A Duke for Christmas (11 page)

“For me? None, I imagine. I am the sister-in-law of his best friend, that’s all.”

“What do you think of him?”

“He’s charming,” Sophie said lightly. “What else should one think of him?”

“Parker,” Maris said to the maid who appeared in the doorway, “my good boots, please, the dark green ones. My sister is going out.”

“The fur-lined cloak as well, my lady?”

“Yes, I think so. Thank you, Parker.”

Sophie’s pride slipped a little from its pinnacle when she saw how beautifully the cloak became her. The edge of marvelously soft brown fur caressed her chin while the deep green made her skin look like alabaster. Burying her hands in the matching muff of banded fur, she couldn’t help feeling a little eager to see what Dominic would think of her dressed as a great lady, if only on the outermost layer.

She walked down the stairs, holding her head very high, only to find the lower landing was empty. Had she misunderstood?

Wasting a little time in the hall, Sophie admired the marble busts tucked into niches at intervals along the entry. She hadn’t had time before to look at the beauties of Finchley. Though not the largest country house in England, everything was of the highest quality and the best of modern taste. The Danesby family had been wise in investments, being among the few who had escaped prior to the collapse of the South Sea Bubble, as well as choosing wealth over honors throughout their long history. Had their choices been different, Kenton might have a title as high as Dominic’s.

She walked into the library, thinking he might be there. He wasn’t. Sophie ran her finger along the spines of the books, admiring the gold crest impressed upon each one’s leather. In between the towering bookcases, handsome if over-varnished portraits of former tenants of the house hung in gilt frames. A highly polished tall-case clock, decorated with marquetry scenes of old China, chimed sonorously.

The fire was leaping and she soon felt too warm in her sister’s cloak. Retreating farther from the fire’s reach, she bumped into a curly-legged writing desk with a leather top. Sophie turned and blinked with surprise.

On the oxblood leather surface she saw a papier-mâché box that she knew as well as she knew her own face. Painted to look like burled walnut, it rested on brass lion’s paws with a dimensional mask of a lion centered on the top. His nose was slightly rubbed so that the underlying material showed through. She’d brought it from Italy, but what was it doing here? It-should be in her room.

“Here you are,” Dominic called from the entry. “I was in the kitchen, wheedling a few lumps of sugar from the cook. Are you ready to venture into the cold?”

“Quite ready.” Sophie put out a hand to open the box. The lid stuck a trifle.

“That’s a pretty thing. French, isn’t it?”

With a little wiggling, the top rose on its hinges. A stack of tightly compressed papers sprang up in a soft explosion. Sophie laid a hand on them to keep them together. “Broderick always claimed it was Egyptian, that it had held the love letters of Anthony and Cleopatra. Nonsense, of course, just like his notion that it brought him good luck. He said that whenever he put a poem in this box, it would sell.”

“So you’ve put them all there?”

“Yes. More for safekeeping than to invoke the power of the gods. Besides, I can’t imagine anything of Cleopatra’s would exactly breathe good fortune. She was unlucky in love
and
war.”

“Did you want to start working on them right away?”

“Soon,” she said. “Not immediately. To be frank, I’m in dire need of a little fresh air. It’s pleasant to have roaring fires in all the rooms, so heavenly not to have to worry about keeping warm, yet they do make it a trifle airless.”

“The stables await, madam,” Dominic said with a half bow.

She smiled as she took his arm, yet couldn’t keep from glancing back. “I just don’t know how they came downstairs by themselves.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. I’m only curious to know who brought my box into the library.”

“You didn’t bring it here?”

“No. I left it in the drawer of my bureau after the maid unpacked for me.”

“One of the servants must have brought it down. Someone probably overheard you talking about them. If Fissing were here, we’d know who to blame. That man is ‘no canny’ as the Scots say. I believe, you follow, that he reads my mind.”

“Fissing impressed me as being unique.”

“Like master, like man? I wish it were true, but I’m afraid I am a very ordinary man.”

“But how can you say so?” she asked. “You have achieved a great position.”

“Not by my own efforts, but by an extraordinary twist of fate. I didn’t plan to be a duke’s grandson; that was my father’s fault entirely.”

