Love Letters From a Duke (5 page)

“Whyever not?” he asked against his better judgment.

“Suffice it to say he is incapable of providing the line with an heir.”

“An accident of some sort? Or is he just too shy around the fairer sex?” Thatcher reached over and added several lumps of sugar to his coffee. “If he’s a bit of wallflower, I can fix that—I’ll send him out with my old friend Tremont, or perhaps Temple, they ought to be able to introduce him to the sort of—”

“Your Grace,” she said through gritted teeth, “it is nothing that your old rabble can cure,” she said, heaving a sigh and then dropping her voice to a low whisper. “His inclinations tend elsewhere.”

Thatcher shook his head and stared at her.

“Oh, must I spell it out?”

“Apparently so,” he told her. “Especially since it means the difference in me having to marry or not.”

“Your heir apparent prefers men over women.”

“Oh.”

“Quite so,” she replied, wiping her lips with her napkin and setting it aside.

“That puts an entirely new wrinkle on all this,” he admitted.

“Yes, and it was most likely why Father agreed to your alliance with Miss Langley. But since you’ve decided against her—which is for the best, considering her entirely inappropriate lineage—”

“Aunt Geneva, if she is so improper, whyever would the duke have chosen her?”

“How am I to know?” she declared. “I begged him to end their correspondence, but he would not listen to reason. Why, when one of her letters arrived, he and Gibbens would closet themselves away for days composing an answer.”

This took Thatcher aback.

Whatever could Miss Langley have written that had turned his gruff and unruffled grandfather into some sort of quixotic Byron? Now he wished he had taken Gibbens up on the offer to read them. No, instead he’d been in such a hell-fire rage over the discovery that he was all but betrothed, he’d ridden from Bythorne Castle, leaving the man to follow in the carriage.

Which would most likely take another three, probably four, days to reach London, what with the entire country buried in snow.

Aunt Geneva, meanwhile, was doing her Sterling best to orchestrate his new life. Given that the old duke was gone, she obviously felt it her duty to move him about the family chessboard. “…then I suggest we throw a ball—after the Setchfields’ masquerade, of course. Yes, that is perfect. It would give you the opportunity to find…”

He heaved a sigh and let her plan away until her final words pierced his thoughts.

“…I suppose it would be best that I go with you this morning, to ensure that there is no lasting damage to Miss Langley’s reputation.”

Thatcher dropped his fork and waved his hands at his aunt. “Oh, no, you don’t. I think I can handle this matter without
all the falderal you’ll add to it. Miss Langley’s reputation is safe enough. Besides, that responsibility hardly lands on my plate, I’d say the chit’s father should bear some of the duty—he’s the one who’s let those harebrained girls loose on London.”

“Their father?”

“Yes, Lord Langley. Isn’t he in service to the King? A diplomat, if I remember correctly.”

“
Was
in the service,” she replied.

“He’s here in England, then?” he asked. “Really, the man should do a better job of minding his daughters.”

“My dear boy, Lord Langley isn’t keeping an eye on his daughters because he’s dead.”

The new footman was late.

“Oh, whatever was I thinking, hiring that man,” Felicity muttered as she checked her pocket watch for the third time.

“Worse yet,” Tally complained as she bundled her cloak tighter around her shoulders, “you gave that Mr. Thatcher our only set of livery.”

“And three pence to get his hair cut,” she admitted.

They stood on the front steps of their house, awaiting Pippin and Aunt Minty to join them. Felicity had finally consented to a trip down to the Thames to view the frozen river, but only because they now had a footman to escort them.

A footman who was two hours late to work, she mused. Not a very good recommendation for the fellow. Not to mention the fact that the carriage Pippin’s brother promised them had yet to arrive as well.

“I wonder if Mr. Thatcher pawned our suit to fund some nefarious deeds,” Tally muttered, more to herself, and Felicity knew her twin well enough to realize when she was starting another of her epic novels. “Do you think our footman is suffering from his time at war, like Mrs. Hutchinson said he
might be? I wager he spent the night gambling excessively and drinking heavily to forget the horrors he’s seen.”

“On our livery and three pence? It would have been a short and dull evening, indeed.”

