Mad About the Duke, page 6
James glanced back out the door and toward the stairs. “You mean she’ll be even more furious?”
“Oh, she’ll be in a rare mood for some time.” Jack walked over and punched James in the shoulder like James had seen other men do with friends, but something Jack had never done to him before.
Their stations in life, James’s title and Jack’s former wild ways had always put such a distance between them, but in the last day suddenly something had changed.
James had changed.
“It is I who should be thanking you, Parkerton,” Jack told him, strolling toward the door.
“Whatever for? I just riled your wife into a rare state.”
“I know.” There it was, that rakish grin of Jack’s. The one that was always the harbinger of trouble. “And I think I’m going upstairs to take advantage of her rare state.” Then he winked and bounded quite happily up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Then it hit James what Jack was actually saying and what he intended to do when he got upstairs and confronted his wife.
In the middle of the afternoon and under this very roof.
James glanced warily up at the ceiling. Oh, good heavens, that was far more information than he wanted to know.
Wheeling around, James headed for the front door, but then realized he was still wearing Jack’s wretched jacket. The same poor coat Jack had probably owned when he’d romanced Miranda.
The duke examined the dark wool encasing him and considered the very real truth that he might know very little about women.
About as much as his brother did about fashion.
Egads, could there really be a good reason why he, the Duke of Parkerton, wasn’t on Lady Standon’s list?
Honestly none that he could think of, but then again, right now his brother was headed upstairs to enjoy the delights of his wife and what was James going to do?
Get out of earshot, that much was for certain.
Chapter 4
If Elinor thought her plan to hire Mr. St. Maur would be enough to find her a husband, she’d quite mistaken the matter.
For not an hour after Lucy had left, Minerva’s Aunt Bedelia arrived. Like an unstoppable windstorm, she blew into the house on Brook Street, feathers fluttering, keen eyes catching every detail around her and her determination resounding in every sharp click of her heels.
A widow four times over, she had recently married her fifth husband, Viscount Chudley, and therefore the newly minted Lady Chudley considered herself the leading expert on the subject of finding and catching a husband.
The Duchess of Hollindrake’s Bachelor Chronicles had nothing on her.
“Now that I’ve gone and arranged Lucy Sterling’s marriage—,” she announced, taking the spot squarely in the middle of the settee in the sitting room.
Minerva and Elinor exchanged glances. Just as they’d guessed. The ink was barely dry on the couple’s Special License and already Lady Chudley was taking full credit for the match.
Aunt Bedelia settled deeper into the brocade, which boded ill for all of them. It meant she had no intention of leaving.
Not until she’d unleashed whatever plot she’d concocted.
“I’ve come upon the perfect plan as to how to do the same for the two of you,” she said, revealing her hand. Not that the subject was a surprise.
Minerva crossed her arms over her chest. “Aunt, I have no intention of getting married again.”
This was met with a flutter of a handkerchief. Some might have considered that a certain sign of surrender, but Aunt Bedelia did not know the meaning of the word.
Hence, the five husbands.
“Yes, yes, so you say,” she blustered, “but now that the two of you are the toasts of the Town, you will be besieged with offers.” Aunt Bedelia practically glowed.
“Toasts?” Elinor managed, taking another glance at Minerva, whose cheeks were now about the same color as her muslin gown.
“Yes. Toasts. Diamonds. The on dit of the Season. How could you not be? Of course it is all because I arranged for the Earl of Clifton to fall in love with Lucy Sterling—”
Elinor shot Minerva a pointed glance. Straighten this matter out before it continues. Before it goes too far.
Oh, but it already had.
Aunt Bedelia fluffed the lace on her cuffs. “Lucy’s marriage puts the two of you in a new light. For if Lucy Sterling could capture Clifton’s heart and steal him away from Lady Annella, then you two, as the other Standon dowagers, must be—oh, how can I say this politely?”
Minerva had her hand on her brow, as if it were ringing with a blinding megrim. “Just say it, Aunt.”
