The Duke's Dilemma (10 page)

A few months later, he had stood beside his tutor at the entrance to the great hall and watched his father’s lifeless body lifted from a carriage and carried up the long flight of stairs. Remembering, he felt a shudder ripple through him. Even now, he could feel the freshening breeze that had lifted the cloth covering the broken body, could see the
copper pieces covering the once mocking eyes—the chalky skin and purple bruises on that bloated, mud -spattered face.

Even now, he could smell the onions on his tutor’s breath when he ‘d murmured, “Now are the Marquess of Staffield, my lord, and will be the Eighth Duke of Montford when your grandfather dies.”

He had wriggled free of the bony fingers gripping his shoulder and with the first show of the chilling arrogance for which he would one day become famous, declared, “Then I shall have sausage and eggs and muffins for my breakfast this morning and I shall never again eat porridge.”

With a determined shrug, he relegated his depressing memories back to that dark chamber of his soul where they’d lain hidden so many years. Pulling the little chest from the clothes press, he traced his finger across the childish scrawl scratched into the scarred lid
Propity of the futur Duk of Montford. Open on pane of deth
.

Lifting the lid, he surveyed the hoard of treasures a seven-year-old had hastily squirreled away on that long-ago spring morning. He hadn’t thought of them in years. Yet now, viewing them like this, he remembered how precious each one had been to him and how fearful he’ d been that some chambermaid might find them irresistible.

One by one, he lifted them out a leather sack containing a pearl-handled knife with a nicked blade and five crudely whittled mumblety-pegs, a glossy black crow’s feather and an equally glossy black curl he ‘d once purloined when his mother’s maid had trimmed her glorious hair, a red top that still whistled when he gave it a spin, a shell from the beach near his old nanny’s home at Bournemouth, the set of jackstraws with which he’d entertained himself by the hour on rainy afternoons—all items a lonely boy, without any playmates, had methodically collected.

At the very bottom of the chest, he found the thing for which he searched—a birch bark basket with a handle formed of two twisted twigs. Inside it lay a short length of satin ribbon—once white, now yellowed with age. Gently, he lifted the crude little basket; then closing the chest, he shoved it back into its hiding place deep inside the clothespress.

Ben Pippin, Brynhaven’s head gardener, had long ago seen his seventieth birthday—how long ago no one was certain, but it was generally agreed he had outlived two Dukes of Montford and a great many of their progeny in the years he’d overseen the care of the estate’s gardens. Jared had spent many an hour in the old man ‘s company when he was a small boy, and he never failed to visit him when he was in residence at Brynhaven.

This morning, he found the gardener watering the few roses that had escaped the housekeeper’s shears when she’d decorated for the previous night’ s ball. “Good morning, Ben,” he said. “I hope I find you well.”

A warm smile lighted the old man’ s face. Relinquishing his hold on the watering can, he clasped Jared’s outstretched hand. “Good mornin’ to you, your grace. I was wonderin’ if ye’d remember old Ben, what with it bein’ near two year since last we seen ye at Brynhaven.”

“Remember you, Ben?” Jared scoffed, deeply shocked by how fragile and wrinkled his old friend had become since last he’d seen him. “Hell’s fire, man, the only happy memories I have of this place are of you and Nanny Partridge.”

“Aye. A fine woman that. Sad I was to ‘ere of ‘er passin’, but many’ s a good year she ‘ad in that cottage in Bournemouth you set ‘er up with.”

Jared smiled. “And what of you, Ben? Do you want me to set you up somewhere? You’ve earned it, you know.”

“Me, your grace? And who would see to me flowers or provide Cook with all the fancy fruits and vegetables she’s forever demandin’ when your relatives descends on her unannounced?” He shook his head and a wisp of thin, hair fell across his forehead. “If it’s all the same to you, your grace, ‘ere’s where I’ve lived and ‘ere’s where I’ll die.” His sharp, old eyes made an anxious search of Jared’s face. “Is that what you come to tell me—that you’re plannin’ to put me out to pasture?”

“Good God, no.” Jared frowned. “Brynhaven is your home as long as you want it. I just came to say hello…and to ask a favor of you.” He looked about him questioningly. “Did the housekeeper leave you enough roses to make up a bouquet for a lady?”

“Not if she’s partial to yellow or white,” Ben said drily. “And the red ‘ave pretty much finished their bloomin’. But I’ve a few pink ones what’ s still middlin’ fair.”

“Pink is just the color for Lady Lucinda. If you’ll make up the bouquet, I’ll send a footman to deliver it to her maid.” Jared hesitated, twisting the small basket round and round in his hands. Finally he thrust it at Ben.