Tally ignored her, having paused to take a swipe at her red nose, but also, Felicity knew, to give herself time to compose her next outrageous conclusions about the poor man. “Perhaps he has a mistress he is trying to keep in diamonds.”

Felicity blanched. “Really, Tally,” she scolded. “The man’s coat was patched, his boots nearly worn through. A mistress? Wherever do you get such notions?”

Tally shrugged and sighed. “Well, he’s handsome enough to have a mistress. Diamonds or not. Didn’t you think him very handsome? Despite that scar, I mean. Do you think he got that from a knife or a saber? Whichever it is, he is still handsome enough.”

Well used to Tally’s rambling dissertations on whatever subject currently held her fancy, Felicity shook her head. “Handsome? Such a ridiculous notion. He is far too unkempt. And besides, he is a
footman
.” She glanced up the block again. “And not a very good one.”

“If you let him live in, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“Live in? Are you mad?” She shook her head. “No, we must keep an extremely respectable household, and having a man who looks like that would only give rise to unseemly talk.”

Tally grinned, rocking back on her heels. “So you
do
think he’s handsome.”

She flinched
. Botheration. Not just handsome. Too handsome.
Felicity tugged at her mittens and glanced again down Brook Street. The empty block left her unsettled for reasons she couldn’t comprehend.

Well, it was of no matter if they never saw the too-handsome-for-his-own-good Mr. Thatcher again, she told herself. What had the agency been thinking sending him
over? She had specifically requested they find an average sort of fellow who was too old to inspire any foolishness.

“It doesn’t matter what he looks like,” she told her sister. “When he arrives, I intend to send him packing.”

“No, Duchess! You mustn’t!” Tally protested. “However can we go down to the fair without him? Let him escort us to the river, and then sack him tomorrow. I so want to see this Frost Fair.”

Felicity drew up her shoulders into a taut line. “We can’t do that.”

“Whyever not?”

“Because then I would have to pay him,” she whispered, even though there was no one around to hear.

Tally heaved a sigh. “Oh, there is that.” She glanced back at the door to see if perhaps there was any sign of Aunt Minty or Pippin yet. “How long do you think he’ll continue with us once he discovers we haven’t the money to pay him?”

“With any luck, long enough for me to secure Hollindrake,” Felicity replied. That was why they had come to London, leaving behind the little cottage that Pippin’s mother had left her and pooling all their funds to stage this Season. She’d known that Hollindrake would have to come to London for the opening of Parliament, if only to take his seat in the House of Lords. And she’d been bound and determined on being there to make sure no other debutante interfered with her carefully planned, and now all-too-tenuous, courtship.

Behind them the door finally opened and Aunt Minty and Pippin made their late appearance.

The old woman shivered and screwed her wrinkled face into a moue of protest. “Blasted hell! What are you gels trying to do? Freeze my arse off with this sammy idea?”

“Dear Aunt Minty,” Felicity said, trying to sound as sincere as possible, “would you mind curbing your tongue? Someone might hear you and think less of you as our esteemed chaperone.”

“They won’t think much of me when they find me in the spring, still trying to thaw me garters off.”

Pippin leaned over. “Aunt Minty, ladies don’t mention their…well, unmentionables.”

“They don’t?” the lady asked, her eyes now wide open. “And why the bloody not? They wear them, don’t they?”

“Please,” Felicity said, now resorting to outright begging, “Aunt Aramintha, remember who and what you are. This is Mayfair, and we are all ladies of good breeding.”
Well
,
three of us are.
“And as such, we don’t use the words ‘bloody,’ ‘arse,’ or mention anything beneath one’s gown.”

Tally reached out and took the lady’s hand, patting her thick, red woolen mitt. “I’ll teach you some lovely phrases in Russian, Aunt Minty. They’ll do the trick when you find yourself at a loss for proper words. Besides which, everyone will think you quite in the pink for being so Continental.”

The lady’s nut brown eyes sparkled at such an offer, and so she nodded her agreement to Felicity. If there was one thing Aunt Minty loved, it was a good bit of profanity.

“Besides,” Tally added, “I don’t think we’re going to the Frost Fair today, since neither the carriage nor our new footman have deigned to show up, and the Duchess intends to send him packing when he does arrive.”

