The Duke Diaries (8 page)

“I don’t know. The Earl of Lambton’s heir is very nice. I happen to like nearsighted, balding gentlemen whose responses are within reason and whose only flaw appears to be an overbearing mother who refuses to live in a dowager cottage.” She widened her knowing eyes for a moment. “And the vicar would have me. He is the best choice actually. With my dowry, I think we would do very well, don’t you?”

He ground his molars. “Do be serious. It’s settled. I have already offered and you must accept.” Where was his famous wit and charm when he most needed it? For some blasted reason he could not seem to muzzle the prehistoric dominant male in him. It was probably the part of him that was beginning to be attracted to her molting hat.

She studied him beneath her eyelashes. And for the first time, Rory really noticed the elegant heart-shaped physiognomy of her face, and the plump nature of her lips. It was only too bad they were combined with her stubborn set jaw and intelligent high forehead.

“I’ve already given you my answer. And if you were a gentleman and possessed half a brain, you would thank me. But I fear that recent brush with absinthe has left you compromised in the upper stories, and so I suppose I shall have to explain it to you.” She sighed. “I shall consider marriage if the gossip leaks from Carleton House. But I would marry someone other than you. So you can go on your merry way—with the added enticement that my brother won’t have to kill you. But don’t look so annoyed. It’s highly doubtful I’d have the nerve to go through with it. I’d prefer life as a recluse in the Lake District if I can manage it without damaging my family’s reputation.”

He took a step closer toward her and she took a step backward, only to find herself backed into one of the white-barked trees.

He shook his head in exasperation.

“It’s true and you know it. My brother only wanted me to have the protection of your name, but I think you know he certainly wasn’t going to allow conjugal rights with his sister.”

He went still at the thought of sexual congress with Lady V. He recovered only after a beat. “Especially his
favorite
sister.”

“Precisely.” Her gaze moved to some unseen object beyond his shoulder. “Look at it this way, Your Grace—”

“So we’re back to formalities, are we?”

“I think it best since I might very well be on the verge of becoming engaged to someone else.”

“You were saying?”

“Look at it this way. I’m saving your life.” She sighed. “With very little effort on your part, I might add. The least you could do is thank me.”

He was going to have to see the tooth drawer if he didn’t stop grinding his back teeth. “Lady V?”

“Yes, Your Grace?”

“Stop that. I prefer you use my given name. You never used my title as a child. Why should you use it now?”

She paused. “All right, Rory. I admit there is something that grates when I’m forced to kowtow to you.”

“Good. And if you don’t want me to compromise your reputation for a second time, then I suggest we continue this conversation somewhere else. I’ve something of importance to relay to you. Tomorrow, say four o’clock, at the north end of the lake on your property?”

“But, there’s no reason to—”

“Yes there is. And if you do not acquiesce with grace I will kiss you senseless right here and now in front of that footman who is now just exiting the front door.”

“You would never—”

He ignored her and took her hand and tucked it under his arm to guide her toward the mansion. “And by the by, Findley was telling you the absolute truth. I can confirm he is neither a gambler nor a rake and he is not in love with another lady. However, you might want to rephrase the question in future, as Findley is indeed in love, but my last thread of decency prevents me from explaining the matter any further.”

She suddenly halted and he almost stumbled. His agility was clearly going in his old age.

Verity’s innocent face looked up at him in the moonlight. “I cannot imagine what you mean, but I’m certain I trust a gentleman whose passions in life include gardening and painting embroidery canvases instead of the practiced charm of an established rake.”

He urged her to continue walking. “Of course you do. And that is further proof that this method of yours and Mary’s is sheer madness.”

“Actually, I had thought you would approve of my method. It would leave you the chance to wiggle off the hook.”

“Perhaps I’ve chosen to accept the hook,” he whispered in her ear.

“No one chooses the pain of the hook, Rory, if it can be avoided,” she insisted softly.

He pulled his head back to examine her face. A pattern of the branches from the oak near the door reflected on her face in the night air. She had the most translucent complexion. And her eyes were . . . extraordinarily guarded yet lovely. “What will it take for you to stop interviewing the gentlemen of Derbyshire?”

She smiled. “Nothing.”

What was her game?

“I began to see the flaws of Mary’s and my plan when one of the old goats began to question me!”

He grinned. “Even I know you don’t like to answer to anyone, V.”

“And that is why I have always desired your friendship, Rory.”

Chapter 6

S
he was going to be late. Verity urged her mare harder. Lord, and after she had chastised him so for being tardy last evening for the Talmadges’ ball. If there was one thing Verity despised, it was a hypocrite. And she might have to revise her stance on timeliness.

It was just that Timmy had needed an extra ten minutes to complete the set of arithmetic problems she had given him. And there had been the essays to correct from the three boys soon to go to Eton.

She approached the gap in the trees and made a sharp turn to the right, hoping he would be waiting for her at the north end instead of near the site of her formerly beloved tree. The last decade, she had refused to avoid the pine that had been the scene of her disillusionment, but that did not mean she had to torture herself by lingering. Thankfully, she spied Rory’s beautiful dark gray horse a furlong away and sped to the prettiest vantage point of the lake.

