With This Kiss

system, Father, I can assure you that it is impossible to disinherit a legitimate son.”
    “I’ll tell the House of Lords that you’re no child of mine,” the duke bellowed. Veins bulged on his forehead and his cheeks had ripened from red to purple. “I’ll tell ’em that your mother was a light-heeled wench and that I’ve discovered you’re nothing but a bastard.”
    At the insult to his mother, James’s fragile control snapped altogether. “You may be a craven, dim-witted gamester, but you will not tar my mother with sorry excuses designed to cover up your own idiocy!”
    “How dare you!” screamed the duke. His whole face had assumed the color of a cockscomb.
    “I say only what every person in this kingdom knows,” James said, the words exploding from his mouth. “You’re an idiot. I have a good idea what happened to the estate; I just wanted to see whether you had the balls to admit it. And you don’t. No surprise there. You mortgaged every piece of non-entailed land attached to the estate, at least those you didn’t sell outright—and pissed all the money away on the Exchange. You invested in one ridiculous scheme after another. The canal you built that wasn’t even a league from another canal? What in God’s name were you thinking?”
    “I didn’t know that until it was too late! My associates deceived me. A duke doesn’t go out and inspect the place where a canal is supposed to be built. He has to trust others, and I’ve always had the devil’s own luck.”
    “I would have at least visited the proposed canal before I sank thousands of pounds into a waterway with no hope of traffic.”
    “You impudent jack-boy! How dare you!” The duke’s hand tightened around a silver candlestick standing on the mantelpiece.
    “Throw that, and I’ll leave you in this room to wallow in your own fear. You want me to marry a girl who thinks I’m her brother in order to get her fortune… so that you— you —can lose it? Do you know what they call you behind your back, Father? Surely you’ve heard it. The Dam’Fool Duke!”
    They were both breathing heavily, but his father was puffing like a bull, the purple stain on his cheeks vivid against his white neck cloth.
    The duke’s fingers flexed once again around the piece of silver.
    “Throw that candlestick and I’ll throw you across the room,” James said, adding, “Your Grace.”
    The duke’s hand fell to his side and he turned his shoulder away, staring at the far wall. “And what if I lost it?” he muttered, belligerence underscoring his confession. “The fact is that I did lose it. I lost it all. The canal was one thing, but I thought the vineyards were a sure thing. How could I possibly guess that England is a breeding ground for black rot?”
    “You imbecile!” James spat and turned on his heel to go.
    “The Staffordshire estate’s been in our family for six generations. You must save it. Your mother would have been devastated to see the estate sold. And what of her grave… have you thought of that? The graveyard adjoins the chapel, you know.”
    James’s heart was beating savagely in his throat. It took him a moment to come up with a response that didn’t include curling his hands around his father’s neck. “That is low, even from you,” he said finally.
    The duke paid no heed to his rejoinder. “Are you going to allow your mother’s corpse to be sold?”
    “I will consider wooing some other heiress,” James said finally. “But I will not marry Daisy.” Theodora Saxby—known to James alone as Daisy—was his dearest friend, his childhood companion. “She deserves better than me, better than anyone from this benighted family.”
    There was silence behind him. A terrible, warped silence that… James turned. “You didn’t. Even you… couldn’t. ”
    “I thought I would be able to replace it in a matter of weeks,” his father said, the color leaving his cheeks suddenly so that he looked positively used up.
    James’s legs felt so weak that he had to lean against the door. “How much of her fortune is gone?”
    “Enough.” Ashbrook dropped his eyes, at last showing some sign of shame. “If she marries anyone else, I’ll… I’ll face trial. I don’t know if they can put dukes in the dock. The House of Lords, I suppose. But it won’t be pretty.”
    “Oh, they can put dukes on trial, all right,” James said heavily. “You embezzled the dowry of a girl entrusted to your care since the time she was a