Chapter Text
When the Grimes family housekeeper, Mrs. Deanna Monroe, bursts into Rick’s bedroom, Rick is certain that the house is on fire and they will all certainly perish. It seemed so, at least, based on the level of panic in the woman’s voice.
“Mister Richard,” the housekeeper exclaims. “Your father needs you in the drawing room. Make haste!”
Rick sits up straight in bed, clutching at his heart and willing it to calm down. “What is the matter, Mrs. Monroe?”
“It’s your sister,” the woman says, crossing the room and tugging on Rick’s arm until he climbs out of bed, letting out little grunts of protest and trying to keep his legs covered for decency’s sake.
“Lori?” Rick asks, only a little stupidly because of course he only has one sister. “Is she unwell?”
“In the head, possibly,” Mrs. Monroe answers. She grabs Rick’s heavy silver hairbrush and advances on him, but Rick holds up his hands and wards her off. “She’s well enough, I suppose. But your father will tell you everything. It’s not my place to say.”
Rick sighs heavily. “Send my valet in and tell Father I’ll be down with all haste,” he tells the housekeeper after a moment. She leaves the room in a flurry of skirts and Rick sits down heavily on the edge of his bed while he waits for Shane to come help him with his clothing and, more to the point, with his birdsnest of curly brown hair that must always be tamed before he can be seen in public.
It takes twenty minutes to get Rick dressed and to get his hair manhandled into some semblance of respectability, and by the time he gets to the drawing room, Col. Abraham Grimes is already in full rant, yelling at the woman who’s sitting on the sofa with her hands primly folded in her lap. She’s a lovely older lady wearing a beautiful rose-colored morning dress, her hair skillfully done up in a tight, deceptively simple bun, and Rick vaguely recognizes her as Lady Jacqui Douglas, who had recently come to London to find spouses for her sons.
“--don’t know what you’ve been teaching your boys, but this simply is not done,” Abraham is bellowing. “What sort of man just… just sweeps off in the dead of night with good, respectable ladies? Carries them off to Gretna Green without so much as a word to their worried fathers?”
“Col. Grimes,” Lady Douglas says, her voice even and careful. “Losing your temper will not change the facts in the matter. We must simply accept what has happened and move on from--”
“Accept what has happened?” Abraham interrupts. “Accept what has happened? My daughter was to be a duchess, Lady Douglas. A duchess. Do you know how hard I worked to secure that betrothal for her? Do you know?”
Rick clears his throat awkwardly in the doorway, and both people turn to look at him. Lady Douglas’s face is still serene and calm, while Abraham’s moustache seems to be making a valiant effort to fling itself off his face and start pummeling someone. “Good morning, Lady Douglas,” Rick says, bowing politely.
Jacqui opens her mouth to respond, but Abraham cuts them both off. “Good morning my sweaty bollocks,” he grumbles, the words punctuated by audible horrified gasping from both Lady Douglas and Rick, but Abraham pays them no mind. “A good morning would have been if my daughter had made it to the altar and started passing around calling cards with ‘Duchess of Bettsville’ imprinted on them. Not run off to Scotland with the second son of a baron.”
“Perhaps we can go after them?” Rick suggests. “They may not have gotten far. We can bring them back before anyone knows.”
“And when she turns up with child and it’s obviously not Dixon’s? We’d never survive the scandal.” Abraham moves his top lip so that his moustache wriggles angrily.
Rick blinks several times, rapidly. “Surely she won’t be…” He trails off, then clears his throat as quietly as he can manage. “Surely she will not be with child already.”
Lady Douglas sighs, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “There is the possibility, however slight.”
Abraham grunts in agreement and glares at nothing in particular. “And with a man like Dixon, the possibility is enough to break off the engagement.”
That starts up the argument again, with Abraham speaking on the borderline of yelling and Lady Douglas shooting back retorts in a maddeningly calm tone. Rick sighs and looks around the room for something else to focus on and his eyes fall on an opened letter lying on the sideboard. He walks over and opens it up.
Father--forgive me. I wanted nothing more than to bring honor to the family by marrying Lord Dixon, but I cannot. I love Theodore, Father, and we will be happy together. You will see. One day I hope you will allow us back into the family. I love you both and look forward to greeting you when we return to London as Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Douglas.
Rick drops the letter back onto the sideboard and repeats Jacqui’s motion of squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the top of his nose. He remembers Theodore from a few of the balls that the family had attended, although he isn’t sure they had ever been formally introduced. In fact, when he thinks of it, he’s not even certain that Theodore and Lori had ever been formally introduced.
The scandal.
There’s a sharp rap on the door of the drawing room, and Rick snaps his attention to the door at the same time that Abraham and Jacqui drop off into dead silence. After a moment, the butler, Mr. Leon Basset, walks in and bows respectfully. “His Grace Daryl Dixon, Duke of Bettsville,” Basset announces.
“Mother dick,” Abraham mutters under his breath, but nods at the butler. “Show him in, of course.”