“Well, you needn’t take that tone, Minerva. It is just that your generation isn’t as open about these things as mine was, but if you insist…It is being said that because of the speed with which Lucy was able to catch Clifton, she must be as accomplished as her mother is reputed to be…”
Accomplished? Whatever did Aunt Bedelia mean? Then Elinor glanced over at Minerva, and from the hot blush coloring the lady’s previously pale features, she understood.
Lucy’s Italian mother had an infamous reputation. And now, guilty by association, Society thought that they were just as…
Accomplished. Elinor blanched. Oh, good heavens!
And worse still, whoever she married would expect that she be…oh, no…accomplished.
When nothing could be further from the truth.
But there was no time to consider such a shocking notion, for Aunt Bedelia sprang to her feet and clapped her hands like a Bath master of ceremonies about to open the first assembly of the Season.
“Shopping, my dears,” Aunt Bedelia ordered. “It is time to go shopping. We’ve hardly begun to beggar Hollindrake’s accounts—”
“Aunt, we are in this situation because we were beggaring his accounts to begin with,” her niece pointed out.
The matron waved her off. “But this is different. Once you are married, he will no longer be responsible for your bills, and if he protests, remind him of the money you will be saving him in the years ahead when you are wed to someone else.”
Elinor’s head began to swim, as it usually did around Aunt Bedelia. “If you must know, I have a prior—”
“Nonsense!” Aunt Bedelia said, shooing them both from the parlor into the foyer, where Minerva’s maid stood hovering close at hand. Not missing a beat, the matron directed the gel to fetch the necessary accoutrements for this expedition. “It isn’t just shopping,” she advised them like a pair of apprentices, “but being seen. By one and all.”
One and all? Elinor’s knees wavered. She had to go out in public when everyone thought she and Minerva were some sort of widowed Cyprians?
But there was no stopping Aunt Bedelia, and before Elinor could come up with a reasonable excuse, short of feigning fits or speaking in tongues, they were bundled up and packed into Lady Chudley’s carriage for an afternoon of shopping on Bond Street.
To Elinor’s horror, Aunt Bedelia spent the ride going from lists of the upcoming social events they must attend to the right colors to wear for each soiree, ball and musicale so they wouldn’t clash with the interior. The lady shuddered and explained, “Lady Godwin-Murphy’s ballroom is the most unflattering shade of puce. Why, I’ve seen unwitting ladies fade right into the walls.”
Elinor did her best to appear the attentive pupil, but she couldn’t shake what Aunt Bedelia had said earlier.
“Then you two must be—oh, how can I say this politely—just as accomplished.”
Accomplished? Whatever was she going to do?
Ask Mr. St. Maur to help you, said a wicked little voice. He appears very accomplished.
Elinor shivered, and Aunt Bedelia quite mistook the matter, drawing the lap blanket up higher.
“Dreadfully cold today, isn’t it?” the older lady said, hardly pausing for breath as she extolled the color of Lady Shale’s second parlor and the likelihood of anyone of merit showing up at her Tuesday card parties.
Elinor merely nodded, trying to listen to the lady’s advice when all she could think of was the inevitable truth: she was so very unaccomplished when it came to men.
Oh, she was a widow, and she’d done that. But accomplished? Not in the least. And while it had never given her much pause over the years, after Lucy’s confession about the joys of lovemaking the other night, Elinor found she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
And then along came Mr. St. Maur—with his dark, handsome looks and his dangerous veneer—and it was like putting a match to the idea that had been kindling in the back of her thoughts.
A lover.
If she was going to have any inkling of what “accomplished” meant, she needed to take a lover if only to discover what all the fuss was about. And quickly, before she got married and her new husband found her lacking.
Just then, the carriage pulled to a stop before the milliner’s shop that Aunt Bedelia swore was the finest in Town.
Dutifully, Elinor and Minerva went to follow the lady inside, but a bolt of fabric in the window of an adjacent shop caught Elinor’s eye.
