The Duke's Dilemma (13 page)

“Miss Haliburton,” he said as he raised her hand to his lips. “I cannot speak for the duke, but I know I feel quite properly chastised.” Gravely, he searched her face, “But, all things considered, would it not have been wiser to make your point a bit more discreetly?”

Emily raked him with a scathing look, stalked into her bedchamber, and slammed the door in his face—but in her heart she knew he was right. She had had good reason to hate the man who had played her for a fool, but in letting that emotion drive her to such extremes, she had made an even greater fool of herself. In one reckless moment, she had branded herself a hoyden—probably worse—in the eyes of all who had witnessed her ignominious return to the manor.

She slumped onto the bed, a bundle of abject misery. Had it been only an hour ago that she had gazed at a man’s face and felt warmth and tenderness? Now the very thought of that cruelly handsome face turned her blood to ice and her heart to stone.

Behind her, the door opened and then closed. “Emily?” Lucinda’s voice sounded even more tentative than usual.

Emily turned to face her wide-eyed young cousin and forced her rigid lips into a semblance of a smile.

“Dear Emily, whatever have you done?” Lucinda wailed, crossing the room to sit beside her on the bed. “I have never seen mama so distraught nor papa so furious. They have forbidden me to ever speak to you again or even to mention your name in their presence. I could not be here now if Hawkes were not standing watch by your door.”

She took Emily’s cold hand in her small, warm one. “Papa says you have brought such disgrace upon our family the duke will never offer for me now. I cannot say I am sorry for that, but it breaks my heart to know you are a fallen woman and Papa will never allow you to darken our door again.” Her eyes grew wide as saucers. “Oh, Emily, where will you go? What will you do?”

What indeed? Emily felt gripped by absolute terror at the thought of being left alone and penniless, and she had not the slightest doubt that Lord Hargrave would cast her out without a farthing now that she had ruined his grand scheme to refill his empty pockets.

“Hurry, Miss Lucinda.” Hawkes poked her head in the door. “Her nibs wants to leave for London afore Lady Sudsley has another go at her. She said to tell Miss Emily she’s to ride in the luggage carrier and stay out of sight of the earl ‘cause he’s hoppin’ mad.”

Lucinda’s eyes puddled with tears. “Oh, Emily, will I ever see you again?”

“Of course you will, and you must not worry your head about me for I shall be quite all right. I am very good at taking care of myself, you know.” Emily gave Lucinda a hug and even managed a genuine smile, but everything inside her felt as if it were cracked and crumbling as she watched her tearful cousin leave the room. For all her addlepated ways, Lucinda was a love, and she would miss her dreadfully.

“You’d best hurry and change into a traveling dress, Miss, whilst I pack the rest of your things,” Hawkes said in her best no-nonsense voice. “As browned-off as the Earl is, he’d likely leave you here at Brynhaven if you was to keep him waitin’ And you wouldn’t want that now, would you, Miss?”

Emily instantly leapt to her feet and tossed aside her blanket. Facing the great, inhospitable city of London alone and without funds might be terrifying; remaining at Brynhaven was unthinkable.

“Oh my poor lass, what has that black hearted rake done to you?” Hawkes commiserated, her eyes wide with horror at the sight of Emily’s torn and sleeveless garment.

She gave Emily a sympathetic pat on her bare shoulder. “If it’s any comfort, you’re not the first woman what’s had her good name ruined by such as the duke. Nor will you be the last. It’s how the gentry takes their pleasure. Many’s the tweeney and chambermaid I’ve hidden behind the linen stacks when the earl come home drunk as a wheel barrow and lookin’ to drop his britches.”

Maggie Hawkes’ favorite subject of conversation was the depravity of the English aristocracy. Emily had often thought that if
Madame Guillotine
were ever to hold sway in London, Hawkes would be the first to embrace the
sans coulottes
and shout, “Off with their heads.” She had to admit she was sorely tempted to do a little shouting of her own at the moment, but for the sake of her self-respect, she felt honor bound to set the record straight.

“The duke never touched me,” she said quietly, trusting she’d be forgiven for stretching the truth to exclude some highly improper kisses. She explained in careful detail how she came to rip the seams of Lucinda ‘s riding habit, ending with, “You know how tight it was across my chest.”

Hawkes surveyed her with dubious eyes. “So you says, Miss, but there’s no use bamming me. I knows there’s more to the story than that, because I knows the duke’s kind and knows ‘em well. “

Emily ignored Hawkes’ obvious attempt to draw her out. The woman had a heart of gold but gossip was her one failing. Emily had no intention of giving her any more choice bits to chew on. With shaking fingers, she buttoned herself into one of the ill-fitting cotton frocks Lucinda had abandoned once she left the schoolroom.