She was tired. Last night after the ball she’d been unable to settle into her usual lovely deep sleep. Thoughts of Rory in all his splendid elegance whirled in her mind. Every lady, marriageable or not, had had their eyes glued on the long-lost prodigal son of Derbyshire. And she was the only one, aside from Mary, who had not one design on him.

She slowed to a sedate trot the last few feet before pulling to a halt and dismounting.

“You should walk your horse after a gallop like that,” he suggested.

She rolled her eyes. “Have you always taken me for a fool?” She gathered her mare’s reins and led her in a wide circle. Rory shadowed her other side. Out of the corner of her eye she spied him blatantly extracting his fob and examining his gold pocket watch.

She pretended to gaze at the vast beauty of the lake. Pine, poplar, and mountain ash skirted the water’s edge, where wagtails and dippers swooped in to feed on the underwater mayfly and alderfly nymphs.

He returned his watch to his pocket and extracted a very formal-looking letter. She was determined not to ask what it was and so she bit her tongue yet again. At this rate she doubted she would be able to eat anything but mush in the near future.

“When you were a child I often thought that you fancied me in a fashion. And so now I am left to wonder if I have done something—apart from mistaking your bedchamber for mine, of course—to make you form such a violent dislike of me.”

She finally darted a glance at his devastatingly handsome profile. “I can’t possibly grasp what you mean.”

“By the by, there is something powdery, almost chalk-like in your hair.”

Her hands flew to her head. “Well, if you must know, I can’t abide you because you’re insufferable. And most notably toward me for some indefinable reason.”

He laughed long and loud. “Of course I’m insufferable. But you should take it as a compliment, V. I’m only insufferable with people I like.” He scratched his jaw. “And here I thought that becoming a duke would, at the very least, prevent anyone from pointing out my flaws to my face.”

“Yet another reason we shall not marry, since dukes have never intimidated me.”

The corners of his mouth rose, and the sun reflected off his beautiful smile.

“You know, V, your brother often remarked that one of his sisters required a new governess each season of the year. He wasn’t talking about you, was he?”

“I can’t imagine James ever suggesting I was unbear—”

He interrupted. “I find that when a person suggests someone has a flaw, it is actually a flaw they possess themselves. Do you agree?”

There were times that Verity wished she was a beautiful, sleek, and very lethal lioness. This was one of those times. “Do tell me if that note you so obviously withdrew from your pocket is a new list of questions for me to use in my pursuit to save your
arse
.”

Amusement filled his eyes. “Are we agreed that your horse is cool now? Perhaps she would like to join mine?” He nodded toward his gray. “What is her name, by the by?”

“Captio.”

“Hmmm. Latin for fallacy. Why would you give such a lovely creature a name like that?”

“I rather think it works perfectly. It is the opposite of my name.”

“How so?”

“First, while she is lovely and dainty, unlike me, she also has far more stamina, grit, and ability than any of the other magnificent creatures my brother has stabled at Boxwood.”

He did not utter any ridiculous false flattery, which deep inside she rather liked. She couldn’t stand it when people lied and suggested she was anything more than what she was: unoriginal and plain.

He disengaged the reins from her hands. She immediately dropped her fingers when they grazed his. He saw to her mare and then returned to Verity.

“You still haven’t explained the chalk in your hair.”

“And you still haven’t explained the note.”

He looked at her with an unreadable smile, waiting.

She gazed at the wild cloudberries dotting the defined pastures beyond the sparkling lake. Newly shorn ewes and lambs grazed near their folds. She wasn’t sure why she was embarrassed to tell him. It was just that she didn’t want him to mock her. “It’s from teaching the children in the village while our teacher, Miss Woods, is away, tending her ill sister. It’s only for a fortnight or so, I am certain.”

He smiled down his approval but said not a word as they walked along the water’s edge. She was glad he didn’t make light of her efforts. It would have been so easy to do. Wavelets danced on the surface of the lake, where a flock of geese had settled for the warm season.

He finally stopped and she followed suit. “I received this express from a trusted acquaintance at Carleton House yesterday.”

She glanced at the note in his gloved hand.

“There is much talk belowstairs in the royal residence. Of you and of me. My source warns that it is only a matter of time before Prinny and others catch wind of the gossip. And it will spread to the rest of London via the ruthlessly efficient network of the serving class.”

The blood in her veins raced.

“And given the public’s rabid reaction to the night of infamy, in addition to the
Morning Post
’s incessant installments from a mysterious diary kept by a
raving lunatic
member of the ton, well, it will not be surprising if Prinny insists we marry. By summer’s end. He has already arranged the marriages of one if not two dukes already.”

The hair on her arms prickled. A mysterious
diary
? Kept by a
raving lunatic
of the ton? For the first time she could remember, she did not reach for her smelling salts. She was far too shocked to do anything but keep walking. In fact, she wanted to run like the wind, all the way to the exotic jungles of Africa and never return. Oh, it was ridiculous. She could not be that unlucky. Every pompous blowhard in London kept a diary. She refused to add another worry to her long list.

“And so, despite your efforts to save me from my own stupidity that night the devil ruled, I must beg you quite sincerely, V, to honor me with your hand in marriage.”

