The Duke's Dilemma (9 page)

Mr. Brummell laughed. “True, my dear, you do imbue one with a desire to hang mistletoe and light the Yule log in the merry month of May, but your sparkling wit blinds me to the incongruity of your attire. I look forward to your conversation with the same eagerness a starving man yearns for a loaf of fresh baked bread. I have just endured two of the most dismal hours of my life listening to Lady Sudsley’s chatter. I swear, that appalling pea-goose could talk the hide off an Indian rhinoceros.”

Emily couldn’t help but smile at the ill-humored analogy, but she withheld comment. “You have traveled to India, Mr. Brummell?” she asked innocently.

“Not yet, but I may well be driven to such extremes before this deadly fortnight is over.” Brummell inclined his head in a brief nod of recognition as they passed Squire Bosley and his lady. “Were it not for my devotion to the duke,” he whispered once they were out of earshot, “and my deep appreciation for his cook, I should have instructed my valet to pack my bags days ago.”

“You are a close friend of the duke?” Emily found the relationship difficult to fathom. The duke did not strike her as a man who inspired affection, and Mr. Brummell was noted more for his caustic wit than his fidelity. Even his much-publicized friendship with the Prince Regent was reported to be a simple matter of social expediency on his part.

“No man is truly close to Montford,” Brummell said, “except Edgar Rankin, of course. But we enjoy a mutual respect.” He paused. “Outstanding fellow, the duke. Brilliant mind and an infallible sense of style, though God knows he puts that to little use. Attends an occasional
race at Newmarket and a mill now and then, but for the most part he tends to be something of a hermit.” He shook his head. “How such a man could consider marrying one of the five pretty flea-brains his aunts have put forth is more than I can grasp.”

Brummel sidestepped a group of local squires who had gathered at the edge of the dance floor, then led Emily to the row of chairs set up for the mothers and chaperons. “Too bad the poor devil is forced to choose his duchess from the daughters of the aristocracy. You would suit him most admirably, my dear. “

“Me?” Emily laughed. “You are jesting, of course.”

“My dear lady, I never jest about something as dangerous as marriage.”

Emily relinquished her hold on the Beau’s arm and searched his face, expecting to encounter one of his famous cynical smiles. To her surprise, she found his expression strangely sober.

“Forgive my impertinence, sir, but I fear you must be mad,” she declared. “I can think of no one in the entire world less suited to be a duchess.”

Brummell nodded. “My point exactly. I sometimes think the last thing Montford would be, had he the choice, is a duke. But more to the point, that clever tongue of yours might make him laugh—something he rarely does now and may never do again once he is leg-shackled.”

His gaze shifted to the duke, who stood a short distance away, surrounded by a clutch of chattering females. “Look at the poor fellow. Have you ever seen a man more morose?”

Emily looked and found herself staring directly into the duke’s stormy silver eyes. For one instant, their gazes locked, then he scowled darkly and turned away, leaving Emily to grit her teeth in anger. If this surly aristocrat was indeed Mr. Rankin’s caring philanthropist and Mr.

Brummell’s brilliant paragon, he was certainly adept at concealing his true nature.

Brummell raised Emily’s hand briefly to his lips before taking his leave of her.” I see Lord Hargrave has inveigled one of the local landowners into a ‘friendly’ game of hazard,” he murmured. “Quite a Captain Sharp, your uncle. He has already parted most of the duke’s unsuspecting houseguests from their pocket money—which does make one wonder how he has managed to get so deeply in debt. Ah well, for lack of something better to do, I think I shall join the game and see if I can bend a few of the spokes in the ratchety fellow’s wheels.”

Sick at heart, Emily watched Mr. Brummell cross the room toward the salon reserved for those who preferred cards to dancing. His admission that he was aware of the Earl of Hargrave’s deplorable financial condition had been most unexpected. If the scandal was such common knowledge, why had Lucinda been considered an eligible
partie
for the duke? Had his distorted sense of humor led him to dangle a lifeline before her drowning relatives merely for the malicious pleasure of snatching it away at the last moment? Much as she disapproved of the Hargraves’ manipulation of Lucinda, it at least was spawned by desperate need. There was no excuse for this depraved game the duke played.