Hawkes folded the last item of Emily’s scant wardrobe and placed it in her portmanteau. “I hopes, for your sake, Miss, you’re not so foolish as to think the muckworm gives a fig what’s to become of you now he’s had his fun,” she said sourly.

Emily shook her head. “No, Hawkes. Even I am not that foolish.”

“And if you’ re thinkin’ the earl will change his mind about throwin’ you into the street, you can forget that too. The old curmudgeon is gettin’ boskier by the minute on the duke’s brandy and if he don’t fall off his fine new horse and kill himself, he’ll be meaner than a snake by the time we reaches London. “

Hawkes warmed to her subject. “Why, even her nibs, fatched as she was at what you done, spoke against him taking his revenge. Said no matter what, you was still her only sister’s daughter and he should at least give you coach fare back to the Cotswolds. But she might as well have saved her breath, for all the good it done. Though to give the devil his due, I doubt the earl had it to give. One of the duke’s footmen told me Mr. Brummell picked him clean in a game of hazard the night of the ball.”

She reached into the pocket of her apron and withdrew a handful of coins. “Take this, Miss. It’s only a few shillings, but it will get you a bit of bread and a place to lay your head until you can figure what to do. “

Emily raised her hand in protest. “I can’t take your money, Hawkes. I know for a fact you’ve not been paid for months and chances are you’ll need it yourself before long the way things are going with your employers.”

She donned her serviceable pelisse and tied the ribbons of her chip straw bonnet. “Never fear. I’ll just nip around to my grandmother’s solicitor and ask him to give me an advance on the monies due me,” she said cheerfully.

“He can do that, Miss?”

“Of course he can and I feel positive he will once he hears of the change in my situation,” she declared with a great deal more certainty than she felt. The last time she’d made such a petition, she’d been told no funds could be released before she was five and twenty.

But that was a problem she would face when she came to it. In the meantime, all that stood between her and starvation was the five shillings she had hidden in the lining of her reticule the day she left the Cotswolds.

Jared awoke to a room deep in the shadows of early evening. Somewhere a window was open; he could feel the breeze on his face, see it ripple the canopy above him. Gingerly he turned his head on the pillow, expecting the searing pain he’d experienced the last time he’d attempted such movement. To his surprise, he felt only a dull throbbing in his temples.

Edgar was sprawled in a wing back chair stationed near the bed. His spectacles had fallen down his nose and his mouth hung open. He was snoring gently, but the minute the bed squeaked as Jared shifted his cramped legs to a more comfortable position, Edgar’s eyes flew open.

“Jared?” he inquired anxiously, rising to stand beside the bed.

Even in the dim light, Jared could see his man-of-affairs looked nothing like his usual dapper self. Dark smudges underlined his bloodshot eyes and there were unfamiliar hollows beneath his cheekbones. His cravat was missing, as were his coat and waistcoat, and his linen shirt looked as if he’ d slept in it for a sen’night.

“Curse me if you don’t look like the one with the headache,” Jared murmured and was rewarded with a smile that spread across Edgar’s taut features like a ray of sunshine brightening a stretch of bleak, gray moor.

Edgar drew a long-barreled pepperbox pistol from the waistband of his pantaloons and laid it on the table beside the candle. “Thank God, I’ll have no more need for this.”

“Since when have you needed to arm yourself at Brynhaven?” Jared asked, scowling at the wicked-looking weapon.

“Since your lady aunts called in the local doctor. The quack insisted you’d expire unless I let him bleed you, and the only way I could change his mind was to threaten to blow a hole in him if he so much as stepped through the door.”

Jared chuckled. “Good thinking, old friend. I know the man well. He buries more patients than he cures.” He swallowed the lump in his throat, touched by Edgar’s loyalty, but certain he would embarrass him mightily if he tried to express his gratitude. “So, you’ve been standing guard while I slept,” he said simply.

“Exactly. Even as you stood guard over me under similar circumstances a few years back,” Edgar replied gravely. Then, lightening the mood, he gave Jared a gentle punch on the shoulder, “Though why I’ve wasted my time worrying about you these past two days, I’ll never know. I should have realized a mere tree limb couldn’t crack that thick skull or yours.”

“A tree limb. Is that what struck me?” Jared asked, fingering the bandage covering the tender spot above his left temple.

