The Accidental Duchess (11 page)

Walking out, he remembered where he had seen that woman before. “That was Lady Lydia’s maid, wasn’t it?” he asked the groom.

The fellow set his attention on repairing some tacking strewn across his lap. “So she be, sir. My daughter Sarah does for the lady. Has for, oh, five or six years now.”

“It is convenient that Lady Lydia visits here often, then. You are able to see your daughter frequently.”

“Her mother and I are grateful for it.”

“I am told Lady Lydia is quite a horsewoman.”

The man’s teeth glistened against his sun-browned skin. “Took to it as a child. As fine a rider as you will see. Better than most men, and I do not think I am favoring her in saying so. That’s her horse in there, the white one. Not a mare either. Helios she calls him.”

He strolled back into the stable and along the stalls until he found the white Helios. She had named him after the Greek god who dragged the sun on its path through the sky by his chariot. Helios had been bred to race, that was obvious, and was not a large horse. Still, he did not appear the sort of horse accustomed to quiet, sedate walks.

The horse appeared clean, relaxed, and neatly groomed. Rather too neatly. He looked much like Penthurst’s own mount, and lacked the evidence of hours in the stall.

Still carrying his valise, he returned to the groom repairing the tackle. “Was Helios ridden today? I ask because he appears recently groomed.”

The man kept his attention on the bridle he inspected. “Might a been.”

“Yet I was told that Lady Lydia is ill.”

“Could be he was exercised, sir, what with her being ill.”

Could be. Mighta been. In his mind’s eye he saw Sarah skipping back to the house, and to the apartment where Lady Sutterly assumed she cared for Lydia.

Some game was afoot here. Perhaps this was how Lydia escaped her aunt’s supervision. She claimed illness, took to her chamber, then snuck out to ride where she wanted and could do as she pleased. Or, perhaps, the pending visit of a certain duke to whom she owed a debt had led her to use the ruse of illness to avoid him should he indeed visit.

He strode back to the house, and handed off the valise. After the servant showed him up to a chamber, he waited for the man to go. Then he toured the upper floors of the house. In the wing opposite the one where he had been put, he crossed paths with a scullery maid bearing a tray of food. Pausing, he watched her deliver it to a door where Sarah took it from her hands.

Once the way was clear, he in turn presented himself at that same door. Sarah’s eyebrows arched with shock on seeing him.

“How does your lady fare?” he asked.

She licked her lips. “Well enough. Better, that is.”

“But not so well as to come down to dinner.”

“No. Not so well as that.”

“And yet she has been riding today.” He did not make it a question.

Her face reddened. “Riding? I don’t— That is, I am sure that—” Flustered, she stepped through the doorway and closed it behind her. “I must go to her aunt and report now, Your Grace, if you will excuse me.”

“Not yet. You should stay for a few minutes more.”

“Why?”

He pushed the latch and threw open the door. “I would not want to cause a scandal by visiting her while she is alone.”

Sarah lunged for the door’s latch, but he had already crossed the threshold. He strode into the apartment, expecting to see Lydia reading or writing letters, fit and hail after a few hours of exercise.

Instead the sitting room was empty. Feeling half foolish, very suspicious, and mostly concerned, he turned to the door that must lead to her bedchamber. Sarah darted ahead and threw her body against the door. “This is very irregular, sir. I cannot allow my lady’s privacy and modesty to be intruded upon, even by such as you.”

“You do that very well, Sarah. You are a credit to your lady.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I will pay my respects and offer my wishes for her speedy recovery, and be gone.”

Sarah pressed herself against the door harder. “I—That is, she is sleeping.”

“Sleeping so soundly that you could leave her and go visit your father, you mean? If you did that, I do not believe she is very sick at all. Now, you will step aside, or I will move you.”

Her mouth gaped, then grimaced. With a sick expression, she moved away from the door.

He entered a bedchamber full of light from large windows facing the sea. Awash in blues and greens and white, it appeared a chamber that might be found underwater. He noticed a few details in his quick appraisal of the space—the tray of uneaten food on a table, the nightdress folded over a chair. Drapes the hue of a robin’s egg surrounded the bed.

