It Had to Be the Duke by Christi Caldwell
Chapter 1
Lydia Brandeis, the Countess of Chombley, had been married thirty-two years.
In those thirty-two years, she’d served as the perfect wife and hostess.
She’d given her husband the requisite heir and a spare; Jonathan and Benedict, two fine men, now busy with their own lives and responsibilities.
Lydia had organized extravagant balls and soirees and adorning the arm of her now-late husband, Lawrence Brandeis, the Earl of Chombley.
She’d planned formal dinner parties to which all of Polite Society had sought an invitation.
There’d been musicales, with flawless performances given by her three daughters.
And summer hunting parties, perfectly executed.
Now… there was nothing.
There was nothing more than the aching heaviness and pain that came with loss.
Silence. There was so much of that, too.
It had been so very quiet for a year now.
A year and a handful of weeks, if one wished to be precise.
Ultimately, however, the world? It moved on from suffering and pain, with only the one closest to it left behind with the misery of…nothingness.
The lords and ladies who’d come ’round to attend the affairs hosted by her and Lawrence? They had since moved on. Almost immediately, really. They’d found new events to attend. Transient friends who’d really just been acquaintances had never been capable of properly mourning his loss as they ought.
Lydia’s children had mourned the passing of their father.
Their daughters had worn black skirts, until they hadn’t.
Their son, Jonathan had remained in London, assuming his responsibilities, getting his affairs in order, before going off again.
But then, that was the way grieving went. Eventually, people picked up the pieces and carried on. As they should. As she’d wished for her children to do.
What remained, however, was a woman alone with memories, and regrets, and… nothingness.
When a woman was young? There were children to care for. And when those children grew up, they became men and women to help navigate the world of Polite Society until they found their own way.
It wasn’t until all those children were grown and gone that one found oneself alone, and then when a woman found herself widowed, the emptiness and loss that echoed in a solitary household were made all the more… acute.
Sprawled on the pink satin sofa in one of her many parlors, Lydia stared over at the wilting roses that filled the urn nearby. Painted upon that porcelain piece was a pair of young lovers. With their hands joined together, the young couple frolicked in the greenest of pastures, their heads angled up toward each other, their faces largely hidden but for the smiles revealed in their profiles.
Resting her cheek upon her palm, Lydia came slowly up and peered at the lady with her big skirts rucked about her knees and the gentleman in pantaloons. Each figure had been perfectly captured in midmotion as they raced through a field of red poppies.
She inched nearer the edge of the sofa to get a better look, her gaze locked in on that couple. She had never frolicked with Lawrence. He’d always been ever so serious; a dear friend whom she’d loved. He’d never resented her for the love she’d had for another…and had been more forgiving than any other husband would have ever been. Nay, they not enjoyed with Lawrence a passionate love. The kind she’d…once known, with another. But she’d cherished the bond they’d formed.
Now she wondered…why hadn’t they frolicked?
There’d been no races through wild fields or pushes upon swings or wild jests shared.
That hadn’t been his way.
Nay, that had been the way of the charming rogues, men like the Duke of Bentley.
She froze, perched at the edge of the sofa.
It had been so many years since she’d thought of him. That is, thought of him, without guilt. It had been the struggle of her life, banishing thoughts of him from her mind and memory.
Geoffrey. Her first love.
A wistful smile hovered on her lips. Geoffrey would have been a frolicker. He’d have been the wild one shucking his shoes and waltzing through the grass as the romantic couple upon the vase did.
Perhaps… that was what loss made a person do, reflect on past regrets, too.
Her smile slipped, and the pain, as fresh as it had been in the gardens when she’d broken it off with him. And as all her muscles seized in an agonizing grip, and her heart twisted, Lydia discovered the hurt of having to give Geoffrey up, lingered still.
She’d never believed she could be happy again after Geoffrey. But in time, she had been. In time, she’d come to love her husband in a different way, and… find happiness again. Afterall, the friendship she’d shared with Lawrence had been far greater than the majority of unions forged by members of the ton.