“I must be going,” Lady Douglas murmurs, standing up from the sofa and gathering her clutch purse. “I will send word if I hear from my Theodore.”
Lady Douglas quickly leaves the room, and then Daryl Dixon walks in.
//
It’s not the first time Rick has seen Lord Dixon. After all, the duke had been betrothed to Rick’s sister, so he’d been in this very drawing room with the man on several occasions, engaging in polite but boring conversation befitting their ranks. But even during those visits, he’d rarely actually spoken directly to the duke.
In fact, Daryl had talked very little to anyone during those conversations, instead letting his eyes rest on the window as he gazed out into the world. Rick had followed that gaze once, stayed along with it as it flowed past the garden outside, past the street full of society members taking strolls, past Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and over the Thames and the Tower and farther out, into the countryside beyond London until it lost Rick somewhere in the forests of Warwickshire, somewhere dark and secret and mysterious like the duke himself.
But this time, Daryl’s eyes are locked on Abraham, and they aren’t wistful and nostalgic. No, they are angry.
“Your Grace,” Abraham starts. “We were not expecting you. Miss Grimes is indisposed at the moment--”
“I’m sure she is,” Daryl interrupts. “I hear the weather in Scotland is lovely this time of year.”
The silence in the room is thick and heavy like a suit of armor and Rick stays in his corner by the sideboard and tries to look small, resisting the urge to draw attention to himself by self-consciously smoothing out his waist coat. He sends a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens that he’d had Shane dress him appropriately instead of just throwing on a dressing gown and answering his father’s summons as quickly as possible, but honestly nothing in his wardrobe holds a candle to the sleek, immaculately tailored tailcoat that hugs Lord Dixon’s arms and broad shoulders like the morning mist clings to the Earth. Daryl’s cravat is immaculate as well, starched and tied so intricately that Rick is sure that Shane would fall to his knees if he could see it, and Rick cannot even let himself consider the duke’s pantaloons because he isn’t entirely certain that the law allows a gentleman’s thighs to look quite so mouthwatering right here in public.
Rick flushes and looks down at his own buckskins and wishes he’d worn his nice green breeches instead. The last time that Lord Dixon had come calling on Lori, Rick had been wearing these same buckskins, although they had of course been laundered since then. And the time before that…
Rick’s face goes progressively paler as he tries to remember each time the duke had come to visit and whether he’d just happened to be wearing these same buckskins every time.
Oh, heavens. He had, hadn’t he?
Rick stares down at the floor, fixing his eyes on a black piece of the rug that makes up the center of a flower, and he wills it to turn into a cavernous hole and swallow him up before the Duke of Bettsville notices that Rick apparently only has one single pair of pants.
“We don’t believe they’ve been gone for long,” Abraham is saying when Rick cues back in to the conversation. “We’re preparing a search party to find them. We can bring her back before anyone knows what has happened.”
Daryl shrugs, brushing a speck from the arm of his tailcoat. “It matters very little to me whether you catch her before they marry or not,” he says, his voice low and rough, reminding Rick of silly things like Gothic romance novels and the stones that make up Westminster, like tremors on his skin and what it must be like to be ravished in a shadowed corner. Rick shivers, and Daryl flicks his eyes over to him at the movement but quickly returns his fiery gaze to Abraham. “I consider her decision to leave town with Mr. Douglas as her decision to cry off. I trust you won’t stand in my way when I move to dissolve the betrothal contract.”
“Now, Your Grace,” Abraham pleads. “No one knows about this yet, and Lori is a respectable young lady. She won’t have… ah… sullied herself. Not before they get to Scotland. So if we just catch them before they get there--”
“No,” Daryl says with quiet authority.
“But Lord Dixon--”
“No,” Daryl says again. “The decision is made. You know the position my family is in. I need a spouse who is above reproach. And your servants know she’s gone, which means that all of London will know by mid-morning.”
Abraham and his moustache both deflate. “Very well,” he says quietly. “I suppose you’ll want to keep the dowry.”
Daryl shrugs again, his shoulders rolling gracefully, and Rick knows he shouldn’t be thinking such impure thoughts about the man, especially not in such a circumstance, but he can’t help the little puff of breath that escapes his lips at the sight of it. “It’s already invested, so it would be a damn thorn in my side to get it back out of the investments. And in any case, you forfeited claim to it when you didn’t keep your daughter reined in.” He sighs heavily and his hand twitches at his side like it wants to lift to his face. “God, I’m going to have to talk to more people. Find another spouse. I hate this, Grimes. You’ve done me a great disservice here.”
Abraham frowns, then looks over at Rick with a rather unsettling gleam in his eye. “Richard is very respectable,” he murmurs, then smiles and looks back at Daryl, whose eyebrow is already raised. “Yes. Very respectable indeed. Are you acquainted with my son, Dixon?”
“A little,” Daryl says, his eyebrow dropping back down and then following its counterpart into a furrow. “What are you suggesting?”