The first set was just ending. The Duke of Montford had partnered Esmeralda Sudsley and the Earl of Chillingham, Lucinda. Emily beckoned to her young cousin when the couples left the dance floor and watched the flushed and happy girl walk toward her on the earl’s arm. “Oh, Emily,” she effused, casting a limpid gaze into the earl’s bedazzled eyes, “I never dreamed dancing could be so…enlivening.”

From the corner of her eye, Emily saw the duke deposit Lady Esmeralda with her mama, make his bow, and stride determinedly across the short space separating him from the spot where the three of them stood. He was apparently performing a duty dance with each of the five candidates for his hand—and Lucinda’s turn was next. Emily had no time to warn her cousin before the duke was upon them.

“Lady Lucinda,” the duke said, raising his ornate quizzing glass to his right eye, “May I have the pleasure of partnering you for the next dance? It is, I believe, a waltz.”

Lucinda gasped. Like a moth mesmerized by a candle’s flame, she stared at the duke’s magnified eye, transfixed. The color in her cheeks slowly faded until her taut, young face turned as pale as the virginal dress she wore, and before Emily could think to catch her, she crumpled into a heap of white lace and silver ribbons at the duke’s feet.

“Dear God!” Emily exclaimed, kneeling down to cradle her cousin’s golden head in her lap. She looked up to find the duke towering above her, the offensive quizzing glass still glued to his eye. “What a beastly thing to do,” she cried. “How dare you leer at this poor child with that monstrous eye of yours when anyone can see your very presence fills her with terror!”

The duke lowered his quizzing glass, but he continued to stare at Emily in obvious astonishment. Beside her the distraught earl dropped to his knees, babbling something which sounded suspiciously like “my darling love.”

“What is it? What has happened?” Lady Hargrave pushed her way through the crowd of onlookers to stare down at her daughter’s prostrate form.

“Good God!” she exclaimed, clutching her heaving bosom. “The little rattlebrain has done us in!”

“Calm yourself, madam,” the duke said in a voice so cold, Emily felt chilled to the bone. “Lady Lucinda has simply been overcome by the heat.”
This
in a room so large and drafty, most of the ladies had already covered their bare shoulders with shawls.

He beckoned Mr. Rankin to his side. “Please see that Lady Lucinda is helped to her chamber while I attend to the rest of my guests.”

“
I
will accompany Lady Lucinda,” the young earl declared, scrambling to his feet.

“You will accompany
me
,” the duke corrected him, and turning his back on the pitiful little drama, stalked away.

The earl stood stock-still—his fists clenched, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork in a hurricane. “I swear I would call the man out if…”

“For raising a quizzing glass? Don’t be absurd.” Mr. Rankin’s look of censure encompassed both the earl and Emily and she cringed, aware too late how ridiculous her rash accusation must have sounded.

“Your place is with your uncle, Percival. Join him at once.” Mr. Rankin’s use of the familiar address cut the young earl down to size as surely as the severity of his tone.

“Yes, sir. But Lady Lucinda—”

“I will see to Lady Lucinda, as the duke requested.”

Mr. Rankin leaned forward and with a strength surprising in such a slender man, lifted Lucinda in his arms and strode toward the nearest door, with Lady Hargrave and Emily trailing behind. Every eye turned away as they passed, as if the very act of looking at them would somehow tar the viewer with the same brush as the social outcasts.

“What happened? What dreadful thing did Lucinda do?” Lady Hargrave whimpered.

“I will tell you everything, Aunt Hortense, just as soon as we reach our chambers,” Emily promised, knowing full well the most “dreadful thing” she would have to relate would be the ill-chosen words that had tripped off her own precipitate tongue.

