Four Nights With the Duke (6 page)

“No!” Charlie scowled. “Mr. Reeve will come back; I know he’ll come back! He promised to make me another crutch. He wouldn’t leave without doing that. He
promised
.”

Mia sighed. Charlie refused to accept that she had been left at the altar. “Mr. Reeve left a note saying he meant to travel to India, remember?”

Her former fiancé, Edward, hadn’t bothered to save her the humiliation of waiting for him in church, for which she would never forgive him. Why couldn’t he have made up his mind to flee the night before the wedding?

That would have been humiliating, but bearable. She would have grieved in private. As it was, the letter was delivered to Sir Richard, who had read it aloud as she was waiting in the vestibule of St. Ninian’s.

Edward hadn’t even informed his parents of his decision to flee the country; the Earl of Gryffyn and his wife had been in the sanctuary awaiting the ceremony. When she’d seen them later that morning, they’d looked as shocked and distraught as she felt.

In a small, secret part of her heart, she wanted to
believe Charlie was right. Someday Edward would return. He had loved her. He had looked at her . . . well, he had looked at her the way she used to look at Vander.

One day Edward would wake from the terror of marriage that had sent him running from the altar, but it would be too late.

“I cannot wait, Charlie,” she said, swallowing hard. “Only two weeks remain before the guardianship clause in your father’s will takes effect.” Her brother had named her Charlie’s guardian—but specified that she had to be married to a man of substance and worth within a twelvemonth of his death.

It would not have occurred to her brother that she, Mia, could undertake the repetitive and boring work of estate management. He and her father had always dismissed her airily, calling her books “scribbles.”

Her scribbles earned more than the Carrington estate did last year, but she hadn’t shared that fact with her father, not since her first book came out and he magnanimously granted her the right to keep her pennies to herself.

In his words.

“I wish he hadn’t left,” Charlie said, voicing the obvious. “Mr. Reeve promised to buy a sleigh next winter and pull me over the snow, and he was going to teach me how to invent things.”

Mia’s arm tightened around him. When her brother died, Sir Richard had promptly tried to retain guardianship of his nephew, on the grounds that Mia’s betrothed was illegitimate and consequently not a man of “substance and worth.” That had come to nothing, mercifully.

Sir Richard often won his lawsuits—which were legion—but he lost this one. Instead, Edward’s solicitors had promptly launched a counter-suit for
slander. Edward may be illegitimate, but he was the son of an earl. What’s more, he was an Oxford professor who had made a fortune perfecting various machines, including a new type of paper-making machine that was used by printers.

Mia had actually met him in the office of her publisher, when Lucibella Delicosa was visiting London. For a moment she thought wistfully about the heady first days of their romance, when her father and brother were still alive, and she had believed she’d finally met a man she admired.

Then she shook herself. Ironically, Sir Richard had been proven right: Edward was not a man of “substance and worth,” or he never would have jilted her.

“You will learn how to invent things on your own,” she told Charlie. “I have to marry someone other than Mr. Reeve. Luckily for us, the duke has offered to step in.” She pressed a kiss on his forehead. “I will not let you go to Sir Richard, Charlie O’Mine.”

He leaned his head against her shoulder and she wrapped her other arm around him as well. She could feel his bones, thin and birdlike, against her body. He may be on his way to becoming a man, but for now he was still a child, and a frail one.

“I don’t like being Sir Richard’s ward. He looks at me as if I had three fingers, or two noses.”

“We needn’t worry about your uncle ever again. You’ll be a duke’s ward. What do you think of that?”

Charlie looked heartbreakingly uncertain. “I’ve never met a duke. Do you know him well?”

“Of course I do,” Mia said. “I’ve known His Grace since we were children, which is why he is being generous enough to do us this favor, on the basis of our old friendship.”

If only that were the truth. “After this marriage
business is over, I thought we might take a trip, the two of us. What do you say about making a tour of Bavaria?” Bavaria had always struck her as a most romantic place with castles that she could use as the setting to future heroines’ adventures.

