Dukes By the Dozen

“It’s not as if I haven’t tried, but—” Behind her, the door latch rattled, and she sprang back to action, lowering her voice to an urgent whisper. “Help me!” She motioned for him to join her as she laid a determined shoulder to the chest of drawers.

“I don’t think I should.” Even he knew barricading them in alone was definitely not the done thing.

“I’ll explain if you’ll only help,” she promised. “You’re supposed to be a bloody hero, Beech. Come act like one.”

He was drawn in by her wayward charm. “My dear Pease Porridge, whatever have you been doing with yourself these many years?” His question went unanswered while he snugged in beside her to lay his good shoulder into the chest of drawers—careful so as not to spill his drink—and shove the heavy piece of furniture the necessary remaining inches to bar the door.

“Thank you.” She blew out a gusty breath before she smiled up at him and patted his lapel in an absent gesture of casual intimacy that nearly rocked him back on his heels. “Good Lord, Beech, you smell divine. What are you drinking?” She swiped the snifter of brandy from his hand and took a hearty sip. “Mmm. Thanks.” She kept possession of the glass as she all but flung herself into the other armchair opposite the hearth. “I’m meant to be good and stay well clear of trouble, but to do so I’m in need of some fortification. You?”

“As you see.” Marcus decided he rather liked the offhand, ordinary way she treated him, much like his brother officers had—as if there were nothing wrong with him.

He fetched himself another drink. “Well clear of trouble? But wasn’t there some stupid talk of you marrying my late, unlamented brother?”

She nearly choked on the brandy, but when she recovered her aplomb, she shot him what he could only describe as a sharp, cutty-eyed glance. “Dear Beech, you have been away.”

“Aye.” He distinctly remembered his mother had written about an engagement between Pease Porridge and his older brother Caius, if only because the news had given him such an awful, riveting pang that had stayed with him, lodged deep in his chest like a broken rib.

“There was talk, but it was quickly dismissed.”

And just like that, the pain was healed, and he could breathe again. “Glad to hear it.”

“Ha!” she scoffed. “You’d be the first of your family to feel so.”

Something in her tone told Marcus he was clearly not in possession of all the facts. “Enlighten me, Pease Porridge.”

She laughed, but by the time she answered, the twinkling warmth in her eyes had hardened into studied nonchalance. “Did no one write to tell you all the gory details? That I made the unforgivable mistake of daring to decline the engagement that was so thoughtfully and hastily arranged for the Duke of Warwick and me? That I refused to marry your brother, and was that instant and forevermore declared entirely unsuitable?”

The flush of satisfaction—she had refused Caius!—quickly burned itself out. Such childish triumph was beneath him with his brother cold in his grave.

Still. “Unsuitable for being smart enough to say no to my blaggard of a brother?” Such a choice only raised her up in his estimation. “Hardly.”

“Kind Beech. You have been away a very long time, haven’t you?” Penelope Pease took another deep drink, before she met his eye. “It’s like this, Beech. I’m ruined, you see. Utterly and completely ruined.”

CHAPTER 3

“THE DEVIL YOU SAY!”

Penelope could tell by the scowl on Marcus Beecham’s delightfully scruffy face that he did not believe her.

“Come now,” Beech continued in his lovely low baritone. “Don’t distress me with such nonsense.”

It was kind of him, if naive. She wouldn’t have expected that of a naval man—especially one so obviously aware of how unfair, unkind and harsh life could be. “I wish I were, Beech. I wish—” So many things. Things she couldn’t say to dear Beech, who seemed to have come back to her from the dead—certainly his family had made no mention of him for years. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here, and that’s what matters.”

“Pease Porridge.” His tone brooked no change of conversation. “What don’t I know?”

How strange—or refreshing, she was not sure which—that he didn’t know the whole of her very short, but ultimately sordid, affair with his now-deceased brother.

Lord, but they grew them fine, these Beecham boys. They were so alike physically—tall and strong-boned with piercing grey-green eyes—she might be forgiven for her imprudent infatuation. Beech was all tanned, naval robustness, even with that empty sleeve, where Caius had been a paler, more citified version of handsome.

But even a blind woman could tell that Marcus Beecham had become everything his devilishly good-looking older brother had not been—upstanding, honest and forthright. Too good for the likes of her. “All you need to know is that I am ruined, and you are meant to stay well clear of me.”