B
randy in hand, Jared settled into the old leather chair before the library fireplace and fit his weary body into the depression shaped by his father and grandfather before him.

The hour was one-and-twenty, and for the first time in the interminable evening, he had a few moments to himself, moments gained by leaving Edgar to see the local gentry to their carriages and failing to issue his usual invitation to Brummell to join him for a late night discussion. His mood was black enough without listening to the Beau’s cynical view of the happenings of the last few hours.

The door behind him opened; then shut. Without looking up, he knew who it was. No one but Edgar would dare intrude on his sanctuary. “Your ball guests have departed, your grace, and your house guests have taken to their beds—all except your lady aunts, who are hoping to have a word with you.”

Jared groaned. Leave it to Edgar to get right to the point, and his pointed use of
your grace
portended another of his tedious lectures. “I will deal with my aunts tomorrow,” he muttered. “Tonight I want a little peace and quiet. It has been a very long, very tiresome day. “

“As you wish, your grace. I shall instruct Pettigrew to convey your message to them,”

Edgar said and disappeared through the same door he had just entered. Moments later, he returned to stand in front of the fireplace. With his face in the shadows and the bright flames leaping behind his slender, black-clad figure, he put Jared in mind of some dark angel from the nether world come to pass judgment on him.

Edgar removed his glasses to polish them on the handkerchief he withdrew from his waistcoat pocket and in so doing, glanced down at the quizzing glass Jared had tossed into the fireplace ashes. “A rather drastic reaction to Miss Haliburton ‘s outburst, wouldn’t you say?” he inquired, with a short bark of laughter.

Jared squirmed uncomfortably. “I never did like the blasted thing,” he grumbled, tempted to exercise his ducal privilege and dismiss his man-of-affairs as peremptorily as he had his aunts, before the cheeky fellow started in on him. But it was a little late in the game to begin playing lord and master with Edgar.

“I see. Well, no loss then.” Edgar lifted the poker and gave a sharp jab to the log Jared had earlier tossed onto the glowing embers. Instantly, it burst into flames.

“Your aunts are quite put out, you know,” he said offhandedly. “As they understood it, and I must say so did I, you were supposed to choose your future wife and make an offer to her papa before the evening was out. “

Jared slumped deeper in his chair, hoping his silence would discourage any further discourse on the painful subject, but Edgar was not to be deterred.

“Imagine, if you can, their humiliation when you disappeared without a word after they had promised the mamas of five incomparables your decision was imminent.” Edgar shook his head slowly back and forth. “Rather mean-spirited of you, old fellow, when they had gone to so much trouble to ferret out the cream of this season’s crop. I doubt either of them will ever forgive you.”

“Oh, do shut up, Edgar, and pour me another brandy.” Jared leaned his head back against the soft, old leather of the chair and stretched out his long legs. By rights he should be awash with guilt over his cavalier treatment of his venerable relatives, not to mention the five anxious mamas. He felt nothing but a vast sense of relief that he ‘d escaped parson’s mousetrap with a whole skin.

“In case it has slipped your mind,” he remarked coldly, “I am the Eighth Duke of Montford. I do not have to explain my actions to anyone.”

“It would never occur to me to suggest anything so presumptuous, your grace.”

Silently, Jared watched the flames Edgar had stirred to life lick hungrily along the log which spanned the fireplace cavity. “I simply couldn’t do it,” he said finally. “I took a long look at those five simpering ninny-hammers—four actually, since I must count Lady Lucinda out unless I’m willing to put a bullet in young Percival—and I couldn’t envision spending the rest of my life leg-shackled to any one of them. For God’s sake, I could scarcely tell them apart, except for the redheaded chipmunk. How Percival has managed to weed one out of the herd, I cannot imagine.”

Edgar shrugged noncommittally and crossed to the sideboard for the brandy.

“Tell me the truth,” Jared said, “can you see yourself bedding one of those pretty little innocents fresh from the schoolroom?”

