Duke of Havoc Read online

His wife’s death had left him with greater responsibilities in terms of child rearing, ones he’d never considered undertaking. It had been their mother’s lot to arbitrate these kinds of skirmishes.

  Not that she ever really did.

  Accompanied only by the greatest of displeasure and the blacksmith working away cheerfully in his head, Reeve headed for the parlor.

  Although he thought he was prepared for anything, nothing could have prepared him for the sight that met him as he strolled into the room – not even Edgar’s well-intentioned forewarning.

  Behind him, Edgar had followed him inside. When he caught the expression on Reeve’s face, he coughed discretely and uttered, “I told you so.”

  *

  The carnage was spread wide for Reeve and Edgar to see: all three women brandished a weapon of attack.

  First, Reeve glanced at the housekeeper. Mrs. Humphrey’s bony fingers clutched a broom, and the way she pointed it at the cook, Duckie, suggested that she wanted nothing more than to sweep her away, permanently. To her right, Miss Ball, Mrs. Humphrey’s sister and his children’s governess, held a large book, possibly an atlas, over her head. It was a large, heavy object that would make a fierce projectile if launched.

  Both women, looking almost skeletal in their ill-fitting morning dresses, had cornered the round and normally jolly cook.

  Estelle “Duckie” Breem, who had been the family’s cook for many years, seemed to be under threat of imminent attack. Both sisters looked sufficiently cross enough to do her substantial bodily harm. But the long pestle in Duckie’s hands, held in a battle-ready pose, could easily serve as her saving grace against the sisters. More tellingly, the burning fierceness in her eyes gave no doubt as to her intentions in handling the pestle.

  “If you witches think you can scare those poor children into submission like you done with their mother, then you don’t know Duckie none!” she spat. Her accent was, and always had been, pure Spitalfields. “I ain’t gonna allow that!”

  “You old cow,” said Mrs. Humphrey in a voice laden with disdain. Her own accent was pristine, without any drawn out vowels or dropped letters. “You will be gone from this house soon, mark my words. I have no idea what the duke sees in you or your cooking, but he will come to his senses soon. We will make certain of it!”

  Miss Ball began nodding her head vigorously.

  “We will,” she hissed. “How dare you think to put yourself in opposition to us! You should pack your things this moment and never return!”

  Reeve’s eyebrows rose as he observed the scene. None of the women had taken note of his presence, which was surprising. A full-grown man had just entered their midst, but with the hatred filling the air, they seemed blind to all else. He’d seen furious rancor in them before, but not quite like this.

  He’d seen enough.

  “Ladies,” he said. “Put down the weapons. Do it now.”

  Their reactions were instantaneous. The thud of Miss Ball’s book, and Reeve observed that it was, indeed, an atlas – ironic considering Miss Ball’s knowledge of geography was nil – on the floor came first, followed by a loud yelp as the broom whirled about in Mrs. Humphrey’s hands.

  The bristly ends swished in Duckie’s face.

  Startled, the old cook released her hold on the pestle, which struck Miss Ball solidly on the foot. “Oh!” Duckie cried. “She hit me, she did! It hurts.”

  Miss Ball squeaked with pain, holding one leg and hopping on the other. Mrs. Humphrey rushed to her side, leaving poor Duckie nearly blinded.

  Groaning in dismay, Edgar rushed toward Duckie to tender his help, even though all he ended up contributing to the fiasco was running squarely into her as she fumbled around with her hands over her eyes. They both fell in a heap. Meanwhile, the incensed sisters continued to screech loudly, raining condemnation on their adversary.

  It was bedlam.

  Sighing heavily, Reeve watched the madness, rolling his eyes at the sheer audacity of the situation and remaining well out of harm’s way. He began to feel sorry for himself. All he’d wanted to do was go to bed and soothe his aching head. Truly, that was all he desired, and now he had havoc on his hands.

  What did I do to deserve such a thing?

