The Duke's Undoing (Three Rogues and Their Ladies) (25 page)

“Yes,” Sukey said. “That’s right. But no mention of wounded soldiers.”

“Right you are!”

Lady Clarice said, “The initial guest list is very important. Sukey and I know the right people that would take to this sort of thing. We will come up with a list. You do the same, Your Grace. Then we’ll need to decide on a date and work from there.”

For the next hour, the duke and his two new lieutenants decided on these matters of importance. At the end of their discussion, they had a guest list and a date, one month hence. The duke assigned the ladies the task of hiring the best caterer, florist, and orchestra. He promised to bring over cards embossed with his ducal crest for them to address the very next day, as well as starting the rumor mill grinding at White’s via Somerset.

Finally, he said, “I really think it would be a good idea for me to see Elise, Lady Clarice. She needs to know that her physical appearance is not permanent, that I can bear to see it, and that my affections are unchanged.”

“You are right. I think that would do her a world of good. I will see if she has dressed.”

As soon as Elise’s aunt had left the room, Lady Susannah fixed him with a gimlet eye. “What exactly are your intentions toward Lady Clarice’s niece?”

“Honorable,” he said. “Believe me. I know my reputation. I am doing my best to change my ways.”

“I think you can hardly have any idea of the depth of the hurt you have caused Elise to suffer. Lady Clarice is far too careful of Elise’s privacy to mention it, but I think you need to know. My friend has confided much of what happened to me, in order to get my counsel on how best to cope for Elise’s sake.”

Pausing, she held out a stick of celery to her pet, which had been slowly crawling toward her during the last hour. “Good man!” she exclaimed when he took it between his jaws. Then she turned back to Ruisdell.

“Elise went through a terribly dark time when she thought you were dead. And then, not only did she find you were alive but received that horrible piece of gossip showing your callousness. Since that time, she’s been like Henry Five, totally withdrawn, spilling out her emotions only in her writing. I hate to think what kind of book she has written. I imagine it is horridly caustic.”

Again, Ruisdell was smitten with deep remorse for the egregious bet. “I know I do not deserve anyone’s forgiveness, but Elise has a beautiful soul. I will persevere, trying to prove my regard for her. If anyone can ever forgive me, I feel sure that she can.”

At that moment, Lady Clarice returned to the sitting room. “I am dreadfully sorry, Your Grace. Elise feels herself unable to see you today.”

He nodded but felt his hopes flag. “What can I do to help her?”

“She asked for you to ‘please not plague her.’”

“She did not like my floral tribute?”

“Perhaps more than she will admit. She is engaged in rebuilding her wall against your charm, I’m afraid.”

“Confound it! It’s not charm. I have ever been the least charming of men.” He stood and paced the room. “It is sincere regard. The war left me drained of compassion. But she has quite restored me.”

“Whereas you have wounded her severely. She feels you used your relationship with Sir Joshua to blind her to your attempts at dalliance.”

Her words came as a blow. Sitting, he clutched his forehead and scalp with his hands. Why had he thought that a little bouquet of flowers and one generous gesture would undo the pain that he had given her?

“What can I do?” he asked in agony.

Lady Susannah said, “Take a lesson from Henry Five. No doubt you have wondered why I have such a pet. It is to remind me that movement and change are not always fast. Permanent change requires patience with yourself and others. You are going to have to tempt Elise out of her shell with constant and sustained regard, proving to her that you are a different man from the one she thinks you are.”

He looked at the tortoise, who was contentedly ingesting the celery stick. “Who would have thought I could learn something that important from a reptile?”

“Lowering, is it not? But Henry Five does manage to get from place to place, eventually.”

“I have wanted to know, why did you name him after King Hal?”

“Because he is heroic in his way. He proceeds to his goal and never gives up. I always want to have things happen in a flash. I am very impatient.”

Ruidsdell reflected on his own expectations of Elise. “I will take counsel, then, from Henry Five.”

OUR HEROINE HEALS

Underneath her fear, Elise knew that she was lucky. The aloe vera that her aunt was applying several times a day to her blistered face was working to ease the pain, and her blisters were only the size of large pinheads. For this, she was grateful. However, she knew that she owed her greatest debt of gratitude to the duke for immediately treating her with the splashes of cold water before the burns could penetrate more deeply. If he had not been present, she had no idea of what she would look like now.

The picture she presented was not a pleasing one. After a couple of days, the redness had departed and she was left with a face covered in breaking white blisters. After a week, her entire face was peeling, revealing a red epidermal layer. Dr. Finch was very pleased at her progress.

Ruisdell sent fresh flowers every day—deep blue hydrangeas, violets, white roses, and ranunculi, a rare variety of gentians—and most recently a posy of pink rosebuds, including a note that said they reminded him of seeing her at the opera that first time. She would probably never admit it, but the constant remembrance and the thoughtful notes in the language of flowers did much to comfort her. She had still not seen him. Nonetheless, she had taken on the task of writing the invitations to the ball, as she wished to keep to her room until she healed.

How did she feel toward the duke? She searched her heart. Was it only hurt pride that kept her stubbornly opposed to him? Had not the disability that came upon him when he remembered Joshua’s death been truly genuine? Did it not argue against her recent idea that he had used the memories of her first love to ingratiate himself with her? Before he had even met her, he had been amazingly kind in his personalized letter of condolence. A complete rogue would never have been able to say those things.

And she had studied the newspaper scrap with the account of the infamous bet. She discounted Gregory’s account of the bet entirely. It had been Somerset’s bet, not the duke’s. Somerset had set up the scenario, but the duke, had, after all bet against it. And she had his explanation that it had all occurred before he even met her for the first time. He had never connected the bet with Joshua’s fiancée.