“There’s another lady, Miss Emily Haliburton—a country woman from the Cotswolds. I thought violets might suit her better, if that patch at the edge of the wood still blooms this time of year.”

“It blooms same as ever,” Ben said, staring at the small basket. “What’s this you ‘ave ‘ere, your grace? Sink me if it don ‘t look like one o’ them May baskets you and me used to make for your mama when you was no bigger ‘n a tadpole. Violets was always her favorite. Funny too, with all the grand flowers she could ‘ave chose.”

He raised his head. “Did you want me to line it with moss like we used to?”

“I had that in mind,” Jared said quietly.

“And I suppose this ‘ere ribbon is to tie the bunch of violets with, same as before.” Ben looked thoughtful. “So it’s true then. Cook said you was choosing’ yourself a duchess. I wish you happy, your grace. Miss Emily must be a very particular lady.”

Jared cleared his throat. “You mistake my motives, Ben. It’s nothing like that. Nothing at all.” Strangely self-conscious, he dropped his gaze to make a serious study of Ben ‘s well-worn boots.

“Miss Haliburton is merely a friend,” he said stiffly. “Hardly even that. A chance acquaintance actually, whom I met up with on a morning’ s ride. It’s just that we had a slight misunderstanding which, as her host, I feel obliged to rectify. Though why he should feel compelled to explain himself to one of his gardeners, he couldn’t imagine.

Ben nodded his head sagely. “Aye, your grace. I heard about the lady what trimmed your sails, so to speak, at the ball last night. ‘Twas all the staff could talk of when I stopped at the kitchen for my mornin’ cuppa.”

His wise old eyes regarded Jared with twinkling humor. “Like I said, Miss Emily must be a most particular lady.”

Emily was in Lucinda’ s chamber listening to yet another of Lady Hargrave’s tirades when Maggie Hawkes entered with a bouquet of long-stemmed pink rosebuds in a tall crystal vase. “One of the footmen give ‘em to me for Lady Lucinda,” Hawkes said, setting the vase on a nearby chest of drawers.

Lucinda, who had been weeping steadily for the past hour, leapt to her feet and snatched the accompanying card from Hawkes’ gnarled fingers. “They must be from the
earl,” she said, then collapsed into a fresh bout of weeping when she read the card.

“They’re not from the earl,” she wailed, throwing herself onto the bed, a picture of abject misery. “They’re from the duke.”

“The duke!” Lady Hargrave shot from her chair and pried the card from Lucinda ‘s fingers. “‘My deepest apologies,’” she read in an awestruck voice. “Can you believe it? The man is so besotted with the silly widgeon he will excuse anything.”

She glanced about the untidy room. “Put Lady Lucinda’s dresses back in the clothespress immediately before they become hopelessly wrinkled,” she directed Hawkes. “Then come to my chamber. I shall need repairs to my coiffure before I make my appearance downstairs.”

Her eyes gleamed with malicious triumph. “Wait until I tell Lady Sudsley about
this
. I’ll make that harpy regret the snub she gave me last night if it is the last thing I ever do.”

She stared down at her daughter’s prostrate form. “Listen to me, Lucinda, and heed what I say. I absolutely forbid you to invite that woman or her chinless brat to any of the routs we shall give once you become the Duchess of Montford.”

So saying, she sailed from the room with all the majesty of a four-masted schooner putting out to sea.

Lucinda ‘s sobs reached a new crescendo as Emily looked on, feeling utterly helpless and bewildered. All through the long, miserable night she had consoled herself with the thought that the drubbing she would take from the irate countess over her social gaffe would be worth the agony because she had unwittingly saved Lucinda from the clutches of the dreadful duke. Now this!

“Pssst.” Maggie Hawkes caught her attention. “There’s one for you too, Miss,” she whispered.

“One what, Hawkes?”

“A posy, Miss. Though not so elegant as Lady Lucinda’s. But still, what with her ladyship bein’ so touchy and all, I thought I’d best put it in your chamber, if you know what I mean.”

“You can’t be serious. A posy for me. From the duke.”

“The very same, I’d say. There was just the one card, but the footman was carrying both together—Lady Lucinda ‘s roses in one hand and your little posy in the other.”

More bewildered than ever, Emily mumbled her excuses to Lucinda and, with Hawkes at her heels, repaired to her own chamber.

She had never before received a posy from a gentleman, and receiving her first from the icy duke somehow made her feel a bit sad…until she saw the little birch bark basket and the bunch of violets nestled on the damp, velvety moss.