A deep, rich crimson, it was the sort of color she would never consider wearing—puce walls aside—yet something about the passionate hue called to her.
If you wore that crimson, you wouldn’t be unaccomplished for long.
And again her thoughts flitted to the dream she’d had. To Mr. St. Maur.
Most decidedly, he would never leave a lady lacking.
“I shall be along in just a moment,” she said, breaking ranks.
“You had best,” Minerva warned, wagging a finger. “For if you think to sneak off and leave me alone with her, there shall be dire consequences!”
Elinor laughed. “I am well aware that if I dared such an affront, she’d hunt me down.”
“Never mind Aunt Bedelia!” Minerva shot back. “I’ll have your head on a pike in front of Almack’s.”
They both laughed and Minerva continued into the shop while Elinor walked toward the draper’s, the crimson bolt of velvet holding her attention.
Oh, it shall be too dear, she told herself as she came closer. Such fabrics always were.
Not that she’d cared for the last few years, living as she had under the Sterling family largesse.
But that was over. And while it would be nothing to order it up and have the bill sent to the Duke of Hollindrake, as she always had, it wouldn’t do to raise the duke’s (or more to the point, the duchess’s) ire, or she’d find herself living in a hunting box in Scotland. Still, such a fabric might be worth the risk.
“So you’ve come out of hiding,” a voice from behind her sneered.
Elinor whirled around and found herself face-to-face with her stepfather.
Lord Lewis, who had once been considered handsome, stood before her, bleary-eyed and disheveled. His cravat sat limply at his neck, his coat was rumpled. “Can’t keep her from me, you know. Not any longer. You’ll hand her over if you know what’s good for you,” he said, looking around for any sign of Tia.
“She’s not here,” Elinor told him, “so leave me be.”
“I wouldn’t have anything to do with you, you blowsy strumpet, if you hadn’t meddled in what isn’t your affair.” He leaned forward and an air of stale brandy washed over her. “You stole what is mine.”
“I made sure my sister wasn’t sold off into an unfit marriage as you did to me, sir,” Elinor told him tartly, taking a cue from Lucy Sterling, remembering how her friend had stood up to Lewis and won.
He’s naught but a coward, she told herself. A coward.
“I can do with the chit as I see fit, and you’d best remember that,” he shot back angrily.
A fact Elinor well knew and was the exact reason why she didn’t have the coins to outright purchase a good length of the velvet in the window. Nearly every bit of her ready cash had been used up bribing Tia’s school mistress to let Elinor take her younger sister out of school in the middle of the term without informing Lord Lewis as to his ward’s whereabouts.
Not that the school mistress had kept her word. The devious woman had informed the baron immediately—though Elinor doubted she’d pocketed much from Lord Lewis for the information.
“My sister is no longer your concern, sir.”
“No longer my concern, you say?” he mocked. “I beg to differ. I’ll go over to that house of yours and take her right now, if I please.”
Elinor shook her head. “You do so at your own peril.”
“That bitch isn’t there to protect you any longer,” he sneered. “I heard how she whored her way into Clifton’s bed and got herself a title. Well, I say good riddance, and now it is my turn for a bit of luck. I’ll take your sister and you won’t have anyone there to stop me.”
He started to walk away, but Elinor wasn’t about to let him go. Not just yet.
“Beware, sir. For Lucy may be gone, but she’s left Thomas-William to watch over us. To keep Tia safe. I understand he was trained by her father to be quite ruthless. You’ll find him far less forgiving than Lucy or I would be.”
The man blanched, for it was true; he was a coward. He stalked back over to where Elinor stood. “You spiteful little bitch! I should have married you to someone who would have beaten that sharp tongue of yours out of your head. I should have—”
Elinor stopped listening to his vitriolic speech. Instead, she glanced over his shoulder, unwilling to look at the hatred gleaming in his eyes, and instead focused on the glorious crimson fabric in the window. The sort of color that would catch a duke’s eye, hold his attention. A duke with enough power to send the likes of Lord Lewis packing.
