An Ideal Duchess (11 page)

             
“The duke?”

             
She glanced quickly at him, but he stared away from her, a blandly inquisitive expression on his face.

             
“Oh, it’s my turn to tee,” She said lamely, filling the awkward silence. “I hope you won’t laugh at me, Mr. Warfield because I don’t think I’m very good at this.”

             
“I’d
never
laugh at you,” Mr. Warfield said fiercely, his eyes glowing with fervor.

             
Amanda covered her nervousness with a laugh and hastened away from him, unnerved by the intensity of his words. She swung her cleek experimentally in small arcs to get a feel for its weight, and then plunged a tee into the green and a ball into its shallow cradle. She gripped the handle of the cleek, suddenly suffused with enough self-consciousness to miscalculate her swing, and the golf ball pitched wildly to her left, causing her companions to duck with shouts of dismay as her shot zoomed over their heads to fall nowhere near the direction of the fourteenth hole.

             
“Bravo,” A man laughed, and a smattering of equally sarcastic claps followed his sarcastic praise.

             
Amanda rolled her eyes towards the man, but avoided meeting Mr. Warfield’s gaze as she turned through the crowd and went after her errant ball, which she soon discovered, had made its way towards the Beaux Arts edifice of the Club House. She bent to retrieve her ball, and glanced back at the group of players, who began drifting away towards the fourteenth hole. Douglas Warfield’s stocky figure was easily discernible within the crowd as he hung back, hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers, obviously waiting for her return. She weighed the gutta-perch ball in her palm and decided against rejoining him. She straightened and walked quickly towards the Club House.

             
Her feet crunched in the gravel of the drive that led up to the veranda and around to the entrance of the building, which, along with the rows of windows flanking either side of it, was covered by cheery yellow awning. As she ascended the wide, shallow steps leading to the terrace, an attendant in white coat and dark trousers immediately appeared, taking her cleek and golf ball and fitted red coat with a brief bow. Her mother was in here somewhere, taking tea with old friends who, just last year, had pretended as though she did not exist.

             
The thought of the slights and cuts her mother suffered from women she’d known from girlhood, simply because her father had lost his fortune, and she’d had the temerity to marry the self-made man who’d taken over the company made Amanda tremble with fury. She barely managed to nod and smile politely to the ladies and gentlemen (ha!) seated on the veranda, clad as etiquette demanded in pale summer frocks and navy jacket and white trousers, respectively.

             
She heard her mother’s hesitant laughter to her right and directed her path towards the sound, failing to notice the man seated with her until he rose to his full height and looked at her with piercing gray eyes. She paused, staring back at him in bewilderment, somehow finding the duke’s presence here in America rather incongruous. He seemed elegant and elusive at once, his very being distinctively English in spite of his conformity to the standard summer costume of pale trousers, crisp white shirt, and fawn jacket.

             
Amanda was dimly aware of the eyes turned discreetly (or blatantly, depending on the person’s voracity for gossip) towards them, and she shook herself from her reverie and extended a hand.

             
“Your Grace, it is so kind of you to
finally
arrive in Newport. How was your trip?”

             
The duke’s eyes narrowed perceptibly, noticing the stress she placed on the word “finally”, but took her hand with a slight press of his fingers. He pulled the chair beside him out for her to sit, and she did so, taking care to move past him without touching even the fabric of his jacket. His hands, where they clutched the arms of her chair, were brown and callused, decidedly not the hands of a pampered, spoiled aristocrat. She lifted her face in curiosity, meeting his steady gaze, but her eyes dropped immediately to his full lips, which parted on a slow breath that then drew her attention to his throat. He wore no necktie, and the bob of his Adam’s apple against the high collar as he swallowed made her draw in a sharp breath.

             
His hands flexed on the arms of the chair and then moved away, the moment breaking almost as quickly as it had occurred. Amanda flushed, avoiding her mother’s eyes as she reached for the china pot to pour a cup of tea.

             
“I was apologizing to your mother for my delay,” The duke said evenly, which forced her to turn with a polite smile or risk attracting attention for ignoring him. “I was simply overcome by the scope of your country and I wished to see few sights before making my way to Newport.”

             
Amanda set the teapot on the table and dropped two lumps of sugar into her cup. “And what sights did you see, Your Grace?”

             
“Washington, the Potomac River, the Badlands, Niagara,” He replied equably.

             
“What do you think of our country?” She raised a brow in challenge, sipping her tea. “Many of your country men and women have a low opinion of America when compared to their own country.”

             
“I hesitate to disparage my own place of origin simply to flatter you, but I am impressed.” The duke said blandly. “I greatly admire the vigor of Americans, and your determination to recapture some of the Old World in the New.”

             
“So you believe we most desire to replicate and reproduce after your kind?”

             
“Don’t you?” His expression darkened, eyes cooling to harsh silver as they glanced around the Club House, whose inhabitants mirrored the society one could easily find in smart hotels in London, Biarritz, or Vienna.

             
“Isn’t that why
you’re
here?” She asked coolly.

             
His gaze snapped to hers and then slowly, deliberately moved down and over the visible portion of her body—which happened to be her bosom beneath the sheer voile of her shirtwaist.

             
“Amanda!” Her mother looked shocked by the tenor of their conversation.

