Duchess in Love (3 page)

“I'll
make
him do it,” Rounton said to himself. His voice had the ring of a man who habitually wrangled the law—and feeble humanity—to suit his clients' interests. “And what's more,” he decided, “I'll do it with a bit of finesse. Creativity, that's what is called for.” God knows, the old duke had forced him to learn creative ways around the law. It shouldn't be too difficult to make the new duke dance to his piping.

The
Queen's Smile, Riddlesgate

T
he upshot of Mr. Rounton's decision to rescue the Girton lineage from certain oblivion was that three men descended from a carriage in front of the
Queen's Smile,
just around six o'clock the following evening.

It only took a second for Cam to recognize his heir, Stephen Fairfax-Lacy, the Earl of Splade. “Stephen!” he shouted, leaping up from his chair and hauling his cousin into his arms. “How marvelous to see you. It must be eight years since you came to Nissos!”

Stephen extracted himself and sat down, a quiet smile lighting his eyes. “Since when have you taken to hugging? What shall I call you?
Your Grace
would be proper.”

“Bollocks to that. I'm still Cam, and you're still Stephen. I've come a long way from all that rotten English formality business that my father so believed in. In Greece, men express themselves as they wish.”

Rounton cleared his throat. “Your Grace, I trust you do not mind that I asked the Earl of Splade to accompany me. A subject of the highest importance has arisen.”

Cam grinned at Stephen at once. “The pleasure is mine.”

“May I introduce my junior partner, Mr. Finkbottle?” Rounton asked, indicating a nervous-looking man in his twenties. “He will act as a liaison between yourself and my office.”

“A pleasure to meet you, sir. Shall we all have a seat? There are plenty of chairs here, and the landlord has some excellent brandy.”

Stephen sat down and stretched his legs. A man of his height—he was a good six feet four in his stocking feet—found even an hour in a coach to be an uncomfortable endeavor. “You look older, Cam,” he said abruptly.

His cousin shrugged. “Age is an infirmity we all share. I've not been living the dandy's life for the past twelve years.”

Mr. Rounton cleared his throat and started a fussy sermon about the legal hurdles involved in annulments. Stephen sipped his brandy and stared at his cousin. For a man who lived in Greece, Cam's skin was remarkably white. In fact, in the flickering light of the fire, his eyebrows looked like slashes of charcoal on parchment. His was a face of hard angles and impatient gleams of light. But his hands hadn't changed, Stephen thought with a fuzzy sense of nostalgia. Their childhood had been enlivened by what those long fingers could make from wood—

“Do you still whittle, Cam?” he asked abruptly, jumping into a moment's pause in the conversation.

A fleeting smile crossed his cousin's face. “Look here.” He reached down beside his chair and picked up a splinter of wood.

“What's that?”

“It's a dart,” Cam said, turning it over. Interest had lit up his eyes. “I had an idea that if I moved the flight up the shaft, the dart would be faster to the target.”

Stephen reached out and took the slender piece of wood in his hand. Like everything Cam made, the dart was beautifully shaped, a sleek, dangerous spike with a narrow groove waiting for its feather.

“What d'you think?”

“It'll dip when weighted. It may fly faster, but once you put a tip, the feather won't balance.” He illustrated with his finger. “See? The dart will spiral down rather than fly straight forward. You might get around it by narrowing the tip.”

Cam looked at it broodingly. “Likely you're right,” he admitted.

“You always were short on the mechanics,” Stephen commented. “Remember all those boats you whittled?”

“Sank, almost every one of them,” Cam said, laughing.

“They wouldn't have, if you had shaped them in a normal fashion. You invariably tried to be too clever.”

Mr. Rounton judged it time to turn the conversation to a more delicate area, since the duke seemed to be in a reasonable frame of mind. “Your wife is currently at a house party in East Cliff, around an hour's travel from here,” he stated.

Cam's deep-set eyes rested on the solicitor's face for a moment and then returned to the dart in his hand. “A pity,” he said casually. “I would have liked to meet the chit after all these years. But I haven't time to be jaunting about the country.”

Rounton recognized the set to his employer's jaw immediately: he'd seen it often enough in the duke's father. But he had his rejoinder planned.