The sooner she left England after the marriage contract was signed, the sooner Vander could file for divorce on grounds of desertion or annulment on the grounds of non-consummation, whichever he pleased. As she’d explained to him in the letter he hadn’t bothered to read.

It was rather sad to realize that although she would miss her horse, Lancelot, there was no one and nothing else to keep her in England—not if Charlie was with her. Just at the moment, her life seemed oddly thin.

“Yes, please!” His voice rose with excitement. “I should like that above all things.”

“Then that is what we shall do.”

“I might have trouble walking on board ship.”

Mia shuddered at the very thought of Charlie on a slippery deck. “We’ll stay in the cabin and find ourselves across the Channel before you know it,” she said, trying to sound gay.

And failing.

His slight arms wound around her neck. “It will be all right, Auntie,” he said, putting his tousled dark head, so like her brother’s, against her shoulder.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Charlie’s voice was only a thread of sound. “I love you too.”

NOTES
ON
P
LOT

         
~ All London at Flora’s feet.

         
~ Flora unsure of Count Frederic: Could it be that the count, so assiduous in his intentions, was in reality naught but a Cruel Betrayer?

Frederic: “Who could behold such a picture of Feminine Grace and Sweetness, and not recognize one of Heaven’s Perfect Works?”

         
~ should he declare himself immediately, at the first ball?

“My heart is madly devoted to you,” the count cried. (Ugh. Exclaimed? Protested?)

“By all that is most sacred to my soul, I swear that my heart is
madly
eternally devoted to you,” exclaimed the count, his heart beating with
love
the agony of his emotion
he felt
.

Not bad.

Rutherford Park

Three days later

T
he morning of Mia’s wedding was clear with the promise of unexpectedly sultry late summer sunshine. She woke, disoriented, at five, thinking that it was almost time to see if Charlie was awake.

But as she blinked at unfamiliar wallpaper, she remembered that she had kissed her nephew goodnight the day before and traveled to Vander’s estate. It was only a matter of an hour between their houses, but the duke had ordered that she spend the night at Rutherford Park, and she didn’t think it politic to bicker over such a trivial matter.

Her rebellion was to arrive very late at night, whereupon she was ushered—without a welcome from her husband-to-be—straight to a bedchamber, one she presumed had belonged to the late duchess.

Mia looked around with a twitch of distaste at the lustrous gold tassels hanging from the bedposts, the Lyonnaise silk hangings along the dressing table, the silver urn engraved with the ducal seal poised on the mantel.

The urn was surrounded by a clutter of small animals made of china and lacquer and jade, a collection that was beginning to feel desperate to her. Could it be that her father had given his lover china animals because he could not give her children?

It was a morose thought. The duchess had had a
sad smile, like a woman with a secret. Perhaps the secret wasn’t her adultery but something sadder. More intimate.

Mia shrugged and hopped out of bed. She would be gone by midday. There was no need to antagonize Vander with her presence more than absolutely necessary. He would be overjoyed to hear that she had no intention of remaining under his roof, and that the marriage was in name only.

Her maid, Susan, popped her head in the door with a smile. “Good morning, miss!” She ushered in footmen carrying cans of steaming water that they took into the adjoining bathing chamber.

For the life of her, Mia couldn’t stop thinking about the late duchess. Why, for example, would Her Grace have wanted a bathtub surrounded entirely by mirrors?

She herself always did her best to not look at her own figure or, indeed, any part of herself. It was impossible not to catch sight of distressing expanses of pink flesh when the walls were adorned with silvered glass wherever one looked.

She refused to soak but washed, climbed out, and wrapped herself in a length of toweling as quickly as she could. Really, she wanted everything about this trip to be got through as quickly as possible.

“What does the household think of this marriage?” she asked Susan.

Her maid’s eyes met hers in the glass and then moved back down to the comb she was drawing through Mia’s long hair. “They daren’t say aught to my face.”

They’d been together for three years, and Susan knew almost everything about her, even the story of that benighted poem. Susan being Susan, she
had hooted with laughter over the “pearly potion,” though she agreed that it was fiendish of Oakenrott to tell the world about her infatuation for Vander.

