Read The Duke's Undoing (Three Rogues and Their Ladies) Online

Authors: G.G. Vandagriff

Tags: #Regency Romance

The Duke's Undoing (Three Rogues and Their Ladies) (2 page)

BOOK: The Duke's Undoing (Three Rogues and Their Ladies)
6.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“Acquainted with Chessingden by any chance? Viscount?”

“Oh, yes. Since Oxford days. Why?” Ruisdell asked sharply. Then, feigning indifference, he inspected his hands. The wear and tear of war was beginning to disappear. From his hands, at any rate.

“Know something against him?”

“Not at all. As a matter of fact, he solicited a donation from me just yesterday for a project he has going in the East End. Soup kitchen for wounded soldiers. He’s a Whig, needless to say. Belongs to Brook’s, I imagine.”

“Right. Pleasant enough estate. Hampshire. Don’t touch Ruisdell Palace, of course. Seems an ordinary bloke, but women! Don’t understand ’em. Go for Chessingden like thoroughbreds to the finish. Something to do with his eyes, they say. Seductive or some such thing. You know, none better, women like wooing.” Sighing, he slapped his thighs with his surprisingly small, neat hands. He sat up and said, “Any road, perfect catch for the beauty. On her third or fourth engagement. First one died on the Peninsula, worse luck.”

“Get on with it, Somerset. She sounds a great bother and disturber of a man’s rest. Does she perhaps have a name, this paragon?”

“Miss Elise Edwards. Air of tragedy suits her. Sent Chessingden packing this morning. Heir of his, malicious chap, says Viscount’s not having it.” George shook his head in wonder. “Determined to wed her. Bowled over. Rejection came out o’the blue. Agreed to a month’s trial! Man like that! Foolishness. But she
has
had a run of bad luck.”

If George kept this up, he would become absolutely loquacious and, more than likely, a bore. But Ruisdell could not keep from asking, “She’s been married before?”

“Nearly. Still virtuous, though.” The marquis chuckled. “Sent one fiancé off a week before the doin’s. Something loose in his brain box.” George tapped his forehead. “Lives in Italy or somewhere abouts. Paints. Sends futile letters.”

“This heir seems to be quite a fount of useful information.”

“Anxious. Under the hatches, y’know. Hopes this will put Chessingden off women altogether. If Viscount marries, heir will be dunned by the vultures. Living off his expectations.” At that, George gave up for the moment. But Ruisdell knew his friend. He was baiting him. And the worst thing about it was, in spite of himself, the duke was intrigued by the woman. Three engagements! And still virtuous? His friend must be sun-blinded. No woman on earth was that pure.

“Write your bet in the book, Somerset. For future reference. I don’t know that I’ll take you up on it, unless I happen to meet the woman. It’s not likely, this late in the Season.”

Somerset bets five hundred guineas that Ruisdell’s seduction of Elise Edwards will rid the duke of his boredom.

CHAPTER TWO

IN WHICH OUR HEROINE CONSIDERS HER SITUATION

As her maid Kitty braided and arranged her black hair into the severe knot she always wore when serving at the soup canteen, Elise looked at her reflection. Her lids were a bit swollen, telling of her tears last night.

The very last thing she wanted to do was to spend the afternoon with Violet and Gregory. How would they act? How long before they let the rest of the polite world know of their attachment?

Aunt Clarice entered the room, stroking her Siamese cat, Queen Elizabeth, and wearing an enormous, loose brown dress that made her resemble a mushroom. “Darling girl, I’m afraid you’re not in the best looks today. You’re as pale as the moon with just that little bit of green. What do you say, my pretty one?” Aunt Clarice often requested Queen Elizabeth’s opinion on matters of grooming and home decoration. The cat replied to this question with a convincing yowl. “Are you sure you want to come today, my love? Sukey has nothing on this afternoon, and if asked, I am certain she would take your place.”

Lady Susannah was her aunt’s companion and an expert entomologist, particularly sound on all the varieties of beetles to be found in the British Isles. She owned the other family pet, a tortoise named Henry Five, and she was not the least bit interested in wounded soldiers or soup kitchens.

Elise gave her aunt a smile. “Do you think a little discreet rouge would help?”

“That black dress, even with the white chemisette, makes you look too much as though you are in mourning! Are you certain you want to betray your feelings in that manner?”