“So I was told by Miss Haliburton. After which she dragged you into the gamekeeper’s cottage, removed your wet shirt and wrapped you in a blanket. Good thing, too, since it was several hours after your riderless stallion returned to the stables that one of the grooms and I found you. “

Several hours. Jared hated the thought that he’d lain helpless for so long while Emily was left to cope on her own. But Emily Haliburton struck him as a woman used to coping with difficult situations. “Miss Haliburton is an extraordinary woman,” he said quietly. “The sort a man can count on in an emergency. “

“Miss Haliburton is a stubborn, opinionated female who is ruled entirely by her emotions,” Edgar said, his voice strangely bitter. “And you, my friend, are an unprincipled autocrat so taken with your foolish games-playing you have lost all sense of propriety. Between the two of you, you have managed to rock society to its very foundations.”

Jared jerked to attention—an action which caused him to wince with pain. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the fact that Miss Haliburton was still unaware of your true identity when we found her in a remote cottage weeping copiously over your unconscious form. “

“Oh that,” Jared said, shifting uncomfortably beneath Edgar’s accusing stare. He grimaced. “But I’ll wager you set her straight forthwith. “

” I had no choice. I could scarcely pretend I thought you a local thatch-gallows with one of your grooms looking on, could I?”

“I suppose not.” Jared lay back against his pillows and closed his eyes, gripped by a sudden premonition of disaster. “How did she take it?”

“The same way General Graham took Barrasa. I am still picking grapeshot out of my eyebrows. The lady was so incensed once she realized how shabbily she’d been treated, she flatly refused to ride in the carriage with ‘the despicable duke and his mealy mouthed minion.’”

“The devil you say. I’ m almost afraid to ask how she got back to the manor.”

“She opted. to ride on the coachman’s bench through the worst rainstorm this part of England has seen in years. Made quite an impression on your guests and staff when we arrived at the manor, let me tell you.”

Jared pressed his fingers to his temples, which for some reason had begun throbbing again. “The stubborn little fool,” he muttered. “I suppose that, combined with the hours we’d spent alone in that blasted cottage, created quite a scandal.”

” I’m afraid so. But we might still have carried it off, with you unconscious and all, if she’d managed to hang onto her blanket when I handed her down—or if her clothes hadn’t been torn to shreds.”

Jared stared open-mouthed at his grim-looking man-of-affairs, too startled by his recitation to utter a word.

“Personally, I believe her story that she split her seams while dragging you to shelter,” Edgar continued. “One could hardly fail to notice she is a bit too amply endowed to fit comfortably into Lady Lucinda’s hand-me-downs.”

He shrugged. “But naturally my opinion counts for little. I am afraid that despite my efforts to convince them otherwise, most of your guests set off for London this morning firmly convinced you had ravished the lady and received a crack on the skull in return. In fact, I can
almost guarantee that, even as we speak, that titillating
on dit
is being discussed behind every door in London, including Carlton House.”

Jared groaned. “Hell and damnation, what possessed the woman to make such a cake of herself? And why in the name of God didn’t you stop her?”

Edgar pushed his spectacles higher onto the bridge of his nose. “In answer to your first question, I believe Miss Haliburton was so deeply hurt and so profoundly shocked by what she termed your ‘havey-cavey game’ that she was beyond thinking reasonably.

“And as for my stopping her from making such a public spectacle of herself, I would have sooner thrown myself in front of a team of runaway horses than face down a woman as angry as Miss Haliburton was when last I saw her. After all, it was never
my
game, your grace.”

Jared shrank beneath the contempt he read in Edgar’s eyes—contempt he knew he deserved. His head was throbbing in earnest now and more than anything, he wanted to turn away from those accusing eyes and find the sweet oblivion of sleep. But first he must make his peace with Emily.

He raised himself up on his elbows. “A favor, Edgar, before you retire to a well-earned rest. Would you please locate Miss Haliburton and ask her to join me here in half an hour. I would prefer meeting her in a more proper setting, but I have a feeling my legs would buckle under me if I tried to rise.”

“But— “

“Spare me your objections, my friend. My mind is made up. Granted I would not normally consider a woman of her social station a suitable candidate far the role of my duchess, but she is a good woman, despite her humble background, and I have been the instrument of her ruination. I feel honor bound to offer her my name and my protection, and I cannot believe that under the circumstances, even such high sticklers as my aunts will dare speak against it.”

“I have no intention of objecting,” Edgar said dryly. “In fact, I would be obliged to tender my resignation as your general factotum and offer for her myself if you failed to do the honorable thing where Miss Haliburton is concerned.”

Jared’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you mad? You would not suit at all. Emily is much too…entirely too…Take my word for it, Edgar, you would not suit.”

Edgar smiled—something Jared realized he had done little of since this business with Emily began. “You are absolutely right; we wouldn’t suit. Much as I enjoy the mental stimulation Miss Haliburton offers, I have come to the conclusion I would be more comfortable with a gentle, biddable sort of woman as my life’s companion. But that is not to say a volatile woman such as Miss Haliburton would not suit
you
.”