Tears misted her eyes. How could he have known? How could a jaded aristocrat like the Duke of Montford have known she had made baskets just like this for her dear mama and lined them with moss and placed bunches of May violets in them? How could he have known that of all the flowers on God’s green earth, violets were her favorite?

“Kind of a piddling thing next to all them roses,” Hawkes said, looking over her shoulder. “And I’d swear that bit of ribbon is a scrap what’ s been lying around here for years. But then you’re not a highborn lady, are you, Miss? Bein’ a duke and all, I guess he took that into account.”

“They’re lovely,” Emily said, fingering the yellowed ribbon securing the violets. “I shall press them in my bible and keep them forever.”

“You do that, Miss. I guess, considerin’ how his dukeship feels about women, it’s a rare thing at that.”

“What do you mean, ‘how be feels about women’?”

Hawkes darted a glance around the room, as if to make certain they were alone. “Cook says he don’t like ‘em much, and one of the upstairs maids told me she heard him and Mr. Rankin talkin’ a while back and it don’t matter who the duke marries, he’ll have nothing to do with her once he gets her with child.”

She wagged her head, setting her white cotton cap askew. “Cook says it’s no wonder he feels like he does, all things considered. Them what remembers her says the old duchess, his grandmamma, was the worst jade in the old king’s court. Died of the French pox she did and took four of his ministers with her. And his mama wasn’t much better. Ran off with some smooth-tongued Frenchie when the duke was scarce out of leading strings.”

“That is enough, Hawkes,” Emily said severely. “I do not care to hear any more such gossip. The duke’s family is none of our business.”

“That it isn’t, Miss. Unless he marries our poor little lady…and her nibs is right, you know. It’s beginnin’ to look like he favors Lady Lucinda.”

A trickle of fear traveled Emily’s spine, and she shivered despite the warm sun pouring through the chamber window. She looked down at the little basket she held in her hands and her heart felt like a great, heavy stone in her breast. Heavy with worry over Lucinda’s uncertain future. Heavy with sorrow for the Duke of Montford’ s unhappy past.

H
is guests were already assembled in the salon adjoining the dining room when Jared joined them the evening after the ill-fated ball. All except Brummell, who had left for London at ten o’clock that morning, an unheard of hour for the Beau to be stirring about. But, as he remarked when taking his leave of his host, after a fortnight of the excellent cuisine at Brynhaven, nothing short of Watier’s would do for his next meal. He intended to drive straight through to London rather than partake of the miserable fare offered at the posting inns along the way.

With the Beau’s leaving, a pall had fallen over the gathering. Jared sensed it the minute he walked into the salon, and two hours later, with dinner complete, the mood was, if anything, yet more subdued. Even Lord Sudsley was still on his feet and relatively sober.

It was as if the departure of the first guest signaled the beginning of the end of what had turned out to be a most frustrating fortnight. Looking back on it now, Jared found himself wondering how he could ever have thought such a cork-brained idea could produce anything but disaster. The rest of the houseguests were scheduled to leave on the morrow and the mamas of the incomparables made no effort to hide their distress over his failure to announce his choice of his duchess—all except Lady Hargrave, who apparently took the peace offering he had sent Lady Lucinda as a sign that he had already made that choice.

He would certainly think twice before agreeing to one of Edgar ‘s schemes again. If the countess had thanked him once, she had thanked him a dozen times—even gone so far as to whisper behind her fan that the earl was at his disposal whenever he wished to “have their little talk.”

In the meantime, he could only be grateful that by the time the virago discovered her error she would be back in London and he would be safely ensconced at Staffield, his estate on the most remote stretch of the Northumberland coast.

Lady Lucinda had mumbled a perfunctory “Thank you for the pretty roses” as they’d all trooped into dinner, but only after her mother had pushed her forward and given her a sharp jab in the back. Even then, the unhappy child had regarded him with such obvious loathing, he had been hard pressed to keep from telling her she had nothing to fear from him.

Emily had said nothing about the posy he had sent her, but twice he had seen her gazing at him with a highly speculative look—and no wonder. In a moment of painful soul-searching, he had faced the fact that the crude little basket with its bunch of wild violets must have seemed an odd offering indeed from a peer of the realm…even in the eyes of a country woman from the Cotswolds.

His only hope was that he could manage to avoid her the rest of the evening so he would not have to witness her attempt to express her gratitude. Emily did not strike him as a woman who took easily to lying.

“I see the Hargraves are still with us and both the countess and Lady Lucinda have thanked you prettily for your roses.” Edgar Rankin approached him, a smug smile on his face. “Apparently our strategy was successful. “

“
Your
strategy, my friend,” Jared said bitterly, “‘and I am firmly convinced that all we would have needed to turn Trafalgar into a monumental defeat was to appoint
you
Lord Nelson’s strategist.”