  Without a doubt, he was too weary to listen to the nattering that was surely to follow when all three women wanted to tell their sides of the story. He always trusted Duckie more than the sisters. But such conversations were always inescapably nonsensical. Untangling the truth from the exaggerations, the tears, and the magnanimous elaborations had been his wife’s responsibility.

  But now that she was gone, it was yet another obligation she’d left to him, and it was merely one in a long queue of many. Reeve could do nothing more here. Nor did he want to. Without Lady Malliston around any longer, these foolish females would have to solve their own problems.

  He simply didn’t care.

  The stairway in the foyer was calling to him and he answered, taking two steps at a time on the glossy surface until he reached the third floor. This was the children’s level, where they slept and ate and had their lessons. It smelled of soap and powder, and of the flowers that his daughters liked to pick. There were little bits of green leaves scattered on the floor. His youngest liked to drag her bouquets along with her, and the clusters of dead leaves told him that the maids had not yet swept up after the morning’s outing.

  It was much more peaceful up here, away from the parlor’s battlefield. It was almost welcoming, but Reeve had never felt fully welcome here. It held a host of sorrowful memories that all evoked the ghost of Lady Malliston, and not in a pleasant way.

  She was a shadow that hung over the entire house like a sea fog that never lifted.

  Coming to the great set of painted double-doors that marked his daughters’ bedroom, he rapped softly. “Sophie? Phoebe? It is Papa,” he said quietly. “Will you please open the door?”

  The door flung open immediately.

  “Papa!” his daughters said in unison as they threw themselves at him.

  “Papa, where have you been?” asked Phoebe, her eyes huge.

  It was a rush of love and affection, something he was highly uncomfortable with. Reeve could not comprehend his children’s affection for him, and he certainly never did anything to encourage it. He was a failure at anything that had to do with fatherhood. It was a harsh admission to realize that what he felt toward Sophie and Phoebe was obligation, and this feeling had only grown since his return from the war.

  He much preferred the gaming tables and clubs of York and London to any show of familial affection. And he had no inkling of what to say or do in response to the distress in his daughters’ voices, or to the desperation with which they clutched his trousers.

  Ill at ease, Reeve tugged his legs away from their clutches and looked down at their dark, curly heads and blue eyes. Only a year separated them in age, and they were the mirror image of one another, each possessing a round face and a small rosebud mouth. He was steeling himself for the day that they would be considered society beauties.

  “What is this I have heard, Sophie?” he addressed his elder child, who was six years of age. “You and your sister refused to go downstairs?”

  Sophie nodded fearfully, her lower lip trembling. She was a bright child, unafraid to voice her thoughts or opinions. “Miss Anna would have us paddled for eating dessert last night!”

  Miss Anna Ball’s self-discipline when it came to matters of enjoying food was legendary and, in fact, expanded past her own personal discipline to interfere with the children’s.

  As Sophie sniffled, Phoebe spoke up. “And this morning, Duckie took us outside and… and…” she said, the rest of her sentence lost to teary hiccups and garbled words.

  Reeve wasn’t unsympathetic, but shows of emotion only made his discomfort worse. “Speak up, little one,” he said. “I must know what has happened.”

  But even if she did speak up, he couldn’t exactly hear her. His younger daughter spoke in mumbled
tones with a young child’s heavy lisp. Her voice did not carry to his ears well enough, and Reeve detested speaking to her because of it – even though he knew it was truly no fault of the girl’s.

  Phoebe tried again. “We went… we went… outside with Duckie and… it… it rained last night…” she trailed off, and even if her life had depended on it, Reeve couldn’t make out much other than “Duckie” and “rained”. Phoebe’s words came to him as many words did, muffled, as though they barely carried through cotton-and-beeswax he’d stuffed into his ears.

  He attempted to draw it out of her again. “Phoebe, do you recall that Papa is hard of hearing?”

  She went deeply pink and nodded.

  “Do you recall why?”

  “The war?” she asked uncertainly. Reeve only knew what she said because, although he could not read lips well, yet, he knew she would say “the war”.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Reeve with a controlled tone.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” said Phoebe.

