Can’t Buy Me a Duke by Bianca Blythe

CHAPTER TWENTY

Sir Seymour’s mouthopened and closed as he stared at Harrison. Finally, he glowered. “The water? You want to gaze at the Thames? In Yorkshire, we have clear water, lake water. It’s far improved.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Harrison said. “In fact, I have more of a craving for the Atlantic.”

“The Atlantic?” Sir Seymour’s eyes sprang further up. “Surely, you mean the English Channel?”

“No.” Harrison shook his head. “The Atlantic Ocean.”

Sir Seymour’s face paled. “You mean you intend to sail on that place with all the horrible storms?”

“Yes,” Harrison said.

“With the wild waves?”

“Indeed.”

“Where after weeks of travel, the only thing you reach is,” Sir Seymour shuddered, “the former colonies?”

“They’re called the United States now.”

Sir Seymour covered his face with his hands. “Oh, heavens. You’re already speaking like them.”

This time, despite Harrison’s sadness, his lips truly did twitch.

“But why would you do it? You don’t need to.”

“I would quite fancy it.”

“But you’re a duke. You’re not some penniless peasant trying to make a new life.”

Harrison swallowed hard. 

“Are you to tell me you truly have an urge to visit that despicable country?” Sir Seymour pressed.

At least Sir Seymour had accepted the United States was its own country, Harrison supposed, but that had likely been a decades-long realization that was inconsistently acknowledged even now.

“It won’t be too terrible,” Harrison said. “Nice people, Americans.”

Sir Seymour’s jaw dropped open. “Nice people? They’re loud. They’re brash. They’re used to long slabs of land with nothing in between.” Sir Seymour leaned closer. “I think it makes them more used to screeching.”

“I’m not worried about that.”

“Cotton for your ears.” Sir Seymour nodded. “Wise move, young man.”

“There’s something happening,” one of the other older gentlemen said.

Sir Seymour stood and clasped his hands to his chest as if he were performing on a stage and found it essential for his melodramatic poses to be readily observed so even the most far-flung ticket holder would be able to get his money’s worth.

Sir Seymour pointed his hand, now shaking, at Harrison. “This man intends to sail to America.”

“No.” The first gentleman clutched his heart.

A few others who had seemed deeply engrossed in their newspapers and books flung them to the side. Newspapers crumpled against one another, creating a cacophony of crunching sounds.

“He’s probably jesting,” a second gentleman said, eyeing Harrison. “He is young. Young men do jest.”

“Oh, I hope so.” Sir Seymour gazed at Harrison as if he’d suddenly turned into a spider or beetle, and Sir Seymour could not anticipate what despicable creature he would transform into next.

“It’s not a joke,” Harrison said, somewhat perturbed his statement had been met with such shock. No wonder Lucy had never felt at home. Her parents had been brave to try.

“But the United States is filled with those warriors,” one man stated. “They slaughtered people. They slaughtered Englishmen. Englishmen whose duty it was simply to protect them.”

Harrison furrowed his brow together, suspecting there was something to argue but not certain what exactly.

“Oh yes.” Another man nodded his head with equal vigor. “You don’t want to go there. Certainly not.”

“Well, Boston is perhaps not dreadful,” a lone dissenter said.

Sir Seymour narrowed his eyes at this man with rebellious instincts and a contradictory air. “Boston is where the crisis started. None of this devastation would have occurred without Boston.”

The man managed to look ashamed and cast his eyes down.

Harrison sighed. It seemed no one else would dare defend Americans in this room now. “Still, they’re not so terrible. Some of them are quite nice.”

“Nice?” Sir Seymour clutched his heart. “Has that become the criteria all of a sudden? More important than birth?”

Harrison had considered these men his friends. He’d discussed which boxer was the best, and whether they’d seen the Beast and the Devil’s match at the local boxing ring.

He’d avoided more important issues, and because of that, he realized he did not truly know them.

Blast it, he’d been happy to spend time with them. Perhaps some of them only visited during the day, but he’d thought he’d known all of them. 

He certainly hadn’t prepared himself for their utter insistence that birth was the most crucial thing in the world. What would they think if they knew his actual identity?

Though his father had been the Duke of Sturbridge, he’d never married Harrison’s mother. Harrison was a fraud.

A sour taste invaded his mouth.

“Good God,” one man said, “you look as pale as a ghost.”

“He’s probably practicing to be one,” Sir Seymour grumbled. “He’ll likely find himself murdered if he goes to that horrible country. That’s what happened to my brother.”

“And mine,” another man murmured.

“I lost my three sons,” an elderly man said mournfully.

A few others listed people who had died in the war. Perhaps their prejudice could be explained. Still, Harrison had no urge to remain. “I must pack.”

Sir Seymour stared at him with a bewildered expression on his face. “You mean, you must tell your valet to pack.”

“Yes.”

It was suddenly exceedingly urgent that he leave. Harrison scampered from the room, narrowly tripping over one of the large, Oriental carpets someone had hauled here from Persia or the Ottoman Empire or some other place which was not England.

He rushed up the narrow staircase, away from the bemused expressions of the people he’d once considered his greatest friends. They didn’t understand him and never would. His heart clenched, but he forced himself to move.

He couldn’t let Lucy think he didn’t care about her. If it had been up to him, he would have married her with no question at all. But things were more complicated.

“Would you like me to pack everything?” his valet asked a few minutes later.

“Oh, yes. Thank you, Fletcher.”

Fletcher started to put Harrison’s stationery away, and it occurred to Harrison he could simply write a letter to Lucy. And yet, this wasn’t something one shared in a letter. She might have questions, after all. No, it was far better to take a ship for America. What were some unpleasant waves?

Soon, Fletcher and he entered the carriage, and the astonished driver prepared the horses.

The carriage soon glided regally past the large, immaculate houses in Mayfair. The facades sparkled as always, the white paint immaculately maintained despite the soot and pollution that sometimes stained it. Gradually, the buildings became less lofty, less exquisite. He must be reaching the East End.

The streets were suddenly crowded, but not by barouches and curricles, the common contraptions found in Mayfair and Kensington and the areas he frequented. Rather, actual people were pushing wheelbarrows across the street, leading horses and cows that clomped across the cobblestones. Dirt-stained children stared at him, as if bewildered by the glossiness of his barouche.

It occurred to him that this was where, in truth, he belonged. He hadn’t come from money. He’d just become lucky. And now, there was no way to make things right.

Finally, the driver halted the coach at the Port of London. The scent of the Thames was almost overwhelming, and he stared at the murky green and brown water. No wonder Sir Seymour and the other men at the club had been so suspicious of his desire to travel anywhere on it.

Still, he was certain the United States did not deserve all their suspicion and prejudice.

Lucy had not deserved it.

His heart ached, even though he’d relegated any such pain in his chest to a much older future age. Everything was different now.