“Heaven forbid,” Edgar demurred. “I have no desire to rob the cradle. But luckily it is not up to me to perpetuate one of England’ s oldest and noblest titles.” He raised the sparkling crystal decanter and surveyed its amber contents against the glow of the firelight. “On the other hand, I could easily imagine bedding a warm, compassionate woman like Emily Haliburton; but then I am not restricted to the daughters of peers of the realm.” He removed the stopper from the decanter. “As a matter of fact, I have been so taken with the lady this past fortnight, I have seriously considered making her an offer.”

Jared shot upright, instantly alert. “The devil you say.”

“But not unless she comes to realize the folly of her infatuation over that annoying highwayman and my hopes on that score are dimming.” He grimaced. “I have no desire to take a wife who is wearing the willow for another man.”

Jared’ s pulse skipped a beat. “What makes you think that Em…Miss Haliburton is wearing the willow. She strikes me as too sensible for such folly.”

“Sensible? Miss Haliburton? You jest. The woman is obviously a hopeless romantic. Good heavens, haven’t you noticed her pallor, her loss of appetite, her lack of spirit these past six days? Any reader of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels could tell you the lady is suffering from unrequited love.”

Jared recalled Emily’s glowing eyes when she’d said, “So that is what it is like to be kissed.” Could Edgar be right? Did the sharp-tongued innocent imagine herself in love with the wicked brigand who ‘d delivered her first taste of passion? Now that he thought about it, it would be just the sort of thing a woman dedicated to deciphering ancient myths and legends might do. An odd combination of guilt and triumph swept through him at the thought.

Edgar poured a generous amount of brandy into Jared’s empty glass and an equally generous glass for himself. “I can well understand why you failed to note Miss Haliburton’ s megrims,” he mused. “You have, after all, been busy licking your own wounds. More than one of your guests has remarked how closely you’ve resembled a lion with a thorn in its paw these past few days. Strange how differently men and women show their emotions.”

Jared slumped back down in his chair. “I am not infatuated with Miss Haliburton, if that is what you are hinting.”

“Heaven forbid, your grace! I never considered such a thing.”

The memory of Emily’s troubled blue eyes and trembling lips when she’d begged him to give up his wicked ways passed before Jared’s eyes. He pulled himself up short. What was he thinking of? He had already ascertained that she could be neither wife nor mistress to him.

“The woman is nothing to me,” he said glumly. “Why, she is as plain as a…”

“A church mouse, your grace.” Edgar nodded. “I quite agree. And, as Brummell pointed out, she is entirely too plump to do justice to the current fashions. Not that it would matter. A common little nobody from the Cotswolds would never be accepted in London society anyway, not even if she were slender as a wraith and a raving beauty to boot.” He sighed. “I think I must have been quite mad to consider offering for her. The woman has little to recommend her, and a caustic tongue to boot. What man would be fool enough to take such a creature to wife?”

“What man indeed!” Jared agreed, his lips twisting in an unbidden smile.

He took a healthy swallow of brandy. “Still, did you see how her eyes flashed when she chastised me for ‘leering’ at her missish cousin? I swear, for a moment there, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to throttle her or…”

“Kiss her, your grace? Now that would have provided the cats of the
ton
with the prime morels—the
on dit
of the season. Besides, I suspect you have already tasted that forbidden fruit. I happened to encounter Miss Haliburton when she returned from her ride Monday last. She had the look of a woman well and thoroughly kissed.”

Jared flushed—something he hadn’t done since he was a mere stripling. “Damn you, Edgar, one of these days you’ll go too far!”

“Never fear, your grace. I have set aside sufficient funds to book passage to the Americas should such an eventuality occur.”

Edgar settled in the chair opposite Jared and crossed one elegant leg over the other. “Come to think of it, that might be the solution to Miss Haliburton’s problems—the Americas, that is. She is certainly finished here—publicly insulting someone as exalted as yourself! In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she, and her relatives, were packing this minute to leave Brynhaven in disgrace.”

