A Wicked Duke’s Arranged Marriage (Preview)

Prologue

It all started with a death. 

No, that wasn’t quite true. It started, as many things did, with a smile. A smile from across the room, a flutter of eyelashes, and then the eventual heartbreak that seemed to stretch for an eternity. 

The sun shone brightly in the background, an astonishing range of gold, orange, and pale yellow. Without a calendar, anyone would be hard-pressed to know that it was only the very beginning of spring, the flowers already in full bloom and the birds singing gaily beneath all the quiet murmurs that otherwise filled the air. It was beautiful. And it was more damning because of it. 

Henry stood woodenly at the foot of the freshly covered grave; his fingers balled into fists at his sides as he tried to block out the random whisperings that carried to him on the warm spring wind. His nails bit sharply into his palms from how hard they were pressed, forming little crescent-shaped cuts in the thick skin. 

The pain was the only thing that kept him from reacting. 

That and the grief. 

It was a cataclysmic thing inside of him, that grief. It welled beneath the surface of every other emotion, thick and cloying. It clung to the very slope of his broad shoulders, bleeding out of him like an actual physical wound throughout the priest’s words and the many poems and eulogies read in Martha’s honour. 

And there were a great many to be read. After all, why shouldn’t there be? She had been greatly loved. To know her was to love her. To see her was to become infatuated with her. It was a point of fact. One that Henry imagined had always been so. Like the sun setting in the west and rising in the east, Martha commanded love. 

Or had commanded love. 

The past tense was like another blow to his chest as he stood there, his ‘friends’ surrounding him and mourning the loss of her with him.

Somewhere in the background, her mother was sobbing quietly into her handkerchief, her other daughter holding the rapidly ageing woman up, and both no doubt wracked with the loss of Martha so soon after that of their patriarch. 

Henry knew that, as Martha’s husband, he ought to go to them. But he was stuck, his feet adhered to the ground beneath them, his grief a weight on his head that all but pushed him down into that earth and past the dirt pile that he so desperately wanted to shove aside and crawl under. 

Hands patted his back on what felt like an intermittent timetable, every person that did so the very picture of understanding and support. But then they all would be. There wasn’t a person in attendance who wasn’t well versed in appearing just as they ought in society. 

There wasn’t a person in attendance, besides perhaps her mother and sister, who knew the true devastation that Henry had suffered. Or cared beyond what was required of them given his station and title. 

“He hasn’t shed a tear.” 

“I know! How peculiar. I think I saw him smile earlier.” 

“Smile? I didn’t see such a thing! You must be mistaken.” 

“Must be. Who smiles at the funeral of their wife?” 

“Their murdered wife no less.”

“Has anyone heard any more about that yet? I heard he didn’t have an alibi for the night it happened …” 

The words came to him like evil tidings on a breath of wind, winding their way through his psyche with all the other drivel that he had pushed out of it throughout the last week. 

Murdered. 

That word still sounded odd in his head. Like the syllables were all wrong or the conjugation was off. 

Murder wasn’t exactly unheard of. It was London, and the ton was always rife with scandal. But his wife? Martha? Murdered? It didn’t sit right in his head. It didn’t make sense. 

“The papers cleared him,” one of the other voices contradicted, still sounding more than a little skeptical.

“They’d have to though, wouldn’t they? I mean he is the Duke of Wallburshare.”

“Well, sure, but what reason would he have to murder her?!”

No reason. 

Henry could have shouted it at them. 

He’d had no reason. 

He and Martha had never even traded a cross word. Not even in the most stressful of times. He didn’t think that Martha was capable of such a thing. She was – She’d been such an accommodating person. If ever she’d had a temper, he hadn’t seen it. 

“I heard there was another woman.” 

“No!” 

“Well, I heard that she caught him in some more unsavoury dealings.” 

“More unsavoury than an affair?”

“More illegal than an affair, that’s for sure.” 

Henry could have laughed. The bitter irony of it all was that the more they speculated, the further from the truth they all got. 