He led her to the rear of the library and opened the French doors which led to the loggia that ran the entire length of the back of the house. It was sheltered from the snow by a sloping roof supported on pillars that had an antique appearance. Though the air was still, the cold seemed to strike inward with every breath. Sophie huddled a little more deeply into her cloak.

“This way,” he said, walking down the three steps to the ground. He held out his hand to her. Sophie took it, surprised by the warmth even through his gloves and hers. He smiled as if she’d done him a very great favor. “Carefully,” he said, “there are sure to be icy patches.”

“It’s wonderful. So bracing.”

“To say the least. Do you remember the winter of 1816?”

“Indeed. No spring, no summer, only cold, colder, coldest.”

“I was living in a hovel on the cusp of Oxford Street in those days, buying old picture frames for pennies. Much cheaper than firewood.”

She didn’t believe him, but she laughed anyway.

The stables were some distance away down a crazy-paved brick path, behind a rise of ground. Beside it, like a palace of cloudy ice, stood Kenton Danesby’s precious greenhouse, the greenery inside glimpsed through the befogged windows, There was something magical about a thriving colony of plants set down in the midst of winter, as if one would open the door not into a greenhouse, but into another world where it was still summer.

As he warned her, some of the bricks were filmed with ice. She took a stronger grasp of his arm. Despite that, a patch of ice overlaid with frozen leaves made her slip. She laughed a little and grabbed Dominic with both hands to keep from falling. The muff fell to the ground.

“All right?” he said, smiling down into her eyes. He bent to pick up what she’d dropped. She took it from him, sliding the warm puff halfway up her arm for safety.

“May I?” He wrapped his arm about her waist, giving her the support of his strength. The cobbled surface of the yard was equally treacherous, and Sophie was glad that she wasn’t alone.

The dark stable smelled richly of horses and straw, overlaid with the smoke from the stove at the far end. The grooms stood up, putting down mugs of tea, reaching for their coats to cover their shirtsleeves. The head man, short, bandy-legged, but with arms banded with muscles, came forward.

“We’re sorry to disturb you,” Sophie said. “We just came to visit the horses.”

“To be sure, ma’am. This way,” he said, a tinge of Irish living still in his voice. He took down a pierced lantern from a nail by the door.

The undergrooms stayed by the stove, no fools they. In the dust-haunted depths, the horses moved, their breath steaming. “How many horses does his lordship keep?”

“Not so many as his father did,” the man said. “Nor so many as your father, miss. I mind well when every stall had a lovely face peering over the door.”

“My father? Did you know him?”

He rubbed his hand over his short-cropped gray hair much as one would ruffle the fur of a dog. “Not to say ‘knew,’ ma’am, but I saw him often enough. A fine, fine figure of a man in the saddle, ma’am.”

“Yes, he was. I shall tell my mother that you remember him.”

“Do, ma’am. The name’s Kellan. And here’s your lovely mare, ma’am. Good shoulders she has, and such a pleasant disposition. Not like that de’il of yours. Your Grace.”

“A devil to ride but a devil to go,” Dominic said. “Have you been having much trouble with him? He should be tired enough to be docile.”

“Not him, Your Grace. He’ll be snapping at the Angel of Death, that one, and telling him to find another stallion to ride on his rounds.”

“I hope so. Where is he?”

“There,” Kellan pointed with his chin. “And your lady is next to him. They seem to get on.”

“Do they indeed?” Sophie heard Dominic mutter.

Rosamund seemed content, certainly well cared for. Her mane was clear of tangles, her hooves shiny in the lantern light. She wore a brown plaid blanket while her breath steamed in the cold.

Sophie asked Dominic for some sugar. He came to her and put the pieces in her hand. Rosamund tossed up her head, demandingly. “Here then,” Sophie said, holding out her hand. She felt the velvety nose nuzzling and marveled anew at the surprising delicacy of a huge animal’s taking of a treat. An ill-tempered horse could bite off a finger in an instant, yet not one out of a thousand would do so.

“Aye, she’s a proper highbred lady, she is,” Kellan. said, patting Rosamund’s neck. “Would you have her papers, ma’am?”

“You’ll have to ask his lordship. She’s really his property.”