“Oh, Aunt, you know it is what I always wear to the canteen.”

“What I do not and never will understand is why you suddenly broke off your engagement, if you’re so miserable.”

“I fear I am not the one he loves, Aunt.”

“I know you said that, but it was a lot of fustian. Violet! Your closest friend? I cannot credit that on the strength of a little charade you cast off the poor man. Why, Violet is a chubby little thing!”

“It wasn’t just a little charade, Aunt. It was . . . sultry, unfettered passion! Romeo and Juliet! Gregory has never looked at me like that. I swear he worships her.”

“Oh, my love. You’ve such an imagination. I suppose you confronted him with it?”

“I’m not such a ninnyhammer. It is quite possible that he does not even realize what he feels. But I gave him a month’s grace to let the light dawn.”

“Elise, darling, life does not behave like a novel! I’ve seen the way the man looks at you. Why do you think I never leave you two alone? And this month’s trial! Why, I loved my Stephen to distraction and would never have contemplated such a thing!”

“I need to give him the opportunity to follow his heart, Aunt Clarice. Now can we please talk of something else?”

Rolling her eyes, Aunt Clarice said, “Rouge will make you look like a courtesan. You know better than to wear cosmetics in the daytime.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to look like an inconsolable widow.”

“Please put on another dress, darling. To cheer the soldiers? Do you want Chessingden to know that you cried all night?”

This reasoning finally prevailed. Keeping the pleated chemisette that ruffled modestly around her neck, Elise pulled out a deep blue India muslin, the color of her eyes, shot with tiny threads of silver. The fabric crossed between her breasts in a deep V, but the chemisette made it proper for daytime wear. When Kitty had pulled it over her head, she said, “Yes, that will do. Thank you, Aunt. I no longer look like I’m at my last prayers, at any rate.”

On another, the deep blue might have looked as bad as the black, but deep blue was Elise’s best hue, picking up the color of her eyes to a startling extent. Just knowing she looked a little better put a pink tint in her cheeks. Gregory’s carriage would be here in moments to collect her for their ride to the East End. Staring down at the diamond circlet of her engagement ring, she wondered if she ought to remove it. Yes. She would take it off so that her lifelong friend, Violet, would know that the coast was clear. Elise took her gloves from her maid and watched as Kitty put her plain chip straw bonnet on over the severe hairdo, tying the blue ribbon under Elise’s left ear.

Even with her aunt standing in the hall next to her, Gregory wrapped his arms around Elise and kissed her proprietarily on the lips. Then he held her a little away from him and looked into her eyes.

Maybe I’m already getting over him
.

Just yesterday, that look from his heavy-lidded, seductive eyes had made her weak at the knees. Especially after a kiss. But not today. Had her night of tears begun to sever her emotional connection to him, in order to spare herself further pain when he inevitably turned to Violet?

“Good morning, my darling. Ready for those greedy soldiers? It seems there are more every week. The queue will already be snaking its way through the marketplace, though it’s only half ten o’clock.”

The Viscount never dressed down for the canteen. Wearing buff pantaloons, a bottle green jacket with a green and gold striped waistcoat and an ivory shirt and cravat, he looked exactly what he was—a privileged gentleman.

“I’m glad there are more each week. This is the only meal they get, most of them,” she answered. Though she was aware that Gregory took credit for the project to increase his stature in the House of Lords, the canteen had been her idea.

He helped her aunt into his carriage first and then handed up Elise. Once they were settled, he struck the ceiling of the carriage with his umbrella handle, and they were off through the noisy, crowded streets. Though Elise detested the sooty air of London and the boisterous streets with their clatter of hoofbeats and jingling harnesses, hawkers, and creaking carriages, she did not want the Season to end. Her mother, kept in the country by a leg broken in two places, was going to be extremely angry if she did not return home with the viscount’s engagement ring on her hand. Known by the sobriquet of Lady Hatchet, she was, at this moment, gleefully immersed in wedding plans. Before Elise’s unwelcome discovery at Lord and Lady Gaskill’s house party over the weekend, she was to have been married in August at the family church in Shropshire.

Well, it could still happen. But only if I’m wrong about Violet
.