“You’d think they’d be glad to see their master married,” she continued. “But they seem to think that His Grace is making an enormous mistake. It was all I could do not to give Mr. Nottle a piece of my mind last night.” Her cheeks turned pink and she started combing a bit faster.

“The butler?”

“It’s that formal downstairs, my lady, you wouldn’t believe it. Mr. Gaunt would fall about laughing if we bowed and scraped to him the way that Mr. Nottle demands. And yet he didn’t stop the servants from chattering about the upstairs in a way that Mr. Gaunt would never allow.”

“I doubt that my father was very popular in this establishment,” Mia pointed out. “I made myself notorious with the love poem, and after my father and the duchess died together, the scandal flared up again.”

“His Grace is lucky to have you!” Susan insisted. “From what everyone says, he’s never shown the slightest interest in ladies, only in horses. He doesn’t go to balls or even to London for the season; he just spends all his time in the stables. He’s never even made a pretense of wooing a lady.” She lowered her voice. “Some folk think he’s not interested in women, if you know what I mean.”

Mia felt her cheeks grow warm. Those people were wrong. Vander was interested in women. “You can’t blame the household for being dismayed by this hasty marriage, Susan. They would likely wish him to find someone elegant, like his mother. Someone to match all this.” She waved her hand at the furnishings.

Susan wrinkled her nose. “Her Grace wasn’t from the peerage,” she said, “and you can see it in this room. It says everything about her.”

“We mustn’t say such things,” Mia said. “It isn’t polite.”

“This is an anxious room,” Susan pronounced. She wasn’t wrong about that; there wasn’t a single place in the bedchamber where a person could restfully gaze without being reminded either of the duchess’ status or her passion for miniatures.

“What I’m saying is that the servants likely wish that I were a different woman, Susan.”

“All you need is a new wardrobe,” her maid said, not for the first time. Susan was a dear, and always claimed that her mistress underestimated her own charms, whereas Mia insisted she was merely being practical. Tall women could wear gowns that swirled elegantly down from their breasts, but she was so short that her legs looked stubby no matter the style.

She had the vague idea that it would take three or four fittings to achieve a gown that would actually be flattering. She had never had time for that, and the local seamstress definitely wasn’t up to the challenge.

What’s more, Sir Richard had been in charge of the estate monies for the last year. As he wasn’t allowed to withdraw funds himself until he came into full guardianship, he had contented himself with restricting every expenditure—and had ended her allowance on the pretense that, because she was in mourning, she had no need for new garments.

Her Lucibella money was reserved for possible flight with Charlie. Consequently, she would be wearing an ill-fitting muslin gown to her wedding. Vander would probably be in sackcloth and ashes, so it hardly mattered.

Edward wouldn’t have cared. He was a man of
intellect, uninterested in the superficial aspects of a person’s appearance. She was a little surprised to discover that she didn’t feel utterly heartbroken at the idea of marrying a man other than her fiancé.

According to the novels she loved (and wrote), she should still be prostrate on the floor, sobbing. It had been only a month since the jilting, after all. She intended to describe Flora as turning white as parchment, with haunted eyes and newly slender limbs resulting from a vanished appetite.

Mia, on the other hand, was as hungry as ever. In fact, after the first shock of the jilting, she primarily felt irritated rather than grief-stricken, and a temper always made her crave buttered crumpets.

The larger problem was that Mia was petrified by the idea of descending the stairs for her wedding. How could she face Vander again? She had engaged in such unethical conduct toward him. He must loathe her.

Of course he loathed her.

Finally, she made herself leave the room. There was nothing to be done about it: She had to face the irascible duke and say her vows as quickly as possible, after which she could go home and pretend none of this happened.

It was horrifying to reach the bottom of the stairs and hear voices coming from the drawing room. Surely Vander wouldn’t have gathered a wedding party?