“Is there a problem of which I am unaware, your grace?”

“Nothing my leaving for Staffield tomorrow at dawn won’t solve.” Jared’s gaze traveled to where the Countess of Hargrave was holding court with the disgruntled mamas of the four other incomparables. “If you must know, Lady Hargrave has been eyeing me all evening with a view toward measuring me for a wedding, suit, and I strongly suspect the gentle Lady Lucinda is, at this very moment, plotting my murder—probably with my heir presumptive’s help.”

Edgar chuckled. “Well that should enliven an otherwise dreary house party. And what of Miss Haliburton? Has she properly expressed her gratitude for her roses?”

“Not yet,” Jared said, deeply grateful Edgar had no inkling of the actual “posy” he had sent to Emily. He glanced across the room to where she stood beside her cousin and inadvertently caught her eye. “But heaven help us, I think she is about to,” he groaned as she excused herself and started toward him.

“Your grace.” She curtsied gracefully. “I cannot thank you enough for the violets. They are my favorite flower.”

I somehow knew they were. Maybe because your eyes deepened to violet when I kissed you, sweet Emily.

Jared drew his brows together in the scowl that had terrorized more than one hostess in the years since he’d acquired the title. “Violets, Miss Haliburton? Is this your doing, Mr. Rankin?”

Emily’s bewildered gaze darted from one to the other. “In the little birch bark basket,” she stammered. “Lined with moss.” Vi vid color flooded her pale cheeks. She looked rattled and embarrassed at his silence, and he wanted desperately to say something to ease her discomfiture, but out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Edgar ‘s face, blank with amazement.

“It was your card, your grace, so naturally I assumed…and it was exactly like the May baskets I made my mama when I was a little girl. Violets were Mama’ s favorite flower, too,” she ended lamely. She was chattering now, out of sheer nervousness, he could tell.

Then we have one thing in common, little country sparrow, and Edgar be damned. I’ll not regret my impulse—for it is all I shall ever be able to give you.

“My head gardener is apparently a fanciful fellow,” Jared said coldly. “But if you are pleased, Miss Haliburton, then I cannot fault him.”

He caught her hand in his and raising it to his lips, briefly touched her fingers.

This is the last time I shall ever touch you, but I shall always remember you. When I am an old roan, grizzled and stooped with age, I shall remember how once long years before Miss Emily Haliburton, late of the Cotswolds, berated me for my sins.

“Your servant, ma’ am,” he said curtly. “And now if you will excuse me, I must see to my guests.”

Emily blinked back the tears of humiliation stinging her eyes. “I have made such a fool of myself,” she said, accepting the linen handkerchief Mr. Rankin offered. “I should have known it was you who sent me the violets in the duke’s name. It was not at all the sort of thing
he
would do.”

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Even after two months among them, I am still quite ignorant of the ways of the
beau monde
, you see. In fact, I find I do not understand them at all.”

Edgar Rankin’s gaze followed the imposing figure of the black-clad duke as he made his way toward the group of chattering women surrounding the Countess of Hargrave. “Think nothing of it, Miss Haliburton,” he soothing her. “I have spent a lifetime studying the strange species, and I still find them beyond belief. “

The evening progressed from bad to worse from then on, in Emily’s opinion. She was sorely tempted to make her excuses and have an early night. But sheer stubbornness made her ignore the humiliation she had suffered and soldier on.

It soon became apparent she was not the only one sunk in the doldrums. Lady Hargrave’s stern edict against conversing with the earl had sent Lucinda into the sulks and she flatly refused to contribute one of her plaintive little country songs to the evening’s entertainment. For once, Lady Hargrave did not press the issue. The reason was obvious; in her eyes, the important issue was already settled.

Two of the blond incomparables had already retired to their chambers, pleading headaches and the third claimed she had misplaced her music. Only Esmeralda Sudsley felt up to performing, and she gave such a lengthy and depressing rendition of a section of Edmund Spencer’ s
Cantos of Mutabilitie
that two of the titled papas drowned out the last few verses with their snores.

“It appears it is left to you to provide the musical entertainment this evening, Miss Haliburton,” the duke said, removing a small silver snuffbox from his waistcoat pocket. He took a pinch and inhaled first through one nostril, then the other.” I hope you have something spirited in your repertoire. I find I am sadly in need of stimulation.”

Emily rose from her chair. Head high and back straight as a ramrod, she walked to the pianoforte.
He wanted stimulation, did he? Well, she had just the thing for him.

