It Had to Be the Duke by Christi Caldwell
Chapter 2
When Geoffrey, the Duke of Bentley, had been younger, he’d attended all manner of scandalous affairs.
In fact, the more wicked, the better.
No sight had been too much.
But, in that moment, as he stood at the entryway to the Marquess of Mardel’s ballroom, taking in the outrageous tableau of couples in the throes of lovemaking, some with multiple partners whom they freely traded among them, there was just one thought that stood out above all the rest.
By God, he was too old for this.
“I cannot believe you’ve dragged us here,” Geoffrey muttered, flanked on each side by his lifelong friends, the Duke of Mowbray and Baron Davenport. The three men took in the ballroom that had been converted into a den of sin.
“Oh, stuff it,” Davenport said. “When did you become a proper bore that you couldn’t be bothered to attend this?”
The orchestra’s haunting strains reached a crescendo, nearly deafening.
“I’d say about two decades ago,” Geoffrey said out of the side of his mouth to the one responsible for dragging him to this infernal affair.
Thumping Geoffrey hard on the back, Davenport laughed like he’d told the most hilarious of jests. “It was a rhetorical, my good friend. Purely rhetorical.” The baron’s robust amusement earned several curious stares from the wicked couples nearby, who eyed them with the circumspection they deserved.
After all, what a trio they must be to the men and women present.
Some two or three decades older than most of the thinly disguised people in attendance, they stood out, the way a debutante in white would while attending an orgy filled with only naked people.
“We needed better costumes,” Mowbray whispered, steering them deeper into the ballroom until he brought them to a stop on the fringe of the activity, thankfully as far away as they could be from the festivities. “A black domino?” Mowbray adjusted his hood. “This was your idea?”
“I had short notice,” Davenport protested.
“I gave you several days,” Mowbray shot back. “Certainly enough to come up with something where we might escape notice. The last thing I need is for him to see me.”
With that, the other duke glanced around the enormous column and searched for the “him” in question—none other than Lord Mardel, Mowbray’s eldest child and heir and also the most scandalous of his three sons.
“I do say it makes more sense that he should be afeared of you and not the other way around?” Geoffrey drawled.
“I’m not afraid of my son,” Mowbray said under his breath. And then, making an absolute liar of himself, the duke ducked his head out and peered around the ballroom, before quickly retreating.
“I daresay I’m not altogether certain what the great worry about your son is,” Geoffrey said, genuinely perplexed.
“You wouldn’t,” his friends said in unison.
Because Geoffrey didn’t have children of his own. Fair enough. On the matter of offspring and father-daughter or father-son relationships, Geoffrey could hardly relate in any way.
Still, he felt inclined to point out, “The boy is enjoying the same pursuits that we did when we were his age.”
“You don’t have children, Bentley.” Mowbray, this time, came right out and said it.
Davenport added a nod of support to Mowbray’s matter-of-fact statement.
His friends were completely right. He didn’t understand anything about this. Not. One. Single. Thing. “Very well.” Geoffrey crossed his arms at his chest. “Enlighten me, then,” he said without acrimony, because he had a genuine need to understand just why he and Mowbray and Davenport hid in the same manner they had as boys at Eton in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek. “I cannot see why hosting the parties that he is should so outrage and offend when you yourself were throwing the very same affairs—”
“Before I married,” Mowbray cut him off. “I didn’t take part in a single one when my Esme was living.” There was a trace of wistfulness that the other man had on occasion revealed after his wife’s passing.
“Precisely,” Geoffrey said gently, mindful of the fact that even as his own brief union long, long ago had been an empty, emotionless one, the same hadn’t and couldn’t be said of either of his friends’, one a widower some years ago and the other as of two years past. He rested a hand on Mowbray’s shoulder and gave a slight squeeze. “Your son isn’t yet married, and as such, he’s not doing anything in any way different than you or I or Mowbray here. So perhaps we let your son and his young friends to their pleasures, just as we were free to do, without interference. And we can take our leave and find our way to our more respectable clubs.” Geoffrey had turned to go when each man clamped a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.
