The Accidental Duchess (8 page)

That was generous, if one ignored that he had also won
her
along with the “almost nothing.”

Seeing her way out of that conundrum, and also a path for adding to her funds to put off Trilby, she sat down at the table. He took Mr. Lippincott’s seat. She gathered up the cards. “Cassandra, perhaps you will mix them and lay them out.”

Cassandra sat to her right and mixed the cards.

“One moment,” Penthurst said. “Are those Lippincott’s cards?”

“I think so.”

“The man is suspected of being a sharper. The deck may be marked. I can’t have you accusing me of cheating.” He twisted, caught the eye of a servant, and called for another deck.

Her heart sank to her stomach. Normally she would assume luck would favor her, but—

Penthurst smoothly mixed the cards, his handsome hands appearing quite expert. He handed them to Cassandra to cut and fan. Cassandra did so, but her gaze locked on Lydia’s and her eyes communicated her offer of retreat again.

“Why do you hesitate, Lydia? The wager favors you financially in all ways,” Penthurst said. “I will add one more thing. If you win, I will never tell your brother about tonight.”

Did Cassandra notice the way the duke looked right now? How golden lights flickered in his dark eyes, and how his vaguely amused expression made one’s breath catch. He managed to appear predatory, but in a most attractive way. She could not ignore how her nervousness quickened her pulse. His attention created an almost appealing excitement.

It was all there in his eyes—what she really wagered, and what she now owed. He regarded her like a woman he expected to possess. The money was the least of it. Double or nothing on her carnal debt had become the real wager, right here under the unsuspecting Cassandra’s nose.

Yet was it really double? One only loses one’s innocence once. After that, it would be a different sort of loss, and much smaller. Indeed, one might say that after that there was nothing much left to lose at all. And if she won, she would be free of that debt, and up another sixteen hundred.

She did not have a choice, anyway. Not really.

 • • • 

P
enthurst waited. Lydia watched him, her complexion slightly flushed. Despite her impassive expression, she did not appear so confident now.

Had she intended to cheat him? She claimed on Mrs. Burton’s terrace that Trilby had been showing her his sleight-of-hands tricks. She may have learned how to misuse that, along with other sharper tricks like marking the cards.

Someone
had marked those other cards. Surely not her. All the same he could not deny that her hesitation seemed odd for a woman who had made the challenge to begin with.

She averted her eyes, and looked at the table, her color higher now. Perhaps she had seen more than he intended. As he teased her about the last wager, and dared her to double it, some vivid pictures of collecting his winnings had entered his mind. Lydia probably had no idea how often such thoughts occupied men, even when the woman was not an appropriate object of desire.

She looked rather pretty now, wide-eyed and indecisive, fighting to keep her aloof reserve in place. Not nearly so bold. He almost felt sorry for her.

Her back straightened and her tapered, slender fingers stretched toward the fan of cards. He could practically see her calling forth the goddess of fortune, and willing her fingers to land on a high card.

She abruptly pulled one and turned it over. The ten of hearts.

“You have a better than even chance of winning, Lydia. That was well done,” Cassandra said.

He looked at the cards, deciding. Suddenly it did not seem so much a game, or even a way to teach Lydia a lesson. Instead, while he waited for his own luck to more than even the odds, he found himself giving a damn which way it went. That was his vanity at work. And his pride. And, he had to admit, the dark side of his soul that had fantasized too often this week about making Lydia pay up.

He plucked a card and flipped it.

Cassandra sighed. Lydia stared.

“It does not appear to be your night,” he said, gently tapping his queen of hearts. “Again.”

Her gaze turned up to him. Luminous. Alert. Curious. Astonished. Then the life left her eyes and they turned opaque, as she donned her sphinx mask again.

“Let us go now, Cassandra.” She plucked at her reticule’s strings. “I owe you sixteen hundred, Penthurst.”

“It is not necessary to count it out now. I know you are good for all that you wager. I will write to you and make arrangements for the settlement.” He stood and offered his hand to her, then Cassandra. “Did you have your carriage wait for you, Lady Ambury?”

“A footman waits. He will procure a hired carriage for us.”

