Least Likely to Marry a Duke (Liberated Ladies)

Chapter One

Great Staning, Dorset—May 1st, 1814

William Xavier Cosmo de Whitham Calthorpe, Fourth Duke of Aylsham—William to his recently deceased grandfather, Will in his own head and Your Grace to the rest of the world—strode up the gentle slope of the far boundary of his new home and relaxed into the calming certainty that all was as it should be.

There was the slight matter of the turmoil he had left behind in the house, but he would do battle with that later, when he returned for breakfast. Patience and the application of benevolent discipline was all that was required. A lot of patience.

Now he was doing what any responsible landowner did first thing in the morning—he was walking his estate, learning its strengths and weaknesses and needs so that he could be a good landlord. He was the Duke now and he knew his duty, whether it was to the undisciplined brood of half-siblings who were currently making domestic life hideous or the hundreds of tenants and the numerous estates that were now his responsibility.

Oulton Castle, twenty miles away, was the true seat of the Dukes of Aylsham, but although, naturally, it was in a state of perfect repair and management, it was completely unsuitable for the large and lively family he had just acquired. This manor, Stane Hall, had been in the hands of excellent tenants for years, but with its improved drainage, its unoccupied Dower House and its complete absence of lethal moat, towering medieval walls and displays of ancient weaponry it was a far safer home for now. He could only be thankful that the tenant had been ready to retire to Worthing and had needed no persuasion to leave.

Will pushed thoughts of problems away to focus on what he was doing. This was the seventh day he had been in residence and the first morning he had been able to spare to inspect the land. Ahead must be the northernmost point of the boundary.

He checked the map he had folded into his pocket. Sure enough, the six low irregular bumps that lay before him like a string of half-buried beads were shown with stylised hatching and labelled ‘Ancient Tumuli (Druidic).’ The low morning sun cast long shadows from their bases and the boundary line was shown on the map as running along the crest of the chain. There was no sign of a fence.

That was not good. Fences were of the utmost importance to a perfectly managed estate and he intended Stane Hall to be perfect. Dukes did not accept second-best, either in their staff, their surroundings or themselves. That had been one of the first lessons his grandfather had taught him when the third Duke had plucked Will out of the miserable chaos that life had become with his father, the now deceased and always erratic George, Marquess of Bromhill.

The old Duke’s first attempts at training the perfect heir had all gone for nothing the moment his son, the newly widowed George, set eyes on the lovely Miss Claudia Edwards, writer and passionate educational theorist. A life made notorious by the couple’s eccentricity had ended with the Marquess’s plunge to his death from a rooftop, where he had been putting into practice the theory that a gentleman should be able to perform any task he might ask of others, including manual labour.

Three months later Will was still struggling to feel anything but deep irritation that his father, whom he had hardly known, had failed to grasp the simple fact that he had an obligation to provide employment for as many local people as possible, not replace his own roof tiles at the expense of a skilled craftsman. Will rather suspected that the realisation that he could now hand the title safely to his grandson had enabled the old Duke to finally give up the fight against a debilitating heart condition.

The loss of his grandfather was one for which he was not yet ready to forgive his father. Will had been Marquess of Bromhill for only five weeks when he found himself Duke of Aylsham. That was only eleven—no, twelve weeks ago, he corrected himself. Three months and the pain inside for the grandfather he had lived with for fourteen years had not subsided. But while dukes might observe all the outward shows of mourning, they did not speak of loss and loneliness and certainly not of their fear of finding themselves inadequate to the role they had to fill, Will told himself. He wondered if the old man had felt like this when he had inherited the title. Grandfather would never have admitted it, he thought ruefully.

Will had absorbed all his predecessor’s lessons and he intended to be every inch as perfect a nobleman as the third Duke. That would be easier with the right wife at his side, he knew. The old man had been firm on the importance of not marrying an unsuitable woman and that rule was underlined in Will’s mental list of priorities, as if his father’s example was not warning enough.

Suitable meant well bred, handsome, fertile and brought up to the highest standards of deportment. A pleasant disposition, an adequate level of education and reasonable intelligence were, of course, desirable. Unconventional ideas and eccentricity were impossible, as demonstrated by his stepmother, who, despite perfectly understandable displays of grief for her recent loss, absolutely refused to observe any of the mourning customs suitable to her sex and station in life.

Will brought his mind back from the problem of his stepmother and the prospect of the Marriage Mart—which could not be contemplated for the next forty weeks of mourning, unfortunately—and reapplied it to the matter of boundary fences. He could have brought his estate manager with him on this walk, but he preferred to make his own judgements first, not allow his staff to gloss over shortcomings or try to distract him from problems.

Brooding unproductively on the past had brought him to the foot of the largest tumulus. Naturally, he had come out dressed appropriately for the rigours of the countryside, and well broken-in boots and his second-oldest pair of breeches were entirely suitable for scrambling up hillocks.

His boots slid on the rabbit-cropped grass as he reached the top, turning as he climbed to face back the way he had come. From here the view over his park was a fine one with the distant glint of water from the lake, a group of grazing fallow deer and mature trees in picturesque coppices. The warming air brought green scents, a hint of hedgerow blossoms, the rumour of the dung hill awaiting spreading in a nearby field.

Was the house visible from here? He shifted back a step to change the angle and the ground vanished from beneath him, pitching him down into the mound in a shower of earth and stones.

Will landed with a painful thud on his tail bone. Dirt and pebbles rained down on his bare head and his low-crowned beaver hat rolled away over beaten earth to the knees of the young woman crouched in front of him. The young woman with a loose plait of rich toffee-coloured hair over one shoulder, wide brown eyes—and a human skull clutched to her midriff. At which point something bit him sharply on the left buttock.

* * *

There was very little warning, only a long shadow falling across her as a body crashed down into her excavation slicing into the mound. Verity lunged forward, grabbed at the skull and rocked back on her heels as the man landed in front of her with a grunt, one short, sharp Anglo-Saxon expletive and a loud rattle of stones.

Silence. It was neither a thunderbolt nor a fallen angel facing her, either of which might have been easier to deal with. The dust settled, leaving her staring at a fair-haired man, blue eyes narrowed against the light, mouth set with either discomfort or fury. Very likely both. He was dressed in expensive, simple and utterly appropriate country clothing, now filthy.

Utterly appropriate. I know who you are. Oh, no...

His handsome face contorted in a wince of pain and she realised why. As social disasters went, this ranked high.

‘Sir, I fear you may be sitting on a tooth.’

Not the correct form of address, but as we have not been introduced...

Those blue eyes narrowed a little further as he shifted on to his right hip, reached underneath his coat-tails and produced a human jawbone. ‘A tooth? Singular?’ he enquired. Then his gaze shifted to what she was cradling against her bosom. ‘Madam, you appear to be holding a skull. A human skull.’