“I don’t think so,” Mowbray said. “My son is almost thirty. Old enough to do right by the line and get his life in proper order, and I have it on authority that there is a particular woman whom he is seriously interested in, and I’m trying to sort out if he’s having a love affair or a love affair.”
Geoffrey’s gaze wandered out to the center of the room and the younger crowd in the throes of their wicked pleasures as he recalled not similar scandalous affairs of his past, but rather, parents who’d interfered in his life. More specifically, Lydia’s father who’d interfered and robbed the both of them of the marriage Geoffrey and Lydia had longed for.
“And is it a problem if your son is in a love-affair versus a love affair?” Geoffrey put that quiet question Mowbrary, who’d never known what it was to suffer the loss of love because of interfering family members.
“I don’t trust the woman’s motives, and I trust his judgment a good deal less,” Mowbray said.
“But—”
Both men gave him a look, and Geoffrey knew better than to press the point. After all, he didn’t have children. No. There hadn’t been sons or even daughters. There’d been a marriage. A miserable, cold, empty union. But no heirs or offspring. As such, the other man was correct—he’d not a damned clue about anything when it came to children. Even the grown kind.
“Good God, what is she doing here?” Davenport muttered.
Geoffrey looked around, in search of the person who’d commanded the other man’s annoyance.
A pair of brightly clad figures, feathers stuffed in their hair and stuck to their faces and gowns, stood out in stark contrast to the men and women in various states of dishabille or completely naked.
“I take it you know the pair?” he asked, smiling at the sight of the women marching through the crowd, swiveling their heads left and right as if they searched out someone in particular.
“Althea and Dorothy. I’d recognize that fiery hair and ridiculous cane, anywhere.”
Althea and Dorothy…
He stilled.
It had been years since he’d heard those names. They’d always moved in entirely different social circles than Geoffrey, but for a brief moment in time, when he’d been courting another woman and imagined a future with her, he had been connected to her two unconventional friends, the ladies Althea and Dorothy.
Despite himself, Geoffrey found himself scouring the crowd for the woman who had forever been part of that little trio, friends who’d become leading patrons of Society…
And he felt… oddly deflated when he didn’t catch sight of her.
Which was ridiculous. Of course Lydia would have never come to an affair as scandalous as this. Society had well known her to be not only eminently respectable, but happy in her marriage.
Odd that a pang should still strike his chest at the thought.
Feeling stares upon him, he glanced over.
Both Mowbray and Davenport stared back.
“What?” he asked gruffly.
“Are you paying attention?”
“I am,” Geoffrey lied.
“Yes,” Mowbray muttered. “paying attention to the latest entertainment my scapegrace son has set up.”
Yes, many years earlier, that would have been the likely supposition for either man, for anyone, to have drawn. Fortunately, this time, it proved a convenient out given to Geoffrey.
When he glanced out at the crowd once more, Lydia’s two friends were gone.
“Now…” Mowbray took command, bringing them back to their purpose in being there that night. “We split up. We find Harold and find out whatever you can about his interest in… this woman. I’ll check the billiards room. Davenport—”
“The cardrooms.”
Mowbray turned to Geoffrey. “That leaves you on the libraries. Everyone knows all lovers meet in libraries.”
“What in blazes am I supposed to do? Interrupt their assignation?” he asked dryly.
“Information. I want information on if it is serious. If it’s serious, they aren’t engaged in wickedness.”
“Oh, I think given the event the gentleman is hosting, it is quite safe to say just what exactly he and this young woman are up to. As such, I hardly think I need to—”
His friends had already turned and split off.
“Be here,” he mumbled that last part under his breath.
They’d already gone.
A young woman slid close. Pressing her naked body against him, she rubbed enormous breasts along his arm. “Are you looking for company, sir?” she purred in throaty tones that would have once enticed. She reached down and made a less than delicate grab for his shaft.
Alas, had Geoffrey ever sired children as his friends had, he could have had a daughter this young woman’s age.
Wincing, he disentangled himself from her cloying attempts. “If you’ll excuse me? I… have someone I’m meeting.”
With that, Geoffrey rushed off and cursed the woes that came with being a loyal friend.