The door burst open. Startled, Lydia gasped and pitched sideways off the sofa, coming down hard on the floor. She grunted as she landed on her shoulder and hip, pain radiating from where she’d hit.
Frantic cries went up as one.
The questions of her maid, Joanna, and her two dearest friends in the world all rolled together.
“My lady!”
“My goodness, Lydia!” Dorothy, the Baroness DeWitt, cried. “You’ve been hurt.”
The three women formed a circle around her, all staring down.
Althea gave her a disapproving look and grunted. “She’s not one of those doddering sorts.” She tapped the bottom of the decorative cane she was never without, on the hardwood floor. “Whatever are you doing down there?”
“I fell,” Lydia mumbled from where she lay on her side.
“Yes, I see that,” Althea drawled. “Quite the tangle you find yourself in.” In one fluid motion, the viscountess unsheathed the thin sword from that clever cane she’d been carrying about as an accessory since she’d made her Come Out, and pinned the the hem of Lydia’s skirts.
Joanna wrung her hands together, her gaze moving frantically between the quarreling ladies. Yes, for everything there was a Society protocol for, what to do with powerful ladies who showed up and brandished a sword? She managed her first real smile that day.
Dorothy gasped. “You are going to ruin her skirts, Althea.”
“I’d be doing her a favor,” the other woman barked. “Black isn’t a color any lady should be in.”
“Do hush,” Dorothy spoke on a whisper that was decidedly anything but a whisper. “She’s still in mourning.”
Yes. She was still in mourning. As she’d been for all these days, and as she’d remain until she took her last breath. Years earlier, she’d lost Geoffrey, and now, she’d lost one of her best friends.
In the end, it was Joanna who took control. “Ahem, might I help you, my lady?”
Lydia knew the other woman wished only to be helpful. But it had been a deal easier to lie there forgotten while they quarreled about her as if she weren’t present.
All eyes immediately swiveled Lydia’s way once more.
The irony wasn’t lost on Lydia. Here, she’d been lamenting the fact she’d largely been forgotten after her husband’s passing. She’d been wrong. As long as a lady had friendships with women such as the Viscountess Olivers and the Baroness DeWitt, one would never, ever be forgotten.
Edging around Society’s leading matrons, Joanna came forward, offering Lydia a hand.
Lydia made to take the servant’s assistance.
Thump, thump.
The cane hit the floor with two firm, decisive stomps, and her maid instantly drew her fingers back. “I assure you her ladyship is quite capable of getting herself up.” Althea turned her next words on Lydia. “Isn’t that right, dearest?”
Joanna, as loyal as the day was long, looked to Lydia with a desperate but silent plea for help. Alas, devoted as the woman was, Satan himself would have been terrified to gainsay the viscountess’s wishes.
“That will be all, Joanna,” Lydia assured the maid. “If you can see to refreshments for my guests.”
The servant was already mid-curtsy. “Yes, my lady.” And with that, she bolted from the room, leaving behind Lydia and her two oldest and most loyal friends.
The moment she’d gone, both women turned their attention back to Lydia.
“That one is problematic.”
Lydia frowned at the overly critical viscountess. “I like her a good deal. She is loyal and—”
Althea snorted. “Loyal friends do not go about abandoning those in need. Now, go pick yourself up.”
Muttering to herself, Lydia got herself up onto her feet, certainly slower than when she’d been a girl years earlier and the fall having been a good deal harder on her body than in those earlier days. “There, are you happy?” She dropped an overexaggerated curtsy and claimed the seat she’d vacated.
“Not seeing you all sprawled and aged-looking on the floor?” Althea asked, joining Lydia around the George III mahogany side table with Dorothy quick to follow suit. “Yes. Yes, I am. Why, I preferred you when you were… When you were…” She punctuated her points in the air with the bottom of her cane. “Frolicking.”
Frolicking. There was that word again.
“Sprinting about playing games of hide-and-seek at Almack’s when you made your Come Out.”
Not for the first time that day, another long-ago memory slipped in. This time of her debut. She’d been playing children’s games with Althea and Dorothy…when Geoffrey had found her. He’d been searching for her and—
Thump, thump.“Are you listening to me?” Althea demanded.