“I assume you bribed him well, so he would not gossip in the household about this adventure.”

“To no avail, since you have witnessed all.”

“While I might have a friend’s obligation to report your doings to Ambury in some cases, this is not one of them. Unless he asks me directly, my discretion is yours if you want it. Rather than wait while a carriage is procured, allow me to deliver you and Lady Lydia home.”

 • • • 

H
is coach stopped at Cassandra’s house first. Along the way he and she chatted. Cassandra’s mood turned merry. Perhaps she forgot how this man had scolded her. Or maybe relief that he promised discretion prompted her good humor.

Lydia thought it very careless of Cassandra to alight from the coach with nary a pause to consider that she would be leaving Lydia alone with the duke. Cassandra said her good-byes, and took her footman’s escort to her door. The coach rolled along toward the other side of the square.

Lydia gazed out into the night. She examined her gloves. She took inventory of the coach’s embellishments. She did everything she could not to look at Penthurst sitting across from her. Even so she saw him, especially whenever they passed a street lamp and a sudden flash of golden light came in the window. Each time he turned from a dark form into a man under sharp light that found angles and shadows and details. So she saw his eyes, watching her. And his hands, settled by his sides on the cushion.

More than that, however, she felt him. He filled the coach. Not only his size cramped her. The rest of him—that presence that had caused her discomfort since she was a girl—did too.

“I will be discreet regarding your visit to that hell too, even though you lost the wager,” he said.

She should thank him, she supposed. Only she did not want to admit life would be more pleasant if Southwaite did not know. The notion of accepting favors from him did not sit well with her either.

“If you employ discretion, do so for him, not me. He would worry far more than he needs to.”

“You do not care if he knows?”

“Not at all. You will spare me some tiresome lectures, that is true. However, my brother is enlightened enough to know that a women of my age cannot be chaperoned like a young girl.”

A flash of golden light sliced across his face, showing the lower half and revealing his vague smile. “He only accepts that because he does not know what you are doing. He sees that blank stare you turn on the world, and he wonders if there is any mind behind it, let alone a clever, scheming one.”

“Clever? Scheming? Do you intend compliments or insults?”

“Only the truth as I see it.”

She felt his attention boring into her through the dark.

“You were going to cheat me tonight, weren’t you? Those cards were marked. I saw and felt enough of it as I handed them off to Morgan’s servant.”

“They were not
my
cards.” She put her face to the window to judge how much farther they had. One could almost throw a stone from Cassandra’s house to hers, yet this ride never ended.

“One does not set aside honor because circumstances not of one’s making present the opportunity.”

Pique turned to hot anger in a blink. “How dare you lecture me on good character. It is laughable for you, of all men, to do so. I might as easily say to you that one does not use honor as an excuse to kill a friend, just because circumstances present the opportunity.”

Silence. A heavy atmosphere settled between them, one so thick that it might rain blood. They passed another lamp. This time the slice of illumination showed his eyes. His expression made her breath catch. She doubted she had ever been the object of such direct anger and—something else, something poignant that she could not name.

“You are referring to Lakewood. I remind you that the lords acquitted me.”

“You are a
duke
. Of course they acquitted you.”

“Your own brother acquitted me too.”

Yes, he had. Not only had Southwaite voted thus at the trial, but after almost a year of refusing to speak to Penthurst, her brother had ended the estrangement. So had Ambury.

She could not believe it! A man kills a friend, and his only punishment is a year of silence from the other friends in that circle. Even dukes should face more justice than that.

A fury of disappointment and resentment choked her breath. Beneath the anger a deep grief stretched her heart. These men never considered that Lakewood had been
her
friend too. She had lived in the margins of the entire episode, not even an afterthought. They left her out of the grief and the anger, then out of the decision to reconcile. Southwaite, Ambury, and Kendale had each other as they accommodated that loss. She only had herself and whatever comfort Sarah could give.

She faced Penthurst now as she had learned to face the world in the dreadful months after that duel, with her grief hidden behind a face that reflected nothing.

