The Duke's Undoing (Three Rogues and Their Ladies) (4 page)

“And it was after this house party that she gave the viscount a month to think things over? I call that wise in a woman. Most unusual. Too wise to fall for my normal line of chatter, don’t you think?” He grinned at George. “I would have to make some kind of extraordinary effort to escape detection as a mere seducer. I must confess that any attempt to make out Miss Edwards’s character seems premature.”

“One’s got to feel for her,” George continued, as though the duke hadn’t spoken. “Been friends with the Archer gel all her life.” The marquis gave a little sigh and dusted a bit of snuff from his protruding midsection.

Ruisdell could see his friend was genuinely affected, which surprised and intrigued him further. A bluff and hearty creature, his friend rarely gave any female more than the coarsest consideration.

A movement caught his eye somewhat further down the path. There he saw a woman dressed in a black and white striped muslin, her figure thinner than he liked, walking with a short person, presumably her maid. Her posture and easy movement declared her to be a graceful young woman, but she had a black veil draped over her bonnet as though she were a widow. The cursed war!

Arriving at the fountain, she seated herself carefully on the edge of a bench. Her posture was absolutely correct. Her head was in profile to him.

The duke could see nothing of her face and was at a loss as to why he was even interested in her, except that she exuded a hint of loveliness overlaid by tragedy. She manifested this so artfully that he wondered if she were playing a role. In his opinion, women did that quite often, though they did not seem to realize it. He blamed it on the novels they read.

She appeared to be staring with fixed concentration at a particularly lovely ancient and twisted old cypress, its branches stretching parallel to the ground for a great distance. Seized with an urge he had not known since his fighting days on the Peninsula, he dropped to a bench beside the path, saying to the marquis, “Get along with you, George. Need to rest the old limb. I’ll meet you at White’s for luncheon in an hour or so.”

“Right-oh.” His friend walked jauntily on, passing the fountain without a glance at Ruisdell’s mystery woman.

Once Somerset was out of sight, the duke took a small sketch pad out of his inside breast pocket and a piece of charcoal wrapped in a handkerchief. He had loved sketching as a child and had had a superb drawing master at Eton. In the evenings on the Peninsula, he had set himself apart from his men and transferred the horrors of what he’d seen from his mind onto paper. He suspected it was the only thing that kept him sane as he led his men to their death, day after day. He wondered if all generals carried the bloodied bodies of their dead troops in their minds forever.

Since returning, he had found that everyone in the War Office agreed that the fighting on the Peninsula was the most brutal the Western Hemisphere had yet seen. Always excepting the campaign of Attila the Hun.

Now he was watching someone he suspected was also seeing things in a former sphere of life. Perhaps she was offering fresh griefs to the branches and trunk of that sturdy tree that had lived hundreds of years longer than either of them. It probably predated everything built here in the West End. If that was indeed what she was doing in her air of tragedy, it was a good idea she had. Nothing like something that had lived that long to put ephemeral things into perspective. And nothing was as ephemeral as the illusion man called love.

With quick, eager hands, he transferred her image onto his small sketchpad, willing her not to move. She stayed perfectly still until his sketch was finished. Not wanting to leave even her distant presence, he turned the page and sketched the tree and then the geese to which the maid was feeding bread scraps.

He realized that his unwillingness to part with this vision was to do with her loneliness. Though he would never admit it to a living soul, it crept across the emerald lawn to touch that same chord in him. The chord played louder and louder until, rising, he could not resist walking to her side. As he did so, he was startled by a disembodied voice—
The jig is up, Your Grace. That is the woman you are going to marry
.

Marry? Now
that
was a laughable notion, wherever it had come from.

He came even with her. “Pardon me, my lady, but may I be of assistance to you in any way?” He took his top hat off as he spoke, noting a piece of blue notepaper closed on her lap.

Starting with alarm, she turned her head away, as if by any chance he could see her face. “No, but thank you for asking, sir.”

Without knowing why he did it, he tore the page with the drawing of the tree out of his pad and placed it on her lap. Never had he inflicted his amateur sketches on another human being. “You seem to be fascinated by Old Father Tree over there. Perhaps you might like this.” Turning, she looked down at his drawing, her face still not visible.

“Why, ’tis lovely. Thank you.” Her appreciation appeared genuine, which pleased him. As she held the drawing in her gloved hands, he wished he could see them. There was something about this woman that struck a chord in his memory. Maybe it was her low, honeyed voice. He was certain he had heard it before.

Unable to think of another thing to say, he returned his hat to his head. “Good morning to you, my lady. I hope the Old Father will comfort your solitude.”

She bowed her head in acknowledgment, saying nothing else, and so he moved on. It wearied him inexpressibly to think of billiards and lunch at White’s.

IN WHICH OUR HEROINE RECEIVES ANOTHER PROPOSAL

Staring at the old tree, Elise felt the pain she had been keeping at bay. Whether or not she had predicted it, being deserted for Violet was causing her real grief.

Sukey is right! Why doesn’t my sense of irony rescue me from this hurt? In a book, this would be my comeuppance—punishment for my vanity. Haven’t I always, in spite of our friendship, been glad that I was not chubby like Violet?

But books aren’t real. Mine aren’t even meant to be real. They are an escape. I write them to get away from the realities of my life—an impossible mother who is never pleased, the love of my life brutally killed, a man I thought I could count on instead changing into someone out of a nightmare, and now Gregory with his secret love for my moral superior.

Looking at her life from this perspective, she realized why she felt as though she were in mourning. It wasn’t just one thing that burdened her. It was the combination. She was two and twenty, and the prospect of yet another love affair gone awry was impossible to contemplate. If ever there was another fiancé, he would probably be struck by a shaft of lightning at the altar.

