“Yes, yes,” the duchess said. A hint of exasperation had crept into her voice. “We will be on our guard. But now get to the point, Jack. What is the trouble you need our help with?”
Frances was not going to let Lord Jack muddy the waters. “It is all my fault, Your Grace,” she said before Jack could speak. “I’ve been trying to convince your son that I just need to see my family’s man of business and get the funds owed me. Then I can be on my way, and he can wash his hands of the scandal.”
Jack glared at her and opened his mouth again, but this time it was his mother who spoke first.
“If there’s a scandal involved, dear, Jack can’t wash his hands of it.”
“Exactly.” Jack nodded. “I—”
He was going to tell the story all wrong. “No, I—”
“Miss Hadley,
will
you let me speak?” Jack’s voice had an edge to it.
“But you will make it out as if you have some fault in this, and you do not.” She appreciated his not laying this completely on her doorstep, but taking any responsibility himself was wrong.
“I will not.” Jack looked as if he wished to grab his hair and tear it out in fistfuls. “Don’t you realize that sometimes people can be entirely blameless yet still find themselves in trouble?”
Of course she realized that—it just wasn’t the case in this instance. “But I’m
not
blameless.”
“I believe,” the duke said in a calm, authoritative tone, “we will make more progress understanding the situation if you would let Jack tell the tale in his own way, Miss Hadley. When he is done, you can add anything you think we should consider.” He smiled at her. He had a very nice smile.
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re quite right.” She bit her lip and sat back.
Jack gave her a pointed look and then proceeded to share the basic facts of the situation. “So you see,” he concluded, “the main problem is that Pettigrew knows Miss Hadley is a female.”
Frances couldn’t hold her tongue a moment more. “The
main
problem is I dressed as a boy.”
The duke laughed. “No, Miss Hadley, I’m afraid Jack is correct. Getting caught is the issue.” He sent the duchess an odd glance. “You could swim naked in a pond, and if no one saw you, there would be no scandal.”
The duchess suddenly flushed. “Er, yes. That’s very true.” She smiled at Frances with a little more warmth. “It was quite daring and resourceful of you to venture up to Town in breeches, Miss Hadley. Your plan would have worked very well if the roads had been better.”
“It would
not
have worked well,” Jack said sharply, glaring at his mother. “It was madness. Fra—Miss Hadley had no idea where her brother lived.”
That wasn’t true. “I had his address.”
Jack turned his glare on her. “Which is in an exceedingly dangerous part of Town—
and
as it turned out, wasn’t your brother’s address any longer.”
“But I didn’t know that.”
“Exactly.” He raised his brows in a very annoying manner. “And what, pray tell, would you have done when you discovered that truth and found yourself alone in the stews without any place to turn?”
She pressed her lips together. The bloody man was correct. She would have been in a very uncomfortable position.
“In any event,” the duchess said, “there is no blame to assign here. You didn’t intend to embroil Jack in scandal, Miss Hadley. You were asleep when he arrived, after all. And Jack had no idea you weren’t what you appeared to be.”
“But—” Of
course
she was at fault. Why didn’t Jack’s mother see that?
“No, my dear.” The duchess blushed again. “The duke is quite right. Something can only be a scandal if you get caught out.”
“Which we did,” Jack said.
“You don’t yet know that for a fact, do you?” the duke said. “Being caught—yes, I suppose that’s a given. But there’s the remote possibility Pettigrew decided that silence was the honorable course in this case. I suggest you and I go off to White’s and see if he has indeed been spreading the story.”
Jack sighed. “An excellent idea, but I went to the clubs last night.” He darted a glance at Frances and then shrugged. “The word is already out.”
“Ohh.”
Frances slapped her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to moan, and she certainly hadn’t wanted the duke and duchess to hear her.
“I see.” Jack’s father smiled at her somewhat regretfully. “That does put a different complexion on things.”
“It only means we move to the next step.” The duchess picked up the teapot. “Would you care for some tea, Miss Hadley? A nice cup of tea can be so soothing.”
Frances wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but she nodded anyway. “The next step?” she asked, taking the cup from Jack’s mother.
“Yes.” The duchess was actually grinning.
