One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)(11)

“Because I’ve tried, several times. And as you see, I’ve failed on each occasion.”

She had no response to that.

“Ask your friend Morland,” he continued. “I’m bloody hard to knock down.”

Beside her, the duke tensed. Clearly the two men had some history of enmity.

“Enough.” Mr. Bellamy raised his head, scrubbing at his eyes with his palm. “We’ve no time for this. Leo is gone. It’s Lily we need to discuss. As Leo died without issue, the Harcliffe title, estate, properties—including the town house—will all pass to some distant cousin. She probably has a legacy due her, but given her condition, she cannot live independently in Town.”

No, she couldn’t, Amelia silently agreed. Poor Lily. She must find some way to help her. “What do you propose, Mr. Bellamy?”

The man looked from Ashworth to Morland. “My lord, Your Grace—one of you must marry her.”

“Marry her?” Spencer blinked. “Did you just say one of us must marry her?”

“Yes.”

Sighing deeply, he raised a hand to his temple. No offense intended to the deceased, nor to Lily Chatwick and her mysterious “condition.” It was just that this situation would clearly require a great deal of discussion, and he’d far exceeded his allotment of civil speech for the evening.

What he wanted to do was to go home, toss back two fingers of brandy, and prostrate himself on the library floor—well, on the carpet; the floor was unforgiving oak, and he wasn’t an ascetic monk, after all—until this damned whirling clamor in his head cleared. Come morning, he’d take Juno out for a rambling canter, probably halfway to Dover and back. She was uneasy in Town, unused to the crowds and noise. A long ride over open country would put them both to rights. Afterward, he’d give the mare a proper grooming himself. She was touchy with these London stablehands, and they were never able to do a thorough job. After all that … perhaps dinner before he went out in search of cards.

That was what he wanted to do. But, as so often happened, what he wanted and what was required of him were disparate things.

“The Stud Club code states,” said Bellamy, “that in the event of a member’s untimely demise, the brotherhood is honor bound to care for his dependents. With her brother gone, Lily will need a protector. She must marry.”

“Then why don’t you do it?” Ashworth asked. “You are obviously well acquainted with her. Weren’t you and Harcliffe friends?”

“The closest of friends, yes. Which is precisely why I cannot do it. Lady Lily Chatwick is the sister of a marquess. Her ancestry includes several royals. I believe Leo once told me she’s thirteenth in line for the Crown. I am …” Bellamy pressed a fist against the seat cushion. “I am no one of consequence.”

Well, on that point he and Spencer were in complete agreement. He despised the vain upstart. From what he heard at the tables, Bellamy had arrived out of nowhere some three years ago. Despite the man’s vague origins, even the veriest snobs invited him to every rout and card party, for his amusement value alone. He was an uncanny mimic.

Spencer had once watched from a doorway as Bellamy regaled an audience of dozens with his bawdy imitations of Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. He thought the man a pathetic clown, but the young bucks of the ton worshipped him. They mimicked the mimic: imitated his style of dress, his manner of walking, his cutting witticisms. Some went so far as to have their valets apply some noxious mixture of soot and egg whites to their scalp, to imitate his riffled black hair.

Spencer had no interest in the man’s hair or fashion, and nothing but contempt for his cheap brand of humor. But he did have a keen interest in one thing of Bellamy’s: the brass token that made him a member of the Stud Club.

“It will have to be Morland,” said Ashworth. “I’m not marrying her.”

“You would be damned lucky to marry her,” Bellamy said. “She’s a lovely, intelligent lady.”

“I’m certain she is. But the last thing I’d do to a woman I admired is marry her.”

Spencer couldn’t resist. “Oh, you’ve a shred of decency now? Where did that come from, I wonder? Perhaps you found it lying around a battlefield.”

“Perhaps I did,” the man said evenly. “I know I didn’t meet with you there.”

Spencer glowered. Just like the bastard, to deal him a low blow. As a youth, there’d been nothing he wanted more than to follow his father’s example and purchase a commission in the Army. But when his father died, Spencer became the late duke’s heir. Suddenly he had a title, duties, responsibilities. He would have been risking hundreds of lives in battle, not merely his own. Farewell, visions of glory.

“Why can’t you marry her, Ashworth?” Bellamy asked. “You’re a lord, aren’t you?”

“I’ve lately inherited a barony. It consists of a worthless expanse of moorland in Devonshire and a house that burnt to the ground fourteen years ago. I had to sell out my commission just to pay the creditors.”

“Forgive me,” Lady Amelia said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt.”

Forgive her? Spencer would have thanked her, profusely. A change in conversation was all too welcome.

“But I knew your name was familiar,” she went on, speaking to Ashworth, “and then you mentioned the commission … Are you by chance Lieutenant Colonel St. Maur?”