Free Second Son of a Duke by Gwen Hayes Page B

her neck. As he went lower, she retreated back into her head as much as possible. Ignoring his hands on her breasts, ignoring the hem of her nightgown being pushed up, ignoring the weight of her new husband as he claimed her as his own—though both of them knowing she belonged to no one.

Two

    Teddy raised his head from the ledgers when the library doors flew open and his brother, the Duke of Fenwick, strode in. “Why are you not still in bed with your bride?”
    “It’s the middle of the afternoon, Derek. Besides, my bride is not at home currently.” She’d gone back to her brother’s estate to supervise the retrieval of her belongings, but Teddy suspected the motive was closer to evasion than errand.
    Last night, he’d had the most horrible sex in his life. With the woman he’d promised to spend the rest of his life with. He hardly blamed her for running off. In fact, he envied her the luxury. Unfortunately, he still had a dukedom to keep track of. Not his dukedom, but someone had to do it.
    Derek flopped onto the settee. “I’d hoped marrying you off might make you less priggish. I can see I was mistaken.”
    “You forced a marriage upon two unwilling people who barely know each other. It’s hardly endearing.”
    Derek scoffed and lay back, plopping his dirty boots on the cushion. “She’s not a stranger, Teddy. She’s my best friend’s sister. And a comely one at that.”
    “Then why didn’t you marry her?”
    “She’s my best friend’s sister.”
    “Well, you need to marry someone.” Teddy returned to the ledger in front of him.
    “We both know I’ll die in a duel before I beget an heir. You can get a running start with the lovely Lady Juliette, and I’ve trained you properly for when the title falls to you after my untimely demise.”
    Trained him properly? Derek didn’t know a thing about being a duke, despite having been one since he was a lad of fifteen. It fell to Teddy, it’s always fallen to Teddy, to follow the investments, the tenants, the livestock, everything. Derek couldn’t keep track of his own gloves. As a second son, Teddy should have situated elsewhere, yet he could not leave his brother or the estates would crumble. People’s livelihood depended on him.
    And now he had a wife to consider. And possibly a child, though he hoped not. It wouldn’t bear well for a child to be conceived in what had passed for bed play last night. He’d done his best to make it enjoyable for Juliette, but she seemed resolute in her martyred state. She made it clear she didn’t want to find the marriage bed satisfactory for either of them. She’d done her duty with as much pleasure as emptying a privy.
    Not a very auspicious beginning for a new life.
    Derek was probably correct. The way he lived his life made it easy to imagine he’d be dead long before Teddy reached the end of his own. The illicit affairs, the excessive drink…if something was lurid, Derek was there wearing peacock colors and already half-sick from over-indulgence. Still, if the duke managed to eek out an existence longer than Teddy, the entitled lands would pass to relatives with no concern for the people that toiled most of their lives for it. On a good day, Derek himself pretended to at least care about their welfare.
    Derek tossed a cushion above his head and caught it over and over. It drove Teddy to distraction, but the man could never sit still. “Will you be taking your wife on a wedding trip?”
    “The thought hadn’t yet crossed my mind. Why would that be, I wonder? Perhaps because, until yesterday, I didn’t know I’d have a wife?”
    Derek laughed. “You’re always telling me I need to take responsibility, to finish projects I start. You should be proud that I managed the feat.”
    “The feat?” Teddy repeated. He really needed to stop doing that. Juliette was right; it was annoying.
    Derek threw the cushion at Teddy with no warning, no doubt hoping Teddy would toss it back. Which he did not do. Instead