Mad About the Duke (4 page)

“No need to apologize,” James said without thinking, for he quite deplored it when people fawned at him. “I am quite well.”

Which is what the Duke of Parkerton would have said, but not the very ordinary Mr. St. Maur.

Nor was his victim all that impressed. “I don't think I remember asking over your welfare, you presumptuous pup!” Then the fellow pushed past him and sent James staggering off the curb and into the street.

It was on the tip of his tongue to give the man a very pointed set down for such manners, until he remembered several very relevant points: he wasn't the Duke of Parkerton this morning. And the man who'd just sent him packing was Lord Penwortham.

The earl wasn't only a haughty sort of fellow but a terrible gossip to boot. So it was a boon he hadn't
recognized James. Oh, yes, it would have been all over White's before teatime.

Saw him with my very eyes. Dressed in some wretched coat, and his boots looked to be in shreds! Gone mad, I tell you. But not entirely unexpected, you know. He's a Tremont after all. They all go that way eventually.

James dipped his head down lower, but there was no need, for Penwortham had already huffed his way down the block.

“Get out of the way,” a rough fellow driving a wagon called out, and James leapt back up onto the curb just in time to keep from being run over by a large team of draft horses. “Hobnail!” the man spat down from his perch.

Hobnail
? James had never suffered such an insult. As if
he
were some country rustic!

But he was in so many ways. For the first time in his life, James Tremont was completely and utterly out of his element.

Noble bloodlines aside, apparently walking required a fair amount of diligence. Not that he needed to be woolgathering. He had his plan of action in hand.

He'd arrive promptly on the hour. Make his excuses and leave. Quickly. For good.

Never to look into her cornflower eyes again…

Ah, there was the problem. Those eyes of hers. And that fair hair…

Into his thoughts rushed the image of her coming through the door, her cheeks flushed with the chill of winter and her hair fluttering out from beneath her bonnet.

It was a vision he couldn't easily forget. One he'd
found himself conjuring up during supper, over cards and first thing this morning, as if he had been, as Jack had suggested, stricken.

Stricken, indeed! He was not intrigued by Lady Standon.

Not in the least.

He glanced up and realized he was standing before her door, and suddenly his heart gave a pounding leap. Ridiculous! It was merely the strains of walking across Mayfair. And nearly being run down by Lord Penworthan. And a cart, he added, as if his pounding chest needed another reason for its errant hammering other than the obvious one.

Not because the lady had the most beguiling locks of hair and the most delightful, come-hither smile.

When she smiled, that was.

Hopefully during his prepared speech, the lady wouldn't do any such thing. Then again, perhaps she wasn't the paragon he'd come to imagine. Perhaps his vision of her was just the result of his rattled senses.

Yes, that was it. Lady Standon could hardly be the vision he saw in his mind's eye. Thus resolved, he went up the steps and rang the bell.

Then he waited.

And waited. Growing impatient, James pulled the cord again. And by the third time he had to reach for it, he was growing imperious.

For the Duke of Parkerton never waited, and this standing about like some tradesman wasn't doing his resolve to be the polite and deferential Mr. St. Maur any good.

But just as he tugged the bell for a fourth time—four times, indeed! Such an ill-run house hardly rec
ommended the lady for matrimony—the door swung open and a ruddy-faced housekeeper with a dirty apron glared at him.

“Not one of those fool swains, are ye?”

Fool swains
? Then over her shoulder, he spied the vases full of flowers. Lady Standon had swains?

A good number of them, from the looks of it.

Gathering his wits together, he replied, “No, ma'am.”

“Good!” she said, wiping her hands on her apron, which seemed to James to be rather counterproductive considering the less-than-desirable state of her apron. “Got enough flowers around here to bury me mum twice over. Like a bloody funeral around here.”

“Yes, well, I have no flowers,” he told her. “Rather, I have an appointment with Lady Standon.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” she asked, tipping her head and eyeing him thoroughly.