“Watch out, Miss Hadley,” the duke said. “I can see my dear wife has a plan!”
“Of course I have a plan.” The duchess took a sip of her tea.
Frances would swear the woman’s eyes, far from being icy, were now twinkling over the teacup. She glanced at Jack. Damn. His expression had grown wary.
“What is it, Mama?”
“Have some seedcake, Miss Hadley,” the duchess said. “It’s very good.”
“Mama.”
Jack scowled at his mother.
Frances cautiously took a slice of seedcake. There was no reason for her to think the duchess could find a way out of this, but somehow she did think it. Whether she would like the solution remained to be seen. She took a bite of cake.
“Obviously the first thing to do is to get Miss Hadley some new clothes.”
“Argh!” A bit of seedcake went down the wrong way; Jack leaned over and pounded on her back. Frances held up her hand to get him to desist and took a swallow of tea, burning her mouth. “Ack!”
“What is it, Miss Hadley?” the duchess asked while the duke tried to muffle his laughter and Jack made an odd growling noise. “Do you actually like that frock you’re wearing?”
“No, of course not.” She should be kind. “Though Mrs. Watson did the best she could.”
“I don’t doubt it, but you can’t go about like that.”
“I’m not going about anywhere except to Mr. Puddington’s offices and then back to Landsford, Your Grace.” And then—well, she didn’t know where she’d go after she had it out with Aunt Viola, but it wouldn’t be London.
“Landsford!” the duke said. “That must mean you’re . . .”
“The Marquis of Rothmarsh’s granddaughter!” The duchess put down her teacup and clapped her hands. “Excellent.”
Oh, damn. Frances wanted to sink into the carpet. She definitely did not want her mother’s family dragged into this.
“And Whildon’s niece.” The duke was smiling as well. “The earl is a particular friend of mine, Miss Hadley. And Trent’s one of your circle, isn’t he, Jack?”
“Yes. I looked for him at White’s last night, but didn’t see him. I’m sure he and his family will wish to help Fra—”
“No.” Frances’s stomach tightened into a hard knot. “No.” Jack had said her grandparents and the rest of her mother’s family hadn’t turned their backs on her, but she didn’t wish to put that theory to the test. Better not to know for certain and leave the faint possibility alive that Jack was right.
The duchess’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “No what, dear? Of course your mother’s family will close ranks around you. Their support—and ours—will quickly put any unpleasant tittle-tattle to rest.”
“I don’t believe they will wish to have anything to do with me, Your Grace.” Oh, why was she even trying to fool herself? She had twenty-four years without even a single letter from any member of her mother’s family as proof of their feelings. The fact of the matter was they
had
turned their backs on her. “The marquis and marchioness disapproved of my father because he didn’t have a title, and completely washed their hands of my mother when she married him.”
She heard Jack growl again, but she chose not to look at him. She couldn’t ignore the duke’s expression, however. His eyebrows shot up.
“I don’t know who told you that, Miss Hadley,” the duke said. “I recall events much differently.”
“You do?” Damn it, even she heard the pitiful hopefulness in her voice.
Stupid!
She did not care about her mother’s family. She’d done very well without them for twenty-four years.
“Yes indeed, though I will admit Lady Diana’s parents weren’t happy with her choice of husband. Whildon told me on more than one occasion about the colossal rows they had over your mother’s infatu—” The duke cleared his throat. “I mean your mother’s strong attraction to your father.”
“But if my father had been a peer—”
The duke didn’t have to raise his hand or say a word; the slight hardening of his expression was enough to cause Frances to fall silent.
“His lack of a title had nothing to do with it, Miss Hadley. I’m sorry to have to tell you it was his lack of character that caused Rothmarsh and his family to argue against the match—and I agreed with their assessment. Your father was handsome and dashing—brilliant, really, when it came to botany. But—and I hope you don’t mind my saying this—he was also cocky and self-centered and a rake. Rothmarsh was not of the opinion that rakes could be reformed, and he certainly didn’t want to have his precious daughter risk her happiness trying to see if she could prove him wrong.”
Ah yes. Rakes couldn’t be reformed, could they?