He did not have to look to know Lydia did not recline within that blue bower. Her absence had been palpable as soon as he entered. He had even sensed it outside the apartment.

Sarah stood silently, head bowed, fingers interlaced.

“Where is she?”

Sarah did not move or speak.

“I do not want to cause trouble for you. If she will return shortly, tell me. If a bigger game is at work, you must let me know. Whatever has happened, you are complicit and her brother will not be rational or quick to forgive if something happens to her. Even an accident will result in blame.”

She balled her hands together and raised them to her mouth. A long sigh made her body sag. “She will not be back shortly, I am afraid. Not for several days.”

“Yet her horse is back.”

“She rode him, that is true. With one of the grooms, who brought the horse back. She rode to Diehl this morning.”

He debated whether to question her further. Lydia must have arranged a rendezvous in Diehl. A friend could have met her there. Or a lover. The latter possibility snaked into his thoughts, bringing more disappointment than he would have expected. Because if she had assignations with a lover, she had lied about that wager, boldly so.

No, that was not the source of the thickness in his chest. The very notion of a lover caused it. That and the possible evidence that Lydia had a full, unknown life that occupied her, and placed him even further on the edges of her world.

“Is she meeting a friend in Diehl?” he asked.

“Friend?” Sarah puzzled the word. Her eyes widened in shock. “Oh!
No
. My lady is not—this is not what you must think. I’ll not have anyone suggest such a thing. She went there to hire a post chaise, that is all.”

“Where is she going?”

Sarah shook her head. “North. I cannot tell you more. What little I know was spoken in confidence, and I would be a poor servant if I revealed that which she tells me.”

“Has she done this before? Played ill while she snuck away for days?”

“Not for days. It may have happened every now and then of a day, though. When her aunt bores her badly, or she just wants to ride up the coast for no purpose in particular.”

He gazed out the window while weighing it all. Clouds rolled on the horizon, and the thin strip of visible sea out there appeared more gray than blue.

He did not like this. Deep inside, his instincts said Lydia headed toward trouble. That she had not dared such a thing before only increased the nagging worry.

He could probably browbeat what else Sarah knew out of her, but he guessed that if Lydia schemed at anything significant with this journey, she had kept most of it even from her lady’s maid. However, there might be another way to reassure himself that she was not headed for some disaster.

“Your discretion is admirable,” he said while he walked to the door. “It would be best if you carried on as your lady instructed. We will trust that she indeed returns in a few days, as she intends.”

He made his way back to the stables. Sarah’s father no longer sat in the sun, but the lads putting down clean hay still worked the stalls. He lounged against the entrance to one of them, watching. The young men worked harder, speeding their actions more with each passing second. Finally one of them stopped and wiped his brow.

“Can we be of service, Your Grace?”

“Perhaps. I may need my horse prepared soon.”

“We can do it straight away if you want.”

“Whether I want depends on whether either of you escorted Lady Lydia to Diehl this morning.”

The other young man froze with an armful of hay. Then he tossed it down and began spreading it with his pitchfork. “If the earl’s sister says she needs an escort, we escort. We don’t ask why or wherefore either.”

“Of course not. However, you also do not turn blind or deaf. I am curious whether you guessed where she intended to go from there.”

The two exchanged sharp glances.

“May have,” the first one said. “Not for certain, though.”

“I must insist you tell me, certain or not.”

They hesitated long enough for him to wonder if loyalty to Lydia would win out.

“Andrew here rode with her, and brought Helios back,” the first one said. “Tell him, Andrew. He is the earl’s friend, and a duke himself, and none can blame you for answering such as him.”

Andrew turned red while he continued to work his fork. “I carried in her valise and heard her talking to the coaching inn fellow about getting to Buxton. Planned to take the waters, she said.”

“Did you not think that a long way for her to go? She could take the waters nearby in Royal Tunbridge Wells.”

“Not for me to think anything, Your Grace. She would not like that any more than you would, I expect.”

