Free Games of Pleasure by Julia Ross

secretaries looked up as he stalked into the estate offices that lay near his private rooms.
    The man scrambled to his feet. “My lord!”
    â€œWe had an appointment this morning at ten, Mr. Davis,” Ryder said. “I was delayed. Was it anything urgent?”
    It was urgent, of course. All estate business was urgent, always. The Blackdowns controlled over twenty thousand acres in Dorset, and countless acres and estates in other counties. The duchy employed stewards and secretaries, agents and housekeepers, yet someone in the family had to hold all of those reins together. Someone had to make the final decisions.
    As he had grown older, the duke had delegated that task piece by piece to his eldest son. Now Ryder ran almost everything.
    He worked straight through the afternoon and evening, only stopping when he realized that the secretary’s face was gray with fatigue.
    â€œI didn’t intend to drive you so hard, Mr. Davis,” he said. “Take off what’s left of the day. Tomorrow as well, if you like. I can finish this.”
    â€œIt’s my pleasure to work with you, my lord,” the secretary said. “I’ll take a rest when we’re done.”
    Ryder smiled at him. “No flattery, sir. Take a break. Get something to eat, for God’s sake! There’s nothing left here now that can’t wait until later.”
    â€œIt’s not flattery, my lord,” Davis said. “I meant it. It’s both an honor and a joy to work with Your Lordship.”
    The man left the room. Ryder sat back and stretched, a little bemused. Davis might even be telling him the truth, though that would—always and forever—be impossible to ascertain. It was simply part of Ryder’s life that he would never be able to distinguish flattery from friendship with any certainty.
    Probably, he thought with a wry smile, why he had so few real friends!
    When the door opened again, he looked up, expecting to see Davis. Instead he scrambled to his feet and bowed.
    â€œYour Grace!”
    Tiny, exquisite, his mother walked into the room. She gazed at him with his own eyes, green as glass. From her blond hair to her shoes she embodied perfection. It was a perfection that Ryder had always longed to encompass, yet knew he never could.
    â€œAre you mad, Ryderbourne?” she asked. “What are you doing in here?”
    â€œI’m managing our properties,” he said. “That’s what I do. Though not somewhere Your Grace normally visits, this room forms part of our estate offices.”
    She raised her fair brows as if he had said he were studying slugs. “We employ stewards to see to the estates. You are my eldest son. You left home yesterday morning to offer marriage to Lady Belinda Carhart, a pretty girl of little brain but much consequence. However flawed a judgment about the fair sex that choice may have demonstrated, you claimed to be in love with her. Fortunately, Lady Belinda is qualified by birth, if nothing else, to become my successor one day. It may or may not have occurred to you that the results of that interview would be of interest to others besides yourself.”
    He felt dumbstruck, but he told her the simple truth. “I apologize, Your Grace. I had forgotten.”
    The duchess walked away to study a print on the wall: the classical facade of Wrendale, one of the duchy houses in Derbyshire. Her straight back was eloquent with exasperation.
    â€œ Forgotten? That you are affianced, or that you are not?”
    The smallest curl of amusement, along with real surprise at himself, forced him to smile. Lady Belinda and the humiliation of her refusal had not crossed his mind since—Ryder took a deep breath. Not since he had seen a small boat foundering in the ocean. It was almost as if his proposal of marriage had happened in another lifetime, one now entirely irrelevant.
    â€œShe refused me,” he said.
    The ribbons on his mother’s dress