She raised her hands, poised her fingers over the keys for the opening bar a Haydn sonata second symphony…and the door to the salon burst open. The duke’s butler, Pettigrew, usually the model of stoic decorum, rushed in, and behind him, without waiting to be announced, Squire Bosley.

“Forgive this untimely interruption, your grace,” the squire panted, “but I have such splendid news, I could not wait till the morrow to convey it.”

He pulled a large square of white linen from the pocket of his greatcoat and mopped the perspiration from his florid face. “We have him, your grace, and it was just as you said it would be. He finally made the mistake of being too sure of himself.”

The duke shot to his feet. “You’ve caught the highwayman?”

“The very same,” the squire gloated. “And the blighter has robbed his last coach this side of hell. Dead as a doornail, he is. Shot through the heart by old Lord Epsley, of all people, when his coach was waylaid on that lonely stretch of the Mayburn Road.”

Emily’s fingers crashed onto the keys in a wild, cacophony of sound. She closed her eyes, but the grisly pictures the squire’ s words evoked danced across her eyelids. Jared’s warm, red blood oozing from the hole in his chest and spreading across his white shirt—Jared’s strong body, limp and lifeless; his beautiful, wicked eyes glazed in death.

Great, shattering waves of shock and grief swept over her, pushing her ever deeper into the black abyss that was opening up beneath her. She felt strong hands grip her arms and for one shining moment, she thought she saw Jared’s face poised above her, thought she heard his voice call her name.

But it could not be. Jared was dead, and the pain inside her was too great to bear. It sapped her strength and dulled her mind until, helpless, she plunged down, down,
down into blissful, mindless nothingness.

Slowly, the gray fog swimming before Emily’s eyes parted and the splotches of paler, muted color evolved into eyes and mouths and finally entire faces she recognized as Mr. Rankin and Lady Hargrave…and good heavens, the Duke of Montford.

“Ah, she is coming around.” Mr. Rankin leaned over her, his eyes anxious behind his spectacles, and Emily realized she was lying on one of the loveseats in the Brynhaven music room.

She tried to push herself upright, but Mr. Rankin caught her shoulders in his two hands and gently pressed her back down. “Calm yourself. Give yourself time to get your wits about you,” he said kindly.

“What happened? How did I get here?” Emily asked, feeling utterly foolish and disoriented.

Lady Hargrave edged Mr. Rankin aside. “You had an attack of the vapors and draped yourself all over the pianoforte. That’s what happened. And the poor duke was obliged to carry you across the room.

The duke!
Emily darted an embarrassed glance in his direction. The color had washed from his face leaving him ghastly pale and there was a strange, almost haunted expression in his silver eyes. Swooning women were obviously not his grace’s cup of tea.

“Whatever could you have been thinking of, girl?” Lady Hargrave continued her tirade. “No sooner had Squire Bosley announced that dastardly outlaw had reaped his just reward, than over you keeled.”

Emily gasped as once again the horror of the squire’s words washed over her.

“Miss Haliburton has a gentle nature. Talk of such violence would naturally upset her,” Mr. Rankin said quickly, searching her face with the same troubled expression he’d worn since she’d recovered consciousness.

“By Jove, I surely didn’t mean to shock you with my blunt talk, ma’ am,” Squire Bosley boomed. “Don’t know what possessed me to rush in here like I did. Should have known it would upset the ladies.”

Lady Sudsley gave a disgusted snort. “Most ladies would rejoice in the news you conveyed. It appears to me there’s a missish streak throughout the entire family.” She gave the duke a meaningful glance. “Such things are known to run in families, if you know what I mean.” Even in her dazed state, Emily could tell Lady Sudsley was implying the
something
running in the Hargrave family could be far more serious than a tendency toward vapors.

“Nonsense. A great, healthy girl like Emily. She’s no more given to swooning than the kitchen cat,” Lady Hargrave said indignantly. “It must have been something she ate at dinner. Probably the lobster. I have a cousin, once removed, who swells up like a toad with the first bite; likely Emily has the same problem.”

“She ate lobster all right; I saw her do it.” This from Lord Sudsley.

Emily sank back onto the pillow of the loveseat, grateful Lady Hargrave had come up with an explanation, no matter how erroneous, for her fainting spell. At the moment, she felt incapable of speaking on her own behalf.

Her relief was short-lived. No sooner had her head touched the pillow than she heard her aunt give a surprised gasp. Glancing up, she saw the duke clearing a path through the assembled spectators. Without a word, he bent over and scooped Emily up in his arms as easily as if she had been a rag doll.