Chapter Two

One week earlier at 87 Harley Street…

D ustin paced before Felix, who sat at his desk as relaxed as if basking in the sun. Well, the light in his operating room was marvelous. It was just perfectly pointed at the head of Felix's dentist chair in his treatment room. Even an artist's studio wasn't better lit. But Dustin needed money, not light. He couldn't bear his title, Dustin Fitzwater, Duke of Duncan, for the shame that his family's name had suffered lest he fix what had been destroyed.

"Felix, please!" Dustin drove both hands through his hair. "I just need enough to make it to America. Go on honeymoon; I'll look after the practice."

"Dustin, it's not that I don't trust you. If anyone can take my place while I travel, it's you. But—"

"Then just let me!"

"I thought you had to keep a low profile? What happened to the cousin who claimed your family's estate?"

"Let him have it. There's nothing to the name anymore."

"But doesn't it matter to you? Don't you want to uphold your family's traditions? Isn't there more to a dukedom than property?"

"Felix, this is the British peerage; it's all about money and power. We're not the chosen people who left ancient Egypt over seven thousand years ago to build a culture of honor and tradition." Sometimes, Felix's Jewish idealism and sense of duty to his people made Dustin feel he was leaving his family's legacy behind in the mud. Nothing was further from the truth, though. He wished to wash the Duke of Duncan's title clean, even if he couldn't bear the title himself to accomplish that. And anyone who knew how the nobility worked… argh! Dustin rubbed his eyes. "Haven't you ever met any aristocrats?"

Felix burst into laughter. "Met them? My practice is in Marylebone. Who do you think can afford to pay for my services?"

"There you have it." Dustin grew tired of Felix's testing questions. As a gentleman, Dustin had begun his studies in philosophy, of course. But the more he'd thought about morality and ethics, the more he realized he had to right his father's wrongs. To understand the crime, he had to study the effects. He needed to understand how the trickery harmed people. Thus, Dustin switched to the faculty of medicine in his third year because he couldn't stop thinking about catching the criminal who'd soiled his family's name and tricked Father out of their fortune with charlatanerie. Until Dustin could restore their family's good name, he'd rather leave the title in his cousin's care. "So why are you asking me about honor and tradition?"

"Because I have indeed met some aristocrats who are not worthy of their titles, but I have also met plenty who are. They try to bring England into the future, and they devote their lives to their holdings, to managing and—"

"Good for them! If there were something to manage, Felix, I'd step up. I hope you know that. But it's been sold piecemeal, and there's nothing but heartbreak associated with the Duncan name."

"You are a duke and not a doctor," Felix mumbled through a lop-sided smile. "You're not the common folk like me."

"Isn't it my prerogative, then, to choose my profession if I'm so special? You know what I chose, Felix." Dustin tugged at his collar, stifled by the title and burden he couldn't escape. "I studied all the subjects of a physician and more; how does that not make me a doctor?"

"Because you are a duke. It was all right for you to perfect the craft and to be a dentist where nobody knew you, but here—" Felix waved at the well-equipped treatment room and then stopped, pointing in the direction of the street—"you could be found out! There's more to you here than an anonymous dentist. What about the castles? The land?"

"Only one is left. The farmers own much of the land, or it's been lost to other estates. I'm telling you nobody needs to know I'm the next Duncan. Let Cousin John have it."

"Won't anyone recognize you here? If you take my place, someone might seek you out." Felix opened the giant ledger on his desk; it was an appointment book. He trailed his fingers along the lines. "Caroline, Duchess of Cornwall, on Tuesday. She has two sons, terrible teeth, sweet boys, and lots of business. It won't take long for you to have enough money for the passage to Maryland." He turned the page. "Lord Elroy Hingham, Sir Wintmore of Stratford on Wednesday. Baron Bruce of Annandale is coming for the first time on Friday, but I've already finished all the work on his two daughters, brother, and wife."

"The baron's wife or the brother's?" Dustin asked, feigning interest. He was genuinely mocking Felix and his long list of fancy patients. To him, it didn't matter whether the patient was titled. He didn't even care if the patient could pay. He wanted to do his best work as long as he had supplies to help people. Sometimes, to his dismay, doing the best work meant working at a deficit. And yet, he thought it was essential to redeem dentists' bad reputation. What was the saying about one rotten apple? In his chosen profession, most apples were rotten, just like their patient's teeth, but he and Felix were the good ones. They'd never extract a tooth only because they didn't want to spend the time to treat it properly. They'd never use inferior materials to fill a cavity. They'd never fail to clean a cavity thoroughly before placing a filling; it just made matters worse. And the Duncans had done enough of that.

Most importantly, neither Dustin nor Felix would ever remove too much material from a tooth; scraping healthy enamel to make it easier to fit a filling was the work of quacks. But unfortunately, in their profession, quacks ruled and made up the standard. It was simple math, really. The lowest common denominator had become the highest standard, which meant he and Felix were among a handful of dentists worldwide who tried to lift the profession from the muddy quackery that was heartbreakingly common. They were the odd ones out.

