Dangerous in Diamonds - Madeline Hunter [1]
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Chapter One
The death of a duke is cause for many people to mourn, but none so much as those dependent on his patronage. So it was that the passing of the fourth Duke of Becksbridge left many a relative and retainer in tears. A few had to swallow the inappropriate inclination to smile, however, in particular several persons named in his testament as recipients of gifts or pensions.
One such beneficiary neither wept nor rejoiced. Rather, on the Tuesday following the duke’s funeral, he finally attended to the oddity that he had received any gift at all.
“I hope he did not expect me to maintain the mourning rituals in his memory because of this,” Tristan, Duke of Castleford, muttered.
He examined the deeds of the properties he had just inherited. If his head did not ache from the sobriety he adopted once a week on Tuesdays, he might muster some grief or nostalgia for this recently departed fellow peer. It would take considerable effort on the best of days, however.
Becksbridge had been a collateral relative, some distance removed, and most of the bequeathed holdings appeared to be distant as well. Also small. So small and insignificant as to hardly be worth the ink used to record the gift in the will.
“You do not intend to mourn? He was an important man and much esteemed.” Mr. Edwards, his bespectacled secretary, spoke from his paper-covered desk in the study where together they labored on Castleford’s business affairs.
“He was an ass. Worse, a boring, self-righteous ass. The boring part was only tiresome, but the self-righteous part unforgivable.”
The latter had been an inherited turn of character, but in Castleford’s opinion, that hardly absolved Becksbridge from being tedious in executing the tendency. That entire side of their complex family tree was so smug in their goodness that it made one want to puke. All the same, if Becksbridge had lived and let live, he might have been tolerable.
But, of course, he couldn’t “let live.” The Becksbridges of the world believed it was the duty of paragons of virtue to remind others they should strive for equal dreariness. In fact, in anticipation of his inheritance, Becksbridge’s son and heir, Gerome, Earl of Latham, had been publishing popular screeds on morality. The next Duke of Becksbridge had already taken his scolds to the world through print and had forged a reputation as an arbiter of morals with his damned essays.
Castleford was inclined to sneer at the irony, but thinking much on the topic would only make his head hurt worse. Still, he knew Latham better than anyone else in the world did. Of similar age, they had raised hell together in years past. Even perfectly tended branches of family trees produce a few wormy fruit. The boring ass was about to be succeeded by a dangerous hypocrite.
“You have that sniveling expression you wear when you are choking on swallowed words, Edwards. Do you disapprove that I speak ill of the dead?”
Edwards flushed. Only twenty-five years of age, he had not yet learned to keep his own counsel on Tuesdays, especially when his employer invited him to speak freely. “The duke was unparalleled, and he was very generous. It is said he endowed an orphanage in his will.”
“Unparalleled? Are you saying outright, to my face, that I am not his equal? That is ungrateful for a secretary who may have to labor on the one day a week when I tend to my estate, but who otherwise has more freedom of movement than any servant ought.”
“I—that is, you are unparalleled as well, Your Grace. Everyone says so, and—”
“I do not hold with the notion that asses should be fondly remembered just because they have the means to spread around gifts to make others beholden. As for his generosity to me, I neither need nor want these small landholdings. The man has managed to be a nuisance beyond the grave.”
“The properties all have tenants. Managing them will not create more trouble.”
Castleford peered at the deeds. “It is too peculiar that he gave them to me at all. We were not fond of each other. We had not spoken civil