From their expressions of veiled relief, he knew that they did think something, however. Both of them thought Lydia’s current adventure extraordinary, and worrisome.

“I think that I will want my horse prepared after all. Right away.” With that he returned to the house, to make his excuses to Lady Sutterly regarding his sudden change in plans.

“I
f we do not concentrate, it will take us days to perfect this,” Lydia said.

“You keep distracting me with your arguments. I will perform as well as necessary, I assure you.” Trilby spoke with undue confidence while he dealt out the cards again.

The last few hours had proven several things to Lydia. The first was that convincing Mr. Trilby to abandon his current plan would take better persuasion than she had thus far mustered. He had shown no interest in her carefully articulated rationales regarding how he should take what she had for him now, and they would set up a schedule whereby she paid the rest.

The second thing in evidence was that Algernon Trilby was no Peter Lippincott. Despite his skill at sleight-of-hand tricks, he knew almost nothing about being a sharper. Which meant she had to instruct him, without sounding like an experienced one herself. At the same time, she needed him to conclude that this partnership was not a good idea.

“I do not mean to argue,” she said, trying a new tack. “I only feel that you are trying to hasten matters with this plan, when it is not in your character to do something so dishonest. I merely remind you that there is an alternative.”

“The alternative that you propose would take forever. Now, pick a card.” He pointed to the fan of them on the table between them.

Nearby, four matrons from Newcastle played whist. At this time of year Buxton was not a busy spa town, and even the patrons who came were not the sort one would meet in Bath, or even Royal Tunbridge Wells. These four women were the wealthy wives of new industrialists from the sounds of them.

This card room in the Crescent was available for guests who took rooms there. Since Lydia had done so, under the name Mrs. Howell, she had a somewhat public place in which to meet Mr. Trilby. He had taken a room in one of Buxton’s guesthouses.

She chose a card. Trilby made a stack of the rest, then split it and offered the top center card as a place to perch her choice. As soon as she did, he again turned clumsy.

One of the women laughed at her companion’s conversation. Trilby’s face reddened. He kept glancing at the whist table.

“If you fear they know what we are doing, I assure you they do not,” Lydia whispered.

“It isn’t that, Lady Lydia.”

Of course it was. “Mr. Trilby, you can only do this if you display supreme confidence. If you appear at all guilty or nervous, everyone will be suspicious. You must practice on your demeanor even more than your handling of the cards. And I remind you not to address me as anything other than Mrs. Howell.”

He threw down the cards and folded his arms. He stared at the table. “I tire of both the game and your criticisms.”

“It pains me to criticize, sir. However, it is necessary if you think to execute your plan. You were not born for such as this, as I said. I urge you to take the longer view of your expectations, so we can both leave this town with our self-respect and honor intact.”

He toyed with the cards, watching his fingers thoughtfully. “You are right. My goal should not be immediate reimbursement, but self-respect and honor. I have been thinking about that since we met in the park, and realized that I erred in demanding this scurrilous choice when far better ones exist.”

“I knew if you gave it serious thought, you would see the risks of this scheme were too great.”

“Indeed they are, and quite unnecessary. I was a fool not to address the matter differently.”

“I trusted you would see things differently. I even brought the sum I have on hand already with me, so I can give it to you forthwith.”

He looked at the whist table. Two of the women there looked back. “Not here, surely.”

“Of course not, but while we are in Buxton.”

“Tomorrow, then. Let us meet outside, on the path behind St. Anne’s well. Shall we say at ten o’clock?” He began to stand.

“Don’t you want to discuss the rest of it? The future payments? Your turning the manuscript over to me? I would like to see it before I hand you such a large amount.”

He made a bow, to take his leave. “I am sure we will contrive to make it fair, Lady Lydia.” He took her hand and kissed it. That raised some eyebrows at the whist table. “I will explain my new thinking on the matter tomorrow. I anticipate all will work out to our mutual advantage.”