“Oh, dear,” Dorothy fretted, wringing her hands. “Perhaps she hit her head in the fall? Should we summon a doctor?”
“We should not.” Lydia and Althea spoke in unison.
“It was a minor fall, and I’m more than fine.”
Of course, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d fallen. As a girl and young lady, she’d always been racing and jumping about. Climbing trees. Diving into lakes off of high branches. She’d set aside all those pleasures when she’d married. Her life with Lawrence had been measured and careful. And—
“Oh, dear. She is going to cry again,” Dorothy whispered.
Another one of those inelegant snorts emerged from Althea. “She hasn’t cried.”
Giving her head a toss, Lydia elevated her chin. “She is right—”
“At least not in front of us,” Althea interrupted. “Am I right?”
She was right. Lydia, however, had no intention of saying as much.
“Hmph.” Althea pounded her cane twice more. Thump, thump. “I thought so.”
Just then, a servant came rushing forward with a tray filled with pastries and tea.
“This isn’t a time for tea,” Althea said as Lydia dismissed the servant once more.
“We are English, Althea,” Dorothy murmured as she leaned forward to make the cups. “It is always time for tea.”
As Dorothy busied herself pouring in the way each lady took their tea and passing around the delicate cups, Althea spoke. “Now, we are here on a matter of business.”
“Oh, dear, and here I’d hoped it was just to be a visit from friends,” Lydia said, blowing lightly over the rim of her cup.
“I’d like it nothing better than were it to be a visit, but you, my dear?” Althea gave her head a shake. “You require a serious-business visit.”
With a sigh, Lydia set her teacup back on the plate and returned it to the table. “Very well. Get on with it.”
“It’s your skirts,” Althea said brusquely, bringing a frown to Lydia’s lips. “We are here about your skirts.”
At her side, Dorothy dropped her forehead into her hands.
Lydia bristled. “Whatever is wrong with them?”
“Black,” Althea said flatly. “They are black.”
“Yes, well, that is generally the color a lady wears when she is in mourning.”
“Well, in fairness,” Dorothy piped in, stirring the little spoon in her cup, the silver clinking against the delicate porcelain side, “you weren’t really in mourning, Althea.”
All of Althea’s attention was immediately—and blessedly—diverted to poor Dorothy. “Whyever would I have mourned my husband?” Althea shot back. “My husband was a miserable bounder.”
“My husband… Lawrence was not,” Lydia said softly, and as soon as the words left her, she wished to call them back for the insensitivity of them. “Althea, forgive me. I didn’t mean—”
“What?” her friend cut her off. “To speak the truth? I should be offended if you didn’t. You ladies know better than anyone that I shed no tears when he was gone, and my life? I’ve been quite content.”
But had she been happy?
It was a question she and Dorothy should ask of Althea, and yet, Lydia couldn’t. Not when she knew it would hurt her. She certainly should have asked that of her friend years ago, for she and Althea were the same in so many ways.
Not unlike Lydia’s, Althea’s parents had maneuvered her into an advantageous match, one that had seen her wed to an ancient lord, but had also seen her miserable in the twenty years he’d lived, though well-off with his eventual passing. Unlike Althea, Lydia had found happiness. Oh, her marriage had never been filled with the grand, all-consuming love and passion she’d shared with Geoffrey, but her life with Lawrence had been safe and comfortable. And she’d come to appreciate both as being gifts.
“Either way,” Althea said, bringing down the hammer of her cane once more. Thump, thump.
“You need to find joy again.”
It was a statement easier said than actually lived.
Particularly when one found oneself widowed.
Her gaze slid over to the young lovers frolicking in the greenest pastures. Suspended in time. How very fortunate they’d been. It was too much. She pressed her eyes shut. “I had joy,” she managed to rejoin for the two friends who’d stormed her parlor. Or, at least…content. She’d been content.
“Had,” Althea spat. In one of her customary bright orange turbans, she was as eccentric now as the day they’d met during their debuts before the queen. “You did not die, Lydia,” she said with her usual bluntness. “Your husband did.”
