Love Letters From a Duke (21 page)

“Funny, eh?” Jack mused. “But he was quite adamant about you marrying her. Wrote me not a year ago and made me swear that I’d see you brought to the altar if Felicity didn’t do it herself.”

“So he did, did he?”

Jack nodded. “Your grandfather wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Suppose he figured if I’d been brought to heel, you could be too.” He laughed and rubbed his chin. “Must have been some courtship. Miranda tried cautioning Felicity last summer about putting too much stock in a man she’d never met, and the little chit sent back a scathing defense of her ‘Aubrey.’” He sat back and laughed. “I’d give my best shipment of brandy to find out what she and Hollindrake wrote about for the last four years.”

“You and me both,” Thatcher agreed, wondering how many more days it would take Gibbens to arrive.

“I have to ask this,” Jack said, “because if I go home and not have an answer for her, I fear my wife will be after you, and her temper makes Felicity’s look quite docile.” He took a deep breath. “When are you going to tell her the truth?”

Thatcher reached for his glass. “Do you really think she’ll shoot when I do?

“If you’re lucky.”

Thatcher had arrived back at the house on Brook Street to find that Staines had done his work well—the kitchen overflowed with baskets, from Jamilla’s shopping list and more.

“Well, finally,” Mrs. Hutchinson was muttering as he’d come through the back door. “Something what to cook with.” She fluttered a knife at him. “But if that foreign tart thinks she’s going to bring some sea monster into this house and ’ave me cook it, well, I don’t care if she’s the Queen herself, I ain’t letting some foul thing into me kitchen.” Slamming the knife down in the carving board, she crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing just standing about? That princess wants her trunks brought up. Seems she’s taken the entire second floor.”

“Why hasn’t her man done it?” Thatcher asked, suddenly seeing the world of footmen in a new light. Haul those trunks up three flights of stairs?

“Apparently he doesn’t lift things, so get a move on.”

Thatcher thought to protest, but if he wanted to keep up this masquerade for a little longer, he needed to do the tasks set out before him. He’d helped move cannons, tugged stubborn pack mules across swollen rivers, and done his fair share of hard labor in the army, so there was no reason he couldn’t haul a trunk or two up a few flights of stairs. Right?

Well, he hadn’t considered that Jamilla would make moving an army look like a country picnic.

After the sixth flight, he was convinced he was about to
meet his maker, but triumphantly he hauled the last piece into her room.

That was his first mistake.

The princess had reappeared and arranged herself on her bed—worse yet, her servants were nowhere to be seen. At his arrival, she rose like Venus from the sea foam. “Ah, the footman,” she said, her eyes flicking over him like a cat’s. She circled him and before he knew it was between him and the door.

Good God, not even Bonaparte was this deadly. “Yes, well, here are your trunks,” he said, trying to dodge around her.

Her hand came out and her fingers splayed across the braid on his livery. “Darling, I don’t know what game you are playing with those dear girls down there, but it won’t work on Jamilla.”

“Game?” he gulped, feeling a bit like a fox in the hunt.

The princess moved even closer. “They think you are the footman.”

“I am,” he told her, backing away, but well aware that with a few more steps, he’d find himself backed up against the bed, which was the last place he wanted to be.

She laughed. “The footman. Dear man, I know footmen. Believe me, I do. And you are no footman. So tell Jamilla who you really are and she will see if you are worthy of her assistance.”

After the chaos of the morning, Felicity had quite forgotten that she’d sent a note over to Lady Stewart and her daughters inviting them to call.

Then much to her shock, it wasn’t the lady who ventured to ring their bell, but her husband, Lord Stewart Hodges.

Oh, not Stewie Hodges, Felicity cursed silently as Tally brought their guests upstairs, and Pippin hurried off to tell Mrs. Hutchinson to prepare a tea tray—a decent one, she prayed as she led her guests to the upper salon. The Hodges
might not be in the upper crust, but Stewie—as he was known about the
ton—
was invited everywhere, and where he went, so did the latest
on dit
. A badly set tea tray would be just the sort of
bon mot
to keep Stewie going for days.

Following in Lord Stewart’s self-important wake were his sister, Lady Rhoda Toulouse, and all three of the Miss Hodges: Margaret, Frances, and Eleanor—whom their father introduced as Peg, Fanny, and Nelly, much to the cringing embarrassment of the young ladies, who were doing their elegant best to make up for his lack of social graces.