Frances kept her eyes on the duke, though she was tempted to look at Jack. She could feel him watching her. He might not be quite as bad as her father—he did seem sincerely attached to the children at his foundling home, even the ones who weren’t his own—but he was still a rake.
The duke smiled. “Your mother was the baby of the family and the only girl, Miss Hadley, so everyone doted on her. This might have been the single time her parents opposed her.” He gave Frances a suspiciously bland look. “According to Whildon, she was a trifle headstrong.”
Headstrong? That was not how she’d have described the sad, sullen woman she’d known. Her mother had been a ghost long before she’d died. “But then why did they never visit, Your Grace, or even write?”
“Again according to Whildon, they did visit, Miss Hadley. They arrived after a long journey to discover they were grandparents—your mother had never told them she was increasing—and that they were not welcome at Landsford. Lady Diana apparently slammed the door in their faces, and they had to stay the night at an inn. They never got more than a glimpse of you or your brother.”
“Oh!” the duchess said. “How horrible! Poor Lady Rothmarsh.”
That
was
harsh, but also rather unbelievable. She’d never seen her mother get angry, and the woman had certainly had plenty of cause to do so with her husband’s never-ending raking. Likely Rothmarsh and his wife had exaggerated. “Still they never wrote a single letter to try to mend matters, Your Grace.”
“Oh, I believe they wrote many letters, Miss Hadley, but Whildon said they were all returned unopened. He was very irate about the situation. I remember quite clearly the day he came into White’s ranting about it, wanting to ride down to Landsford to shake some sense into his sister, but he said his father forbade him from doing so. Lady Diana was an adult. If she wished to cut herself off from her family that was her choice.”
“Weren’t they afraid Hadley might be abusing Miss Hadley’s mother?” Jack asked, sounding rather angry for some reason.
“No, because they knew he wasn’t at Landsford. The man’s exploits were covered rather completely in the papers.”
Of course the Duke of Greycliffe would side with his friend. “But that makes no sense, Your Grace. Why would my mother send her parents away and return all their letters?” She’d always assumed her mother had stayed at Landsford because she’d had nowhere else to go. There was likely far more to this story than the duke knew.
The duke smiled gently. “Whildon thought, perhaps, that Lady Diana was too proud or too stubborn to admit she’d made an error and ask for help.”
“Oh no. I’m sure that wasn’t the case.”
But...
One of her earliest memories—she could have been only four or five years old—was of running down a garden path at Landsford to tell her mother Frederick had snatched her doll. She’d tripped and fallen just a few feet from where her mother sat reading. She’d wailed, but her mother had just looked at her.
Don’t waste your time crying, Frances
, she’d said.
You’re a big girl. Get up and brush yourself off. Learn to help yourself.
“Whildon told me his parents last wrote when you were sixteen, Miss Hadley, offering to sponsor your come-out. At least this time your aunt opened the letter—and sent them back a very strongly worded note telling them no, and furthermore, in case they had so far failed to discern it, they had no place in your life.”
“Aunt Viola never said anything about it to me.” It was true her aunt had used to make a point of getting the post, and Frances did suspect her of hiding a letter from Frederick . . .
No, it was too incredible. “Lord Whildon must be mistaken.”
Of course he was mistaken. He was a man. He’d probably overheard a few comments and assumed a great deal. And then, being male, had insisted his version of things was the truth.
“Well”—the duchess put her teacup down with a decisive click—“I know of only one way to find out what your mother’s family thinks, Miss Hadley, and that is to ask them. I shall send a note to Rothmarsh House at once.” She smiled at Frances. “The past is what it is. We need to concern ourselves with the present and the future.”
Blast it, she did
not
want to go crawling to her mother’s family for help. “I’m afraid the present is worse than the past, Your Grace, given the scandal I’m embroiled in. I still think it would be better if I returned to the country.”
“Oh no. That would be fatal.” The duchess offered Frances some more seedcake, which she declined. The last piece had not gone down well. “If you do that, people will assume you had reason to flee. However, if you stay here and go about with our support—and, I firmly believe, Rothmarsh’s support, as well—we shall put this unpleasant gossip to rest in a twinkling.”