             
Amanda realized she had leaned towards the duke, her skin feeling warm and tight beneath her clothes, and she shrank back into her seat, taking refuge in her tea. The duke looked uncomfortable, a dull red flush creeping up his collar and across his cheeks. She blinked in surprise: was he blushing? The novelty of watching his skin redden with embarrassment distracted her from her unusual reaction to the duke’s perusal of her body, and she smiled over the rim of her cup, suddenly wondering what else would make His Grace blush. Then suddenly, the thought of following that blush across his body entered her brain and she felt her own cheeks heat.

             
“Is Papa to come down this weekend?” She blurted, startling her mother.

             
“He sent a wire earlier today to express his regrets, but he said to expect Lulu and Quin from Groton.”

             
“Their boarding school,” Amanda answered the duke’s questioning look. “You remember my brothers, don’t you—Lulu, or rather Lucretius, after my mother, and Quintus.”

             
“And you are Amanda Cornelia, after your father,” He tilted his head with a smile of bemusement. “It is typically the other way around, isn’t it?”

             
“My father was determined to christen his firstborn child after himself, and I happened to be a girl. Mother won out with my first forename—I am Amanda, after her mother.”

             
“And your given name, Your Grace…” Her mother looked expectant.

             
“Auberon,” He replied readily enough, though Amanda noticed a slight tightening of his lips. “And no, I was not named for my father.”

             
“Your mother?” Amanda asked, drawn by his odd reaction.

             
“Not for her either,” He said cagily.

             
“How is Her Grace—I shall never forget her hospitality at Bledington Park,” Her mother plowed on, eyes bright with curiosity. “Before that, I once managed to catch a glimpse of her in the Royal Enclosure. She is a great friend of His Majesty?”

             
“My mother was a lady of the bedchamber to the late Queen for a brief period in the ‘nineties, so she is well acquainted with many members of the Royal Family.”

             
“How thrilling!” Her mother clasped her hands.

             
“I would think it a great responsibility, looking after the old Queen and her court,” Amanda said, holding the duke’s gaze when he turned to her. 

             
He frowned slightly, as though assessing her tone. She allowed herself to smile and he sat back, visibly relaxing. This also surprised her, and disarmed her, for she would have never assumed the duke would be nervous with her.

             
“When we were at Eton, and my mother was called up for service, the Queen used to have us for tea. I remember how frightened I was, fearing she would disapprove of my manners and have one of the guards lop off my head,” The duke smiled shyly at the memory. “But she was really a small, doughy woman with a sly sense of humor, as I quickly discovered when she asked one of the guards to bring a medieval axe after I’d dropped my scone on the carpet.”

             
“My mother had informed Her Majesty of my anxious fantasy before we arrived!” He continued with another smile.

             
His smile broadened when her mother laughed, softening his harsh features.

             
“
We
, Your Grace?” Amanda touched his sleeve, inviting more confidences.

             
“My elder brother,” He replied tersely, his expression drawing closed.

             
She returned her hand to her lap, feeling unreasonably foolish for the pang of hurt she experienced with his withdrawal. Her skin prickled at the nape of her neck; she looked over to find Douglas Warfield, windblown and glassy eyed from the sun, advancing across the room with Blanche Oelrichs and some of the other members of their golfing group. Her eyes widened when he diverted his path away from the table Miss Oelrichs and her friends claimed and started towards their table. He came to an abrupt halt beside her, forcing her to introduce him to her mother and to the duke.

             
The duke eyed Mr. Warfield warily as he stood to shake hands. Her mother on the other hand, was visibly delighted by her golf partner’s courtly manners as he lifted her slim, gloved hand to his lips in Continental fashion. Amanda grimaced when, without an explicit invitation, Mr. Warfield took the vacant seat on her other side, settling between she and her mother. One of the attendants, trained to anticipate the guests every need, had already added another tea cup and matching saucer to the table, and still another arrived to replenish their supply of thin, crustless sandwiches and cakes.

             
“I’ve never met a duke,” Mr. Warfield stated, bristling with nervous energy. “How long do you intend to remain in Newport? Perhaps we could get a party up for a clambake at Easton’s Point if you are still around.”

             
“I have no definite plans, as my visit to America is rather open-ended,” The duke replied neutrally. “But I would enjoy a clambake if Miss Vandewater and I find the time to accept your invitation.”

             
Amanda gasped softly. This was the first inkling the duke made of his intentions towards her, and judging by the blanching of Mr. Warfield’s complexion, he too understood the implications of such a public declaration. She didn’t know how she felt about this, even though she knew he had accepted her mother’s impulsive invitation to visit them in Newport. Her mother’s smile faltered a bit, for though she did like the duke, she was chary of transatlantic marriages, but Amanda knew her father would be thrilled by the news, and would not hesitate to run roughshod over anyone’s objection or obstruction—including that posed by the persistent figure of Douglas Warfield.

*          *          *

              Amanda was present at the Long Wharf when the Fall River Line steamer pulled into its berth and released the scores of New York businessmen who traveled every weekend between their Manhattan offices and Newport. She squeezed the horn attached to the hood of the apple red Packard Model F she’d wheedled from the chauffeur, and grinned at father when he glanced at her, and then glanced back with a dumbfounded expression on his face. He was, until now, unaware she knew how to drive an automobile (lessons had also been wheedled from the chauffeur), and she grasped the steering wheel with a stubborn tilt to her chin as he approached. His amazement had mellowed to disgruntled amusement. She ignored this and waved at her father’s longtime valet, Jonah White, who followed behind her father, carrying their luggage.