“I stand corrected. Once more you point out how my behavior, and even my thinking, is in error. Having been acquitted on the basis of your own word that a good man’s death had been a matter of honor, you must now be spared any reference to it, and we must all accept the rightness of your actions.”

The coach mercifully slowed. She threw open the door as soon as it stopped, and kicked down the stairs, then stumbled down the steps into a footman’s hurried attendance and rushed to the sanctuary of her chambers.

T
he sun burned off the early morning mist while Penthurst rode into Surrey. On a lane two hours from London, he turned up a drive to a stone cottage surrounded by thatched outbuildings. He dismounted and led his horse to the stable in back. Shedding his frock coat, he removed the horse’s saddle, rubbed him down, and set him into a stall with some hay.

Rolling up his shirtsleeves, he aimed for a field behind the stable. Two men worked there, one quite young. The older one noticed him and stopped the ox that pulled his plow. Boots loose and muddy, he walked over, wiping the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief.

“You be early this month, Your Grace.”

“The day looked to be fair. Maybe I will avoid the rain this time, Mr. Gosden.”

Mr. Gosden chortled. “Looked like a drowned dog, you did.”

“A mud-covered drowned dog, as I remember.” He gestured to the plow. “You are turning up this bit here, I see. I’ll finish it, unless you require me elsewhere.”

Gosden’s small pale eyes narrowed on the field. “Lots of rocks in there. Been avoiding it for years, but figured I’d give it a go. We got out the worst of ’em, but if you plow there, you be careful.”

“I will try not to break your plow.”

“It’s your head you should try not to break. Or a leg. I’ll leave it to you, though, since you are of a mind to break a sweat at least instead. We have some planting of winter wheat we’ll tend to, and be glad of the help here.”

Mr. Gosden walked away, collecting his helper as he went. Penthurst took the plow and began churning the ground. Man and beast fell into a rhythm as old as agriculture, silently playing their roles in coaxing crops out of the earth.

Penthurst welcomed the humble labor. The exercise and the fresh air provided the clarity he sought regarding the matter occupying his thoughts.

Lydia’s accusations last night had surprised him, but mostly because they came from her. Undoubtedly many people held the opinion she expressed.
The law is different for lords. They take care of each other, and expect the same for themselves in turn
.

But her scathing, furious directness in speaking of it had been startling. No one flung such accusations at him. Not even Southwaite and Ambury. Those friends had cut him, but they had never spoken their minds.

Perhaps they thought he would call them out over it, and kill them too. He saw that calculation in men’s eyes sometimes now.
If I press this point with him, will I find myself dead at dawn?

He wondered now if it had been a mistake not to pursue his suspicions about Lakewood. For over a year now it had eaten at him, that a man would choose to die to avoid what would be a survivable scandal. That suggested more had been at stake.

Guilt had kept him from finding out. He had taken Lakewood’s life. What good could come from also taking his good name?

Today, however, as he walked the turned earth, Lydia’s accusations rang in his head. He had not liked hearing that view of his character. Especially coming from her. He was beginning to realize just how costly it had been to protect Lakewood’s name.

The plow suddenly jerked to the left while a good-sized rock flew to the right. He cursed as the rock barely missed his knee.

A shout went up from the end of the field. Mr. Gosden, who had been returning, broke into a run.

“Did it hit you?” he called as he neared.

“A miss, fortunately. It was my fault. I was distracted.”

Mr. Gosden wiped his face and caught his breath. He kicked the rock aside. “Distraction be easy enough on a fair day, but not so wise, Your Grace. A plow is a serious thing.” He bent down and examined the ox’s legs, to make sure the more valuable partner in the labor had not been hurt either. “You be done now, sir?”

“Do you think I should be done?”

“Do I think? Not for me to think, that I know.”

He did not only defer to his betters with his answer. Mr. Gosden paid much less to be a tenant than normal, because he allowed a duke to work here on occasion. It was not for him to approve or disapprove, or to draw fine lines around how long that duke should stay.

“If I am ever hurt, you will not be blamed, Mr. Gosden. That will be laid at the feet of my eccentric habit.” He smiled, so perhaps the farmer would not look so worried. “When they hear of it, everyone will think my doing this was as strange as you find it.”