James straightened. He hadn't been given such a once-over since his old nanny had gone to her reward. Nanny Dunne. Only woman who'd ever frightened him down to his toes. That is, until now.

This harridan looked ready to add him to the stew-pot with no apologies over it.

“Lady Standon?” he prompted. “I do have an appointment.”

Her eyes narrowed, and then she smiled. “Oh, an appointment, you say.” She poked him in the chest with a long, bony finger as if she were checking him for plumpness. “You must be the handsome solicitor.”

“Well, I am not precisely a solicit—”

Oh, just a moment. What had this harridan called him? Handsome? Truly?

His gaze rose up, for until now it had been fixed on the finger poking into his breastbone. Who had said he was handsome? Lady Standon?

His chest tightened a bit, and not from a fear of being carved up but because his heart was doing that rare thump again.

Elinor thought him handsome.

James couldn't help himself; he smiled, even if it was at this rather frightening housekeeper.

And when she smiled back, like one of the old witches from Macbeth, James shook off his momentary lapse and reminded himself of the business at hand.

He didn't care if Lady Standon thought him handsome, or, for that matter, if every Lady Standon on the block thought him good looking.

He needed to extract himself from this situation before he had a larger debacle on his hands.

“Well, then,” the housekeeper said, pointing at a spot on the floor in the foyer, “wait there.” She cackled a bit and left him standing about like a man at Tyburn about to be called up for a noose.

“She isn't as bad as she seems,” a voice called out from the steps.

He turned and spied Lady Standon's sister Tia sitting on the stairs. The girl smiled and rose, coming down half a flight.

“I don't know about that,” he said. “Wherever did your sister find her?”

“She didn't,” Tia told him. “We inherited her from the Duchess of Hollindrake. She's not a bad cook, and I think she might even be a good housekeeper someday. But do be careful around her. She was a pickpocket at one time, and she…” The girl mimed tipping a bottle back. “Though not as much as she used to drink. Not since she took up with
Mr. Mudgett.” She paused and glanced around the foyer. “Though I am not supposed to know those things.”

“No, I can see why you shouldn't,” James said. Good heavens, did servants truly have such lives? For a moment he considered his own staff—Richards and Winston, and Cantley, his butler, and the countless others who served him—and realized how little he knew about them, or if they “took up” with anyone, or drank to excess.

He had a flashing image of Cantley romancing the housekeeper, Mrs. Oxton, and shuddered.

Perhaps he didn't want to know.

“How are the puppies?” he asked, steering the conversation into a safer harbor.

“Very well!” she exclaimed, coming down another step or two, her hand on the railing.

“Excellent news,” he said. “And Isidore?”

“She's quite taken with them, as we are all. Though perhaps not Minerva, but that is to be expected.” The young minx smiled at him. “Do you want one?”

This took James aback. “I don't know, I—”

“No, I suppose not,” Tia said, mistaking his hesitation. “Elinor says we need to find them good homes, and I don't suppose you have one of those.”

James bit his lips together, thinking of his residences. All seventeen of them.

Just then a door down the hall began to slide open and Tia snapped to attention. She put her fingers to her lips, as if to ask for his confidence, then silently made her way up and out of sight.

Little imp! She'd probably been eavesdropping. He took another glance upward, for suddenly it struck him. What the devil had she gleaned from her illicit prowling?

“Mr. St. Maur,” came a voice from down the hall. “Right on time.”

The musical sound of it stopped him, for while it was probably close to freezing outside, her words made him think of a spring day.

Lady Standon.

He turned around and half expected, half hoped she wasn't nearly as pretty as he remembered.

Unfortunately he'd been wrong yesterday.

The lady wasn't just pretty, she was stunning.

All he could manage of his manners was a slight bow, for he didn't trust his tongue.