Slowly, one by one, bodies were filing out of the cemetery, many stopping by to offer words of condolence and empty platitudes that Henry ignored as staunchly as he was the whispers from further back in the crowd. 

He was involved in no illegal dealings. He’d had nothing to do with Martha’s death. 

Even the thought made his stomach turn. 

And made him remember all over again coming home from parliament to find her body stretched across the entryway floor at the base of the stairs, blood pooling around her pale, lifeless form. 

Oh, God. Why her? 

Why had he taken her? Of all people. 

Henry had never sought romance. He’d never thought to find love or marry for anything besides the very basic requirements of his station and title. 

And then she had shown up, flowery and kind, unlike any woman he had ever met before her. 

And now she was dead. 

The words sat like acid inside of him as the crowd thinned out more and more. 

Death was an inevitable. Everyone died. 

His father and mother had died. All of his various aunts and uncles. Martha’s father had died only two years after agreeing to allow Henry to court her. Death happened. It was. 

But it wasn’t supposed to happen to people as young as them. 

It wasn’t supposed to happen to her first. 

Henry had no idea what he was supposed to do now. How he was supposed to make his feet move from her gravesite or where he was supposed to go afterward. Back home? Back where the memories of her filled every room and every detail? 

What was he supposed to do? 

Carry on with his life as if he hadn’t just lost the single most important person in it? 

Return to his duties as a duke? 

His duties could wither and burn for all he cared. His inheritance could be given away. His lands, his money, his titles, all of them meant nothing if he didn’t have Martha to share them with. 

Everything was grey and bleak despite the warm evening. 

Everything was… dead. 

The murmurs died out with each new party’s departure, soon only the sound of the birds and nature itself filling his ears as he remained rooted in place. 

The funeral was concluded. The guests had gone. 

But Henry remained. 

How could he leave her? 

Something stuck in his throat, raw and barbed, like thorns catching at the sensitive skin as he blinked heavily to try and clear his vision.

“Your Grace?” 

Henry jerked, not expecting the voice so close to him – soft and careful as fingers alighted on the sleeve of his jacket. 

Catherine was a small woman, even smaller than her sister had been, and while she had a totally different colouring and facial structure, it was abundantly clear that she and Martha had been sisters. They had the same nose. The same tilt of their eyes and soft, thin lips. There was a delicateness to the women of their family, a beauty that caught one off guard. 

And seeing her so close, standing at the foot of Martha’s grave, made Henry want to crawl inside himself to avoid the reminder that she provided. 

“Henry,” he corrected her belatedly, his voice scratching out of his throat. “There is no one else here but the two of us, Catherine. I am still your brother-in-law.” And he always would be. To have her return to addressing him the way that she had several years before would be like erasing the very few years of love he had been allowed to spend with her sister. 

Catherine smiled, a slow, barely-there curve of her lips as she nodded. 

“The funeral is over, Henry.” Her fingers pressed softly into the sleeve of his jacket. “Everyone has gone home.” 

Henry’s eyes lifted from her to sweep the empty graveyard, already knowing her to be right but still unable to help himself. Only their two carriages were left, although he could see that it was her mother’s waiting, not her husband’s and her own. 

“Don’t allow me to keep you from getting your mother home before the evening chill sets in,” Henry said quickly, avoiding the question in her mahogany eyes. “I would be more than happy to see her home and you back to your own, but–” 

He didn’t have a reason to really give her, his words cutting out as abruptly as he ran out of them. 

Catherine’s fingers tightened on his sleeve. “Oh, Arthur took mother home already,” she assured him quickly. “I decided to take her carriage back. I didn’t want to leave you here on your own …” 

Henry felt a brief stab of guilt. 

Followed by a melancholy thought that that was all he was any longer: on his own. 

“I just wanted to …” Words failed him again, his eyes flitting back to the mound of fresh earth in front of them both as he tried to even rationalize what he wanted. Or rather what he could say aloud. He very much doubted confessing to wanting to crawl inside that coffin with his wife was the sort of thing her also grieving sister would want to hear. 

