The Beast's Bluestocking (The Bluestocking War), Eva Devon [e textbook reader .TXT] 📗

to some world far from the rules and strictures that they both had been controlled by.

As a second son, he couldn’t offer much. But he’d assured himself he would find a way.

That was an impossibility now. His body was broken. He would have no future and no way to make one. Certainly not in the Navy.

It had been the strangest of miracles which had brought him and Philippa it together.

She'd written to his sister, Clara.

They were friends, quite good friends.

And one day, one of her letters had somehow managed to get into a satchel of things sent to him. He'd opened that letter. He knew that he shouldn't have, but he did. And he'd read the sprightly. intelligent words upon the page. He’d been taken in by her cheerful wit and her honesty about her own family situation.

He'd been unable to stop himself and he'd written back. Ever since then, they had exchanged letters and those bright notes. Even though they were sometimes filled with her own difficulties, they had gotten him through the years of hell upon the Indomitable.

Now, he wondered what might she have to say if she saw him? No doubt she'd recoil in horror. He was going to look like a monster after this and he'd have nothing.

Merrill lifted his hand, as if he was going to place it atop Anthony’s but then he stopped and rushed, “Your brother is dead.”

Anthony blinked and tried to focus, unable to fathom the words just spoken. The laudanum was truly twisting his mind.

“I beg your pardon?” he breathed.

“Your brother, the duke.” Merrill’s gray face only grew more harrowing. “He's dead. He died in a freak riding accident. His horse bolted, your brother was thrown, and his neck was broken. You are the duke now, Your Grace.”

Anthony gaped at Merrill. His mind rolled on that sea of laudanum. He shook his head. Swallowing back the nausea roiling inside him.

“No—”

“Yes,” Merrill replied firmly. “It’s true. It is official news.”

Anthony groaned inwardly. He did not know what to feel. He’d barely spent any time with his elder brother, who had been several years older and dogged in his duty. And his distance.

No, no, this wasn't possible.

The last thing he wished was to be a duke.

Anthony wanted to remove himself from the hierarchy that ruined men’s lives and strike off to parts unknown, to never be a cog, an important cog but a cog no less, in the British Empire again. He would not take part in the cruelty of the great machine or its sprawling force.

If he was a duke? Duke of Grey? He was integral to it.

A power of it.

One of the ruling forces.

The reality was too much to take in at this moment.

The power and wealth now at his fingertips. His brother had shaped governments, influenced the royal family, and in his own way was just like Captain Adams, a god to the peasants that depended on his good will.

His brother had been raised for that role and was considered by his peers to be superb at it—unfeeling, strong, unyielding, capable of ruling at least a quarter of England.

Anthony himself? He had been raised to rule too, but to rule in a different way, to command men to go to their deaths without shirking, to fight, to ensure victory for England.

Now he wasn't so sure that victory was worth the cruelty and loss of small boys that he'd seen.

Except there was no changing it, for it was the way of the world.

Unless. . .

Perhaps if he was a duke. . .  He could make change.

He swallowed and nearly gagged on the dryness of his throat. He felt little for the passing of his brother, but it caused him a different sort of pain.

He'd barely spent any time with him and his brother had been very different than he, hard, cold, astute, unwilling to spend much time away from his works.

He had left Anthony alone when their parents had died. From nanny to boarding schools for years and years, his brother had left him alone, then he’d left him to the Navy too.

They had not talked in at least five years' time, except through exceptionally brief missives.

Yet, his brother did boast about him. That information had come to him through their various similar acquaintances. Tales of him lifting a glass of wine to salute the might of England and his brother’s bravery.

After all, Anthony was often mentioned in dispatches and that seemed to please the duke  to no end, to have a successful military man in the family.

But he had shown no actual interest in Anthony as a person. Still, it was hard to believe that his older brother was. . . dead.

That left just himself and his sister, of course. A sister he loved dearly.

And his brother had done his duty by Clara, ensuring she was raised to be a lady, allowing her to live with him in London.

Clara, he thought. Her heart must be breaking. For though she had always been at a distance from her eldest brother, she had cared for him. Now, she no doubt felt alone in England.

He could not imagine the sorrow that she was going through. And no doubt, she would get news soon that he was in dire straits. And all thoughts of wanting to die suddenly left him.     He could not do that to his Clara. He wouldn't leave her alone in the world. It was far too hard for a woman, especially a young lady, to be left without the assistance of a male relative, no matter what their position or wealth.

No, he had to fight to ensure that he at least lived for her to ensure that they could become established and safe. They had all the money in the world, it was true, but it was difficult to navigate this world alone as a woman.

And he thought of Philippa.

As a duke, could he. . .

No, he snapped his brain away from that thought.

The pain lacing through him