“Who—the driver or the footman?” Pippin asked. “For I doubt you can fire poor Mr. Stillings, since he has been in our family for more than thirty years.”

“I have no intention of sacking Mr. Stillings. It is that Mr. Thatcher I intend to dismiss. He is entirely unsuitable, never mind his obvious disregard for punctuality. Besides, there is such a thing as a man who is too handsome for his own—” Felicity’s blustering came to a sudden halt when she spied the sly smile on Pippin’s lips.

“And I say we keep Mr. Thatcher,” her cousin said, “if he does deign to return. He has you in a fluster, and that is a good thing.”

“I am in no such state. And certainly not over a footman!” Felicity crossed her arms over her chest. Why, she had never heard such nonsense!

“He was a looker, that one,” Aunt Minty declared. Apparently she hadn’t been as asleep as she appeared. “Seems a shame to send him packing. Thought he might be something nice to take a gander at when he came in to tend the fires and such.”

“Aunt Minty!” all three girls said.

The old woman shrugged. “I ain’t blind. And I ain’t dead. I’ve had me fair share of fellows in my life, and I tell you the handsome ones always had a way about them. I remember a highwayman who used to come around the inn from time to time. Now what was his name? Gentleman, he was, and that was all that mattered. He had a way about him, he did. When he was to cast an eye in yer direction, there was little chance you’d be saying no.”

Felicity closed her eyes and rubbed her brow. “Oh, heavens, Aunt Minty, this is exactly what I was saying before! You mustn’t say such things. If anyone was to find out that you are—”

“Good God!” Tally said, adding a curse in Russian that brought Felicity’s gaze up. “Look who’s coming down the street!”

Felicity glanced up and her gaze landed on the tall, solitary man strolling toward them. There was something so commanding about his gait, the set of his shoulders, the tip of his hat, that she found herself mesmerized, much as she had been yesterday when he came to their door seeking employment.

Thatcher.
The man had to be some nobleman’s by-blow, for if you didn’t know better, you might mistake his hawkish visage, Roman features, and height for that of a baron or even a viscount.

“That isn’t who I think it is?” Pippin was saying, squinting her eyes to get a better look.

“It is,” Felicity muttered. “Mr. Thatcher, our new footman. And carrying our livery, I might add.”

“No, no, Duchess,” Tally said, tugging at Felicity’s elbow and pointing in the opposite direction. “There.”

Felicity turned around and instantly her heart sank.

There was no mistaking the lady in the grand carriage approaching, despite the thick stack of blankets and bundles of furs. Miss Sarah Browne rode forth like the Queen herself, being drawn by four matched white horses.

“Only that pretentious American would ride about in the middle of winter in an open carriage so all could see her new hat and gown,” Tally declared, though there was no missing the note of envy in her words.

“Whatever is she doing in London?” Felicity whispered. “I thought she’d gone back home for good.”

“Well, she’s here now, so you’d best fortify yourself, Duchess,” Tally said, reaching over and squeezing her sister’s hand. “We could always let slip to Temple that we suspect her of spying for the Americans.”

Felicity shook her head. “Wouldn’t work. No one would ever think her smart enough to carry out such a deception.” Especially not their good family friend, Temple, now the Duke of Setchfield, whose connections with the Foreign Office went all the way to the top. “Still, we must be cautious, for what she lacks in intelligence, she more than makes up for in sheer spite, and if she discovers a hint of what we’ve done, well…”

“I don’t see that you’ve done all that much—” Aunt Minty began.

“Not a word!” Felicity shook her finger at the woman. “Not one word out of you or you’ll find yourself back in—”

“Miss Langley, I must speak to you,” came the deep voice that sent a tremble down her spine.

Thatcher! Oh, the devil take the man and his now inconvenient arrival! How had she forgotten him? But now that he
stood towering beside her, he was impossible to ignore.

When she turned to face him, the same deep fluster that afflicted her yesterday arose anew, leaving her once again tongue-tied. She didn’t know what had her more unnerved by him—those dark eyes, or the expanse of his chest. Why, the man was like a mountain, so tall and sure of himself. And while Felicity never lacked for confidence or words, this man, this footman, left her, as Pippin had so astutely pointed out, completely flustered.

“Miss Langley,” he said, tipping his head down to look at her. “Are you well?”