“It’s only natural for you to grieve,” Catherine assured him gently. “You loved her.” 

There it was. The past tense again in reference to his wife. Like a serrated knife inserted into an already raw wound. 

“She was the love of my life,” Henry agreed heavily. 

And he meant it. 

She was all that he knew of love. She embodied it, even after death. She had taken his from him with her when she left the earth, leaving him a hollow shell of a man in her wake. 

“She would want you to be happy,” Catherine whispered. 

Henry recoiled from the words. 

Happy? 

How could he be happy when his happiness lay six feet beneath him? 

“You know how she felt about grief,” Catherine pressed on. “You remember what she would always say after Papa had died? He is not in the earth; he is not gone. He is the sound of the notes being played on his grand piano; he is in Arthur’s poorly timed jokes and is the whisper on the wind reminding us that he is here.” Catherine recited it by rote, her voice so soft that Henry found himself leaning in. Even if only just to hear his wife’s words repeated again. 

The whisper on the wind … 

Like she had summoned it, a breeze tickled his cheek, his eyes closing as he fought the tears that had been absent all day. 

Without a word, Catherine stepped into him, wrapping her slender arms around his waist and hugging him tight. 

It was inappropriate, given both the setting and their lack of a chaperone. 

But for a moment, Henry didn’t care. 

She was soft, warm, and smelled faintly of patchouli and lavender, just like Martha. And she was a married woman. His sister-in-law. So he embraced her back, allowing his arms to wrap around her and give in to the comfort she was so freely offering him. 

Out of everyone else in the world, only she could know to any extent what he was going through. 

Martha had been her whole life before her marriage, the pair thick as thieves. 

Henry bent his head, closed his eyes, and inhaled as he tried not to wish it was Martha in his arms instead of Catherine. As he tried not to imagine their places traded. 

“‘What is life without laughter’?” Catherine quoted her sister again, driving that knife even deeper into Henry’s heart. 

His ragged chuckle was anything but amused. 

What was life without her? 

“Martha would want to know that you were moving on,” Catherine whispered, her words hot against his chest even through the layers of fabric he wore. Her hands shifted, her palms flattening out against the small of his back as she spread her fingers as wide as they would go. “She would want to know that you were taken care of …”

Henry couldn’t argue with her. He knew she spoke the truth. 

But he didn’t quite grasp what she was doing. 

She stepped in even closer to him, even embracing as they were. A half-shuffle forward until he could feel every bit of her pressing into his front, her slender frame fitted to his in a way that was no longer just breaching protocol but entirely doing away with it. 

And he froze. 

“Catherine?” 

Her hands slid slowly up his back, her face lifting as her dark eyes flashed up at him. 

“I could be your wife, Henry,” she whispered fervently. “I could take care of you. I could do that for her. We could do that for her. To honour her memory, to let her know that you were going to be fine.” She pressed her chest into his until he could feel the rapid beating of her heart through both their clothes. “You could marry me.” 

Her words were like pointed spikes driven into his spine, forcing him to let go of her and step back so abruptly that she teetered on the verge of falling over. 

But he didn’t dare reach out to steady her. 

Instead, he stared at her as if he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing. 

“You are married already, Catherine.” The words were the only ones he could think of to answer her. 

Everything else was too obscene. 

She couldn’t possibly have just been suggesting what he thought she was …

She was clearly driven by grief just as much as he, though hers had taken an odd, twisted turn that he didn’t think he could stomach. 

“Henry–” 

“You had better see yourself to your carriage,” Henry cut her off in an abrasive monotone. “I need to be returning home.” 

Despite how much he didn’t wish to. 

Anything was better than standing in that space with Catherine for longer or allowing her grief to give voice to any other insane suggestions. 

He strode away from her without waiting for a reply, heading for his carriage with the full intent of just sitting in it until her own had pulled off. 