Mr. Gosden shrugged, and grinned. “Strange enough, I expect. If I was a duke, I’d never work a plow. What good is being a duke then?”

There was an explanation, but not one that Gosden would understand. What had started as a punishment long ago had continued by choice. There were times when this duke, at least, needed to remove himself from the title and its privileges, and this was as far away as he had ever found. Working the soil of the estate proved a respite of the most elemental kind, and provoked the kind of thinking that often resolved dilemmas.

As it had today.

“I will leave the plow to you, Mr. Gosden, and hope my few hours here were more help than hindrance.” He gave the ox a firm pat on its rump and walked away.

“Will you be coming again?”

“Oh, yes. The usual day, however.”

 • • • 

F
eeling more himself, that evening Penthurst dropped in on one of his clubs. He paused inside the door to Brooks’s subscription room, to see who else had sought refuge here. He spied Ambury sitting with Southwaite and Kendale.

Ambury gestured him to join them. Since Kendale did not turn stone-faced, Penthurst settled into a chair at their table and accepted some brandy. “Is your wife feeling better, Southwaite?”

“She says she is.”

“Do you not believe her?”

“He was just telling us that he should not have come tonight, and needs to leave very soon,” Ambury said.

“I explained why,” Southwaite said firmly, his dark eyes reflecting displeasure at the teasing note in Ambury’s voice. Unlike Ambury, who lounged in his chair like a man content with his world, Southwaite appeared distracted and preoccupied, and unlikely to be good company.

“Emma was looking a tad pale when he left, he said,” Kendale offered, deigning to join the banter, which was unusual for him.

Kendale had been in the army prior to inheriting upon his brother’s death. Stiff, hard, and a social disaster, her green eyes tended to see the world as divided into a series of halves. Right and wrong. Duty and self-indulgence. Bravery and cowardice. In such a world view, Lakewood’s death had been murder.

That Kendale even tolerated his company tonight probably reflected his improved humor due to his recent marriage, and not any true accommodation.

“She should have rested another day.”

“Did the physician advise that?” Penthurst asked.

“I am thinking I need to replace him.”

“I assume that means no such advice was given,” Ambury said. “If women take to bed for two days every time they are light-headed, we will have a lot of invalids.”

Southwaite crossed his arms and looked petulant. Penthurst guessed the jokes about this had been going on for a while before he joined them.

“I cannot wait to hear your cool logic at work when it is your turn, my friend,” Southwaite said to Ambury.

“She is probably restless,” Kendale said. “Your wife is a woman of purpose and action, Southwaite. You will drive her mad if you try to make her into anything else.” His military posture straightened even more as he issued this opinion on the subject he understood least—women. No doubt his recent marriage misled him to think he had acquired sufficient experience to give advice.

“The philosopher speaks,” Southwaite muttered. “However, she insinuated much the same thing, if you must know. She all but threw me out of the house.”

“She is probably annoyed that she missed the fun the other night with Lydia and is in no mood to indulge your notions of protection further,” Ambury said, his attention mostly attached to a servant who had brought over a cigar he had requested.

Southwaite looked over sharply. “What fun?”

Ambury’s perennial, affable smile froze. He watched the servant prepare his cigar and paid heed to nothing else. Definitely not to Southwaite.

“
What fun
?”

Ambury took his time with his first puffs. “A little outing, that is all. My wife and your sister spent the evening together. The ladies do that sometimes, of course. Not at all unusual. Emma probably heard of it, was all I meant, and felt left out.”

That appeased Southwaite. He even appeared a bit chastened. “Where did they go, that she would have felt left out? I will take her myself, to make amends for my overbearing worry.”

Ambury frowned amid the smoke he made while he pondered the question. “I’m not sure Cassandra ever said. Let me investigate my memories.”

Across the table, Kendale tapped his chin. “Cassandra and Lydia out and about together, free of their cages. Hmm. Where might they have flown? Hmm . . .”

“Wherever it was, there is no reason to think twice about it, so you can stop making trouble,” Ambury said to him. “They were delivered home safe and sound by Penthurst here, so were hardly walking hell’s streets if they met up with him.”