Dorothy gasped. “Althea.” Grabbing a pillow, she hurled it at the other woman, seated like Queen of Sheba upon Lydia’s satin sofa.
The other woman caught the satin missile and tossed it aside. “What? It is true.”
“You still don’t say it.”
Althea’s dark eyebrows pulled. “What do you mean I don’t say it? I just did.”
“No, what I’m saying is that you don’t say it”—Dorothy lowered her voice to a still-outrageously loud whisper—“to her.” The youngest of their trio tipped her head pointedly in Lydia’s direction.
And the sight and familiarity of that friendly bickering between her friends, the same as it had been since they’d been girls, nearly brought Lydia to smile.
No. Lydia hadn’t died. Rather, her husband had.
The pain of that would never, ever go away.
“Now,” Althea said, redirecting the conversation. “We’re discussing you and Chombley. If you’re living in misery because he’d want it, well, then he was no worse than my bastard of a late husband.”
She frowned. “Of course Lawrence would not have—” Lydia pressed her lips together and made herself quit speaking.
It was too late. She’d already stepped into that trap. So. Very. Neatly.
Althea smiled. “Precisely. He would not have wished for you to conduct yourself so. As such…” She glanced to Dorothy.
Dorothy smiled and nodded. That bobbing of her head sent the lone peacock feather she insisted on stuffing into her hair arrangement toppling over her brow. Much the same way it had always done since she’d been a girl of sixteen who’d insisted all respectable ladies must wear feathers.
“Oh, would you quit shaking your head in that manner? You look like a deranged peacock.” Althea snapped. She held a hand out and snapped four fingers against her palm.
Dorothy’s eyes went wide. “Oh, right.” She lifted a finger up in a dawning understanding. “I have it.”
Humming happily to herself, she fetched her reticule from the place beside her and fished around inside the bag.
“Oh, would you hurry?” Althea pressed.
“Here we are.” Dorothy brandished three envelopes and passed one to Althea and one to Lydia.
Turning the envelope over in her hands, Lydia stared on with consternation at the ink-black seal. Two serpents twisted and coiled, forming a heart and feasting upon an apple between them.
Sliding her finger under that outrageously dark and wicked mark, Lydia unfolded the note.
Nay, not a note.
An invitation.
She lifted her head and found both friends staring expectantly back. “What is this?”
“It is an invitation,” Dorothy squealed, clapping excitedly.
“I… Yes, I see that.” Lydia glanced down once again and this time read the entire thing through.
celebramus vitae
Hosted by
Lord Mardel
Sinners Need Attend
Only Sinners
Come One. Come All.
Come.
Friday, 13thApril 1804
Lydia strangled on her amusement. “Come o-one? Come All. C—” Except, she couldn’t even manage to utter the remainder of those words. The over-the-top, outrageously written invitation was alternately horrifying and hilarious for how ridiculous it was.
“Of course, Mowbray’s son, would be the host,” Althea muttered. “As wicked as his father has always been. Throwing a party on the thirteenth of Friday is bad form.”
“I know,” Dorothy whispered, shifting closer. “I said that. Very ominous stuff.”
Lydia couldn’t help it. She dissolved further into a state of hilarity.
Her friends both gave her odd looks. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” And oddly, for the first time in a long time, she was. Perfectly distracted by her friends and this silliest of pages. “I’m just attempting to sort out why you’re focused on the date and not on the fact that—”
“Mowbray’s son overused the word ‘come’?” Althea supplied. “Because it should be entirely obvious by now, with how silly and obsessive all men are with their body parts and using them, that it shouldn’t merit so much as another glance.” She paused. “Now, the date, on the other hand…”
“What of it?” Lydia asked when it became apparent her friend expected those unfinished words to be all that was needed for Lydia to make sense of the matter.
Althea tossed her arms up in exasperation even as, at her side, Dorothy pointed her eyes skyward. Because of Lydia?