“It appears to be virtually impossible to prepare annulment papers in a week,” he stated.

“May I suggest that you try very, very hard?” The duke's tone was kind.

His father's son, Rounton thought gloomily. “There is another problem, Your Grace.”

“Oh?” The duke had taken out a small knife and began whittling the tip of the dart.

“I am prepared to initiate the annulment. However, something has recently happened to your wife which has complicated matters.”

He looked up at that. “What about her?”

“The duchess is…” Rounton hesitated. “The duchess has found herself in the midst of a scandal.”

“A scandal?” The duke sounded only mildly interested.

“Gina? What sort of a scandal could Gina make? Likely a storm in a teapot, Rounton. She's a sweet little thing.”

“Naturally I agree with you as to the duchess's virtues, my lord. However, she is currently viewed by the
ton
in a less salubrious light.”

Cam turned the dart over and over, his long fingers searching for any irregularity in its surface. “Now that I find hard to believe. Every Englishman who has made his way over to Greece—and there've been a surprising number of them, with France in a frenzy—has been keen to applaud my wife's virtues.”

Rounton said nothing.

Cam sighed. “I suppose they
would
say that?”

“If you seek to annul the marriage at this particular moment, I have no doubt that you can obtain that annulment, but I am afraid that Her Grace may be barred from society in the aftermath.”

“I gather little Gina has been burning the candle at both ends,” Cam said. His eyes moved to Stephen. “Well?”

Stephen shrugged. “I don't move in those circles.”

Cam waited, long fingers flipping the dangerous little arrow.

“I've heard rumors,” his cousin said. “Gina has a rather wild group of acquaintances. Young married women…”

“All married?”

“Their reputations are not chaste,” Stephen added, rather reluctantly.

Cam's jaw tightened. “In that case, why would annulling the marriage make any difference to Gina's reputation?”

The solicitor opened his mouth but Stephen cut in. “Rounton thinks you should make a show of support. He has asked me to go to this house party as well.”

Cam scowled down at the dart in his hands. What the devil was he supposed to say to Gina? If she was gallivanting around with her marquess, well, she meant to marry him, after all. “Once Gina marries Bonnington, won't it all blow over?”

“I doubt it,” Rounton said. “That would certainly mitigate matters, but what if the marriage does not occur?”

“Gina is thought to have spent the night not with Marquess Bonnington but with a man named Wapping, a servant of some sort,” Stephen put in. “There is now some doubt about whether Bonnington will wish to go through with the marriage.”

“That's nonsense,” Cam snapped. “Wapping is the tutor that
I
sent her. Found him in Greece and dispatched him over here.”

Rounton nodded. “You can see how important your opinion will be in the aftermath of this unfortunate debacle, Your Grace. If you were to spend a few days at the house party, making it clear that Wapping is your employee, it will go a long way to soothing people's suspicions.”

Cam's jaw tightened. “Gina has written me letter after driveling letter about Bonnington, telling me how much she wishes to marry him. Someone has made a mistake.”

“I have no doubt but that is the truth of it,” Rounton said. “And after you make it clear where your opinion lies, Your Grace, society will follow your lead. You are her husband, after all.”

“Hardly. A few minutes before the altar twelve years ago doesn't make the title worth much. I dislike even referring to Gina as my
wife
. She and I are both aware that we are not truly married.”

“I suggest we both travel to East Cliff,” Stephen put in. “I can spare a night or two. You may not know this, Cam, but Parliament isn't in session until early November.”

“Of course I know that, you ass!”

Stephen shrugged. “Given that you have shown no interest in taking up your seat in the House of Lords…”

A twisted grin crossed Cam's face. “You may be older, Stephen, but you haven't changed. You were always the one who understood responsibility. And I was always the one who ran from that same admirable trait,” he continued. “I see no reason to alter my entirely comfortable habits at this point. I have work to do at home.”

“I think you owe it to Gina,” his cousin insisted.

“You don't understand. I have
work
to do.”

Stephen eyed him. “Why can't you make something over here? We have stone and chisels—and beautiful women to serve as models.”

“I'm in the middle of a glorious piece of marble, of the faintest pink. Do you know how much time I've already lost, just by traveling here?”

“Does it matter?” Stephen said with the insolence of a politician convinced of his own usefulness in the grand scheme of things.

