Ne’er Duke Well by Alexandra Vasti (Excerpt)

Chapter 1

… You may be interested to hear that Peter Kent has finally inherited. You remember what he is like, do you not? One pities the House of Lords.

—from Lady Selina Ravenscroft to her brother, Lord William Ravenscroft, His Majesty’s Army, Seventh Division, 1815

Peter suspected the project was doomed.

It had not been a good idea to begin with. Surely he could have found another way to satisfy his half sister’s desire for a rapier—one that did not involve dressing her in boy’s clothes and smuggling her into a fencing parlor on Bond Street.

He should have sent for a rapier, not gone out to fit her with it himself. He could have had someone bring a sword to his house.

He was supposed to be a duke, for Christ’s sake.

Peter Kent, the ninth Duke of Stanhope—for all that he’d never set foot in England until two years ago, when he’d become heir presumptive to the dukedom and the Earl of Clermont had dragged him unceremoniously away from his home in Louisiana.

He was the duke now. Had been for three-quarters of a month. People called him Your Grace. He had more money than God.

These facts did not seem to matter to his half siblings.

“Lu,” he said to his sister, slightly horrified to hear pleading in his voice. “You sure you don’t want the kitten? We might buy it a little collar…”

He’d brought his siblings a soft, fluffy gray kitten in a basket that morning. Freddie, his ten-year-old half brother, had nearly come out of his skin at the sight of the thing, but Lu had quelled Freddie with a wordless scowl.

Freddie, at least, had wanted the kitten.

“No,” said Lu flatly. “No kittens. Its tail looked like a chimney brush.”

“Its tail looked soft,” mumbled Freddie disconsolately.

“It has claws,” offered Peter. “And teeth. Sharp little teeth.”

He’d felt a right jackass in the carriage on the way to their house that morning, trying to stuff the kitten into the basket. The idea had seemed so promising. What child could resist a kitten? He’d had one brought in from his country seat in Sussex—because, in-bloody-explicably, he had a country seat in Sussex. And people who brought things at his request.

And then the damned kitten kept popping out of the basket and climbing his coat sleeve with its little needle claws and sinking its tiny teeth into his ear and shrieking like the hounds of hell were after it.

Pop pop went its claws as he’d pried it from his coat. Then meeeewwwww as he shoved it into the basket. Then ouch Jesus blasted cockered ratsbane, let go of my goddamned thumb!

And then Lu didn’t even want the kitten. She’d turned up her nose as if she were the ninth Duke of Stanhope and not his illegitimate twelve-year-old sister, the natural daughter of a dead man who thankfully would never darken her door again.

Peter hadn’t even known about Freddie and Lu until he’d gotten to England. He hadn’t been able to protect them from their father’s neglect and cruelty. Just like he hadn’t been able to protect Morgan.

But he was damned if he wouldn’t protect them now.

It would help, though, if he could get the children to trust him. Or at least like him. Or even tolerate his presence without glaring suspiciously in his direction.

“I want a rapier,” Lu said. “So that I might stab people with it.”

You, her eyes said. So that I might stab you.

“I’m not sure that there’s actual stabbing in fencing.”

“How do you know?” Lu asked. “Do you fence? Is there fencing in America?”

“I fence.”

Good God, the child didn’t need a rapier to know exactly where to place the knife in his gut and twist. Yes, he was American. Yes, he was damned out of place here on this cold, foggy island, and in the fencing parlor, and in the House of Lords. And no, he hadn’t been to Eton and Oxford, and no, he didn’t know how to convince the Court of Chancery to give him guardianship of Freddie and Lu, and no, he didn’t know how to get Lu on his side.

And no, and no, and no.

But for the rapier, he could say yes.

“I mean to demand satisfaction,” Lu murmured, almost inaudible over the sounds of the street. “From the world.”

God, she was a terrifying creature.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s buy you a rapier. But listen, Lu, don’t talk, all right?”

Her brows drew together. “Whyever not?”

“Because you sound too much like a small, bad-tempered lady.”

She glowered. “I am no lady.”

“Well, you sound like one, so keep quiet.”

“How would you know? Are there ladies—”

Peter frowned at her, and to his surprise, she closed her mouth mid-sentence. Frowning? Was that how he was supposed to act like a guardian? God, he hoped not, because the expression on his face made him feel like his father, and he resented it with every fiber of his being.

“In New Orleans?” he finished for her. “Yes, Lu, there are ladies in New Orleans. My mother was a lady.”

“Oh,” she said.

Beneath Lu’s chastening hand on his shoulder, Freddie said, “Was?”

“She died,” Peter said, “a long time ago.”

“Our mother died too,” Freddie said.

“He knows, Freddie,” Lu said irritably. “That is why he is trying—and failing—to pry us away from Great-great-aunt Rosamund.”

Ah, yes, their current guardian. The beloved Great-great-aunt Rosamund, who was not, as far as he could discern, actually related to the children, and who did not appear to recognize them whenever he returned them from one of their outings.

After their mother’s death, the children had been passed like unwanted puppies from household to household, settling most recently upon a very elderly thrice-removed aunt. Rosamund nodded off mid-conversation. She rarely rose from her chair. She occasionally referred to Lu as Lucinda, but sometimes she called her Lettice and sometimes Horatio Nelson.

But despite all that, Lu acted like she wanted to stay with the woman—even though Peter could buy her a whole room full of fencing masters and send Freddie to Eton and give them everything he’d always wanted and never had.

“Lu,” he said now, “I’m telling you, if you talk, it’s not going to work. So show me how much you want the sword by keeping your mouth shut, and we’ll walk out of here with one strapped to your hip.”

She scowled, but she did it. They strolled quite casually into the fencing parlor.

A quarter of an hour later, they strolled back out. Lu was red-faced at the extravagant lies Peter had invented to account for her refusal to speak. Freddie buried his laughter in his hand, and Peter held the sword nearly above his own head to ensure that Lu couldn’t stab anyone with it.

Which was how he found himself—bracketed by children and with a small sword held aloft out of a still-sputtering Lu’s reach—when they collided with Lady Selina Ravenscroft.



Chapter 2



… I do remember Peter Kent. He knocked you into a mud puddle at Broadmayne, didn’t he? And stole your horse. And wasn’t there something about a wedding at St. George’s, two sheep, and a duel?

—from Will Ravenscroft to his sister Selina, posted from Brussels

Selina settled her poke bonnet firmly onto her head, ducked out of the back alley behind her publisher’s office, and emerged into the sunshine of Bond Street.

It was extremely large, the bonnet, its brim jutting out past her face like a green silk prow. It clashed horribly with the pink pelisse she wore knotted over her yellow-striped, outrageously flounced walking gown, and if she kept her head tilted downward, her face was almost entirely obscured.

She wasn’t disguised. She hadn’t needed to wear the rough serge servant’s dress she’d kept stuffed in the bottom of her wardrobe for well over a year, a fact that struck Selina as something of a relief.

If Lady Selina Ravenscroft, younger sister of the Duke of Rowland, were to be caught wandering about London in servant’s garb, the scandal sheets would be wild with it by morning.

But in this—a shockingly out-of-fashion outfit, her hair tucked away beneath the bonnet and her face shaded by its outlandish brim—she wasn’t precisely in disguise. She was simply barely recognizable, which was exactly how she preferred it.

And if she were to be recognized in this ridiculous ensemble, that wouldn’t be enough to engender a scandal. Well, perhaps a very mild one, given that she was walking about without a chaperone or maid. But she need only cross two blocks to where the Rowland carriage waited—her delightfully bribable maid Emmie snugged inside—and then she’d be safe. No scandal today.

No scandal so far.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before someone found out the truth about Lady Selina Ravenscroft.

She angled a glance back at the office of Jean Laventille—the radical Trinidadian immigrant who was both her publisher and her only confidant. It was, decidedly, a mistake. Because with the poke bonnet’s brim blocking her vision and the flounces dancing around her body, she didn’t see the little boy who darted across her path until it was too late.

They collided with a whomp, and Selina felt the breath rush out of her. She tried to stop herself from kicking the boy in the calf and overbalanced instead.

“Hell’s bells!” said the child, voice sweet, dark-fringed eyes wide as saucers.

And Selina flung her hands out in front of her, her mind busily registering a series of facts:

One, the child was, perhaps, not a boy.

Two, Selina’s face was about to make a very abrupt acquaintance with a cobblestone.

And three, these gloves were certainly going to be ruined, and she really liked these gloves—

And then she was caught around the chest by one strong masculine arm and set, cautiously, back on her feet.