 • • • 

E
ven great investment cannot make a town fashionable. Penthurst considered that as he rode through Buxton. Famed as a market town, it had recently received the patronage of the Duke of Devonshire, who, in commissioning the Crescent and a few other improvements, had tried to make it another Bath. Only it was not by the sea, but high in the foothills of the Peaks, far from London, and no Mr. Nash had endeavored to provide it with the social graces that marked Bath. Thus it was that anyone who was anyone had visited Bath, but most of those anyones had never taken the waters at Buxton.

He stopped in front of the Crescent, so imitative of the one in Bath as to be embarrassing. Unlike most of those other anyones, he knew this town fairly well. His title’s county seat lay west of here. In chasing Lydia, he had almost returned home.

Within a half hour he had procured a chamber in the Crescent, had his horse seen to, drunk some coffee in the card room, and looked in on the grand salon. Deciding sleep could wait, he left the building to see what he could learn about the whereabouts of Lady Lydia.

He doubted she had used her real name, no matter what the goal of this adventure. While he paused outside to pull on his gloves, he realized that the most likely place for her to stay was the same likely place he had chosen. He considered how to ask after her without sounding like a libertine prowling after some woman who had caught his eye.

While he picked among the various ruses that came to mind, he noticed a carriage slowing across the way, near the wells. A man hopped out and walked around the tower that backed the wells. He appeared familiar. Was that Trilby?

He walked up the lane fifty feet to get a better view. The man from the carriage strode up a little rise toward a park area with paths. A woman waited for him there. One with pale skin, and dark soulful eyes.

 • • • 

“Y
ou are punctual, unlike most women. I am glad to see it,” Trilby said as he approached. “That speaks well of you.”

Lydia wanted to respond archly. She hardly needed Mr. Trilby’s approval of her character. She swallowed the impulse, so that they might finally be done with this.

She patted her reticule, the largest one she owned. Even with her winnings converted to the largest banknotes she could get, it bulged. “I trust that you brought the manuscript, so I can at least see it is whole. I have twenty-five hundred here. I will manage to bring another five hundred by year’s end. Then five hundred a year hence, until all is settled.”

Trilby eyed the reticule. He removed his hat and raked his pale hair back with his fingers. He looked toward the wells. “I think not.”

Her heart sank. Not again. “Sir, your inconstancy is such that we will never make an agreement. I refuse to have this continue in such ambiguous a way. You cannot possibly hope to gain more than you first mentioned.”

“I have rethought it all since we last met in London, and concluded that I should recognize this opportunity for what it is.”

This did not sound good, Lydia thought. No, this did not sound good at all.

He turned and smiled. “Lady Lydia, I do not want what is in that reticule. I should like instead to improve my station in the world. What good is thousands if I am still the mere cousin of a man whose sister married a baronet? How much better to be a man who is married to the sister of an earl?”

His smile turned too familiar. His eyes became pointedly focused. Alarm began freezing her before she had it all parsed out, but she picked through it again because his last sentence had been too bizarre.

“You cannot be serious.”

“It is the kind of marriage made all the time. One that is mutually beneficial. I am hardly going to release to the public a scandalous journal that impugns my own wife’s reputation, and through her mine too. I thought you would embrace the brilliance of it, since it ensures my discretion as money never could.”

This was horrible, not brilliant.

She could barely breathe. Her mind grasped for reasons this would never do. “You will find yourself far poorer this way.”

“Perhaps monetarily, but rich in other ways that any man of my station values highly.”

“My brother will never approve.”

“You are of age and require no guardian’s permission. However, to ensure he does not interfere, I propose a jaunt up to Scotland forthwith, where bans will not delay matters. We will depart at once.”

She looked at the carriage. He hardly needed one for this meeting. By “at once,” did he mean right now?

He had left her yesterday with this plan well hatched. Perhaps this had been his intention even when they met in the park. The cheating partnership had been a ruse to get her to Buxton, and more than halfway to Scotland.

She had been a fool to underestimate him. She had done so, however. Badly. Yet nothing about him suggested he could be this sly.

She stepped back. “You are too impatient. Let us return to London and have a proper wedding. It would be cruel to my family if I eloped.”