They pulled up in front of the town residence of her closest friend where she lived with three aunts and her brother, Thomas who was becoming a very influential member of the House of Commons. Elise watched Violet’s and Gregory’s expressions intently as they met. They were just as normal. No guilty looks. No furtive glances. Neither of them seemed the least self-conscious. Gregory did not hold on to Violet’s hand a second longer than he needed to when handing her into the carriage. Violet’s countenance was as open and guileless as ever.

“Good morning, Elise!” she said. “My, you look lovely.”

Violet was slightly chubby, as her aunt had said, and her straitened finances did not allow her to have dresses made by the top modistes, who would have played up her voluptuousness and streamlined the rest of her figure. But nothing could take away from the sweetness of her face and the brilliance of her rose petal complexion. Elise had always thought that her friend had the face she deserved. Violet was the kindest, most giving person she had ever known. Now Elise wondered how long her friend had secretly been in love with Gregory. If her fiancé made no move during this month, she had no doubt that Violet would take her unrequited passion to the grave before she would speak of or act upon it.

When the viscount climbed back aboard and signaled to his driver to start, he said, “Ladies, I’m so glad you are all in plump currant today. We’re to have visitors. Your patrons are coming to look over the operation.”

Elise stifled her annoyance. She disliked the idea of being shown off for Gregory’s political ends. But Violet said, “Oh, those wonderful gentlemen who have given their money to help the poor wounded soldiers? I cannot wait to thank them!”

Aunt Clarice echoed Violet’s sentiments. Elise was left wondering at her own cynicism.

The canteen was in a former small shop building with a rudimentary kitchen in the rear. It sat in the heart of the Covent Garden street market where fruits, vegetables, poultry, fish, and meat were sold to cooks from all over London. Two sturdy women were paid to do the canteen’s cooking. Each day of the week, three different society women would come to ladle out the nourishing soups and stews to the queue of soldiers and their families. They ate at the crowded tables and benches in the storefront. A gentleman always accompanied the ladies to keep the soldiers and other East End riffraff in order. Thursdays were Violet’s, Lady Clarice’s, and Elise’s day to serve and Viscount Chessingden’s day to protect.

When Elise began her duties, she ceased to think of Gregory and Violet and focused on the former soldiers she was coming to be familiar with. Her favorite was “Cap’n” Joe, as he was known—a soldier who had lost both his legs in the war and who played ditties for her on his mouth organ while being pulled in a wooden wagon by his wife. Today he was serenading her with “What’ll You Do with a Drunken Sailor?” Elise smiled at him, his pregnant wife, and four-year-old daughter who carried a dirty rag doll.

It was near noon when the patrons started to arrive. First was Lord Clarendon, a noted Whig with a charitable disposition. He and Elise had a great regard for each other. In his middle age, he had a large head of gray hair and a long face with a generous chin. This was not his first time to the kitchen. After greeting Elise, Violet, and Lady Clarice, he began shaking the hands of the soldiers in the queue, cheering them and their families.

Next to arrive was a stranger. A very handsome stranger from what Elise could see when she looked up from her ladle. His brows slanted down at the ends as he smiled at her, giving his brown eyes a concerned and gentle look. At his temples, his medium brown hair made Michelangelo cupid’s curls. He was dressed immaculately all in black, relieved only by his white shirt with moderate collar points and an expertly tied cravat. He carried a mahogany walking stick.

The new patron looked over their operation with an interested countenance. The viscount was quick to meet him with a handshake and a clap on the back. “Welcome, Ruisdell! Ladies, we have here a genuine Tory, the Duke of Ruisdell. Your Grace, may I present Lady Clarice Manton, her niece and my fiancée, Miss Edwards, and Miss Archer. The duke bowed solemnly over each of their hands. When he reached Elise at the end of the line, he held her hand a fraction longer than necessary and searched her with his eyes as though she puzzled him. Then his gaze followed her hands as she resumed ladling the soup, her silver bangle of a bracelet sliding up and down her forearm. For some reason, the sight seemed to fascinate him.

BOOK: The Duke's Undoing (Three Rogues and Their Ladies)
6.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Devlin's Luck by Patricia Bray
Cover Up (Cover #2) by Kim Black
Heart Failure by Richard L. Mabry
Canyons Of Night by Castle, Jayne
Three’s a Clan by Roxy Mews
Unholy Blue by Darby Kaye
Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby
Yesterday's Spy by Len Deighton