“It is superstitious. The thirteenth of Friday,” Althea said in the same manner she would use with a child. “It is a day of darkness and ill-fortune and black magic.”
“They are trying to be too clever, and”—Lydia tossed the invitation down—“wicked, and now it would seem, in their selection of the date, dangerous, too.”
“I don’t disagree,” Althea quickly added. “What I will agree with is you going out of your way to attend.”
Lydia’s jaw slipped, and she attempted to get words out. It took several tries. “Let me see if I understand this correctly. You are thinking this most ridiculous of events, with this even more ludicrous invitation to a wicked ball held on a day purported to be filled with ill-luck, is one I”—nay, that wasn’t right—“we,” she amended, gesturing between the three of them, “should attend?”
There was a brief pause and then nods. “Yes, I think you have the whole of it,” Althea said, lifting her nose a fraction.
Lydia dissolved into another fit of amusement, another round of great, big, gasping, heaving laughs that caused a stitch in her side. Doubling over, she clutched at her waist and collapsed against Dorothy.
“She’s smiling again,” the baroness cried happily and proceeded to clap once more.
“She’s laughing at us, you silly twit.” Thump, thump. Althea glared. “I take offense to your making light of my plans for us, Lydia.”
That immediately cleared up all amusement. Oh, dear. She swiped the floral kerchief Dorothy dangled before her face and brushed away the tears of amusement she’d cried. “You are… serious.”
“Deadly so.”
Lydia glanced down at the invitation upon her table. “I… cannot go to something like this. It’s… It’s…”
“Yes?” both women pressed at the same time, their bodies rolling like a wave toward her.
“It’s ridiculous. I am a widow, and this event”—she motioned once again to the invitation—“is being hosted by a gentleman whose father is our age. A young man we are some twenty years older than.”
“In fairness,” Althea ventured tentatively, “I have it on authority that widows are the ones who tend to pay attendance on these affairs.” The other woman beamed. “As such, we will be in like company.”
“Very well. An old widow, then,” Lydia allowed.
Althea immediately brought up her cane, jabbing it in Lydia’s general direction. “Have a care there. You are, in fact, six months younger than me, and I’m not yet fifty. Old, indeed,” her friend muttered. “Speak for yourself, dear girl.”
Her lips twitched, and she forced them into a line. “My apologies.” Either way, the truth remained that her eyes had begun to develop little wrinkles in their corners, and her breasts weren’t pert, having gone round and heavier with age. “As you have pointed out numerous times, age is just a number.” Though, on occasion, it was also now joints that creaked when walking, announcing a lady like a calling card.
Dorothy inclined her head. “You are forgiven, but only because you are attending.”
And through her amusement this day, the solemn set to her friends’ features registered. Their very serious, very determined facial expressions indicated several things—one, her friends weren’t jesting about any of this, and two, they expected Lydia would join them.
“But—”
“No, buts, Lydia,” Dorothy cut her off. “Come along, Althea.”
She needn’t have bothered with that command. The baroness set down her teacup and stood.
Lydia groaned. “What are you—?”
“I put Dorothy in charge of costumes, so you needn’t worry about that.”
A costume was the least of Lydia’s worries.
“Your ensemble is complete. We will return for you this evening—”
Lydia jumped up. “But…”
Her protestations proved futile.
Her friends were already on a steady march for the door.
When Althea made her grand exit, Dorothy paused long enough to pass a regretful glance over her shoulder. “My apologies,” she whispered loudly.
“Come along,” Althea ordered from the corridor, her voice reaching back into the parlor.
Finding her footing, Lydia raced across the room. Catching the doorjamb, she leaned out. “This is really rather ridiculous, you know.”
Althea didn’t even pause in her forward march. “You’re going, Lydia.”
“I’m not!”
Her friends were being absurd. The idea that she—that they—would attend an affair such as the one in that invitation was utterly preposterous. She had absolutely no intention of attending such an affair. She’d not done so before her husband, and she’d certainly never done anything so scandalous as long as he’d been alive.
And whatever her friends wanted or expected of her, Lydia didn’t had absolutely no intention of going.
Ever.
