Love Letters From a Duke (3 page)

“’Cept for our cousin Pippin,” Miss Thalia added. “But you’ll meet her later.”

Her sister shot her twin another scathing look, and he took the interruption in this nonsensical conversation as his chance to wrestle some control over the situation. “Uh, yes, well, the point of my visit—”

In a flash, the chit outflanked him. “Oh yes, the point. Exactly,” Miss Langley said, not even batting an eye over the fact that she had just cut him off. “Though I must say, you hardly look proper.” She tipped her head and measured him yet again from the toes of his boots to the top of his head. There was another sigh and then she said, “I daresay the livery will be a tight fit.”

Livery?
He shook his head. Whatever was she talking about? She wanted him in livery? What sort of wanton nonsense was this?

“You look surprised. But yes, we have livery for you,” she assured him. Not that he found it the least bit assuring.

“Nanny Jamilla always said a footman should be well dressed,” Miss Thalia added.

“A footman?” he stammered.

“Oh, dear,” Miss Langley said. “They didn’t hint that you may have the butler position, did they? I told them quite plainly we sought only a footman who could—”

He waved his hands at her. “Miss Langley, there’s been some sort of—”

She didn’t let him get any further. “Yes, of course, you would want the more elevated position, but we are such a small household, and really only temporary at that, so we could hardly employ a butler and a footman, now could we?”

She flashed him a smile that did something odd to his chest—left him a bit breathless and unable to jump into the opening she’d offered. Oh, this Miss Langley was an able opponent. As quickly as she’d feinted to the right, she closed ranks and turned in another direction. “You have some experience managing things, do you?”

Twelve years in Wellington’s army. Commanding the 95th Rifles at Corunna, Badajoz, and Salamanca. Marches across Portugal and Spain with ill-trained, ill-fed men and having to find them not only the sustenance to keep them moving, but the bullets to keep them alive.

“Yes. A little,” he answered wryly. “But Miss Langley, that hardly bears—”

“Well, of course it does,” she told him. “We might be a small household—not by choice, mind you—but I am determined not to let anyone discover the truth of our situation…”

The truth of her situation? What the devil did that mean?

“…and having a proper footman is one of the things that will put just the right outward appearance on things. Not that our circumstances will remain like this, I assure you. With the Season approaching, changes are afoot.” She paused, but only briefly. “It is no secret that I will shortly be married to the Duke of Hollindrake—so yes, my sister and I, as well as our cousin, will not be living here for long, I daresay.”

Care to place a wager on that?
“Miss Langley, if you would but—”

“Please don’t think our current situation will affect your position,” she rushed to add. “We are quite solvent enough to afford your wages—though you look as if you could use some decent meals.”

She reached over and pinched his arm. “Dear heavens, you are quite starved. Well, we will just have to see about that.” She gave his sleeve a warm pat and smiled up at him.

The maneuver effectively disarmed every discordant
thought he’d been holding about her. For when she smiled, the lady looked like an angel, and her touch sent a shock of warmth through his limbs.

He struggled to fortify his position by remembering his carefully wrought speech.

Miss Langley
,
this betrothal was made without my knowledge and I find it impossible to—

Yes, yes. That was supposed to be how it was going.

So he opened his mouth and began, “Miss Langley, I believe there’s been a—”

He was cut off yet again, but this time by the other Miss Langley. “Duchess, dearest, I fear he will never do.”

“Duchess?” he managed. So she was already using the title? And without the benefit of marriage. The warmth from moments earlier fled in the face of this newest audacity.

She shook her head slightly. “I fear it is a childhood nickname. My sister still insists on using it.”

Even worse. She’d been set in this course since infancy. He suddenly had an icy sort of premonition that it might take more than an ill-cut suit and a curt dismissal to rid himself of her.

In the meantime, she’d turned from him to her sister. “Whatever are you nattering on about?”

“He’s too tall, Duchess. He’ll never fit the livery.”

Her hands went to her hips. “Of course he will.” She slanted a glance back at him, sweeping her measure of him like an experienced tailor. “Well, it might be a tight fit.”

There was his out. The livery wouldn’t fit and he could be away from here. Then he’d order his grandfather’s—nay,
his
secretary—to write Miss Langley a nice note of condolence and let her know that he’d gone completely and abruptly stark raving mad.