  “Thank you, my pet. Now, if you could please speak more loudly, I would appreciate it.”

  Phoebe simply burst into tears at that.

  Sweet, quiet Phoebe was the fearful sort to begin with, which was made worse by Reeve’s impatience in dealing with her. His frustration at being unable to hear her only came out as anger.

  But Sophie, who always remembered their father was so very hard of hearing since his return home, had undertaken the duty of repeating her sister’s words.

  “Duckie took us for a lovely walk this morning,” she said, more loudly than Phoebe could ever manage. “We picked flowers, and Mrs. Humphrey will have us whipped for bringing in mud because it rained last evening and had not dried up by dawn.”

  Reeve sighed. He knew that none of the women in the household would dare to paddle his children because he had made certain they wouldn’t. However, his daughters were unaware of that directive. When they believed that they had done something wrong, they cowered in fear of their governess and the housekeeper. That nervousness was compounded by the fact that both women seemed to constantly, coldly threaten to use the paddle even though they knew they couldn’t.

  It was an idle threat that struck fear into Phoebe and Sophie’s young hearts.

  “That is ridiculous,” Reeve said dismissively. “They will do nothing of the kind.”

  Unexpectedly, his words seemed to have the opposite effect with his girls, because their eyes welled with heavy tears. He fought down the urge to panic.

  “But Miss Anna says so,” Phoebe said. Her voice became higher. “She promises.”

  Their squeals and tears only made the pounding in his head worse. Reeve found himself consoling his children when he wanted to be resting his head. He tried to convince them that no one was going to spank them, but his pain just translated any well-meaning words into sharpness.

  “I assure you that she will not spank you,” he said. His voice was curt. “Papa is back, and there will be nobody taking a paddle to your backsides. Let this be the end of it.”

  Despite his brusque words, the girls finally seemed at ease. Satisfied, he quickly led the way into their nursery to ring for a maid. He wanted his girls tended so he didn’t feel so guilty when he abandoned them to seek his bed. But Phoebe and Sophie, having not seen him in several days, began regaling him with the happenings in the manor since they’d last seen him.

  Of course, rather than be even more churlish than he’d already been, he had to stand there and take it.

  Reeve passed a hand over his eyes as he listened. Or at least pretended to listen. The truth was that he could only hear Sophie on occasion. She had a deeper voice than Phoebe, which helped, but she still lapsed into what would have passed for a more normal volume of voice, a lower volume, with any other adult. The ache in his head seemed to have increased tenfold since making his entry into his own house and, now, he was considering leaving it again just to find some peace.

  Cool bed be damned to the Devil.

  “Papa, will you stay home now, or will you be gone again so soon?” Sophie asked. Her gaze was beseeching.

  Reeve heard that question. He looked at the pair, with those blue eyes that looked so much like their mother’s. Maybe that was part of the problem: every time he looked at them, he saw Daisy, the cold blonde creature, fragile, but oh-so-wicked.

  There was her ghost again, clinging to the house, poisoning his memories of his life since he’d married her. They were memories best forgotten, but that was difficult when he looked at his children. He couldn’t think of Daisy in any terms other than evil, not after what she’d put him through after he’d returned from Salamanca.

  He couldn’t summon a shred of sympathy, not after what that she-wolf had done.

  “Papa has businesses he must attend to,” he said shortly. “You must allow Miss Anna to care for you.”

  Phoebe’s lips started to tremble again. “But we don’t like Miss Anna.”

  Reeve knew that, but he couldn’t do anything about it today. “That is unfortunate,” he said. “But Miss Anna is your governess, like it or not. She has great things of import to teach you, and you had better allow her to do what she is paid to do, or you will be sorely lacking in education. Is that what you want?”

  But Reeve knew the girls didn’t know what they wanted, or what might be best for them. Not really. They were still far too young. All they knew was their governess terrified them. They looked at each other, sadly.

  “But we still don’t want her, Papa,” Sophie said, again. “She is wicked and cruel.”