“Shall we go into the parlor,” she said, pointing to the sitting room beyond where he had met with Lucy Sterling the day before. She paused for a moment and glanced up the stairs, her eyes narrowing as if—while she didn't precisely see her sister—she knew the girl wasn't out of earshot. “We should be able to discuss our business in private in there.”

He managed to nod in agreement and followed Lady Standon into the room. Poor place that it was.

Whatever was the Duchess of Hollindrake about—consigning the Standon widows to this ill-gotten house? The sitting room was a bare affair with only a settee, a chair and a desk. Drafts came in through the windows, while the fireplace puffed more smoke than it gave off warmth.

Jack had mentioned something about the three of them being troublesome. While James could see this of Lucy Sterling, he couldn't imagine what sort of problems Elinor had caused the duke and duchess to gain this wretched banishment.

The lady seemed perfectly amenable.

Perfectly delectable. Perfect for…

James stilled. What the devil was he thinking? He was no rake. No devil-may-care fellow who prowled about Town looking for fair creatures and lovely Incognitas to seduce.

This is where James parted company with most of his Tremont relations and forebears. Now, if he had been the 6
^th
duke, or even his brother Jack (before the former Miranda Mabberly had brought him to heel), Lady Standon would have already been seduced, her gown teased from her body, her lips pliant and willing.

Good heavens, after long and careful years of rehabilitating the family reputation, living with an unflappable code of honor and respectability, he now found himself willing to toss it all aside for one impetuous and willful taste of Lady Standon's rosy, sweet lips.

Yet a kiss, he knew, would never be enough.

Oh, if anything, such a notion was more than enough evidence that he needed to get out of this situation immediately. Before he became known as the Mad Duke of Parkerton and Jack appeared to all Society as the solid, respectable Tremont.

“I can't tell you, Mr. St. Maur,” she was saying, “how much your assistance in this delicate matter means to me.”

His heart made a double thump, for she was gazing up at him as if he were her knight-errant come to rescue her.

One of his medieval Tremont ancestors would have known what to do, how to save her from both a dragon (the Duchess of Hollindrake coming to mind) and the ne'er-do-wells who threatened her happiness.

Demmit! There he went again. Falling prey to such ridiculous sentimentality.

Utter folly,
he told himself as sternly as he could muster.

He straightened and began to force his practiced speech past his unwilling lips.

“Lady Standon—,” he began.

Even as she said, “Mr. St. Maur—”

They both paused and smiled at each other.

“You first,” he demurred, as only a gentleman should. He was still a gentleman.
He was.

She nodded, then sat down, waving her hand at the chair to indicate that he should do the same.

He would have preferred to stand so he would be closer to the door and therefore able to bolt free at the first opportunity, but what else could he do?

James sat down, taking one last, wistful look over his shoulder at the door.

“I have prepared a list,” she was saying.

“A wha-a-t?”

“A list. Of prospects.” She pulled a slim volume from the pocket of her gown, and from that plucked out a folded piece of paper. She held it out to him. “These are the names I have determined are the mostly likely.”

James stared at the paper. Husbands to be. A man to marry her. Rescue her. A man who would claim her devotion…and her love…and her body.

His teeth ground together.

“I've only included the ducal prospects,” she continued. “At least for now.”

The ducal prospects? Suddenly the dull, faded room brightened a bit.

She took his pause, as well as his reluctance to take the list from her hand, altogether wrong. “Yes, as my sister mentioned yesterday, it is my intention to marry well, a duke preferably.”

He opened his mouth to say something. Something like
“I am the most likely duke around,”
but he knew that such an announcement at this moment, considering the circumstances, would hardly endear him to her.

Not that he wanted her regard. Not in the least.

Besides, she'd think him mad. As he was beginning to suspect was a legitimate conclusion.

“Yes, well, I have come up with a list of the only ducal candidates in London.”

James nodded politely and took the paper, running through his own list of likely candidates, and other than himself, he couldn't think of one of his peers who was worthy of her. Unless she meant to go after one of the royal dukes.

Which would be madness in itself.