Permanently.
And while that was a deliciously wicked wish, one she was sure Lucy would have applauded, this was neither the time nor the place for murder, as tempting as it was.
Lewis, who had never exercised a moment of patience in his life, took her reverie as an insult. He caught hold of Elinor’s arm and shook her. “Don’t stick your hoity-toity nose in the air at me, miss. I got you that fancy title you prance around with, and it is grateful you should be. And now it is your sister’s turn to earn her keep, and you’ll hand her over immediately or I shall have Bow Street on you. A few nights in Newgate ought to remind you of where your obligations lay. And if that isn’t enough, then I’ll—”
But the baron’s last threat was cut off as suddenly he rose in the air, his fingers clutching at his throat.
“Then you’ll do what?” a deeply masculine voice asked as he shook Lord Lewis like a terrier might a rat.
Elinor’s gaze flew up.
St. Maur!
And just as she’d suspected, he wasn’t merely a man of business, all papers and figures.
In fact, there was nothing mere about him right now.
James had left his house and walked without any purpose or direction (other than to get as far as possible from his brother and sister-in-law’s afternoon antics), having left poor Richards and Winston in the foyer gaping after him, their carefully crafted schedule for the remainder of his day in utter ruins.
But right now, his appointment at Gentleman Jim’s seemed rather redundant. He’d had enough of fisticuffs this week without paying for the pleasure of being swung at.
Instead, he walked through the park, around the reaches of Mayfair, pursued by that single word his vexing sister-in-law had tossed at him like a gauntlet.
More.
The word taunted him with every tromp of his boot. More.
Worse yet, here were Jack and Clifton, living proof that Miranda had hit him with something more than just a notion. They had discovered the truth behind this mysterious “more” and seized their chances (or rather the ladies who held the key) and were now living like greedy, well-sated sultans.
More. James shook his head and paused to get his bearings. Not that he had the faintest idea where he was, until he glanced up and saw the sign on the post.
Bond Street.
He smiled and turned to the right. He knew exactly where he was—but his confident decision to return to Cavendish Square via this familiar route was soon hampered by a shocking realization.
The streets were thronged with ladies shopping.
All kinds of ladies. Matrons. Debutantes with their mothers. Well-heeled countesses and lofty marchionesses with their entourages of friends and companions and maids and footmen trailing behind them like the faint glimmering lights of a comet’s tail.
So this is what they do during the day, he realized, keeping his eyes down and his hat pulled low so that no one would recognize him. Not that it was likely, wearing Jack’s coat as he was, or, for that matter, shopping.
For the Duke of Parkerton never shopped. Not like other people.
Richards handled all that, and when James needed to make a personal decision, the tradesmen came to him.
But here were the multitudes of Society, parading about and going from shop to shop to make their own singular choices from the myriad of offerings—not just the chosen few that had been winnowed down for his discerning eye.
Truly, it was rather fascinating, or so he thought.
But into his curious ramble came an unpleasant voice bellowing from a nearby shop window.
“Don’t stick your hoity-toity nose in the air at me…”
The man’s foul tones sent nearby shoppers scurrying in a wide arc to avoid this detestable display of ill manners.
James had heard enough, and that was even before he saw the object of this man’s displeasure. When he clapped his eyes on the lady bearing the brunt of this foul wrath, his vision glazed over with a red anger, and his fists curled into hard knots, like they never would have in the sawdust ring at Gentleman Jim’s.
How dare this man…
“A few nights in Newgate ought to remind you of where your obligations lay,” he was now yelling, having drawn the attention of passing carts and carriages. “And if that isn’t enough, then I’ll—”
James stormed through the knot of curious onlookers and caught the fellow by the throat, cutting off his threats. With a strength and determination he didn’t know he possessed, he hoisted the man up until his toes wiggled in the air.