“Yes, it bloody well does,” Cam snapped. “If I don't work—well, it's the only thing that does matter.”

“I saw your Proserpina, the one Sladdington bought from you last year. Quite nice.”

“Oh, yes. That was a bit risqué, wasn't it? Now I'm working on a Diana. A prudish one. Modeled on Marissa, of course.”

“Of course,” Stephen murmured. “I think you owe it to Gina,” he repeated. “She's been married to you most of her life. You can't blame her for kicking up a bit of dust with you out of the country. But once she's not a duchess anymore, she's likely to be tossed out of society. I doubt she understands just how brutal the
ton
will be to an ex-duchess with a damaged reputation.”

Cam's knife gouged the dart and broke off its tip. “Bloody hell!” He tossed the dart to the floor.

“We'll go together,” Stephen said. “I'll find a hunk of marble and you can bring it with you. Make yourself another Proserpina.”

Cam's mouth quirked. “Do I detect a snide note, cousin? Don't like Roman goddesses?”

Stephen said nothing.

“Oh, all right,” Cam said. “I'll desert my Diana. I just hope that Marissa doesn't gain too much weight while I'm gone. I'll have to starve her back into a goddess shape.”

“Marissa is his mistress,” Stephen informed Rounton and Finkbottle.

“My muse,” Cam corrected. “Gorgeous woman. At the moment I'm sculpting her as Diana rising from the water.”

Stephen threw him a darkling look.

“Not to worry. I have put some foam around her hips.” He smiled his lopsided, sardonic smile. “Think it's rubbish, do you?”

“Yes, I do,” his cousin said bluntly. “Because it
is
rubbish.”

“People like it. A beautiful woman can enliven the garden. I'll make you one.”

“You don't respect it yourself,” Stephen said savagely.

“That's what I dislike the most.”

“You're wrong there,” Cam replied. He stretched out his hands and looked at them. They were broad and powerful,
marked by small scars from the slip of a chisel. “I'm proud of my goddesses. I've made quite a lot of money on them.”

“That's not a good enough reason to keep fashioning naked women,” Stephen snapped.

“Ah, but that's not the only reason. My talent, such as it is, lies in naked women, Stephen. Not in darts, nor in boats. I can't really fabricate objects worth a damn. But I can fashion the curve of a woman's belly so that it would make you uneasy with desire just to see it.”

Stephen raised an eyebrow but held his silence.

Cam shrugged an easy apology to Rounton and Finkbottle. “Please forgive the family squabble, gentlemen. Stephen is our gift to the world, standing up for crippled army veterans and climbing boys—”

“Whereas Cam has made a fortune selling plump naked women fashioned in pink marble to parvenus such as Pendleton Sladdington.”

“Marissa is not plump yet,” Cam observed mildly. Then he reached over and swatted Stephen on the shoulder. “It feels good to argue with you again. I missed you, old moral sobersides that you are.”

Rounton cleared his throat cautiously. “Am I to understand that you will join the earl in a visit to Troubridge Manor, Your Grace?”

Cam nodded. “I just remembered that I have a gift for Gina, sent from her mother's estate. I'll deliver it in person…if Stephen arranges for a one-foot-cube of marble to be delivered within a day of my arrival.”

“If you fashion it into something other than a female body,” Stephen snapped back.

“A challenge!” Cam said gleefully.

“No less,” his cousin retorted. “I doubt you know how to model anything but life-size female torsos.”

“I can hardly make a life-size torso out of a block that size. But promise me you'll display whatever I make in your house and you're on,” said Cam.

“Done.”

Rounton sighed inwardly. Now he had to depend on the duchess's beauty to win her husband's heart. It was the best he could do, to throw them together for a brief period and let nature take its course. The young duchess was famed for the vivid beauty of her red hair and green eyes; Rounton returned to London, offering a brief prayer to the gods that Girton would find himself unable to resist her hair, if nothing else.

Stephen stayed on at the
Queen's Smile
with his cousin. He sent Cam's man back to London to fetch his own valet, some luggage and one-foot block of marble. It felt oddly comfortable to be sitting in an inn in the back of beyond, drinking brandy and amiably quarreling with his only living relative.