At least she could understand such a situation, since she seemed to be so afflicted.

But an ill-fitting livery turned out to be the least of his worries.

Miss Thalia set down her dog, which immediately renewed his acquaintance by sinking its teeth into his boots. Instead of retrieving him, the chit smiled and said, “You must love dogs.”

Dogs
,
yes. Leather loving rats
,
no.

“Do you drink?” she asked, circling around him.

“Excuse me?” he stammered, shaking his boot to no avail.

“I asked if you drink. Do you have a fondness for spirits? More specifically, large quantities of brandy?” She gazed up at him, wide blue eyes very much like her sister’s.

“I do not drink brandy,” he replied. But he was beginning to think he should start.

Both the girls heaved a sigh, and Miss Langley rushed to explain. “I fear our cook is a bit of a tippler and we can barely afford her habits, let alone if you were inclined to partake.”

“Miss, I can assure you that I have no intention of—”

“Excellent!” she declared, clapping her hands together. “Now with that settled we can get on with more important matters.”

Settled? Nothing had been settled. Why, they hadn’t even got to the point of his visit.

“I still don’t think he can wear the livery,” Miss Thalia remarked, her gaze once again raking over his body with a calculating eye. “It won’t do to hire him if it doesn’t fit.”

“If you are so convinced, then go fetch it,” her sister told her.

“I will,” she shot back, turning on one heel and marching toward the door. She stopped for a second and turned around. In a flash she bent over and scooped up her dog, detaching the little brute from his boot. She glanced up at him. “You
look terribly familiar. Have you been in service long?”

“Not long at all,” he replied. “In fact—”

But the chit wasn’t listening. She’d shrugged him off and was out a side door and off to fetch the now infamous ill-fitting livery. And with her, thankfully, went her dog.

Before she returned, he needed to rectify this entire mess, starting with straightening out Miss Langley as to
who
he was and
why
he was here.

That proved to be impossible.

“I suppose you’d like to know your duties around here,” she was saying, settling down on a chair nearby.

“Duties? No, Miss Langley, I think I need to make something perfectly clear—”

“Miss Langley! Miss Langley, if you please,” came a sharp, strident cry from somewhere in the bowels of the house.

“Oh, dear,” she said, rising from her chair. Her shoulders straightened ever so slightly, and if he didn’t know better, he’d say she was bracing for battle.

And so she was.

“Miss Langley!” This time the cry came with piercing clarity.

“In here, Mrs. Hutchinson,” Miss Langley replied in an all-too-pleasant voice that belied the steel set to her spine. “Our housekeeper and cook,” she said in an aside.

Ah yes, the aforementioned Mrs. Hutchinson. Of the brandy bottle fame. This was turning out to be quite a visit.

He hadn’t realized how much so until he met her.

Mrs. Hutchinson was a tall, lithe woman, with dark auburn hair and sharp eyes. If she had a fondness for drink, it wasn’t obvious. “Well, Miss Langley, that grocer fellow is downstairs. Full of cheek over his bill and all. Badgering me like I keep the purse strings. What should I tell him?”

Miss Langley shot him an apologetic glance, and stepped between him and the housekeeper. Lowering her voice, she
advised the woman, “Tell him that our solicitor, Mr. Elliott, handles all those matters.”

“Harrumph. Used that one last week and it won’t do no better this week than it did then.” She shot a glance over her mistress’s slim shoulder. “And who’s this?”

“The new footman,” Miss Langley told her, obviously happy to change the subject.

Another loud
harrumph
followed. “Not much to him,” she said, maneuvering herself closer and reaching out to take a hold of his arm.

Thatcher was starting to feel an affinity for the horses over at Tatt’s.

The housekeeper sniffed and gave him one more pinch. “More meat on ’em than it appears, but still, he’ll need feeding up a bit.” She cast a glance over him as if she too was measuring him, then looked at the side of his head where the line of a scar still remained. “In the army, were you?”

He was so startled by this astute observation, he could only nod.

“Thought so. Got that ‘hungry, ain’t been fed since I left home’ sort of look. Well, I’ve got a good kitchen, when the grocer ain’t badgering me, and we can use the help around here. But there will be no cheek in my kitchen, do you hear me? No pinching my arse when you think I’m not looking, no chasing after my Sally, or I’ll show you the business end of a cleaver, I will.”