“As well they should. A more pawky lot I’ve never seen,” Jared grumbled, but the ache he had carried in his heart for the past six days sharply intensified at the thought that Emily might disappear from his sight.

“That ‘pawky lot’ will be your cousin’s by marriage within the year unless I mistake young Percival’s intentions—and what a deucedly awkward situation that will be, unless…”

“Unless what’?” Jared asked cautiously.

“Unless you make some gesture to show you found the little contretemps this evening more amusing than offensive.”

“Which I did, actually. I could hardly take the actions of two emotional females seriously.”

“Hardly, your grace.” Edgar took a thoughtful sip of

his brandy. “I suppose, if you wish me to, I could instruct the head gardener to prepare posies to deliver in your name to the ladies involved. Roses, I think, would be most appropriate.”

“Do you think that would make things right’?”

“Without a doubt. A posy from the Duke of Montford! They would swoon with gratitude. Well, at least one of them might.”

“I’ll do it then,” Jared declared, feeling as if someone had just lifted an anvil off his shoulders. “I’d hate to cause Lady Lucinda any more trouble than she already has with that gambling fool Hargrave for a father.”

Edgar’s lip twitched. “I felt certain you would agree, your grace…about Lady Lucinda.”

“And so I should,” Jared declared. “She is the daughter of an earl, after all.” He smiled to himself as an idea crossed his mind. “But, no need for you to bother with the tedious business, Edgar. I’ll handle it myself. I’ve been planning to visit the orangery in any case. I used to be rather close to old Ben when I was a child, and I understand he’ s still in charge there.”

For the first time Jared could remember, Edgar looked honestly surprised, but being Edgar, he quickly recovered. “Good idea, your grace,” he said, something that sounded suspiciously like humor coloring his voice. “I am certain Lady Lucinda will appreciate the gesture all the more because of your personal touch.”

Jared rose at dawn after the first good night’ s sleep he’d had in a sen’night. Dressing quickly, he slipped silently into the hall and hurried through the maze of connecting passages to the stairs leading to the old nursery. Since none of his guests had small children, he felt certain that wing of the house would be empty.

He opened the door to the cozy room where he had spent so many hours the first seven years of his life and found himself gripped by memories, both poignant and painful. Everything was just as he remembered it. His toy soldiers, in their bright red uniforms and black shakos,
still marched across the ornately carved dresser; the same blue coverlet still adorned the narrow bed; the same blue draperies still framed the recessed window seat—and unless it had been removed sometime during the past twenty-three years, the object he sought would still be on the floor of the old clothespress.

He opened the heavy doors and peered inside. There it was, his wooden toy chest, exactly where he had placed it, the day he’d been whisked off to live with his grandfather after his drunken father broke his neck escaping through a bedchamber window when a wronged husband returned home unexpectedly.

That had been a momentous day in his young life—almost equal to the day, one year earlier, when his adored young mother had kissed him tenderly, promised she would always love him, and promptly run off with the French dancing master.

It was as if all the joy and laughter in his young life had gone with her, leaving only a dark cloud of gloom hovering over Brynhaven. For weeks, nay months, he had watched in vain from his nursery window for her return. Many years later, when the pain of her desertion was nothing but a bitter memory, he had learned that
Madame Guillotine
had claimed both her and her dandified Frenchman shortly after they’d reached the Continent.

He’d never felt a minute’ s grief over the loss of his father—only bewilderment at being wrenched from the only home he knew. The marquess had never visited the nursery and on the one occasion Jared had dared seek him out, he’ d found him stark naked and tumbling one of the chambermaids. His father had looked up just long enough to laugh at Jared’ s wide-eyed confusion. Then, muttering an obscenity, he had gone back to pumping the squealing maid, and Jared had run to the comforting arms of his nanny as fast as his little legs could carry him.