And after that … he would return home. To the empty mausoleum that his manor had now become. He would return home and sit in solitude. He would forget that Catherine had ever said such a thing as she had. 

After all, he had no use of those mortal pleasures any longer. He would never be with another woman. Never love another woman. He would live out whatever time he had left and … 

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? 

And what?

 

Chapter One

House, rent, and taxes for the first quarter… Housekeeping account from the last page … Price of seed exceeded that of the last quarter by a margin of–

The words went on and on, blurring together as the scratch of the quill filled the otherwise quiet study. One ledger after another was entered and copied, expense reports sat off to the side, and correspondence was sorted accordingly. It was a never-ending, dull monotony. But one that Henry had been prepared for his entire life. 

When his father had been the man behind the desk, drumming up all the figures and reports, Henry had thought it to be a grand thing. He had imagined the intelligence it must take and the power his father held. 

Only now, doing it himself, did he realize just how tedious it really was. 

More so, very likely, because, unlike his father, he didn’t ride out to all of his tenants’ houses on a schedule, checking in on them and engaging himself in the day-to-day business of it all. 

His father had known the name of every tenant he had. He had known their jobs and the integral parts they played in the community. He had known their family’s names when someone was sick, what to send … And Henry pushed papers. 

He sighed, running his hand down the front of his face as he pulled yet another letter over to him, scanning the brief correspondence and the facts and figures included. 

The cost of feeding a family of three was becoming a problem for many of his tenants with the rise in poultry and produce prices. Perhaps that was something he could look further into. An apology of sorts for his seeming indifference. 

Or maybe it was too far-reaching. 

Henry stared down at the ledgers, willing himself to care more and break out of that rut he had found himself stuck in for the last three years. Ever since Martha– 

No. 

His knuckles blanched white against the pen that he held, his heart stuttering in his chest at the mere thought of his late wife’s name. 

Three years. 

How had they passed so quickly? 

That cavern of numbness in his chest seemed to expand as his vision seemed to grow sharper, the quiet of the room overtaking all else and–

Laughter? 

From outside the closed study door, the faint sounds of children laughing carried through everything else, the innocent joy distracting Henry from his melancholy thoughts. 

He rearranged the work on his desk quickly, standing and moving from behind the desk to the doorway in a matter of a few strides.

He wasn’t expecting company. He could think of very little reason for laughter in his home. It wasn’t a regular occurrence – and children? That was an even rarer one. 

As he strode from the study into the hall, all his questions were answered, though, the concern falling off of his face, replaced with a smile as he caught sight of the family that Harbuttle was greeting in the foyer. 

Three children between the ages of what looked like two and seven swarmed the three adults who stood there, the elegant woman standing just a few paces back looking as amused as she did frustrated as she cradled the smallest of them all, a babe, in her arms. And bending and trying to catch two of said three children able to walk themselves was a stately looking man, his beard close-cropped and his clothing as finely cut and tailored as Henry’s own. 

“What have you let into my home, Harbuttle?” Henry jokingly demanded of his butler as he approached, his lips stretching into a rare grin at the delighted squeals of the children upon the sound of it. “What ruffians are these?!” 

“We aren’t ruffians!” The oldest, a boy with shocking blond hair most similar to his mama and bright green eyes, cried out. “It’s us, Uncle Henry! Don’t you recognize us?” 

“Us?” Henry parroted, winking at the father as he straightened with a weary sigh. “Is that capitalized, as in the royal We? I was unaware I was to be hosting such high royalty this evening! Pray tell, of whom do I have the honour of addressing?” 

“Us,” the second oldest giggled, her brown hair so much more similar to her father bouncing from all the curls put into it as she hopped and skipped her way over to Henry’s knees. “Peregrine, Lucy, Thomas, and Irina, Uncle Henry!” 

Henry smiled fondly down at the little girl as he ruffled her hair, his eyes moving warmly over the lot of them despite the stress such an expression put on his face due to the irregularity of its use. “Peregrine, Lucy, Thomas, and Irina? Why, that cannot be! Those are my godchildren! And last I saw of those scoundrels, they were barely higher than my knee!” 