He moved closer. He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. She watched, aghast. It felt as if time had slowed.

“My dear Lydia—you do not mind the familiarity, do you? Since we will soon be wed, it is not inappropriate—You are a clever woman, that is certain. However, please do not assume I am a dolt who cannot see through your schemes. If we return to London, you will find ways to put me off on this as you did with the money. No, the border it will be.”

He stepped back. She tried to pull her hand free without success. Trilby’s smile became a thin, firm line of annoyance. He took her arm and her stupid slippers slid right over the moist grass, refusing to grip the ground while he pulled her toward the carriage.

Dear heavens, he really intended to go right now! Once in Scotland, she would have a simple choice. Marriage to Algernon Trilby, or total ruin.

She would be damned before she married this man, or even rode in that carriage with him for one mile.

Swinging her stuffed reticule at his head and arm, she screamed for help. Trilby proved stronger than his appearance would suggest, however, and in a moment she would be dragged into the carriage.

Through the blur of her vision she saw people moving toward them. Two women and a man had been summoned by her cries. Then a dark presence burst through them and surrounded her and suddenly Trilby’s hold on her vanished. She fell to the ground on her rump while confusion and movement and grunts swirled above her.

Suddenly all went silent. Eerily so. She blinked hard and looked at the carriage. For some reason, Trilby’s head lulled up near the top of the carriage door with his chin deep in his collar. His body hung like a rag doll. In front of him, holding him up there by a grip on the front of his coat, stood a tall, dark-haired man.

“You have until nightfall to choose your weapon,” a biting, low voice ordered. “We meet on the field of honor tomorrow morning, or you will be known as the coward you are.”

Trilby’s eyes bulged in shock. Then he slumped to the ground as the hands released him.

Slowly the world had been righting itself. She felt the damp beneath her rump, and saw the gazes of the women and man. Her reticule had split, and the edges of some banknotes peeked out. She tucked them back in and clutched the reticule so the money would not pour out and fly away.

That dark presence hovered above her. She looked at the boots mere inches from her hip. Then up long legs. Up, up farther, her stomach sickening more with each inch. She knew who it was. She realized she recognized the voice. She had never heard it speak like that, but—

She took a deep breath and tilted her head back. A handsome, severe face looked down at her. The Duke of Penthurst had come to her rescue, and did not look one bit happy about it.

He bent down, lifted her, and set her on her feet. He took her arm and pushed her toward the street and the Crescent, not showing much more patience than Trilby had.

“I should thank you, but—”

“Not another word until we have privacy, Lydia. Not one. If you speak, I will turn you over my knee right here and give those people even more to write home about tonight.”

 • • • 

T
here was one chair in his chamber at the Crescent. Lydia sat in it primly, her dress shedding grass onto the carpet.

He washed his hands and assessed the minor damage from the fisticuffs with Trilby. He had landed more blows than necessary. Lydia’s scream had turned his mind black and his blood hot, and Trilby got the worst of it.

She had wisely obeyed, and not spoken. Instead she had retreated behind her sphinx mask. He was not in the mood for that right now.

“Are you hurt?” he asked while he put his coat back on.

She subtly flexed her body this way and that, checking. “My arm will be sore, perhaps. And my hand is bruised.”

He took it in his own. Trilby’s grip had left its mark on the back. “Are you going to tell me what happened out there?”

“You bid me not speak. I have decided I prefer not to anyway.” She looked up. “You are not really going to fight him, are you?”

“Of course I am. No gentleman can allow such behavior toward a lady to stand. Whatever his reasons for being here, whatever your reasons for meeting him, he crossed a line that must not be crossed.”

He waited for her to answer the unavoidable questions.
What was he doing here? Why did you meet him here?

“I should not be here,” she said.

“I should say not.”

“I mean here, in this chair, in your— I have my own chamber and should go there.”

“Lydia, you have just been the center of a spectacle that will be reported far and wide. You were almost abducted. The scandal waiting to drown you cannot be avoided. Being here with me is the least of our worries.”