Drawing a linen handkerchief from his pocket, Edgar polished his already spotless glasses. “As for her being beneath you, that is pure claptrap in my opinion. She is a remarkable woman in all ways and just what you need, my stuffy friend. She will give you such a merry chase, you may even become quite human in time.”

Jared drew himself up to a sitting position. “Enough,” he said raising his hand imperiously. “I weary of your everlasting sermonizing. Hand me my dressing gown and fetch the lady. Let us be done with this tiresome business once and for all.”

“Here is your dressing gown,” Edgar said, tossing the wine velvet robe across Jared’s knees. “But I fear you will have to wait until you are well enough to travel to London to make your honorable offer. Miss Haliburton and the Hargraves were the first of your guests to depart.”

“She is gone?” Jared slid back down on his pillows, feeling a strange combination of relief and deflation “Ah well, perhaps it is for the best. Emily in a rage would not be a pretty sight. “

“For
that
, I can vouch,” Edgar agreed, folding the dressing gown and returning it to the foot of the bed.

“Perhaps it would be wise to let her temper cool a bit before I make her an offer,” Jared said, more to himself than to Edgar. “A fortnight should do it, I think.”

So saying, he dismissed Edgar, closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep to dream of Emily’s sensuous mouth begging for a kiss, Emily’s lush body tangled with his in the marriage bed. He could not remember when he had had such a satisfying dream.

“I don’t like it, Miss. Don’t like it one bit—leavin’ you alone like this with night comin’ on. You don’t strike me as the kind of female what would last long on the streets of London.” Numbly, Emily watched the wiry young driver of the hired carriage set her portmanteau beside her on the cobblestone walk and climb back onto his perch.

“But I got no choice,” he continued. “I’ve me mum and the nippers waitin’ with empty bellies, and the old sod’s a payin’ customer. ‘Drop the trollop at the Haymarket he says, and give me no guff or you’ll not see a brass farthing from me, my lad.’”

Emily thought it would be a miracle if the boy managed to wring a brass farthing, or anything else, out of the impecunious Earl of Hargrave, but she held her counsel. That was his problem; she had plenty of her own.

The boy stared down at her, his pinched young face gray from the dust of the road.

“Drunk on his arse, he was, so maybe he’ll come round when he sobers up, Miss, dependin’ on what you done to turned him up waxy.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “But I wouldn’t count on it if I was you. Them old ones is touchy like. Seems like when everythin’ else starts shrivelin’ up, if you gets my meanin’, their bloomin’ pride gets bigger ‘n ever.

His pale gaze strayed beyond Emily to a bright pink curricle with an inset of black cane which had pulled up behind the luggage carrier. “Or maybe you already got a young buck to take ‘is place. For unless me eyes has gone bad, this is the same bloke what’s been followin’ us since we changed the nags at Croyden.”

He doffed his cap. “If so, I says God bless you, for such as you and me needs any hand-up we can get, and I feels easier in me mind knowin’ you got somethin’ goin’ for you.” With a snap of the reins, he urged the horses forward, and joined the stream of carriages circling the King’s Theatre.

Emily picked up her portmanteau and started walking as rapidly and as purposefully as her legs would carry her, though she’d no idea where she was going. She had heard tales of the libertines who frequented this area looking to arrange their night’s sport, and she felt certain any man who drove a gaudy pink-and-black curricle must surely be such a creature.

With grim determination, she plowed ahead through the crush of gaily-dressed people strolling the walk, never looking into the curious faces which turned her way as she passed. Her heart pounded wildly in her breast and beads of perspiration dotted her brow. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the curricle pull up alongside her.

“Wait, Miss Haliburton. I am here to help you. Lady Lucinda sent me. “

Emily stopped in her tracks, colliding with a dapper gray-haired gentleman walking in the opposite direction. She took a daring glance toward the curricle and found herself staring into the earnest face of the young Earl of Chillingham.

“My lord,” she breathed, as he raised his stylish high-crowned beaver in greeting and directed his tiger to take the reins while he alighted to join Emily on the walk.

“She told me of your plight, ma’am,” he said, brushing the dust of travel from his bottle green topcoat. “And she assured me you were merely an innocent victim in that dreadful affair at Brynhaven.”

He stared at the toes of his highly polished Hessians, avoiding Emily’s eyes. “I swear I cannot credit what came over Montford; he is the last man in the world I would expect to involve a decent young woman in a scandal. No need, you see.” The earl’s blush spread into the roots of his straw-colored hair. “I mean no offense, ma’am, but with his blunt, the duke has his pick of the brightest birds-of paradise London has to offer.”