“You just saw us!” Thomas argued, his voice still raspy with the lisp of toddlerhood as he put his hands on his hips and glared Henry down. 

“Now, now,” their father finally intervened, a twinkle in his green eyes as he looked over his brood. “You’ll have to forgive His Grace; he is getting on in years, you see. He must not remember that we called on him only a fortnight ago!” 

“Simon!” his wife hissed despite the giggle that followed it.

“You should pay better heed to our dear Lady Fethmire, Lord Fethmire.” Henry chuckled, stepping forward to kiss her cheek as Simon made a disparaging noise from beside them. “She, at least, remembers her manners.”

“Only on account of you feathering her with so much praise and compliments,” Simon muttered, nudging Henry with his shoulder as Henry looked down with another smile at the babe in Lisbet’s arms. 

Four children. 

There had been a time that he would have laughed at the very idea of Simon, Earl of Fethmire and one of London’s most notorious rakes, ever even settling down. But to be so happily married as well as blessed with four children like he had been? It was as near to a miracle as anything that Henry had ever seen. 

“To tell the truth is hardly flattery, old friend,” Henry answered easily, bending and picking Lucy up to settle on his hips as she reached up with both hands. “Now, tell me, what prompted this visit here?” 

The two old friends shared a fond look, Simon leaning in to put his arm around his wife as he shrugged. “It is simply us calling on a friend,” he answered with a laugh. “We are in the country; where else would we go? You know as well as I that my country manor will unlikely be as well-stocked as yours so soon upon arrival. And I fancy a good dinner and a nice glass of port.” 

“Simon!” Lisbet chastised again, rolling her eyes. “What he means, dear Henry, is that he missed you so terribly that he made every excuse to leave town to come and see you here.” 

“And to climb trees!” Peregrine added with an excited grin. 

“And go on walks!” 

“And all of the other things that we cannot do in town quite so easily, yes.” Lisbet laughed, smiling happily along with her children. 

“I knew it must be such a reason,” Henry confided in a faux whisper to Lucy on his hip. “As if your father would ever run out of port!” 

They all laughed at that, Henry feeling something within him unfurl at that first breath of warmth in the manor in so long. Something about the presence of children dared not let even this old, draughty mausoleum be depressing in their company. 

“Come inside, I’ve no doubt you’ve driven all the way here from London. Dinner is no doubt close to being served, and I’ll see what I can do as far as some prior refreshments are concerned. Lisbet, if you’d like, Simon and I can take the children so that you can freshen up after your journey.” 

Henry’s manners slid seamlessly into place like an old familiar, if rarely worn coat, Lisbet’s answering smile all the thanks he needed. 

“You’re a godsend, Henry,” she murmured emphatically as she all but foisted her youngest off onto her husband and hurried to do just as he had suggested. 

Simon made all the appropriate grunts and groans to make it seem like he was being inconvenienced, but Henry didn’t miss the loving way he stared after his wife as she left. Or the smile he continued to wear as the two of them sojourned into the parlour with the lot of rascals he had produced either. 

There was something that inspired warmth and happiness just by their arrival, echoes of a long-distant past and something murkier … the promise of something that niggled in the back of Henry’s head as he allowed himself to rest briefly from his grief in their company.

Maybe it was just rest itself; Lord knew Henry got little of it these days. 

***

It was several hours later, dinner finished, and a handful of minutes after Lisbet wrestled the children out of the sitting room to herd them up for bedtime before Henry and Simon were given an opportunity in which to catch up beyond the odd gossip and child-friendly tale. 

The fire roared in the hearth as Henry poured them a glass of port each, his face sore from all the smiling and laughter the children had coaxed out of him. 

Simon sat in what he had years ago dubbed his ‘favourite’ armchair, his green eyes knowing as he watched his friend slowly settle in the absence of the children. The smile on his face gradually slid off, but the frown lines that had been there when they arrived had not quite reappeared just yet. 