Rick blinks and his feet move to make a hasty retreat, but Abraham is too fast, crossing the room like the rug is on fire and grabbing Rick by the arm. He tugs Rick over closer to Daryl. “My son, Richard. He’s above reproach. That’s what you needed, right? Richard will make a proper duchess, mark my words.”
“I marked your words once before, Grimes, and we see where it got me,” Daryl grumbles, but he turns his gaze on to Rick, giving him a dispassionate once-over that Rick has seen his father give to horses before buying them. He wonders if the duke will want to check his teeth as well.
“He’s a handsome fellow, isn’t he?” Abraham says, beaming. “He’s an accomplished gentleman. He’s had the best dancing instructors, and he paints with watercolors. He’s excellent at card games and he plays the pianoforte--”
Very ill indeed, Rick thinks, cringing inwardly at the memory of the last time he’d tried to play in public--
“--and most importantly, he’s never had a whiff of scandal associated with him. Not one whiff.”
Daryl is still watching Rick, running his eyes over him thoughtfully, and--oh merciful heavens, is he staring at Rick’s pants? Does he know that they’re the same? Rick bites down on the inside of his cheek to try and keep from whimpering in shame.
Finally, Daryl looks back at Abraham. “He’s been courting Miss Anderson.”
“Very respectfully,” Abraham insists. “And not very seriously. That can be ended quickly and without any scandal. Not a whiff. It was a passing fancy at best. No promises exchanged. Not even a whiff of a promise. No whiffs. None.”
Daryl slides his eyes back over to Rick. “Do you sing?” he asks.
“Only if I’m made to,” Rick says, and Abraham looks as if he’s going to have an apoplectic fit but, luckily, Daryl lets out a nose-breath that sounds… amused? Dear Lord, Rick certainly hopes it’s amused.
“Do you hunt?” Daryl’s eyes meet Rick’s, still appraising but with a spark of something else that Rick’s not sure about.
“Oh, he hunts, alright,” Abraham crows, clapping Rick on the shoulder. “Rides like he was born in the saddle. Shoots better than half the officers I know. More than half. He’s a crack shot.”
“Father,” Rick murmurs, the red in his cheeks threatening to catch fire.
“With a gun or with a bow?” Daryl presses, his eyes still locked with Rick’s.
Rick reaches up to rub the back of his own neck. “Um… both? Although I do not have as much experience with a bow.”
Daryl nods, and Rick can’t help but feel like he’s passed some sort of test. “I can teach you,” he says, then finally breaks eye contact and looks back at Abraham. “Very well. I’ll take him.”
Abraham’s eyes light up and Rick blinks several times rapidly. “Your Grace?” Rick asks, but he’s not entirely sure what the question is, so he lets it hang in the air.
Daryl reaches out and pats Abraham’s arm briefly. “Make the changes to the contract and send it to me. I’ll take care of the rest of the arrangements.” He looks back at Rick and bows a quick, informal bow. “I’ll see you at the ball tonight, I expect?”
Rick nods, his throat dry and unstable, and Daryl turns and leaves the room. There’s silence for a few seconds, then the heavy click of the front door being closed behind the duke, and then Abraham grabs Rick’s arm hard and shoves him down into a chair, crossing his arms and towering over his son.
“Richard, I swear on a stack of Bibles that if you run off with someone or do something scandalous or even so much as look at someone else in the duke’s presence, I’ll wring your neck like a chicken.”
“Yes, Father,” Rick says, blinking again to see if he can get his eyes to focus correctly. Ten minutes ago he was Mr. Richard Grimes, who would probably end up with an aggressively bland and proper marriage to Miss Anderson and live out the rest of his life in a cottage in the countryside, and now… holiest of heavens, now he’s going to be a duchess.
“I need you to go practice your dancing. I’ll have the instructor over here in an hour.” Abraham crosses the room over to his desk and starts pulling out paper and quills. “And have Mrs. Monroe make room for new clothing in your wardrobe. You’ll have to look the part of a man who’s being wooed by a duke, which means new clothing.” He flicks his eyes over at Rick and frowns, his moustache quivering with disdain. “Do not wear those buckskins again in his presence, do you understand?”
“Yes, Father,” Rick says again, smoothing his hands self-consciously over his pants. Lady Dixon, he thinks, imagining how the name will look in his own hand when he signs letters. Lady Richard Dixon. Richard Morgan Dixon, Duchess of Bettsville.
Duchess. Of Bettsville.
Rick Dixon.
Rick smiles softly and lets his world shift on its axis as he moves his future in his mind, from a small cottage to a manor house, from a Mister to a Lady, from a soft blonde woman who does nothing for his loins to a muscular dark-haired man who does. Abraham continues ranting in the background about pin money and tailors and archery lessons, but Rick’s mind is miles away, finding its home in the Forest of Arden and, possibly, in the quiet thunder-blue eyes of a duke.