“Lady Ambury had brought a footman too,” Penthurst added. “Rather than have the servant go for a carriage, I transported them home.”

“Good of you to look out for them,” Southwaite said.

“Very good,” Ambury nodded.

The topic was mercifully passing. For everyone except Kendale, who lacked good instincts when it came to social conversations. “You are right, Ambury. If Penthurst was there, all kinds of hells can be eliminated. Gin houses, for example. He would never go to one of those.”

“The taverns near Covent Garden too,” Penthurst said. “I never visit them at night.”

“Almack’s,” Ambury added. “You hate it. Not that either lady would receive a voucher even if she wanted one.”

“A male brothel can be eliminated as well,” Kendale offered. “He’d never have cause to go to one of those.”

That got everyone’s attention. One brother and one husband shot dangerous stares at Kendale.

Penthurst laughed. “I can confirm that I did not meet the ladies at a brothel of any kind.”

His effort at levity did not work.

“What is wrong with you, to imply that Cassandra and Lydia might have visited a male brothel?” Ambury asked.

Kendale looked honestly confused, and annoyed to have had his rare attempt at humorous small talk turn around and bite him. “We were itemizing where they could
not
have gone. How does my saying they could not have been there mean they might have gone there?”

“To even reference such a thing is enough to get you thrashed, in the least.”

“By you? I don’t think so.”

“By both of us.”

“Let’s kill him, Ambury,” Southwaite said.

“Two against one? Hardly fair.”

“If it is the only way you finally learn to watch what you say, two against one it will be.”

“Gentlemen.” Penthurst tried his most ingratiating tone. “Kendale was attempting a joke at my expense, not the ladies’. Weren’t you, Kendale? Such wit requires some practice, I think you will agree. He is new to the game and is bound to commit some unintended errors.”

Ambury’s hard expression broke first. He sighed in acknowledgment that Kendale would be Kendale for a long time to come.

Penthurst decided to turn the conversation elsewhere. “You have been gone several weeks, Kendale. I trust you enjoyed the country with your wife?” The marriage to the French émigré Marielle Lyon had been recent enough for Kendale to still be in the throes of new passion, to the extent he succumbed to such things.

“Very much. Fortunately, she prefers it to town, as I do.”

“Did you start any private wars while you were away?” Kendale had served in the army, and at times acted as if he still did. That had created a few dramatic adventures in the past. “Or has Mars been disarmed by Venus?”

“Venus would be disappointed if I laid down all my weapons, I think.”

Penthurst laughed. It took the others a five-count to join in. Kendale so rarely made bawdy jokes that they had almost missed this one. Kendale’s unbending posture might have had something to do with that. He had sat in his chair the whole time as if he rode a horse in a parade.

“His current private war is here. He has brought Marielle back to town for more skirmishes with society,” Ambury said. “You will have to allow Emma out of bed if only to help out, Southwaite.”

“Yes,” Kendale said. “Marielle will need what friends she has by her side. We both will.”

That was another unusual thing for Kendale to say, making this a rare day indeed. Normally he presented a face that denied any lack of confidence, let alone the kind that anticipated the need for friends. However, even before marrying an inappropriate wife, Kendale had hardly gotten on well in society, so these battles would take place on unfriendly ground.

“Let us all go to the theater on Friday,” Ambury proposed. “You and Marielle will be my guests in my family’s box, Kendale. You must come, Penthurst. It will make all the difference.”

He waited for Kendale to object to that last point.

“I would not miss such a display of social independence as you will present in that box. A phalanx of it. You will give the matrons apoplexy,” he said when no such objection emerged.

“You can bring your current mistress, whoever she is. Then all of us will be with unsuitable women.”

“As it happens, there is no current mistress.”

Southwaite roused himself from whatever distracted him. “There is no current mistress? What became of Mrs. Ca—”

“That has been over for some time. I can be as discreet about my private life as you can be, if you are wondering how you did not know.”

Southwaite’s eyebrows went up. “Then the ladies will balance the group another way. It is decided, then? We will all await your invitation, Ambury. I promise not to imprison Emma since it is such a worthy cause.”