“You haven’t told me anything interesting about things here,” Simon challenged as Henry handed him his glass and slid into the chair across from him. 

“There’s not much of interest to share,” Henry answered honestly, shrugging off the inquiry. 

Simon snorted. “I do keep telling you to join us for a Season in London. Lisbet knows–” 

“A great many eligible ladies,” Henry cut his friend off dryly, the lack of interest in his voice bordering on sharp. “So you’ve said. For more than a year now.” 

A silence fell between them. Tension reigned along with it, though not with any anger or anything stronger than a mild frustration. It was an old argument. One that Henry had expertly shot down time and time again since the first it had been broached. 

“You wanted a large family at one point, Henry,” Simon reminded him gently. No urgency marked his words, just a quiet concern that almost made them harder to hear. 

Henry grimaced. 

After growing up an only child, he had always dreamed of populating this house with a multitude of children. But even that thought was tinged with the horror of what had happened here. With the brown-eyed children he had come to expect, that would now never be. 

“Simon,” he warned, taking a large draught of his drink as he stared into the fire. 

“Unless you mean to let your name fully die out and your title pass to some far-distant relative that has never so much as stepped foot in these halls,” Simon spoke blithely, but there was a passion to his words that spoke volumes about his relationship with Henry. “We know how you feel about finding another wife, Henry. No one is expecting you to replace Martha. God, I couldn’t imagine how you even could. But to remain here? On your own? It has already been three years, and every passing year you become more and more of a recluse. Where does that lead?” 

Henry’s fingers tightened around his glass, his stare hardening as he refused to look at Simon. 

They were good points. 

They were points he had no interest in hearing. 

But still … That niggling in the back of his mind that had persisted ever since he had greeted Simon’s children in the hall earlier whispered, stretching and growing until he could no longer fully ignore it. 

“I am not saying yes,” Henry bit out finally, slumping in his chair as he finished the rest of his port in one large drink. “I am only saying that I will, maybe, consider it. Perhaps an arranged marriage …”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Simon agreed readily, skipping right past the first half of Henry’s statement and catching onto the only part he cared for. “There are a good many eligible ladies–” 

“In London.” Henry chuckled dryly. “Yes. You’ve said. But I have no interest in leaving here to go and court any of them. I have no interest in a member of the ton expecting romance and excitement.” 

Simon paused, his brows furrowing as he considered Henry’s words. 

“Then maybe one of the lords here?” Simon suggested, his tone cautious. “I know there are none so great of title to match your own–” 

“That matters little.” Henry shrugged as he stood, crossing the room to refill his already empty glass. “A woman of lower title will expect less. Especially if she is inheriting all this …” Henry gestured emptily to the house around him. It meant little to him. A woman who wasn’t expecting love, one who didn’t want it, sounded like a much easier prospect to swallow. 

“I could have Lisbet ask around,” Simon broached, clearly unwilling to let the topic die out or to allow Henry to find a way to talk himself out of it before it could even begin. 

He’d consider it, Henry had said. But, standing there, pouring his glass, he knew that to admit that much must mean that he had every intention of doing so. The laughter from earlier that evening … the breath of life that Simon’s children brought with them every time they came … He couldn’t be happy, not really and truly, he knew that. 

But to have some vestige of it? 

“I will write to the lords of the area,” Henry muttered, “enquiring after their eligible daughters.” 

He pretended not to notice Simon’s victorious smirk almost as strongly as he pretended not to feel that tug in his chest, his grief pulling on his guilt as he added more port than necessary to his glass. 

He knew what Simon thought he was accomplishing. And he didn’t have the heart to tell him that no woman, no matter how well-suited she might be, stood a chance of coaxing Henry from his confirmed bachelorhood. He would marry her, certainly. She would provide him with heirs … and in return, he would provide her with more than she could have ever asked for. Comfort, wealth, station …

And that would just have to be enough.