Still in a dreamlike fog of shock over the mention of a diary, she watched in silence as the man with whom she had once been besotted before life had taken a turn, awkwardly got down on one knee and offered his hand.

She refused to take it. “Don’t.” She looked away. “Don’t do this. Do get up. The letter makes no difference.”

He didn’t move. She turned in time to see a muscle in his jaw clench. It took every ounce of moral strength in her not to reach out and sooth it.

“Of course it makes no difference. I knew we would have to marry the moment I opened my bleary eyes and saw your adorable white lace sleeping bonnet and your brother, just beyond, with murder in his heart.”

She stepped away from him. “Get up. I know it’s not adorable, and it is a
cornette
not a bonnet. I only wear it to save myself and my maid the trouble of an endless bush of tangles in the morning.”

He dropped his hand to his side. “I could do it far better and faster than your maid, I assure you.”

“Oh, I’m sure you could. It’s probably the hallmark of someone who womanizes.”

A muscle in his mouth moved. “Actually that would be unhooking corsets.”

“Thank you for your elucidation. Now please,” she knew her tone was becoming a bit too high-pitched and unattractive, “please get up. You’re ruining your breeches. Grass stains are impossible—”

“No,” he interrupted without moving a muscle.

“ ‘No’ to what?”

He had stopped smiling. His face was alarmingly serious. He held out his hand again, palm up, urging her silently to accept it. “Verity, enough. I shall arrange for the first reading of the banns immediately. A Special License would only add to any gossip. I’ve had a word with the vicar, who said—”

“You told Mr. Armitage?” Her hand went to her throat.

He finally, slowly, regained his feet. The grass-colored cloth on his knees now matched the color of his eyes. Finally a better comparison than peas.

“I’m delighted to inform that that is how a marriage is done in England. One must go before a vicar unless one binds and drugs a female, crosses the border to Scotland, and pays an indecent amount to an unscrupulous smithy to perform a service over the anvil. I had hoped to save myself the trouble. But if you persist in this determination to ruin yours and your family’s name, then I can be counted on to reconsider the other option.” He paused. “Enough of this, V. Name the day.”

“Of course. The seventeenth of July.”

She almost laughed when she saw the odd combination of relief and fear mingling on his features.

“In the year of our Lord,
nineteen hundred and nine
,” she added.

“That’s what I thought,” he replied dryly. “You are a hard woman, V. And here I was even prepared to give up your promised pin money to have you.”

I
t was not often a person dumbfounded him. Indeed, it was this very quality—of reading people’s character, way of thinking, and deciphering their moral code—that had earned him his nom de guerre, Chameleon, for the uncanny ability to adapt to any and all situations with astonishing ease. Prinny and a handful of people at the top of Wellington’s food chain knew his true identity, to be sure, but they were determined to keep it secret in case the country’s needs became too great, in which case he would be pressed into service again, despite his last mission, during which his identity had been compromised.

Rory surveyed the activity in the rear gardens of Rutledge from the vantage point of his north-facing library. He still could not fathom how he had mangled something that should have been the least complicated event of his life. And all this time he had been given the impression that the young ladies of good ton and their ambitious parents were willing to do just about anything to land an eligible duke.

Apparently Verity Fitzroy did not subscribe to this way of thinking. Perhaps it was that after having a ducal father and brother, she’d had her fill of the arrogant, domineering males.

And so, for his inept preparation to charm his future bride, Rory was reduced to this: overseeing the installation of a formidable feast outside, otherwise known as a
fête champêtre,
which was really nothing more than a blindingly extravagant
pique-nique
for what appeared to be every last inhabitant of Derbyshire. Not one person invited had declined the honor. And yet, there had been only one response to which he had paid any heed.

Lady Verity Fitzroy and Lady Mary Haverty accept with pleasure His Grace’s kind invitation to the entertainment Tuesday next.

Well, at least she had not taken complete leave of her senses. Or more importantly, he still had a chance to make her see reason.

He scratched his jaw as he watched a parade of servants, bearing trays and platters, artfully arrange the fare on an endless series of elegantly appointed tables, dripping with mounds of grapes and oranges and lemons in etched crystal bowls.

All this to woo one petite, recalcitrant, dark flashing-eyed Fitzroy.

It was the most calculated bit of trickery since Welly had sent him behind French pickets in the middle of the night dressed as a replacement aide-de-camp for Napoleon.

There was really only one question far back in an unvisited corner of his mind. When had he become so ill-fired moral-minded that he felt it necessary to save someone? It was this thin air of the Peak District, it was.

Well.

He would successfully advance, subdue the enemy, use a bit of torture if necessary—he smiled to himself—enlist allies in the neighborhood if possible, and win the battle even if he had to eat every last grape in sight.

For the first time in a very long time, he had a mission. He hadn’t known he’d longed for an aim in life other than obliterating the past through every known method possible, the number one being a concerted effort to get himself killed, an endeavor that had failed miserably.

It didn’t matter that it involved winning the hand of a bride he did not want. He cleared away the cobwebs in that unused corner of his brain and reviewed the reasons: