My Once and Future Duke (The Wagers of Sin #1)(67)

“Good morning,” she said as the footman pulled out her chair.

“Good morning.” Jack watched with mild surprise as she seated herself. The duchess usually took breakfast in her room, and not at this early hour. Her appearance this morning was decidedly unusual.

By the time the servant had fetched everything she wanted and arranged it at her place, Jack was nearly finished with his meal. His regular habit, before Sophie, had been to go to his study for an hour before taking a morning ride in the park, depending on the demands of the day. Now, since Sophie, he had put Percy to handling more of the routine matters. Now he rode every day, rain or shine, and today he planned to stop by the boxing saloon for the first time in years. He wasn’t ready to climb in the ring again, but it felt good to get out of his study and do something. He pushed back from the table. “If you’ll excuse me, Mother.”

“Are you well, dear?”

The question, asked in such a gentle tone, caught him off guard. “Perfectly,” he told her, thinking that he’d never been better. “What makes you ask?”

Concern creased her brow. “You’ve not been yourself these last few weeks. Neglecting your work, going out every night and staying out until dawn . . . It’s not like you, this wildness. Of course I wonder.”

It wasn’t as wild as the way he had behaved before his father died, and it didn’t hold a candle to Philip’s regular habits. “Percy is handling things well. Father ought to have trusted him more. There’s no need for me to personally approve every purchase at Kirkwood House or review the plan for repairing the ice house at Alwyn.” He cocked his head when her reproachful expression didn’t abate. “What worries you, Mother? What friend has come to you, faint with horror over the hours I keep?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m your mother. My concern springs from my own observations. And I cannot help noting that you have changed your habits very dramatically since the incident at that club.”

The Duchess of Ware never said the name Vega’s, not even when she was imploring him to save his brother from it. And Jack bit back a grin at the way she referred to his wager with Sophie. She had no idea how much he’d changed since then. “Perhaps it shook me out of my calcified ways,” he said mildly.

“Not for the better!” she exclaimed. Her butter knife clattered on the plate. “How can you go to that wicked place every night?”

“Wicked? I go with Philip. Are you equally worried for his habits?”

Her eyes flashed. Jack had long known Philip was her favorite son, and it did not surprise him when she refused to address that. “We were discussing you, not your brother. Are you neglecting your duty because of him?”

Jack wanted to laugh. Philip had provided him an excellent excuse to see Sophie, and he was very grateful for that. “I’m not neglecting my duty at all. In fact, one might say I am observing my duty—-the duty you pressed upon me—-by keeping an eye on my brother and preventing him from ruining himself at the tables.”

Now she was piqued. “Stop blaming Philip,” she snapped. “I wasn’t speaking of your duty to him, but of your duty to Ware. Your father would be gravely disappointed.”

Jack said nothing. For seven years he had done everything possible to make his father proud, and never once had his mother complimented him on it. She only mentioned how disappointed his father would be whenever Jack refused to do as she wished. And Jack had long since given up trying not to disappoint his mother.

“There.” Her tone softened at his lack of argument. “Leave Philip to his own devices tonight. I am sure he cannot get into very much trouble in the span of a few hours. Come with me to the theater.”

“The theater,” he repeated in surprise. This was new, this gentle entreaty.

“Yes.” She sipped her tea. “I have already invited Lady Stowe and Lucinda to share my box. They will be so delighted to see you at last.”

But he would be more delighted to see Sophie. Lady Stowe talked a great deal and laughed even more, a high girlish titter that made his head ache. Jack couldn’t fathom spending three hours trapped in a theater box with her. “Not tonight, Mother.”

The duchess sighed. “Wait.” She motioned to the footmen, who silently left the room. “Let us be plain with each other, dear. You are being unpardonably rude to Lucinda and Lady Stowe.”

“Rude!” Jack began to wish he’d taken breakfast in his study. “How have I been rude to Lucinda?”

His mother gave him a severe look. “You have avoided her all Season when you ought to have been doing the precise opposite.”

“I have not avoided her,” he said. “I have been otherwise engaged. And more to the point, why on earth should I seek her out? That is what you mean, isn’t it?”

“You know very well what I mean. Everyone expects you to propose marriage to her this year.”

If the ceiling had caved in on them, Jack couldn’t have been more astonished. “Propose? Marriage—-to Lucinda? She’s just a girl,” he protested, incredulous.

“She’s eighteen,” replied his mother, unruffled. “And you gave your father your word, as he lay dying, that you would marry her. She’s grown up expecting your offer, and now you’re haring about London like a boy just out of university without a care in the world when you should be courting her.”