A week after the incident, when her aunt and Sukey were at the canteen once more, Elise was reading one of Mrs. Edgeworth’s romances in the sitting room off her bedroom when the duke called. Her face was scaly and horrid looking. She told Bates that she could not receive his grace in her present condition. Ruisdell, however, must have been tired of being put off. He came upstairs to her sitting room and let himself in unannounced. To her utter surprise, he was carrying Henry Five with him.

Placing him on the floor at her feet, he said, “Behold me. The lowliest reptile. Slow and steady, I will not forsake you, my darling.”

Instantly covering her face with her hands, she said, “Go away!”

“No. I won’t. Let me see your poor face, I dare you.”

In an act of belligerence, she removed her hands to expose the mass of peeling skin. He approached where she sat by the open window. His flowers bedecked the room, giving the lie to her surliness. He noticed, of course. When he towered over her, looking down, she was warmed clear through by his tender gaze. It disarmed her.

Fortunately, this time he did not catch her in her wrapper. She was fully dressed in a blue muslin figured with dark blue gentians. She had worn it deliberately, trying to remember Ruisdell’s words about intrinsic worth as she stared at her ravaged face in the mirror.

Now he took both her hands and gently raised her. He was so tall that her head came only to his shoulder. He gathered her to him as though she were a beloved treasure, clasping her head to his shoulder, and running his hands through her hair, which she wore loose. The action reduced her anger to the consistency of a quivering blancmange.

“Oh, my dearest love, I am so sorry you suffered this when you were giving so generously of yourself.” He then held her from him and cupping her face in his hands, smoothed the peeling skin with his thumbs. Even in her distress, she still felt the warmth of desire flood through her. She wanted him to hold her close again and stop looking at her face.

“Thank you for dousing me with water,” she said. “If I ever get my complexion back, it will be due to your quick wits.”

He chuckled. “I’m glad I’m good for something, if only for throwing water on you.”

“I look dreadful, don’t I?”

“Facial skin heals remarkably fast. I think you will be back to normal soon. But the reason I invaded your privacy is because I must set the record straight on a matter.”

Unable to bear his scrutiny any longer and afraid that her eyes were betraying her desire, she put her head on his solid chest once again. His arms came around her and he rocked her to and fro, comforting her as though she were a child.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“Lady Susannah told me that you thought I had used your memories of Beynon to disarm you. I want you to know that those memories are as precious to me as they are to you and that I would never do such a thing. Particularly as I love you from the bottom of my poor old heart.”

His words moved her greatly. She envisioned her childhood love bivouacking on the Peninsula after a bloody day of fighting, drinking out of a mug next to the duke, his green eyes crinkled up in laughter, sharing a memory of dramatics in the tree house. Tears stung her eyes. It was such a childish memory. How could a rogue be moved by it, unless at bottom he was not a rogue? “My fears and my hurt made me unjust.”

“After meeting your mother, I can see that Beynon must have meant even more to you than I had supposed. Did you receive any love from your father as a child?”

“He was gone to Town as much as possible. Even he did not escape my mother’s wrath.”

“So the only love you knew came from your sweetheart. He is doubly dear for that reason.”

“Yes. You’re right.” Forgetting her face, she pulled her head back and looked at him. “I never really thought about that.”

“Beynon was very protective toward you, and I know he regretted leaving you. He was always so glad to receive your letters. I know now what the sunny temperament you showed him must have cost you. It is another of the reasons I love you.”

His words of love penetrated her heart this time. He must have seen it in her searching eyes. “It would be very dishonorable for me to kiss you under these circumstances. I knew you would be alone today.”

She shook her head slowly, never taking her eyes off of him. “Thank you for respecting me.” Leaning into him once more, she felt the hardness of his chest through his shirt and waistcoat. His masculinity excited her, and forgetting herself entirely, she put her hands up into his thick mane of hair and ran her fingers through it. He was so dear to her, all at once, and she wanted badly for him to kiss her. Caressing the planes of his face, she felt her heart melting dangerously. She had never desired a kiss so badly.

But the duke stepped away. “Confound it! I must go,” he said. “I am on fire for you, Elise. I dare not stay a moment longer. God bless you for a miracle in my poor life.”

He kissed her fingertips, and then he was gone.

Dazed, she went into her bedroom and lay on her bed, curling into a ball so that she could hold the warmth she felt inside her. In spite of everything, there was no denying it. She loved him.

She must go to her publishers as soon as she was fit to be seen in public and withdraw that scurrilous book she had written.

IN WHICH THE DUKE ENCOUNTERS FRUSTRATION

Ruisdell tried to follow the pace of Henry Five in his courtship with Elise, but it was exceedingly difficult. Used to having whatever he wanted when he wanted it, he had not learned much restraint in his life. He called at Blossom House most days to check on the progress that the ladies there were making with the plans for the benefit ball. Elise was still shy about her face, however, for she kept to her room for the next three weeks. Her aunt said that she had never seen her niece so discouraged. Her face was taking a long time to heal. According to Lady Clarice, once it had finished peeling, it was as red as a tomato. The new skin was shiny, and Elise was determined to keep to her room until she looked normal enough to conceal the worst of the damage with cosmetics.

They corresponded, as though they were in different parts of the country.

Dearest Elise:

We are making good progress in the matter of stirring up interest for the benefit ball. It is the latest on dit among the ton! I have not even confided in Somerset what the lottery will be, for fear he might let it out while in his cups. No doubt I am being too cautious. He does not say much, as you will recall. He does send his regards to you and hopes for a good recovery.