This was not the first time she had visited Old Father Tree, as the stranger had called it. Its ancient dominion over this little part of London always put her little life into perspective. Think of the griefs, the lives, the heartbreaks, the deaths it had overseen! But for each death there was a life, for each heartbreak a love. Nature was balance.

This tree had borne her grief two years ago, as she held that same letter she clutched now. The “Old Father’s” transcendent beauty had conveyed the truth that life was evergreen, that Joshua was alive in some other sphere. Her other griefs were really nothing compared to that one. And now, as in that time, she felt his presence as she used to when he hid from her in a tree in the forest.

Opening her battered heart to the memory of her deliriously happy childhood and adolescence, she let her love for Joshua pour over her.
How did I ever think I could be happy with someone less than he? I’d better pull myself out of this self-pity, or I shall go off my head and they will put me in Madame Tussaud’s! “The Woman of a Thousand Fiancés.”
Smiling at the absurdity, she realized that an onlooker would indeed see her life since Joshua’s death as one long comedy of errors.

Aunt Clarice had been urging her to take the first step out. An opera this evening. Not a ball. She must start sometime. And operas were good fun, for using her opera glasses, she could always “collect characters” as well as scenes in pantomime by looking into the other boxes.

Eventually, Elise felt a change in the wind and looking up, noticed storm clouds approaching. Rising, she called to Kitty and started on her way home.

When she arrived just moments ahead of the storm, she was astonished to see Gregory’s high-perch phaeton standing in front of her aunt’s house. She might have kept walking, leaving her former fiancé to cool his heels until he gave up, but Gregory, apparently divining her thoughts, came running out the front door.

“Oh, my darling,” he said, as though they had never been apart. “I’ve heard the news! Robert is back, Violet tells me.”

Walking into the house, she pulled back her veil, hands suddenly shaking.
It just needed this! Robert! What havoc will he wreak on my life this time?
Memories of struggling against his manic strength rose from deep inside, threatening to take her breath away.

“Darling, you do look careworn,” he said at the sight of her. “Has he threatened you?”

Clenching her teeth, she handed her bonnet and gloves to Bates, her aunt’s butler.

“No. I have not heard from him at all. Perhaps he has become reasonable. But if not, Aunt and I will manage as we did before,” she said.

“But he tried to kidnap you!”

“Aunt fought him off very handily with a poker.”

“That doctor ought to have sent him to Bedlam!”

“It was that threat that sent Robert to Italy. Now you must be on your way. Aunt’s expecting me for tea, and then I must dress for dinner. We are going to the opera, Aunt and I.”

“Come with me a minute,” he said gently, leading her into the navy blue parlor her fanciful aunt had fitted out in a nautical theme for gentleman callers. Shutting the door behind him, he leaned his compact form against it and said, “I have been courting Violet, as you have probably heard. My heir has spread the word that your engagement to me is broken.”

She nodded. “You are well-suited, Gregory.” She walked to the window and gazed out at the now-slashing rain, her back to her former fiancé.

He came up behind her and encircled each of her upper arms tightly with his hands. Leaning toward her, he whispered, “I can’t marry Violet, Elise. You gave me a month, remember? Well, I’ve made my choice. The truth is that I still love you.”

Gently he turned her so she could not help but see the entreaty in his eyes. Looking into her face with what she perceived now as lust, undiminished by their days apart, he said, “I apologize if my unsteadiness caused you pain. I thought I might be happy with Violet and her simple purity, but I’m not. Even if I did marry Violet, my heart would still belong to you. You have bewitched me, I think.” He kissed her. It was a hard kiss, and he did not seem to notice that she did not return it. “As I told you once already, I love you body and soul. There is no other way I can explain it.” He ran his hands up her arms and neck, and cupping her face, smiled down at her. “Is this certainty of mine what you wished to accomplish with this month’s trial you devised?”

“You don’t love her?” Elise was astounded. The impression she had received at the house party was branded on her mind. She could not be mistaken.

“She is a friend, Elise, nothing more. She has been a comfort to me, and I’m certain she would make a comfortable wife for me. Her brother’s position in Parliament would be a great help to my career. But the zest is gone out of living. I dream such dreams of you that I feel unfaithful to her.”

Leaning down, he kissed her once more, gently at first but it grew in heat as his passion overcame him. In spite of the fact that Gregory kissed very well, Elise fought him off, attempting to hold on to the perspective she had gained. Unfortunately, her loneliness had been so dire that his kiss was like a banquet after her self-starvation.

“I’ve missed you devilishly,” he said, his voice hoarse. He scooped her up and carried her in his arms to the sofa, where he proceeded to take all the pins out of her long black hair. Stunned at the proprietary action, indeed at the entire scene that was unfolding, she heard him say, “I always wanted to see it this way. I have wanted to feel the sensation of your hair falling through my hands.” Gathering it together, he wound it about his fist and then kissed it and laid it forward over her shoulders, shrouding her breasts. He looked at it cascading to her waist. After a moment, he pulled her to him and began to kiss her face and neck with unwonted fervor. She felt him fumbling at the back of her dress and discovered that he was unbuttoning it!

This brought her out of her numbed daze.
How dare he even think such a thing?
Jumping off his lap, she stood before him, her fists clenched. “You, you, you cad! What do you think you are doing?”

His brow furrowed in abject distress. “I want to marry you!” He fished in his pocket and came up with her ring, holding it out to her.

But all she could see was Violet’s face, stoically fighting tears. “If you break Violet’s guileless, innocent heart, I will never speak to you again! You are right. Thomas will be a boon to your career. Now, go! I believe I am in more danger from you than from Robert.”

Leaving him, she threw open the door and walked out of the room. She hastened up the stairs before he could come after her.