“Ah. I must’ve misheard him, then.” Kellan’s gaze went past Sophie, his eyebrows rising.

Turning abruptly, Sophie caught Dominic with his hand in the air, evidently semaphoring some sort of message to the head groom. He transformed the gesture into a steadying pat on the top of his hat, turning on her a smile so innocent that any nanny worth her tatting would have suspected him at once of ill intentions.

Sophie only repeated, “She’s his lordship’s horse. Why? Were you thinking of having her covered?”

“That’s right, ma’am. Good breeding always tells. Of course, His Grace would have to agree.”

“You don’t mean my horse, do you, Kellan?”

“Yes, Your Grace. Marry the power of one to the good manners of the other.”

“It’s a thought, Kellan, definitely a thought. Though his lordship prefers roses to horses.”

“There’s no accounting for tastes, Your Grace. Some men have an aversion to whiskey, which just leaves more for the rest of us, by my way of thinking.”

“Good man,” Dominic said, giving him a coin. “Every man needs a philosophy of life.”

They couldn’t leave without drinking a mug of tea, hot, stewed, and sweet. Though not to her taste, it had an undeniable warming effect. Between it and the odiferous stove, Sophie soon began to regret wearing her sister’s fur-lined cloak.

The lads were shy of Sophie, being their mistress’s sister and all, but Dominic soon had them at their ease. He had a knack for asking questions that elicited a person’s most interesting tale about themselves or those they had known. Sophie saw that she wasn’t the only person to find Dominic Swift remarkably easy to talk to.

When at last they could politely take their leave, Dominic had only walked a few feet away from the stable when he asked Sophie if she were cold.

“Not after that tea,” she said, fanning herself with her hand.

“Would you care to walk about a little before we go inside?”

She remembered promising herself that she would avoid being alone with him. However, she should take advantage of the sunshine while it lasted, winter days were so brief. But she wouldn’t allow herself to be drawn out again in that overflowing way. She had her pride to consider.

“Very well. Where shall we go?” Anywhere, she thought, but the rose garden. Seeing that place of rioting summer beauty shrouded and cold would be far too apt an analogy to her own life to be her choice.

“Why don’t we walk toward the circular wood? It’s prettier in the spring when the bluebells come out, but it should be peaceful now.”

“Excellent. This way?”

“That’s right. There’s a sun dial in the middle of the wood. Silly place for it. The sun never strikes directly down among the trees except on noon on the solstice.”

“I didn’t know that, and I’ve lived in Finchley all my life.”

“It must have been a pleasant place to grow up!”

“It was,” she said, following the path around a curve, “if you don’t mind everyone knowing all about you. There are no secrets in a village, Your Grace. But tell me more about this wood. You said it was circular?”

“Ken’s the one to tell you that tale. By daylight, if you are wise. He told me it late one night at school when we should have been asleep and it kept me awake for all of twenty minutes.”

Her feet in their borrowed boots were growing cold, but she kept pace with him as best she could. “You were a sound sleeper as a child, I take it.”

“I still am. It’s quite all right, though. Fissing says a gentleman should never arise before eleven.”

“I would have thought Fissing an early to bed, early to rise proponent.”

“For himself, yes. For a gentlemen of leisure, perish the thought! Confidentially, however, I believe he likes me to lie abed so that I’m not in his way while he puts the house in order.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, a giggle escaping her.

“You should laugh more often,” Dominic said.

She stopped, ignoring the snow that fell in the top of her boot. “If there’s anything more calculated to stop a person laughing, it’s saying something like that. Now, where’s this circular wood?”

“At the top of this rise.”

“And what’s the tale about it?” she asked, gazing off into the distance. The path stopped about there.

“Several stories exist. Some say the Romans first planted the trees in imitation of their columned temples in Rome and sanctified it to the rites of Venus. Someone dug up a bronze cupid of about the right period not far from this spot a hundred years ago.”

“Indeed. That makes it a reasonable explanation.”

“Only the Romans weren’t shy about building real temples when they wanted them. Another theory holds that this was a grove sacred to the Druids. Certainly the base of the present sundial is covered with faded marks that might be runes.”

“I like that story. I think that’s the one I’ll believe.”