The second son of the Marquess of Kennings, Stewie had neither valor nor intelligence to recommend him, but by a stroke of luck had married Miss Alice Simons, a coal heiress worth five thousand a year, and therefore secured his continued standing amidst society with a simple “I do.”

“Lady Philippa, Miss Langley, Miss Thalia, how prodigiously kind it was for you to send around a note to my Alice,” he began. “She was quite taken with your well-written words and sincere expression, and was overwrought this morning when a cold—a trifling matter, really—prevented her from coming to call straightaway. So I said, ‘Alice, I will call on those dear girls, for their father, bless his soul, was a most excellent fellow.’”

Felicity opened her mouth to respond, but Lord Stewart was off and running again.

“And zounds! As we were about to hie off to see you all, who should arrive but my dearest sister.” He beamed at Lady Rhoda, who sat on the settee beside him. “Right there and then, I had such a capital idea. I said to her, ‘Rhoda, you love a good visit, and those poor motherless girls could use your sensible advice.’ So here she is with us.”

“And it is very nice to meet you, Lady Rhoda,” Felicity interjected before the loquacious lord had a chance to take another breath.

“And you ladies as well,” the matron said. “I remember
your mothers…” She smiled at Pippin and Tally. “They were such blithe spirits and so well liked. I can see the three of you take after them.”

“Ah, yes!” Lord Stewart added. “The Hawstone sisters! Oh my, I see the resemblance now! What a lucky bloke Langley was when he caught the elder Miss Hawstone’s eye. Caused such a scandal when they eloped.” He sat back and stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat. “Have to imagine the three of you will find a way to set all the tongues wagging just as your dear mothers did when they first came to Town.”

“I assure you, Lord Stewart,” Felicity rushed to tell him, “none of us have any intention of causing a whiff of scandal.”

Aunt Minty, who up until now had appeared to be dozing in her chair, snorted and coughed.

“Don’t see how you can avoid it,” he said, puffing up his chest. “’Tis in your blood. Besides, as much as you protest, my dear Miss Langley, there is already much talk about you and
a certain fellow
.” His brows waggled up and down.

“Me?” Felicity shot her sister a look.

How would I have told anyone what I saw
? Tally’s wide-eyed expression said.

No matter, Felicity realized. Any gossipy cat who’d been looking out her window this morning might have caught sight of her with a footman dangling over her like an erst-while Lothario.

And if Lord Stewart already knew about it…

Felicity shuddered. She might as well have had an engraving done and put it on the front page of the
Times
with a description underneath that read, “The Ruination of Miss Felicity Langley,” for the popular paper was decidedly more discreet and had far less range than Stewie Hodges.

“And you other two,” he said, grinning at Tally and Pippin. “Come along as well for the Marriage Mart, I venture,” he said. “The girls are here for your second…no, make that
third go ’round. Come as long as it takes, I tell my Alice. We’ll find them some likely lads.”

“Papa!” Miss Eleanor Hodges protested, her cheeks pinking.

Her father didn’t notice her distress in the least, and continued on until he had all of his daughters sinking into the settee and looking as if they wished themselves in the farthest reaches of Ireland. “Of course that’s what the fillies do in the spring! But those young rapscallions out there are crafty devils—you’d best watch your step, Miss Langley. I was quite the young buck in my day, and I was forever—”

“Papa!” the eldest, Miss Margaret Hodges, protested. Nut brown hair and plain brown eyes left her without any remarkable features, but Felicity could see she shared her aunt’s intelligence. “You promised quite faithfully—
no stories
.”

“And so I did, poppet, so I did.” He winked broadly at Felicity. “No stories about how Hollindrake and I were rakish devils in our misspent youths.”

“You know Hollindrake?” Tally asked, moving to the edge of her seat.

“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Lady Rhoda laughed. “He was hoping one of you would ask. Been all but bursting at his buttons to regale you with his lies and exaggerations.”

Stewie grinned broadly, having succeeded in finding an eager audience. “Hollindrake? Of course I know him. Wasn’t even the heir back then, why not even an Honorable, just plain old Aubrey Sterling, and a rare spirit he was. Rare, indeed!”