“Madame, I have no desire to—”

“Madame, he says.” Mrs. Hutchinson snorted. “Nice manners, but just see that you don’t.”

“I have no intention of pinching you or your Sally,” he said quite honestly.

“Harrumph! Mind that you don’t. Then again, iffen you had the brains the good Lord gave a goat, you’d skiddle out of this asylum as fast as you can.”

“Mrs. Hutchinson!” sputtered Miss Langley.

“Just giving the poor man a bit of advice, miss,” she huffed. “’Sides, he knows I’m teasing.” And when Felicity turned away, the lady shook her head and jerked her thumb toward the door.

“I found it,” came Miss Thalia’s triumphant cry as she reentered the room, the aptly named Brutus at her heels. The mongrel reattached itself to his boot with a determined snap of his teeth.

When no one else noticed his predicament, the ladies busy laying out the livery, he bent over to pluck the determined canine off his boot. The dog growled and snapped at this interruption to his afternoon snack.

“Oh, look at you!” Miss Thalia declared. “Making friends with Brutus. Aren’t you a dear man.”

If she’d known what he was thinking—that the dog would most likely solve their problems with the grocer—she might not have been so effusive.

Miss Langley, on the other hand, had unfolded the silver trimmed jacket and was holding it up to survey it.

“What happened to the other footman?” he asked, having no doubt he could find the man happily ensconced in Bedlam.

“There was no other footman,” Miss Langley said as she shook out the jacket.

“And this livery?” he asked, suspiciously regarding the jacket the pair of them looked determined to shove onto him with nothing less than suspicion.

“Was our father’s.”

He shook his head. “Your father was in service?”

“Heavens no,” Miss Langley said, “a diplomat. ’Twas a costume he had made while he was assigned to the Russian court.”

“No, Duchess,” her sister argued. “’Twas Nanny Jamilla who had it made for him when we were in France.”

“Whyever would Nanny Jamilla want Father to dress up like a footman?”

“I daresay it was a jest. You know how she liked to tease him–and she did have a fondness for footmen.”

Miss Langley snapped her fingers. “Yes, now I remember. You are right. I distinctly recall Father being such a good sport about it.”

Both girls nodded as if that made perfect sense, while Thatcher regarded the costume with newfound horror. They might not understand, but he had some idea what this Nanny Jamilla had in mind when she’d commissioned this faux livery.

“I daresay it seemed a waste not to put it into use,” Miss Langley told him.

Practical, and insane to boot. But he rather suspected this livery had been put into service—just not the kind these two minxes intended.

Then in a flash, before he could protest, his coat was tugged from his back, along with the jacket beneath it, and the used-only-once livery with the silver trim shoved up into place.

Thankfully, Lord Langley wasn’t a small man, for the jacket fit, mostly—the chest was a bit tight, but he could still breathe.

Miss Langley stepped back and surveyed her work. “Yes, yes, indeed. You almost look a proper footman.” She went over to a desk and dug into a cubby. The jingle of coins echoed through the room as she returned. Gathering up his hand, she dropped a few pennies into his palm. “Please see about having your hair trimmed and obtaining a decent razor, and with that done, I think we’ll all get along splendidly.”

What about new boots?
he almost asked, as he found himself being skillfully propelled out of the room and down the hall. “But Miss Langley, I don’t think—”

“I’m sure we can settle any questions you might have in
the coming days,” she said quite blithely, as Brutus rose to assist her by nipping at his heels and herding him down the stairs like a hapless sheep.

He’d been routed by the French with less efficiency.

“Do you have lodgings?” she asked as they turned on the landing.

“Uh, yes,” he replied, hurrying along before their infernal dog could claim his heel for a souvenir.

“Excellent. For we can’t have you live in as yet.” She waved her hand around the foyer, which he’d failed to notice before was devoid of decoration and furniture. With a not- so-subtle shove, his coat and hat and jacket were returned to him and he was maneuvered out the front door. “I fear the house wasn’t as well-furnished as we were led to believe when we took it. But it is convenient to the square,” she said, nodding toward the corner, around which sat Grosvenor Square.