You must meet my brother,” he told the girl. “He is cheerful and a fit companion for a charming young lady such as yourself.”

At first her expression revealed anger, then hurt. She tossed her hair, her elaborate blonde ringlets flouncing across her shoulders. “Perhaps you are correct, Your Lordship,” she said coldly, opening her fan. “One does prefer a companion who is charming. I leave you to your blue devils, sir. May they provide you with sufficient diversion.”

Across the room, he saw his father’s measuring expression. Did the Duke really expect Davenport to leave Uptrue Hall tonight with his engagement settled? Was that not rash? Was marriage truly no more than an exchange of rings and titles? No, he decided. He could not live that way. He had no money of his own, no belongings that had not come to him through his father and yet, after tonight, he was ready to leave all that he knew, if Charlotte would come with him.

“I say, Davenport, haven’t seen you at one of these for an age; where have you been?” The greeting was from a friend of long standing, Edward, Lord Calverton, who had been a student at Oxford with Davenport until he’d been sent down for incurring unpaid gambling debts to other students.

“I’ve been here and there,” Davenport said vaguely.

“Off on the hunt?”

“Not lately, no.”

Lord Calverton laughed. “You have been out of things. I meant the hunt for Lord Anthony’s missing daughter.”

“Missing daughter? I didn’t know...surely they had no children?”

Calverton showed his disbelief. “You must be the only man in Battington who hasn’t heard.”

“Heard what?”

“Turns out that Lord Anthony had a daughter. Legitimate, no less. But his lady wife, while he was away on that excursion to India nineteen years ago, took a disliking to the baby because of the brat’s birthmark. Gave the child away, don’t you know?”

“Gave away her own child?”

“Quite. She told Lord Anthony on her deathbed. Well, what’s a chap to do? Buries the wife then goes off in search of a child who’s been gone for nineteen years. Talk about a quest. All for the sake of a daughter, which is almost unheard of. But it seems her birthmark is some kind of family sign that seems to skip generations and only shows up in the females. Extraordinary, ain’t it? Who’d conceive of such a thing? The whole country is in an uproar.”

“Harder still to conceive of a woman who would cast off her own flesh and blood because of a birthmark.”

Calverton waved the comment away. “I suppose she thought the girl was marred by it and wouldn’t make a fashionable appearance at Court for her coming out when she was of age. Women set a great deal of store by their husband-hunting, you know. You must have noticed the lovely ladies lining up on the other side of the room so that you’d have the opportunity of admiring them.”

“No, I—surely you jest.”

“The son of a duke is bait for the marriage bond, Davenport. Don’t you know that? And the heir of the duke…” Calverton shook his head. “Beyond measure. Not many heirs here tonight, you see. I’m a second son. Not much of a catch.”

“That’s a sad way to think of it.”

“Not really. I’ll marry well enough. Got a title, and a decent inheritance, although nothing like what my brother Charles will bring in the marriage market. I say, if they do manage to find the missing heiress, she’ll find herself positively swamped with suitors. Might give her a try myself, if she’s reasonably pretty, and if that horseshoe mark ain’t too unsightly…”

“What did you say?”

“Horseshoe mark. That’s the birthmark. Personally, if she’s rich enough, I don’t much care what kind of mark she’s got on her neck. Her purse will look pretty enough—what the devil, Davenport, where are you going?”

Davenport was aware of his father’s lowered brows and frown as he bolted for the door. There was no time to waste. “Calverton, please tell my father that I had an urgent errand to run and that I will return to Walsingham Hall later tonight.”

“Tell him yourself, he’s right across the room, and he’s your father…”

But Calverton found himself talking to the empty air. Davenport had gone.