Her heroine in
Love Conquers All
, Petronella—or was it Giuliana?—had had to face the guillotine. Petronella lifted her chin and walked bravely to her doom (though, of course, no doom awaited her, because a duke was overcome by her exquisite beauty and risked his life to save her).

Mia lifted her chin and tried to walk bravely
toward the drawing room. It wasn’t exactly the same as moving toward a guillotine, but her heart was certainly thumping as if she faced death. Vander’s butler, Nottle, didn’t make it easier; he looked condescendingly down his long nose before he opened the drawing room door and announced, “Miss Carrington.”

To her enormous shock, the Duke of Villiers stood directly before her. The gentleman—a distant acquaintance of her father, as she recalled—was renowned for his sartorial splendor and true to his reputation, he was dressed like a peacock, in a coat of blue-and-green striped silk taffeta over a waistcoat embroidered all over with flowers.

Mia looked rather wildly for his duchess, but the only other person in the room was Vander, also dressed splendidly, in a coat of dark amethyst silk with embroidery around the cuffs.

So much for the sackcloth.

She was underdressed for her own wedding.

Vander stepped forward and bowed. “Miss Carrington.” Her stomach clenched. He had that kind of voice, a truly masculine voice. “I apologize for not greeting you last evening.”

“Your Grace.” She dipped a curtsy. A deep one because it gave her a moment. She turned and curtsied before the Duke of Villiers. “Your Grace,” she murmured.

“I trust you are well?” Vander inquired, his face utterly expressionless.

She could feel rosy blotches spreading up her neck. “Of course. I am surprised. I did not expect that we would have a wedding party under the circumstances.”

“What’ya saying?” a voice broke in, coming from nowhere. Startled, Mia jumped sideways, straight into Vander.

His big hands came around her shoulders to steady her and he held her there, against his warm body. “Uncle, I had no idea you were in the room. Miss Carrington, may I present my uncle, Sir Cuthbert Brody?”

Sir Cuthbert had just risen from a high-backed chair positioned before the window. He was a short man, about her height, though a great deal rounder. His nose was red, and his cheeks were red, and what hair he had left had once been combed over his bald head but was now standing up like a flag at the prow of a ship. He wore an extraordinary, if crumpled, coat of sage-green paisley silk and carried a matching green cane with a brass top.

“I prefer Chuffy,” he said, with just the faintest slur to his words. “Good morning to you, my dear.” He was drunk. No, he was not just drunk: he was utterly bosky, actually swaying slightly.

Vander groaned. “When I saw you last, at two in the morning, you said you were going to bed, Uncle.”

“Oh, by then it was too late to go to bed. Besides, I would have missed this glorious occasion, this nuptial . . . this marital meeting.”

“Were you planning to change your coat?” Vander asked.

“This coat is good enough to drink in,” his uncle said cheerily. “So it’s good enough to walk
you
to the altar. Besides, it ain’t as if this is the kind of wedding that’ll involve wiggle-wagging our way up the aisle of Paul’s, is it?”

There was something endearing about his brown eyes, muzzy or not. Mia stepped away from Vander’s hands and the first genuine smile of the day came to her lips. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Cuthbert.” She curtsied.

“You can call me Chuffy,” he said, listing a bit as he
bowed. “You’ll be my—my—my
niece
, after all. I must have met you before, haven’t I? I mean, back when your father was diddling around with my sister-in-law?”

“Uncle,” Vander said from behind her, his tone flinty.

Chuffy squinted at him. “What? Are we pretending that we’ve never met the gal before? Though I don’t know as I did meet you, m’dear. Vander’s father was my brother, though his brain was all higgledy-piggledy.”

“She knows that,” Vander stated.

“Don’t mean that we should just stand about and stare at her as if she were a potboy dressed up in a vicar’s cassock,” Chuffy said. He managed to get himself upright and made a wobbly swipe at his head that made his hair fly into the air again. “How’s every little thing, Villiers? Didn’t expect to see
you
here, I must say.”

It was interesting to discover that the most discriminating peer in London apparently counted a drunkard among his friends. “I had no idea you were in the room, Chuffy,” Villiers said, with a bow and a warm smile.