“Good God, Lu,” said the owner of the arm. “You’re lucky I didn’t accidentally stab this woman, because even peers of the realm aren’t exempt from the legal consequences of murder.”

And—

Oh.

Oh no.

Selina knew that lightly accented voice. She knew the owner of the arm. She knew that particular brand of easy words and nonsensical charm, and she knew without looking that the expression on the man’s face would be a slightly feral grin.

Peter bloody Kent.

She couldn’t look up. She couldn’t turn her gaze even one fraction, because then the brim would reveal her face, and he would recognize her. And she really, really didn’t want him to recognize her.

She was alone, not that Peter would care. But he might wonder what she was doing out here on Bond Street by herself. He might ask. He might have seen her come out of Laventille’s office, for heaven’s sake. She couldn’t be connected to the publisher, because then she might be connected to Belvoir’s, and then she would be so thoroughly entangled in the web of deception she’d crafted that she might never find her way out.

Also, he’d practically rescued her, which was mortifying.

And, God, she was wearing this patently absurd costume.

Not that she cared what he thought of her costume. Not that she thought about Peter Kent like that.

Or at all. Ever.

“Beg pardon,” she mumbled, sidling away, eyes downcast and fixed on his dusty boots. She couldn’t look up. She thought maybe there was another child somewhere to his other side, but she dared not turn her head to check.

But then, horror of horrors …

He recognized her anyway.

“Selina?”

Oh blast.

She tipped her head back to meet his gaze. And then back, and back farther. The bonnet, which had been quite superb at disguising her appearance, was remarkably poor at allowing for normal social congress.

Finally she found his face.

Yes, it was Peter Kent—Stanhope, she reminded herself, he was the Duke of Stanhope now—and yes, he was grinning bemusedly down at her.

She was tall, but he was taller. His bright brown eyes were lit with warmth and the comfortable, irrepressible familiarity that had him addressing her without her proper title. His dark curls were artfully mussed—she wondered if he had his valet form them with hot tongs. His fair skin was gold-burnished from the Louisiana sun, and his lips were almost insultingly lush for a man, and—

This. This was why, in the two years since she had met him and he’d tossed her into a mud puddle, she did not think about Peter Kent.

Selina dropped into a practiced curtsy, polite but not deferential. “Your Grace. What a pleasant surprise.”

Peter’s grin widened. “You wouldn’t say that if I’d stabbed you with Lu’s rapier.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, as usual. She didn’t even see a rapier.

Peter turned and gestured to the slightly smaller of the two children at his side. “Come on, Freddie, hand it over before Lu steals it and skewers someone.”

“I thought it was blunted,” said the boy, sounding scandalized. “You said it was for practice.”

“Lu could skewer someone with a spoon.”

The boy—Freddie, evidently—produced what appeared to be a toy fencing foil from behind his back and handed it to Peter.

Peter’s large palm practically enveloped the thing. It looked ridiculous.

He turned back to Selina. “Now that the weapons are safely stowed—”

She arched an eyebrow. Stowed, was it? He more or less held the small sword aloft.

He caught her look and ignored it utterly. “Lady Selina, allow me to present to you my siblings. Lady Selina Ravenscroft, this is Miss Lucinda Nash”—he used the foil to gesture to the taller of the two children—“and Master Frederick Nash.”

Master Frederick Nash gave her a polite bow.

Miss Lucinda Nash swept her flat cap from her head, setting free a tumble of shining chocolate curls, and bowed so low she was nearly prostrate on the ground. Then she stood, regarding Selina with bright, fierce green eyes, as if daring Selina to comment on her boy’s garb.

Well, Selina supposed that she had no room to criticize anyone for what they were wearing this afternoon.

“Miss Nash,” she said, inclining her head in greeting. “Master Nash. It’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Lu,” said the girl furiously. “Not Lucinda. Lu.”

“Lu,” whispered Freddie, looking pained. “You’re not supposed to correct the duke in public—”

“Freddie, shut up, they can hear you—”

Selina bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. God, she would have hated to be laughed at when she was that age.

“My brother Nicholas is a duke as well,” she offered instead. “I assure you, I correct him in public frequently.”

Lu’s eyes sparked with interest.


Copyright © 2024 by Alexandra Vasti