  At a loss for what else to say, Reeve eyed his daughters. Phoebe had a finger stuck in her mouth, while Sophie had an arm thrown around her sister’s small shoulders. Both were staring at him with earnest determination and hope.

  Hope that, for once, he might listen to them.

  Aspirations for a quiet bed or a healing bath were fading further and further. Reeve had come home entertaining hopes of hiding from the world, but his daughters had innocently thwarted his plans. Sophie, the more opinionated of the two, was a good sister. She took care of timid Phoebe well enough for Reeve not to worry about them. He knew that his daughters grieved the loss of their mother. But the sorry truth was that they had learned to get along without her well before she had died.

  Yet the older they became, it was clearer that their self-sufficiency was waning. They needed, and wanted, their father’s attention these days. But he couldn’t bring himself to give it.

  What in the world could make them so yearning?

  What was he missing? The girls had a governess, a housekeeper, a cook, and several maids to tend to their whims and needs, so why did they still act as if they needed him?

  Why wouldn’t they leave him alone?

  Thankfully, he was saved from further conversation by the maid’s arrival. She swept in and whispered sweetly to the girls. They turned to her, diverting their attention from their father, and Reeve took the opportunity to quickly bolt for the door.

  “The children must be hungry,” he said to the maid – anything to keep them busy so that he could escape. “See that they are well fed. And send word to Mrs. Humphrey, Miss Ball, and Duckie to join me in my library in five minutes.”

  As the maid nodded and the little girls waved farewell to their father, Reeve quit the nursery, wondering if he was ever going to be able to tend to his throbbing head.

  The Thornlands required too much of his attention today.

  He had to do something about it.

  Chapter Two

  “I will not say it again, so listen well,” Reeve said. His tone was a displeased growl. “Under no circumstances will any of you take a paddle to my daughters – nor will you ever threaten to do so. Is this in any way unclear?”

  He spoke to a sullen group. Miss Ball went so far as to gasp with outrage as she glared at him in a mulish manner, but Reeve ignored the show of provocation. At least for now, he did. But there was a problem behind all of this, somethi
ng he’d been ignoring since his wife’s death.

  It had been Lady Malliston who had brought Miss Ball and Mrs. Humphrey with her from her maiden home. From the start, they had only taken orders from Lady Malliston as if Reeve did not exist. He’d not been troubled by it. He didn’t care how the house was run, or about anything else that he considered his wife’s business, but now he was forced to assume her position without any of her authority.

  Unfortunately, their old habits were deeply entrenched and neither Miss Ball nor Mrs. Humphrey saw any need to listen to, or otherwise obey, him. It was to be their downfall.

  “By that same token,” Reeve said, continuing under Miss Ball’s murderous stare, “Under no circumstances will I ever come home to such an objectionable scene as I did today. It is detestable and unseemly, and no further debacle will be pardoned under my roof. It was shameful at the very least and a terrible example to my children. Do you understand this?”

  The ladies grew quiet at the admonition, with Miss Ball and Mrs. Humphrey passing rebellious glances. Duckie, however, was more serene and receptive; she’d been with the Malliston household since Reeve was a child and, much like the duke’s two young daughters, she detested the sisters. They’d been nothing but trouble since Lady Malliston had brought them in, and she had always been the odd man out.

  “I shall abide by your words, my lord,” Duckie said. She set her jaw. “But if threatened, I should be allowed to defend myself.”

  Reeve looked at the woman. Estelle Breem was, by nature, an inoffensive, well-meaning, and easy-going creature. These were the very reasons that Reeve thought of her with reasonably warm regard. However, the two sisters seemed to draw out a combative nature that had been hidden within her. If Reeve didn’t show more care, the three women would degrade his home into a battleground. They were growing increasingly disgruntled by sharing responsibilities over a household that no longer included Lady Malliston.

  In more accurate terms, the sisters were disgruntled by Duckie’s presence. They had been trying to oust her since their arrival, and their efforts had only intensified since his wife’s passing.