Now perhaps, Felicity thought, she could get to the truth of the matter. Lord Stewart might natter on, but he was known to be honest. Oh, finally she’d get to the bottom of all the mystery surrounding her nearly betrothed. Yet much to her chagrin, Jamilla chose that moment to come floating into the room, interrupting the man’s discourse.

There was, Felicity grudgingly admitted, something to the
way their former nanny entered a room that left every man in the vicinity gaping. She took a glance over at the Hodges sisters and had to imagine they wouldn’t make it to their fourth Season if they were to perfect Jamilla’s grand style.

“Darlings! I thought I heard new voices in the house! Especially such a deep masculine one—for it held such a divine noble tone to it, I was drawn, I tell you, drawn here!” She’d come to a stop in the middle of the room, wearing a gauzy sort of gown with a length of purple silk wound through her dark hair, the ends trailing down her back. It was if the Queen of the Desert had just arrived in their midst.

Stewie’s mouth flapped, his eyes nearly popping at the sight of this unprecedented lady before them, and after a moment of shock, he rose hastily to his feet.

Lady Rhoda’s face held a bemused look of begrudging admiration, while the Hodges sisters, like their father, gaped.

Felicity heaved a sigh, for there was nothing left to do but introduce her. “May I present our guest, Jamilla—”

“Princess, darling,” she corrected. She held out her hand to Lord Stewart. “Princess Jamilla Kounellas.”

Stewie stumbled forward, taking her fingers as if he’d been presented gold, and with great flourish brought them to his lips. “Madame, you are a divine presence, a flower amidst—”

Jamilla glanced over at the Hodges sisters and then back at Stewie, her calculating gaze obviously noting not only the family resemblance but the plain and serviceable gowns. It took the lady but a moment to realize there was no future for her here. Jamilla had never really relished a man with children—inheritance issues and all, though Lord Langley had been the exception—and as such she dismissed Lord Stewart from her affections before he had a chance. “Yes, yes I am,” she said, plucking her hand back and settling down on the nearest chair. She turned her head toward Felicity. “Why aren’t there any refreshments for our guests?”

Felicity smiled perfectly, while at the same time grinding her teeth together. “I’ve rung for the tray.”

“Perfect, darling,” Jamilla purred. “And whatever were you saying, Lord Stewart, when I dared to interrupt you?”

“Interrupt? I say not, Madame.” He was still standing in the middle of the room staring at her as if he’d never seen a woman before. Lady Rhoda caught him by his coattails and tugged him back down on the sofa. He didn’t appear to notice, rambling on with his story. “My dearest, radiant princess, I was just telling these girls about my acquaintance with Miss Langley’s future…oh, shall we say, her future betrothed, the Duke of Hollindrake.”

Jamilla’s dark eyes glittered. “You know of him? Delightful! I would hear more, for the little duchess has been quite, how you say, closed in the mouth about her
duc
.”

“I daresay she would be, especially if she knew some of the things I do. The tales I could tell you of Aubrey Sterling—” He was interrupted by Brutus, who chose that moment to sit up and start barking. Unfortunately for the little dog, Lord Stewie’s half boots presented little appeal, so he’d been keeping an eye out for Thatcher’s return. “Yes, well,” Stewie stammered, before he tried to continue, “let me tell you all about old Aubrey Sterling—”

“Ah, here he is with the tray!” Jamilla announced. “You naughty fellow! Where have you been? Nada says the kitchen has yet to see any sign of my octopus!”

Jamilla’s complaints held little weight, for Thatcher was too busy trying not to drop the tray and make a complete, and cowardly, retreat to, say…. Scotland. For of all the people to come face-to-face with in Felicity’s salon, the last person he wanted to see was Stewie Hodges. Gossipy, running at the mouth, indiscriminate Stewie Hodges.

“Yes, well let me tell you all about old Aubrey Sterling—” the man was saying.

Oh, demmit, this was a nightmare.

Jack’s warning rang in his ears.
She’ll shoot you if she discovers from someone else that you’ve been misleading her.
No, Scotland wouldn’t be far enough, he reasoned wildly. Siberia, perhaps. Or maybe China would be well out of Felicity Langley’s furious range.

Not only was Stewie there, but his sharp-eyed sister, Lady Rhoda Toulouse. Stewie barely noticed his arrival, for the man’s gaze was fixed in a glazed sort of fashion on the princess, but not so with Lady Rhoda.