Dustin cast Felix a warm look. Even though he was a bit older than Dustin and had become much of a mentor, they shared the values contained within dentistry as a profession. They were friends. And Felix was the only one in London who knew his secret, Dustin hoped.

"Watch out on Saturday. That's usually when many—but not all—ladies of the ton bring their debutantes or almost-debutante daughters. Utmost secrecy prevails here. The young women are considered ruined if their mouths are not perfectly virginal."

"At age eighteen?" Dustin asked.

"They rarely come without some work done. I cannot tell you what those finishing schools do to the girls, but their mothers are relentless when they come here."

"What do they think we do to their mouths?" Dustin's frustration with the clandestine dentistry and his clandestine aristocracy gave him a headache.

"Nothing, if it's not necessary. But it often is. They live rather spoiled lives, with lots of treats for the children. And until it's time for their debut, their parents are too self-absorbed to pay attention to their teeth. Usually, some school dentist… oh, what can I tell you? Sometimes, they come with a mess in their mouths. When they grow up, having a bright white smile for their debuts at Almack's takes a little—" Felix rubbed his fingers together to show the finesse required to restore white teeth for the ladies who sought matches among England's nobility.

"I understand, Felix. I saw your kiln." Dustin was only one of the few who had seen how to make porcelain inlays, inlays, and crowns. Felix was a pioneer and had reinvented how to craft a tooth from paste, fire it to harden, glaze it, and make it fit in the patient's mouth. Even though others had made similar white teeth before, nobody had ever managed to give the restored tooth the transparency of a natural one and to make it functional, comfortable for the patient, and permanent.

For what was a valuable tooth if not for chewing? It could be made of paper if it only had to be white.

It was an issue Dustin preferred not to touch on these days. There were quacks worldwide, not merely in England, who barely scraped the decay from a cavity and then stuffed whatever cheap material they could find in the tooth. Only some of these so-called dentists ever considered the functionality, occlusion, or aesthetics. The patient didn't matter; money did. They were no better than the stewards and tradesmen who'd tricked his father out of his fortune. Their collusion had ruined his family. He hated everything that had to do with it.

That was how Dustin and Felix had become friends in the first place. At the amphitheater in Vienna, where Dustin studied, and Felix assisted the professor as his junior surgeon, Dustin nearly cast his insides up one day. The patient, a former soldier, was on a table for surgery that Dustin knew would distort his features for life. Dustin had sought refuge in the halls, where he met Felix, and Felix became his mentor.

And so, they became friends, traveled together, and perfected their craft. Even though Felix was a few years his senior, Dustin caught up quickly and learned a lot. However, gold was the more reliable material to use when he traveled. He couldn't afford a kiln and had never quite known how to make the porcelain teeth as well as Felix. It wasn't the sort of dentistry Dustin could practice when he was on the move, and he'd been since he started to chase Corrigan, for Dustin needed to catch the criminal who'd brought doom to his father and the Dukedom. Maybe he could learn more from Felix one day when he returned from America.

All he could think of for now was to stop Corrigan's charlatanry from spreading to the continent. Dustin thought he'd inherited his father's guilt along with his name. If he didn't solve the problems his father had left, he feared he didn't deserve the honor of the title.

"All right, so what will they call you? It would be best if you didn't lie to my patients. One disgruntled aristocrat could cost me the practice."

"Understood. I'll leave the title and family name out. How about just Dustin Fitzwater?"

Felix nodded his acceptance. "Here you go, Dr. Dustin Fitzwater. This is your schedule for the next month. I hope to be back in three weeks. Keep my practice going, please. You can keep all the profits."

"Enjoy your honeymoon, Felix. Don't think about the practice; I'll look after your patients."

"Be careful, Dustin. They might recognize you," Felix warned again.

"I haven't been to London since before I was sixteen. Nobody will recognize me."

"Let's hope you are right," Felix said with a crooked brow.

Dustin's insides clenched at the thought.

Dustin's father had fallen victim to a cunning middleman, tricked out of their fortune and leaving their family in shambles while he sold badly mixed filling materials produced with their family's fortune. Determined not to follow the same path, Dustin had thrown himself into his education, where he met Felix and discovered dentistry.

At first, he hadn't expected to find joy or talent in dentistry. Yet each day brought a growing satisfaction as he honed his skills, a rare bright spot amid the ruins of his family's lost fortune and title. The weight of nobility and its responsibilities had never suited him; he preferred the tangible, philanthropic work of dentistry, where he could make a real difference and instantly visible results by reducing pain, and preserving teeth other less educated practitioners would remove. In a way, he was preserving smiles, rather than destroying them as the trickster had done to his father and their family fortune.

But as the years passed, a new resolve took root. His heritage demanded retribution. Each gold filling and crown became a small act of defiance, a step towards reclaiming what was rightfully theirs to rebuild the damage that the bad financial deals of his father's mistakes had caused. But could he ever right the wrongs that his family's fortune had financed, albeit unintentionally?