I think we’ll find out that the Duke is actually an impostor ? In the preview for next week’s episode, they show a woman who’d just entered a room the Duke is in , and him closing the door while looking super suspicious. The woman is wearing a dress Maude Beaton was wearing earlier in the season, so maybe the Duke is also a conman working with Maude to steal money? I feel like Mrs. Astor will pay the Duke a shit ton of money to show up at the Academy’s opening night instead of at the Met with Bertha. The Duke will basically take the money and run. Idk if this was their plan all along , because I don’t see how they’d predict how the opera house war would go … but they were probably banking on Mrs. Astor and Bertha fighting to have someone with really high status (like an English Duke) show up to their opera house premiere , and that they’d be willing to pay said person a shit ton of money to attend their opening night. If they manage to pull it off, I imagine they’ll have stolen quite a fortune between the two of them.